Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Work/ Money

Just like every other person in the world, the last thing I ever want to do on any given day is go to work. Work, as shitty as it may be, is an essential part of any given day for most people in this world. Now there are exceptions like children and lazy assholes, but those of us who want to make some money and live our lives, this is, for all intents and purposes, what we have to do to survive. I have already talked about three of my wonderful jobs already and there are still more to come, but what exactly is it about jobs that makes everyone hate their lives so much? I mean, unless you work for some happy company like Disney or something, what the hell is there to be happy about in a job environment? Well for those select couple of people who actually LIKE their jobs and actually do something they want to do, well kudos to you. The rest of us assholes are stuck in boring ass jobs toiling our lives away to uselessness.

I have had some shitty jobs; there is no doubt about it. But really people, who hasn’t? I have had a total of seven jobs now in my life and I can honestly say I only really enjoyed one of those. And to tell you the truth, I even hated aspects of it. I guess there is no real “perfect” job though. The only one I could think of is being a professional athlete. They get paid millions upon millions of dollars in some cases to play a game. Man that would be the life… unless you got severely injured being that they don’t have health insurance. So I guess that even has its drawbacks. But other than that what job could there possibly that has no stress, no stupid people to deal with, is highly paid, and is easy to do. If I had that answer don’t you think I would be doing that right now?

I wouldn’t hate my jobs so much if it weren’t for the people. When I say people, I mean the people I have to deal with, not the people I work with, though they can even get a little much sometimes. Like I said a little while back, out of my seven jobs I really only enjoyed one of those jobs, and that’s the one where I didn’t have to deal with the public. I worked for my high school during the summer for five years doing maintenance work. I worked with actual people I liked and in some cases were some of my best friends in the whole world. So who wouldn’t like that job? I got to goof off a lot, I got to be outside, I got a golf cart to ride around in, and I got to hang out. What a freaking job. But like I said, this had its downfalls to. Number one, being that it was a forty hour a week job, the hours were pretty awful. Every day was 7am-3:30p because God forbid we actually get paid for our lunch break. But before I get to deep into that job, I gotta tell you some other stuff first.

If you know absolutely nothing about me you should probably know that I am a night owl. One of my least favorite things in the world to do is get up before 11am. I am one of the crankiest people on earth in the mornings. Ask anyone, my mother, ex roommates, or ex fiance, I literally just grunt for an hour if you try and talk to me in the morning. It’s the WORST  feeling in the world. There is nothing that rivals the feeling you have when you first wake up. I don’t know about you, but I wake up and there is a film over my eyes that won’t go away, I have this layer of grossness on my body, I am always thirsty, and any sort of light makes me react like a vampire. And not one of those gay vampires either. So my first reaction is to get a shower when I wake up to wash away all of these awful feelings. That would be a great idea, but then comes number three of the top five worst feelings your body will ever feel on a regular basis… the feeling of warm water hitting your face when you just wake up. I have no idea how to explain it. It’s like a feeling of utter shock and awe while you feel even more tired because your body is relaxing under the temperature of the warm water. What are those other four feelings? That’s for me to know and for you to make your own list.

Now you can see the beginning of why I hate working so much. Most “normal” jobs start early in the morning because most “normal” people have lives and a family to go to at night. So that means I have to wake up in the morning and go to work. Not my bag baby. So I stick with jobs that are later in the day, or at least I try to. My first ever job was like this. I was in junior high school and I got a job as a newspaper delivery guy for the local newspaper. This local newspaper only came out on Thursdays and my job was to deliver it sometime during the day to the people in my neighborhood who got that paper. This wasn’t the annoying part about it. That came in the form of payments, which slipped people’s minds 90% of the time. Picture me, this 13 year old kid trying to collect a fee from these people on a monthly basis. No one takes a kid seriously, especially one who delivers their newspaper. I would have to go to these people’s houses on a daily basis in the evening to try and catch them so that they could give me their five dollar fee for the month. Half the time I could tell these people were dreading that fact that I was coming. It’s like they had a radar for me. Sometimes I would knock on people’s doors, see that they are inside, and also see that they were completely ignoring me. I mean, who does that? I was 13 years old and already could figure out that people were absolute assholes. They were getting free papers because they couldn’t pay the paper boy $5.

After this I got a job at a local chain convenient store in town as a facilities dude. This was literally three or so years after I had the newspaper job so it was a considerable amount of time between jobs for me. I had no idea what this job entailed, but I knew it was going to be my first legitimate job, so that was exciting. It turned out that this job only had about 12 hours per week which kind of sucked but was perfect for a person my age.  I mean, who needs a full time job or even a job that has 20 hours when they are 14 years old. It’s not even healthy for a person at that age to have a job in my opinion. But I wanted money and I wasn’t going to get it any other way.

So I start this new job with open eyes and new vigor for life. I have income coming in and an alright job for someone my age, so life is pretty good. I even get to wear blue jeans to this job and a store t-shirt, so it’s not like I even had to dress up. The one drawback of that job though and it actually almost made me not actually take the job is that I wasn’t allowed to grow facial hair. If you know anything about my family, there is one thing we take pride in, our facial hair. Us Jackson's have been known to grow some mighty beards over the years including my father’s slick porn star mustache I saw him walk around with most of my life. He finally realized they went out of style around 1972 and then grew a goatee around the year 1998. I was about to let my family lineage down by not growing facial hair, and I didn’t like the fact. But I had to do what I had to do. Which brings me to another point,..

 Why can’t people grow facial hair in most places of employment? This way of thinking just strikes me as such a thing that should have been abolished by now. Sure, they can hire literally anyone, but your gonna have to shave your beard off if you want a job. Just seems like shallow thinking to me. I completely understand if you are working with food, now that makes sense, but the kind of job I had at this convenience store really shouldn’t have made me shave my beard. I get it, in some people’s opinions it looks unprofessional.  You know whose opinion that is? I’ll tell you… Its these old fucking people who went to a soda fountain shop back in the 1940’s and saw they weren’t allowed to have beards so they always think that no one should have facial hair in a place of employment. Good God we wouldn’t want grandpa to have a bad experience getting gas because the guy mopping in the back had a beard. I mean honestly, who gives a rats ass?

My job was simple. Basically all I had to do was figure out things to do for four hours so I stayed out of trouble. At first this was easy. I stocked the cooler first and foremost, mainly because my shifts were so early in the morning I could do that as a fucking zombie. I had to take out the trash, which was usually done twice a day because the people who go into these places are messy/ rude assholes. They literally just throw garbage, papers, and coffee wherever they please and then move on with their lives. It’s ridiculous. I would also have to, like I said before, mop and sweep whatever needed done in or around the store. So this entailed the daily spill or two along with a sweep around the building of cigarette butts and other items. Oddly enough, no matter HOW slow I went all of this shit never took nearly four hours. So I had to get creative. I started cleaning the gas pumps with this high power degreaser, but this could only be done once a month or so. I would make sure all the windshield wiper fluid was stocked out in front of the store which again could only be done once or twice a month. Not many people buy that shit surprisingly. So I actually had to come to terms with making multiple five minute trips to the bathroom when I really didn’t have to go. When I realized people thought I had a problem though, I quit doing that. So I had to go to desperate measures. After a couple months of doing the same shit over and over again, you get pretty good at it. I took what used to take me four hours to start down to about an hour and a half.

You may not believe this but my time was a valuable thing. After I got everything done, the rest of my time was focused on avoiding any sort of other employee crossing my path, especially a manager. So I would literally do ridiculous things such as build barriers and hide behind them. There were hundreds of boxes in the back of the store, so I would stack them up and bide my time till my shift was over. I would sometimes sit behind those damn things for hours. Other days I would sneak a radio to the back and listen to it. This was particularly nice during football season. I swear I worked every day the Steelers played, so I would listen to the game instead of working. This was particularly dangerous. Instead of paying any sort of attention to the cooler door opening, I would be paying complete attention to the tiny transistor radio at a low volume. I could have gotten caught so easily. But I never did.  Pretty much all in all, that job was a complete fringing joke. Someone who was already working could have been doing all of the things I was doing. But a job is a job and I was making easy money. But eventually all good things come to an end.

Being that I was about to graduate high school, I knew that I really couldn’t keep this convenience store job if I was going to college. At this point I was already accepted into college so there was a decision to be made. Go to college and come home and work this half ass job or go to college and quit the job. Well this was certainly a dilemma being that I would have absolutely no money coming in whatsoever. So my decision was made, I was going to be a lazy piece of shit and quit this job for the summer before I went to school. A typical Greg Jackson move.

I had my summer completely planned. I was going to relax and mentally prepare myself for my first year of college, which sounded simple enough to me. But then, out of the blue, I was offered a job that was only a summer position from the school that I just graduated from. By the way, this is that job I started telling you about before. It was a 40 hour a week job where I would work 7am-3:30pm for minimum wage. Now like I said, I really didn’t want to work at all but this was too good to pass up. Looking back on it now, I am really happy I didn’t either because I kept this job for literally four years. If you do the math, that is a couple months over a year of total work which is pretty damn good for someone my age. So I took the job. I was working with a bunch of people I knew so how bad could it be?

Oh it was bad. So bad I remember my first day like it was freaking yesterday. If you remember correctly from a previous chapter, one of my least favorite things to do in the entire world is get up in the morning. In my opinion, the morning witching hour is eleven o’clock, so anything before that I am going to be a literal bear. If you are anyone who knows me, when I wake up in the morning before the so called witching hour, anything you say or do to me will be met with an angered grunt and sometimes wild aggression. For example… When my Mother used to try and wake me up for school, she did it one of two ways. She would either sing this song to me that went something like this; “good morning, good morning, you’ve slept the whole night through, good morning, good morning to you,” or she would sort of shake me. It just mattered what kind of mood she was in. My response to these situations are like I said before, I would either grunt at her or I would flail my arms and grunt at her. Take your pick, because I still do those things. Needless to say, being that this job started at the crack of dawn, I was not a happy camper.

6:30am. That’s the awful time I had to be at the maintenance shed to report for work. I would drudgingly and literally drag my feet in seconds before I had to punch, and the idiotic hicks whom I worked with would try and hold unintelligent conversations with me about things I had absolutely no desire or will to talk about. It was torture sometimes honestly. I remember specifically this one conversation the one guy had with me because it was so ludicrous. He was not a large man, but he is still one of the most intimidating people I have ever met. There is no other way of describing this man then to call him ridiculously country strong. This man could literally pick up anything and throw it, and he would do this for no reason what so ever. He did it all the time. Not to mention, for some reason he had a Mighty Mouse tattoo. Nothing says bad ass like a Mighty Mouse tattoo. But he would talk about some stupid shit called a figure eight car. I still don’t know what the hell a figure eight car is and he literally talked about it for an hour one morning. All I know is that these stupid ass cars drive on a track that is a figure eight, that’s all I really got out of that hour of mind numbing conversation.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to actually keep up with the conversation. I mean, I’m not fringing Einstein here, but I would like to think I have some level of intelligence. But trying to keep an hour long conversation going about some sort of race car is my peek. It was outrageous at times the things I had to try and have in common with some of these people. Other than the monotonous droning from these common folk, the only other thing that really bothered me was probably the main part of our job, weed whacking. Weed whacking, wee eating, trimming, whatever the hell you want to call it was literally the main purpose of why we were hired. If it was the least bit nice out we were out there with our gigantic weed eaters whacking away at anything that remotely looked long.

Now with this job came a lot of different aspects of life. Teamwork, tragedy, but mainly pain were just some of the possible things you could witness while doing this wonderful job. While there are a couple people with you doing the same thing, it’s generally not a good idea to work in tandem when having a gigantic piece of machinery in your hands. But, we did it sometimes… carefully. Tragedy would also strike at inopportune times like the time I accidentally exploded a frog with my weed whacker. But usually the only thing that really happened was pain. Having a job where we cut grass in western Pennsylvania can be risky business. Literally all of the school is on one gigantic hill, so trying to weed whack and stand on a hill could, at times, be one horrible journey. One third of your focus has to go on keeping your balance while another third is focused on not killing your coworkers and the last third focused on actually cutting the grass. It’s despicable. So as you could imagine, being the wonderful klutz I am, I spent most of the time on my ass. So falling down a hill became very painful, yet you kind of got used to it. Also, it got kind of hot during the summer. You would think that we would wear jeans because of the type of work we did, but you would be wrong. First off, Pennsylvania summer times are always blistering damn hot, so if you wanted a heat stroke then go for it. I mean the humidity is enough to drive a man to murder sometimes.  So myself, along with most of my coworkers, wasn’t ready to wear long pants while we worked. In fact, Basketball shorts were worn by all and our legs paid dearly for it. Grass, bugs, garbage, and rocks would be embedded in our legs with precision and haste. It hurt like fucking hell by the end of the week.  

But those things weren’t even the worst of it all. When you wait till weeds are the size of a four year old, bad things can happen. At times, the weeds we were cutting were sometimes as thick as a damn broom handle. They then fly at your body at speeds of about 20 mph and leave welts without there being anything you can do about it unless you are in the matrix. But again, that’s not even the worst of it. Apparently, when you let those weeds go for so long and being that my school was basically next to a forest, everything has some sort of poisonous plant next to it. Ivy, oak, and sumac, being all deciduous to western PA, had the makings of disaster for all of us.  When you are weed whacking, you have to disregard for what you are hitting. You see one color and one color only… green. Honestly, when you know what you have to get done, you just do it. You don’t care what you cut down in your path. So as you can imagine, we all hit our fair share of poison. Out of all of the people who wee whacked, I think myself and my friend Chris were the ones who go it the worse. At one point, both of my legs, along with most o my right arm and some on my left had some sort of rash or irritation from poison. It wasn’t only annoying, which is was, but after a while you have to give in to the itching. I wouldn’t advise doing this though, because I have a giant scar on my right leg to prove it. Apparently if you itch it enough and enough of the juices come out of your leg, it will create a scar. Who knew. If I never get poison in my life again, it will be spectacular. But other than the retarded people I had to work with and the awful weed whacking, the job was awesome.

Other than the fact that I have had some shitty jobs, some of the hardest times I have had in my life thus far is actually trying to find a damn job. Not only is it nearly impossible to find any job what so ever (unless you want to flip burgers for no money at all), but you basically have to jump through hoops to get one. Now by jumping through hoops, I mean you have to have big boobs and attractive or had to have gone to Harvard and graduated with honors. In the rules of the work place, those are the golden rules if you want to be guaranteed a job. Being that I have neither of those characteristics, I’m fucked. Now you may be thinking to yourself, that can’t be true. If you haven’t realized it yet, I’ve been being sarcastic throughout this entire book. So get a clue. But honestly, that’s what it seems like to me. I have a fringing master’s degree and I can’t even get a damn interview for a good job. The job I am working at now was basically handed to me on a silver platter because I knew someone in the department. A lot of people actually say that’s the key to finding a good job. To that I say, bullshit. If I wanted to network and basically blow my way to a job, Id work in the porn industry. I honestly don’t think people even look at qualifications anymore. It’s all about who ya know... UNLESS you went to Harvard or have big boobs.

Other than people saying you need to know people to get in to a place of employment, there are other keys as well. People say you have to call and ask about the job and see if they got your resume. I don’t know about you, but I find that I am being overbearing when I do that. It’s basically giving a place a call and annoying the hell out of them while you waste their damn time. Let’s create a fictional setting here. If I was a successful person working for a large company and I put out a “now hiring” post on the interweb, this is word for word what it would say…

“My name is Greg and I work as a successful businessman at a multimillion dollar company. We are currently looking for a new secretary to do all the grunt work for our company. The job is very important and the person who gets hired will basically be our whipping boy. Now, with that said, we are already anticipating getting hundreds of applications and resumes for this job. So don’t even bother calling and asking about the position. You will be wasting both your time and mine. Good luck!”

Now that’s what I wish these things would say because at least its fucking honest. I mean for God sake people, do you really think you calling and bugging the hell out of them gives you a better shot at a job? I don’t know if it does or not, but if I were in that fictional setting above and you called me, I would for real throw your application in the trash because there is not much more in the world that I hate more than an annoying and domineering person. I actually laugh when people say they keep calling the places they applied at. How do you think that’s helping? You think it makes you look ambitious? No dude and dudettes, it makes you look desperate.

Now on the other end of that, one thing I wish a place you apply at would do is call you either way. What I mean by that is I wish they would call to tell you if they are interested or if they weren’t interested. Because then I wouldn’t just sit there with my thumbs up my ass wishing and praying I get that call. There are probably thousands upon thousands of people out there wondering if they are ever going to get that dream job because the places they apply never called them back. That’s probably because they filled the position months ago and didn’t bother calling and being courteous enough to tell you thanks for being interested in that position and their company. I mean, God forbid they be courteous. I have applied for hundreds of jobs in my life and I have only gotten a thanks but no thanks call/email four times. And each one of those times I went out of my way to tell them how much I appreciated them telling me that. Its common fucking courtesy, that’s all it freaking is.

Hell man, if I didn’t have to work, it would be the best thing EVER. Even when I think about it the biggest smile comes on my face. But then reality slaps it off my face and the federal government throws student loan letters in my mail box like those owls from Harry Potter. Yes kiddies I, like mostly everyone, have dept. When I finally realized I had to consolidate my loans and then realized how much money I actually owed for my useless five years of education, I could feel zits forming on my forehead from stress automatically. But I should have seen this coming. I put it off for months. And then I finally realized that literally everyone is in dept. So I will get through it, eventually.

After I realized that I owed so much money for my schooling, I did what any reasonable person would do. You have to understand one thing here, I was in some sort of denial stage where I thought I was going to make a lot of money in ridiculous ways. For one, I started writing this book. I have no idea while writing this if its going to even get published let alone make money, but I thought it was a good idea. How many people can say they actually wrote a full length book? I bet not many. Hell, for all I know by the time you read this sentence I could have made a pretty penny off this load of crap . Secondly, and less productively, I started playing the lottery. Yes, I now play the Power Ball twice a week and the closest I have ever come to wining was hitting three of the numbers and winning $5. People tell me it’s a waste of time but at least I’m giving my money to older Pennsylvanians I guess. I also started selling some of my crap that just sits there collecting dust. I’ve made quite a bit on that actually. Some stuff you just have sitting there in your house is actually pretty valuable, you wouldn’t even believe it until you check it out.

 If anyone could give me a better idea on how to make money any easier than applying for hundreds of jobs, writing a book, selling shit on the internet, and playing the lottery, then email me or something. Because obviously nothing short of prostituting my body out is going to pay the freaking bills. Now that I think of it, I don’t even think that would pay the bills. But like I said, it is what it is. Money is the root of all evils, and it aint gonna bring me down, man. It’s just gonna piss me off a bit. 

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Sports

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. I absolutely love sports. There have been days where I have woken up, sat down, and watched sports literally all day long. I remember those days like the back of my hand and they are absolutely glorious when they happen. This usually happens on a Sunday during football season, but they happen every once in a while otherwise. I admire the athletes and what they can do. I admire the owners who have the money to put the products out there. And I admire the leagues who keep them up and running. I absolutely don’t know what I would be like without sports and I don’t ever want it to come to that point.

With that said, there are some things about sports that really bother me. If you ask any person that has ever been to a sporting event with me, be it friend, foe, stranger, player in the game, the Lemonade guy at PNC Park, anyone whatsoever, they have probably heard me rant about this issue. I absolutely hate fans. Well, not all fans, fake fucking fans. I would be willing to say that a fair share of fans, in any sport, are what I would consider to be fake. Now with that said, there are certain types of these fans. All of which I absolutely hate more than mostly everything on the face of this earth. Why do I hate it so much? Being that there is not much more on god’s green earth I love more than sports, anything that takes away from my experience really gets my blood boiling.        

First and foremost I would like to talk about fake fan number one, anyone who tries to do the wave. I am one of the biggest advocates of fan interaction during a game. It can actually turn the tide of a game for the home town team, which I think is absolutely amazing. There is nothing more important in sports than the home court/field advantage. But if I was an athlete, and I saw some dick head trying to start the wave, I would intentionally throw something at him. It is not only distracting to the fans, I am sure it is extremely distracting to the players. In my opinion, when a fan starts the wave, if you contribute to the wave being continued, not only is the person who started the wave an asshole, but you are a bigger one. I hate the wave. No, I LOATHE the wave. It has actually angered me so much to the point where I yell at people who do it. Obviously they don’t give a shit because they are the ones standing up and shaking their arms in the air in front of me, but my voice must be heard on this issue. It’s fucking rude plain and simple. When someone pays money to go see a sporting event they are not spending money to see some jack ass stand up in front of them.

Speaking of jack asses standing, the second type of fan I hate are what I call the frequent leavers. These are those idiot people who buy tickets in the middle of everything just to get up and leave every five minutes for whatever reason. They buy seven beers, go piss 11 times, and have to go find their buddy Rick a couple times during the game which then in turns makes everyone else uncomfortable because they are either rubbing their crotch on you that many times or their ass on you that many times. It’s not only annoying but it’s also disgusting being that 90% of the time those people are gigantic and sweaty. This literally always happens to me. I remember I went to a Pittsburgh Penguins game in Philadelphia. Our row was in the all you can eat section which was a mistake to being with, and we were in a row of about 20 drunk men. I don’t exaggerate when I say in the first two periods these people left at least ten times. After the second period break they just didn’t come back. I was overjoyed because I didn’t have to stand any longer. I know it sound likes I am just being picky, but honestly… There is like no room to move at all in those rows but these people expect you to get up and let them out. It’s really inconvenient.

People who go to a sporting event and wear a shirt/jersey of a team who is not one of the two teams playing in the game that they are currently attending are next on my hit list…. That was a mouthful… I am confused by the fact that people would go to a game and wear a different jersey. I went to a game not too long ago against the Penguins and the Canadians. My friend Justin and I are going up the escalator to our seats and these jackasses cut in front of us who are wearing a Vancouver Canucks jersey and a Los Angeles Kings jersey. They were either complete idiots, really confused, or they are just trying to piss people like myself off. Why would you catch yourself in public doing that? I mean it makes absolutely zero sense to do it. It doesn’t even matter if it’s the same city either. If you go to a Pittsburgh Pirates game and wear a Steelers jersey, you shouldn’t be allowed in. I know it’s the same colors, but seriously dude. Spend the cash and get at least a t-shirt with the right freaking team on the front of it. You are an embarrassment, honestly. People are actually flabbergasted when they see someone wearing other team’s colors.  

Which brings me to another point, why the fuck do people wear New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox shit everywhere they go? It doesn’t even matter if you’re from Alaska, I would put my life on the line there are people who own one of those two hats there. I mean I kind of understand that they are fashionable, but every team’s hats are. Especially with these stupid fucking hats they have now where the logos and the hats are different colors. Don’t even get me started on those. Not only do you look like a jackass for wearing a Yankee hat constantly, but now you look like a bigger asshole for wearing this.

 

Or how about the iconic colors of the Baltimore Orioles?

Now, I thought they changed their colors to green and vomit grey… oh wait, they didn’t. In my opinion, anyone who buys these hats are complete prick faces. Not to mention that they are over $30 a pop, but they simply are just lame as shit. No person in their right mind would wear this if they were a “true” fan. That’s like saying, hey I need a hat that matches my stupid jeans that have all sorts of rips in them and my trendy shirt with brand names all over it, so I am going to buy this hat that is the same color. That’s like the asshole Penguin fans who constantly wear those God awful baby blue jerseys constantly. I actually think these people idiotically think that baby blue is the primary color of the Pittsburgh Penguins. And to them I say, shut the fuck up you idiot.

            People who wear those stupid jerseys are considered, in my eyes, as fake ass bandwagon jumpers. Some people call them fair weather fans, but that’s something completely different. I am talking about people who start cheering for a team because all they do is win. You know the people. The same ones who I saw on the street wearing a San Francisco Giants hat just a day or two after they won the World Series. Now I can say with 100% in my heart that these are the worst fans in all of sports. Not only are those Yankee and Red Sox wearing bastards also part of this group, but I saw one of the biggest bandwagon jumps in the history of sports happen right before my eyes. Bandwagon fans, for the people who don’t know what they are, are people who realize a team is doing well so they root for them. It doesn’t matter if there is a team in the city they are from, that team is doing better so they are going to cheer for them. It’s appalling. I grew up watching the Penguins win two Stanley Cups in the 91-92 and 92-93 seasons along with them being really good till about the 2000 season when it all went downhill. I had to sit through almost a decade of awful hockey, including a lockout year where the fans basically abandoned the sport altogether. So, when the sport came back, the arena was basically empty when it came to games. The team had promotions like student rush, which they still have now, that was implemented to boost attendance and get new fans into the sport. It worked. I went to a lot of games during that time. But not many other people did.

            I was seeing world class athletes like Rico Fata and Steve Mckenna play their hearts out for a team that only won 22 games one year. It was an abysmal stretch. But it didn’t matter… I was still there every year cheering for them along with no more than. I really can’t say that about all the fans that buy the tickets and doesn’t allow me to even go to five games per year now. As soon as they got good again, which started around the year 2006, I couldn’t even get the scent of a ticket because of all these fucking ridiculous fans. They use all their daddies money to buy expensive ass tickets so true fans such as my friends and I have no chance of going. The worst violators of this whole scenario are these girls who go to the games. They are the freaking worst. Now with that said, it’s not just hockey that has these girl fans either, they are just the worst. They come into the games bellowing that they are going to marry a player or their lives are over. Then they make these gigantically inconvenient signs with sayings that are nowhere close to being clever on them, just so there is one iota of a chance that they will be put on television. Most of them just ask a player is they will marry them. Now if I was a player and I saw a 14 year old girl with a sign that said “marry me Greg Jackson” it obviously would cross my mind. That was complete sarcasm, obviously. They also wear those stupid fucking pink jerseys which are ridiculous too.

            These bandwagoners also follow any trend there is to possibly follow. In the 2008 NHL Winter Classic, the Penguins wore these kind of cool looking baby blue jerseys (the ones I mentioned to hate before). Everyone and their fucking mother bought one of these things. Now everywhere you go and every time you see a penguin jersey, the colors aren’t black and gold like they are supposed to be. No, these idiot people actually think that the teams colors are baby blue and white. Its absolute insanity. You even go to a Penguins game and are expecting to see an endless see of black and gold like every other Pittsburgh sporting event. But no, all you see is fucking baby blue. These people need to get a freaking clue.

            On that note, these are the same fucking people who ask me, with all sincerity, who #82 Marty Straka is when I wear my white Penguins jersey. Though I answer them calmly and tell them who he was, you better believe that whoever I am with is going to be hearing about it later that evening. Its usually some teeny bopper girl holding up a sign asking one of the awful fourth line players to marry them. And they are asking me who Straka is because, God forbid, I wear someone other than the current star on the roster. Get a fucking clue and realize where you are. You are in my world now, bitch. The world of a passionate fan. And by passionate I mean I love the sport not that I am in some dream world where I am going to have a one night stand with one of the players.

            With all of that in mind, I have a set of rules when it comes to being a sports fan. Ive actually thought about this so much that this was actually the first idea I had for a book. I was going to write an entire book on the rules of being a fan. Actually, it’s a pretty good idea, but in all actuality, I didn’t think I could get a whole book out of the idea. It would have probably ended up being a small booklet that they gave out at seminars or something. But anyways, in my opinion, a true fan has to follow these few simple rules…

1.      You must be loyal.

2.      You have to know how to act at games.

3.       You have to wear the proper attire.

Simple enough? You would think so, but obviously people don’t understand these few key rules. And it isn’t the kind of thing where, as Meat Loaf so elegantly put it, two out of three aint bad. Its three fringing rules people. Follow them and you will be accepted by every sport fan out there.

Rule #1

            In order to be a true fan, and probably the most important of all three, is you must be loyal to your teams. Now knowing what teams to root for is essential. For example… The closest city from where I live is Pittsburgh. I get all of the Pittsburgh sports channels and I grew up watching Pittsburgh everything. So naturally I am going to be a Pittsburgh sports fan. This would make me a Pittsburgh Penguins (NHL), Pittsburgh Pirates (MLB), and Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL) fan. That is three out of the four major sports. When you are in the predicament of not having one of the four major sports in your major city of choice, this is what you have to do. You simply choose the next closest city that has that specific sports team. So in my case, the sport I need to get a team for would be the basketball or the NBA. In this case it would be the Cleveland Cavaliers. Now this is where it gets tricky boys and girls. In my opinion, being that Cleveland is probably Pittsburgh’s biggest rival in the NFL, there is no way in hell I could root for a Cleveland team. So if that is the case, the way you determine your fandom is by choosing a team. I chose the Chicago Bulls. Now I know what you are thinking. Given my age and time frame of which I became a sports fan, I probably jumped on the Chicago Bulls bandwagon. Well slap nuts you are wrong. At the time I became a Bulls fan was near the end of the Jordan era. So you can suck it. I stayed a fan through the Jay Willams, Jalen Rose, Marcus Fizer years. Yeah, Marcus Fizer… I went there.

            Now that you know who you have to root for, there are other things involved. You have to root and root hard through the good and the bad. You can’t give up on a team just because they suck for a year, or in some of my team’s cases years. At the time I am writing this, the Pirates haven’t had a winning season for 18 freaking years. I have literally never seen a year of winning baseball. But I have been there through it all no matter what. I am there every year on opening day cheering louder and louder every year. And you know why? Because when that day comes where I witness a winning season or hell maybe even a pennant or World series, it will be that much sweeter. I have been blessed to have seen four championship years for my teams in my life and I have loved every minute of it. But I would never and will never give up on my teams.

Rule #2

            Another rule that actually may be more important than the last is that people learn how to act at a game. I have pretty much already talked about this but I will reiterate. Basically, cheer when you are supposed to, don’t do the fucking wave, mock visiting fans, and actually cheer. That’s all there is to it.

Rule #3

            Again, I have pretty much already went over this but… All you have to do is wear the right jersey/short/colors for the team in which you are cheering for. Do not wear a jersey from another sports and don’t you dare wear the colors of the other team by accident. This can get you hurt.

            I know I may sound sort of prickish for giving out “rules” for being a fan, but I kind of think that everyone thinks it anyways. I mean honestly, when I see people at games doing the opposite of the rules, I actually wish physical harm on them. I know it sounds mean, but that’s the life of an avid sports fan.

            The last thing I am going to talk about in this chapter are sports channels. I am not going to say the name of the sports channel, but let’s just call it the “big sports network.” That’s apparently as creative as I can get. I have had a problem with this network for a very long time. It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching their programming, because in fact I love some of their shows, but it’s the way they depict the sports world that really gets me. I swear to God they make the world look like it revolves around New York City, Boston, Dallas, and Los Angeles. While yes, these may be four of the biggest cities in the world, if you aren’t a fan of one of these cities you don’t give two shits. Literally no one cares that the Yankees and Red Sox are playing another three game set. No one cares that Kobe Bryant is not getting along with his over rated teammates. And no one cares that Jerry Jones paid a gazillion dollars for anything. Seriously, there are other sports towns out there that have much better and interesting stories than anything that comes out of any of those cities.

            I also hate the fact that they run the same show for pretty much 12 hours a day and don’t change it once. It drives me insane. I have actually sat there for hours at a time watching the same thing over and over again like a damn drone, just hoping something would change during the hour program. Hell, just shake up the order, which would even work. But no, they always lead off the show with something I don’t give a damn about and talk about it for a good 20 minutes. And don’t even get me started when its college football season. All they talk about is USC and Arkansas for some reason. It doesn’t help the fact that I absolutely hate college football.

            When I tell people how much I don’t like college football, they are actually stunned. I am one of the biggest sports nuts you will ever meet, but every time I try and get into college football, which has been a few times now, it never pans out. I know exactly why I hate it to, but it doesn’t seem to please any person I talk to about my hatred for the sport. These idiotic people actually try to convince me of the fact that I should really enjoy the sport because they aren’t getting paid and playing for the pure aspect of sport. Yes, you tool, college football is the definition of true sport. You know, the lying, cheating, payments under the table from agents, and basically anything that these idiotic prepubescent faux athletes think they have the right to because they can run real fast and hit real hard. They really think they are special. I am sure this is what the Romans had in mind when they were competing for their pride. Trust me people, these so called “true athletes” who are playing at the purest level are anything but. You want that, go see a pee wee team from the town next to you. Not only are they playing for the love of the game, but they are so awful it’s hilarious. I know… that’s mean. They are just kids. But you know what I’m saying.

            On the other end of the spectrum there are people who think racing is an actual sport. Seriously, it’s anything but a damn sport. I call it more of a waste of time if anything. I would rather shave my ass till it bleeds than watch a second of those southern drawled “athletes” turning left for hours at a time. If this is a sport, then I am going to try and become the pope later in life, because there is no way in hell that could ever happen. I mean seriously, anyone can do what they do. I can call up a few buddies and say “hey guys, I had a great idea. Why don’t you bring up your cars so we can drive around the block about 50 times so we can see who wins.” Its literally the same fucking thing. Sports revolve around some sort of competition involving strength, endurance, skill, and speed of a HUMAN BEING. What does Nascar involve? Well, you have to BE a human being, you have to be able to lift your arms and move them in one direction, you have to be able to climb through a car window, and most importantly you have to look good in a onesey.  None of the above mentioned skills of sport are actually needed to drive a car. I think I prove my point. Seriously, there is nothing in my life I am more positive about than saying that Nascar is NOT a sport. It’s a damn farce.

            Another thing I am pretty much positive about is my hatred for some teams and athletes in sports. Like any true sports fan, there are those teams you love to hate. And just like the teams, there are the athletes you do the same for. Here are some of those…

1.      The New York Yankees- I think I have made it abundantly clear how much I actually hate this team. But what I have yet to do is explain why. Being that this team is the only reason that the sport of baseball is in the state it is today, well that’s reason enough for anyone to want to loathe this brood of assholes. But let’s be fair here, I can’t really blame it on the actual players, though there are some pretty arrogant pricks on the team. You have to look at it from the standpoint of the ownership. A man by the name of George Steinbrenner, God rest his soul, bought the team and basically said fuck you to the system of how an actual team was run. This is not a direct quote but this is what I imagine he said when he bought the team… I am going to throw all of my money out of the window and I hope some good baseball players pick it up and play for me. The league actually constituted a luxury tax because of this guy and it didn’t even matter. He still spent more and more money every year. And why does this bother me so much? That’s because that is not how a team is supposed to be run. You can’t just throw some money at the problem and hope for the best. A team is supposed to be built through multiple sources including the draft and free agency among other things. But I hate this team because they basically say fuck you to the system, which isn’t cool. I legit think they ruined baseball.

2.      Almost everything Boston- I say “almost” everything Boston because I really don’t have a problem with the Bruins. I never really have had a problem with that team and I don’t think I ever will. But on the other hand, I do have a problem with the rest of the teams. Let’s start off with the Celtics. Yet another case of a team who thinks throwing a shit ton of money at some star athletes is going to fix the problems the franchise has. It won them a championship but they failed to realize how fucking old all of the players were when they signed them. How old was Ray Allen at the time? At least 52. And if Rajon Rondo doesn’t learn how to shoot a 15 foot jump shot, I might have to go teach him myself. Teams literally leave him open and he just dribbles by the three point line like its actually doing something. Get a clue man. But in all honesty it isn’t even that. The team has won like 94 championships and they still flaunt every single one of them. That’s what annoys me the most. Which now Brings me to a team I have already talked about a tad, the Boston Red Sox. The thing that annoys me the most, besides the fact they almost spend as much as the Yankees, is their annoying ass fans. They cried every damn year how they had a curse and couldn’t win a championship. Then they actually win one and it’s like the fucking flood gates opened up and everyone was a fan. Everywhere I go I see Red Sox gear. This is a typical case of bandwagonitis obviously. Also, if I hear about how historic and awesome Fenway Park is, I will personally punch the next person who says it. It’s like fucking Cro-Magnon man designed the damn park. Who honestly thought that putting a gigantic green wall just 310 feet from home plate was a good idea? Even worse than that stupid stadium is the third and final team in Boston that I hate more and more every year. My hatred for this team started in the year 2001 when the New England Patriots beat my Steelers in the AFC championship with this asshole hotshot pretty boy quarterback named Tom Brady. Not only is it this prick face, it’s the pompous ass coach Bill Bellichick. Him and his cut off sweat shirts and arrogant press conferences can shove it. There is nothing more frustrating to hear than a Bill Bellichick press conference. Usually it’s just one word answers or some generic ass answer like “we didn’t play well enough to win” or “we didn’t play defense well enough.” It doesn’t even matter if it’s a win or a loss, the answers are still the same. I haven’t even mentioned that he’s a fringing cheater. That whole spy gate scandal should have been enough for him to be kicked out of the league along with his pretty boy toy Mr. Brady. I hate them both so freaking much. I didn’t even mention the Tom is married to one of the hottest women alive. That just makes his case even worse.

3.      The AFC North- Being that this is the division that the Steelers play in, it is imperative that I actually hate each and every team in it. But no matter how hard I try, and no matter what they do, I can’t hate the Browns. They are just terrible. No matter what they do and how hard they try they just can’t seem to win any games. There was that one fluke year with Kelly Holcomb where they made the playoffs. It was actually kind of cute how their optimism was at an all time high. But like I said, I honestly don’t think they will ever be good in a division with two other dominant teams and another mediocre team like the Bungles. Now, the real team I hate in the division and is the Steelers biggest rival is the Baltimore Ravens. Now here is a team that you can hate. Its full of cocky bastards and hot shot overrated players, not to mention murderers who do stupid fucking dances. Yeah, Ray Lewis is actually the main reason I hate this team so much and for many reasons. For one, he may have killed a man. Apparently in the world of sports this means nothing. And secondly he literally makes every tackle in a game. If you look at the box score after the game he made about 45 tackles. It’s ridiculous. Apparently he has the foresight of a God and is considered by a lot of people as being one of the best linebackers around. Coming from Pittsburgh, that’s literally blasphemy.

4.      Three teams in the NHL- There really aren’t many teams I hate in the NHL. You would think that since the Penguins are in a division with a couple of good teams in the division, I would hate mostly everyone in it. But really I only hate three teams. The first team I hate is the Washington Capitals. There is one reason and one reason only I really hate this team, Alexander Ovechkin. This dude is an absolute fuck tard. First of all, every uneducated fan in the world thinks he’s the best player in the NHL and so does Alexander Ovechkin. So not only is he a cocky ass, he’s a show boater too. Every time he scores a goal, no matter how big or small the goal, he takes like 18 victory laps and waves his hands around likes it’s fucking Independence Day or something. So he sucks. I also hate the New Jersey Devils for a couple more reasons. They also have a guy on their team that drives me insane and his name is Martin Brodeur. The goalie of the New Jersey Devils has been there for what seems like a fuckin eternity and literally never lets any goals in. He just flips around on the ground, which is completely opposite of what any actual fundamentally sound goalie should actually do, and he makes every save. It’s outrageous. That place shouldn’t even have a damn team. No matter how good they are, the fans never show up to the games, the team always plays this boring ass style of hockey, and literally no one gives a shit about them. The third team I hate, and probably hate the most, is the Philadelphia Flyers. Let’s be serious here for a second… Any sports fan knows that Philly fans are the worst for many reasons. They are loud, boisterous, and cocky when they absolutely shouldn’t be. I mean hell, how long was it since one of their teams won a title in 2008? The last one was in 1983 but you could have sworn that every team of theirs won the title every damn season as good as their fans make them sound. But of all of the teams in the city, by far the worst fans are the Flyers fans. The fans cheer like their goon team plays, loud, obnoxiously, and annoyingly. It doesn’t matter what player plays for that team, they get in their minds somehow that when you play for that team you have to goon it up every game, no matter what. Some people actually enjoy watching that kind of game, but I don’t. Being that they are a natural rival with the Penguins, it gets even worse. You can make a case for there to be actual hate in a rivalry, but you rarely see it. But in this one, you can actually see the genuine hate seep out of the pores of the players every time they play which makes each and every game a great one. Each one has sort of a playoff feel to it. I just hate how the team goes about the way they play the game. It gets under my skin.

5.      Cocky NBA Players- This is a double edged sword. Cockiness in this game can be a good thing. Hell, I got turned on to the game by one of the cockiest players of all time, Michael Jordan. But there are some players who can’t pull it off. Case in point, Lebron James. Back your shit up you cocky ass. Like seriously, how can you do the shit you did (“the decision”) And then have such a shitty show in the season? Well it could be that you and your jackass friends that signed with the team took so much money that the franchise couldn’t sign any role players. If you didn’t know sir, basketball is a team game. Or how about Kobe Bryant? I hate this guy just about as much as anyone but I have to give him props. He backs his shit up and wins, unlike Lebron. How about just about everyone on the 2011 Boston Celtics team? Well, except Ray Allen, who is a genuinely nice person. But seriously, Kevin Garnett and Paul pierce are pieces of crap. They always have this cocky look on their face like they are the best players in the world, they are fucking old, and in my opinion are completely overrated. I haven’t even mentioned their gigantic man baby who comes off the bench. He makes a fucking lay-up and it’s like he just got a Tonka truck

6.      The Milwaukee Brewers- Yes, I know, it’s sort of weird to just hate one team out of my favorite teams division, but I may actually hate this team more than the Yankees. No I don’t, but its close. This team plays in this stupid fucking baseball park that looks like a bland ass fun house. It has a gigantic slide in center field for their stupid mascot to slide down for no reason at all. I mean seriously? That’s even dumber than a hill in center field (Houston Astros) or a humungous rock formation in the park (Anaheim Angels).  That’s not even the worst part. Ever since that fat fuck Prince Fielder came on the scene in his daddies shadow,  I have had a deep hatred for this team. If this dude is a vegetarian, then I am the world’s richest man. My bank account at this time literally has like $200 so my point is made… I mean seriously, what does he do, eat bread all fucking day? He goes on a binge of bread and a pound of ziti every other day apparently and then swings the baseball bat as hard as he can. Then this asshole named Ryan Braun was there to, who I’ll give him his due is a great hitter but his face annoys the shit out of me. I mean look at it… His nose is the size of George Washington’s nose on Mt. Rushmore. It’s actually a little disgusting. Then this other guy named Corey Hart came in the mix and then I really got pissed. He’s this tall, lanky, Amish looking mother fucker who kills my team every time they play each other. I mean honestly, I think he gets nervous playing night games because of the lights. I think he legit is an Amish person. It’s like a real life Kingpin. Now that I got all of those assholes off my chest, why don’t we talk about how fucking arrogant they always are. They act like a bunch of fucking teenagers when they win a game, they talk shit on other teams, and they get pissed at simple parts of the games. For example… They held this grudge over former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Matt Capps for literally years for accidently hitting Prince Fielder with a pitch. He whined and groaned about it for the longest damn time like he never realized it was part of the game. Get the fuck over it dude. No one gives a shit. Then, like I said, God forbid they get a walk off hit. They fringing party like its 1999 and they had their first fucking cocktail. They have shit choreographed, which by the way is ludicrous, and then they wonder why people get mad at them. Grow the fuck up you pieces of shit, You should really care about what you are doing. I mean you’re getting paid millions to play a game. Act like it.

            With all of this said, I can truly say that I absolutely love sports. Yes, there are some aspects of them that piss me off such as some teams but I will never stop loving the idea of sports or the games. I’m just a dude at heart I guess. 

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Holidays

            Now I know what you’re thinking. This guy hates literally everything. But no, I don’t hate all holidays, only some of them. Thanksgiving and Christmas fucking rock. But when it comes to those holidays, there are certain things I really don’t like about them. But the general idea of eating as much as I can or getting presents, well how could anyone hate that?

            A holiday is generally a day that is designated as having  some sort of special significance that individuals, a government, or religious group have deemed that observation is warranted. With that said, there are eleven federal holidays recognized and then about 30 more holidays that are recognized by people as well. That’s literally over a month of celebrating, in some cases, stupid shit that most people don’t care about. Case in point…

            Earth day is stupid. It is the celebration of environmentalism. Great job making a holiday literally no one cares about but hippies. Like seriously, what do you do? Am I supposed to grow some green beans in my back yard on that day? Or is it everyone’s job to plant a tree on that day? Nope, that’s yet another dumb holiday called Arbor Day. So we now have two holidays that actual people celebrate that are literally the same fucking thing. Legitimately, what is the difference? I don’t see it. After researching it a bit more, I actually found the answer to my perplexing question. Apparently, on Earth day you are supposed to admire the earth’s beauty and it is also intended to create awareness and appreciation of the earth’s natural environment. So, I guess you are supposed to go on a picnic or something. But make sure you don’t liter, that’s the lesson, go green. And then Arbor Day is literally a day where you are supposed to go plant a tree. How sad is it that people actually stopped planting tress so there needed to be a holiday where you went out of your way to go plant one?

            Now this brings up the question of what actually makes a holiday one in which the United States recognizes it as an actual holiday. Like I said, out of the over 40 or so “holidays”, only 11 of them are recognized as one. Well, all but maybe one or two on the federal holiday list is stupid and shouldn’t be a holiday. That’s what the difference is. The one that I really think should be recognized is Easter. Easter, apparently, is not recognized as a federal holiday. Why? I don’t know really. Easter has religious and monetary ties to the nation, so I really don’t get it. I am not one who is big on religion, but being that Easter is supposed to be celebrated as the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, I think it should have some sort of recognition.

So how do we celebrate Easter ? By buying a shit ton of eggs and chocolate, that’s how. We buy a bunch of real eggs, vinegar, and dye. Then we make the house smell real nice by hard boiling the eggs, mixing these so called Easter colored dyes into vinegar, and then going to town. You dunk and dunk and mix the colors around. You take a white crayon and you write messages on the eggs for pep pep. You have a ball. Then apparently a gigantic bunny comes to your house and leaves baskets full of chocolate for the children. Sounds like a fun time. But I don’t know what this had to do with Jesus really. But let’s leave him out of this for now and focus more on the actual holiday activities. Of all the holidays, this one is the most active. You make those stupid eggs, you jump for joy when you get your basket of candy, and apparently you go on egg hunts. This is the part I really don’t get. Who came up with this idea? You hide these brightly colored plastic eggs with candy or some other prize in these really easily spotted places. Then you let 20 kids go running as fast and as dangerously as possible through the yard so they can to find the damn things. This is the true meaning of Easter. It’s obviously for the kids. But I have two beefs with this holiday. For one, being that it’s not a nationally credited holiday, why the hell does the White House hold a gigantic Easter egg hunt every year in its courtyard? Isn’t that a little condescending? And secondly, why did no one ever ask the question of how the hell the Easter Bunny gets in your house? These other mystical beings have a way in. The tooth fairy uses the window. Santa uses the chimney. How the crap does the Easter Bunny get in?? Well all I know is he always got in to our house and he knew what I liked. I never was a big candy kid. So this guy used to bring me awesome stuff like G.I Joes and Ninja Turtles. Well Easter, if the United States doesn’t recognize you, I sure do. I salute you. Thanks for all the awesome stuff. I mean what did something as lame as a nationally recognized holiday like Inauguration Day ever give me? For God sakes, it only happens every four years... the least it could do is give me some sort of present. Presidents don’t count.

There are other holidays, such as Arbor Day and Earth Day, in which they should basically be bunched together into one day or just eliminated completely. Things like Constitution Day and Flag Day could be bunched into something called No One Cares Day. I have never even heard of these freaking holidays until I looked up the actual list of holidays. Well, I lied. I heard of Flag Day, but not Constitution day. I mean, you could throw Patriot Day into this mix as well. Why don’t we just call it America Day and call it quits because these are obviously just another bad attempt to show patriotism. Everyone wears enough red white and blue to last them the year on the Fourth of July. Does anyone actually celebrate these days though? Are there actually festivities that go on during these days because if there are, I bet the party for Constitution Day is off the chain.

            But enough about the shitty holidays… I didn’t even talk about Washington's Birthday yet, but I am throwing in the towel on the shittyness of the idea. I’m only going with the big ones now. These are big for many reasons. These include and are not included to…

1)     Presents

2)     Food

3)     Cheap crap

4)     Food

5)     Presents

6)     Family

7)     Presents and

8)     Food

These are the big boys of the holidays and there is nothing you can tell me to otherwise disprove my reasoning. There are three big boys in my holiday trio. One of them is not recognized as a national holiday, but is widely celebrated by millions upon millions of people. There other two are quite obvious. These holidays have captured many emotions in my life and will continue to do that until the day that I die. But underneath it all, just like mostly everything else, there merely piss me off.  

Black Friday

I know I know, this technically isn’t a holiday. I mean, what do you celebrate? It’s quite obvious what you celebrate on this day, cheap crap. I would rather buy $2 DVD’s all day long than go outside and watch fireworks. Which before I get going on why I love and hate black Friday so much, let’s talk about the Fourth of July. I hate this day so much I want to punch it in the kidney and make it piss out bloody fireworks. I love the traditional picnic theme to the day, don’t get me wrong there, but if I didn’t have to see another damn firework in my life, I would die sort of a happy man. I don’t see everyone’s fascination with the firework. People come from miles around just to see some colorful explosions going off in the sky for sometimes up to and not limited to a freaking hour. If it wasn’t for the fact that my father and Uncle taught my four year old cousin to call fireworks “spermi’s” I don’t know if I could even stand them just a little bit. Even at freaking baseball games there is some kind of fascination with fireworks. I don’t understand it. If there is a guarantee of a fireworks show at the end of a game, by God it’s a given its going to be sold out. Anyways…

The months of November and December are an amazing time really. Not only was I born in November, which really should be a holiday in its own right, but it is just a magical time altogether. Black Friday is amazing. That’s really all that needs to be said about it, but I will go on.  Not only does it follow my favorite day of the year, it is filled to the brim with outrageous savings and the first day of Christmas music. People are nasty, people are pushy, and people are downright nasty during this day just because they have a shot at getting a TV at a discount price. Its absolute brutality and I love every second of it. Stores open at an outrageous hour, usually being about 4a.m, and people are in literal lines waiting in the cold to buy some shit

My brother Joel and I started doing this about six years ago. I never actually knew about until then and wondered why we hadn’t done it before. If you don’t know my brother or me, we are major consumers/collectors. My brother buys DVD’s, toys, and books where I buy DVD’s, video games, and cd’s. He is obviously more cultured than I am since he reads, but don’t let it fool you. He really only reads comic books. Most people are out there literally risking their own lives to fulfill their kid’s Christmas dreams with these spectacular deals while we are in their ways fulfilling our ridiculous need to collect them all. I know, it sounds awful, but it’s us.

I remember my first year of doing this insane adventure. We formulated a plan that we decided to follow for years to come. It was and still is flawless to bring closure to our every need. We always start at Best Buy, for obvious reasons, and then make our way to Toys R’ Us. We would then swing by the mall if needed for stores like Old Navy and JC Penny’s where then we would end the day with trips to Target and Wal Mart. What a plan. It has never failed us and I don’t think it ever will. I mean, what other stores would WE possibly need to go to? So we go to Best Buy to start out our day. First of all, it’s like 15 degrees out and it’s two in the freaking morning. So needless to say none of us were happy campers. Secondly, the Best Buy near our house is kind of on a hill. So when we pulled in there were already hundreds of people there and they were all lined up going up the hill. It was a little ridiculous actually but every year we do the same thing. We usually make it about half way up the hill and are in the first wave into the store. This is essential for our purchasing needs being that there are only a few of everything. I mean God forbid we leave without our discounted seasons of the Office. We do this every single year, just for a couple of pieces of media. It’s ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, this past Black Friday was the epitome of it. We drive down there, this time including my pregnant sister in law Melissa, at about 2:30 in the morning. Its literally pouring down rain and like 35 degrees out. I swear it was on the border of freezing because it was damn cold out. Joel has the brilliant idea to drop him and Melissa off at the back of the line, or midway up the hill, while we run to a store that is already open and we buy some ponchos. Like no one else had this idea… So Justin and I go. Being that it’s almost three in the morning, we were kind of short on options, and actually almost out of gas. We manage to find some ponchos about 45 minutes later, find a gas station that’s actually open, and we make it back to the store to give Joel and Melissa their ponchos. Keep in mind, my sister in law is about four months pregnant at this point. Brilliant. But that’s beside the point.  We needed our seasons of Mad Men on Blu Ray. Not only is it basically sleet, the wind is also blowing at a ferociously. It literally felt like our ponchos were ripping off our bodies.

If that wasn’t annoying enough, in comes in the most annoying part of the Black Friday festivities, panhandlers. You see, some stores, such as Best Buy, have such good deals that they only have a couple of the items to give away. For example, if they have a really good deal on a laptop computer, they may only have five of them to give away. So it’s kind of like first come first serve. They give out these coupons to the people who arrived first to buy the product. Well, there are these asshole people who basically are waste of fucking life. They leave their houses literally right after they eat their turkey dinner to be first in line to get these tickets. Then, once all the people arrive to start the line hours later, they leave the line and try to actually sell the coupons to the other people. Are you fucking with me dude? You arrived at this store about ten hours ago because you wanted to sell those tickets for five bucks a pop. Wow. Not only did my hatred for these white trash pieces of shit grow and grow every time they asked me if I wanted to buy a digital camera, the people who were actually there for legitimate reasons hated them even more. This one man actually got physically violent with this group of assholes and actually grabbed a dude and called the police. It was absolutely amazing. But eventually, after everyone yelled curse words at them and they knew the police were called, the assholes finally left. But they keep doing this every freaking year, its absurd. I hope they get punched one of these times. They came close, why not finish the deal.

Thanksgiving

            There isn’t much about this holiday that makes me mad. There is nothing to really hate about it actually, unless you are afraid of birds or something. Well , if you were afraid of birds this should be your day of rejoice or something because there are thousands of damn birds being eaten. I guess you could be anorexic. God, that has to be the worst day for them. I would hate to that. There is literally nothing more satisfying than eating as much as you possibly can, watching football, and then letting the tryptophan do its work.

            Why does this make me mad per say? Well, let’s take into consideration one thing. This is one freaking day per year. One day per year where everyone says “fuck it” to their diets and their eating habits and literally lets it all hang out. I know for a fact for the next couple days, after it all passes, I have to wear my fat pants because I eat so much. But what I am suggesting is something very simple. Why not have a day like Thanksgiving all the time?

            I know I know. It’s a holiday based on something that happened a long time ago. It would ruin the meaning of the holiday and I understand this. But I love spending time with my family and eating very fatty foods. What can I say, its one of my vices. How hard would it be to have a day like this every month or two? It wouldn’t be hard at all. I think that would be awesome.

            Also, why the hell don’t people make pie more than like twice a year? Here is a simple fact of life. People love pie. It doesn’t even matter what kind of pie it is. My personal favorite you ask? Pumpkin. And it just so happens to be a seasonal pie that is made only really around Thanksgiving. This is my curse people. I can only have pumpkin pie once or twice a year. I honestly would eat it for a meal itself I love it so much. My pops loves it to, it just seems like he likes whipped cream a little more. He smacks that shit on like it’s going out of style. I always ask him if he wants some pie with that, but I digress. All I am saying is that people make pie more than once a freaking year. This also just may be a family thing. Hell, there may be people out there that make pie all the time. I have no idea. Apple pie is an American constitution like baseball and Rock and Roll, but I don’t see people making it like they make chocolate chip cookies or boring ass sugar cookies. God damn, my pallet wants to die from the boredom.

            Why do people have to eat the same things for Thanksgiving to. I know in my family we literally eat the same meals for every holiday get together. I will be you a million dollars I know exactly what we will have for both Thanksgiving and then Christmas. It’s almost identical. Thanksgiving meal consists of…

-Turkey, both white and dark meat

- Stuffing, three different kinds made by three different people

- Cheesy Broccoli

-Corn

-Dinner rolls

-Fried Mushrooms

- Mashed potatoes, with gravy of course

-Cheesy Potatoes

-Cranberry sauce

-Strawberry pretzel salad

-And a multitude of pies

            This is literally every Thanksgiving. It’s so deliciously stereotypical it hurts. All I am asking is to change it up a bit every couple of times around. What’s it going to hurt? Why not try a different type of meat; I would be down for that. I could never see my family switching up the bird to a pheasant or a duck or something like that. I don’t even know what the hell those birds taste like. They can’t be bad. I think people might cause a scene though.

Christmas

            Christmas is awesome. But some of the things about it annoy me. Christmas is supposed to be spent around loved ones celebrating the holiday. Well, as much as I love it, it annoys me in a way. I hate the superficial family crap that you have to do around the holiday really, I think that’s what annoys me the most. What I mean by this is mainly the gift giving that goes on within the gathering. There are literally hundreds of presents given out between everyone, which sounds awesome. But you really have to be there to understand. I love my family, don’t get me wrong, but holy shit do they go over bored on children.

            My family is made up of a lot of women. That’s not a bad thing, but for some reason women love babies more than anything on this earth. It is some God given animal instinct that women can’t stand but love and grab them and hold them. So, around Christmas time, what is the best way of showing how much they love those babies? By buying them ten or more gifts obviously. My family had five kids in a span of about four years so it was like the great baby boom within the Jackson family estates. This is by far the most annoying thing about the holiday. It takes a process of what should take no more than a half hour for everyone to open their gifts and jacks it up to literally over an hour. Why?  Why is that even an option? I am not exaggerating when I say that each and every kid in my family opens gifts for a solid 20 minutes each and they don’t give two shits what the hell they are opening, especially If its clothing. They just kind of stare into space while everyone around them is yelling at them to hold it up so they can take pictures. You could swear that some celebrity just walked in the room by how many flash bulbs go off when one of the children holds up a gift. My family loves to document literally everything. It’s sort of adorable.

This is generally how it goes on Christmas. The older people, such as myself and my brother, go into the other room where the presents are held and we take them all in and divvy them up. In my family, the rule is after you are married or have children, you don’t get gifts anymore. So at this present time I still get gifts. And for some reason the older people in my family like my grandmother when she was still with us got presents as well. About fifteen minutes passes and everyone has their presents. I have a four inch radius of gifts, obviously all gift cards, while my cousins have a literal mountain of the newest and trendiest toys and clothes on the market. These people go ape shit on the gift giving. I never really understood going all out for babies because they outgrow everything just days later anyways. And I am talking both clothes and toys too. We always go from youngest to oldest when opening gifts so, at this present time, am usually near the end of the rotation. You really cant get to excited about gift cards. Don’t get me wrong, I love them but what am I supposed to do, pump my fist in joy or something? I never really know how to react when receiving a present. Never really got that one down pat.

After the awkwardness of that whole situation dies down, its usually time to eat. Now if you remember what I said before, Christmas dinner at the Jackson residence is eerily similar to Thanksgiving. Let’s see if you can spot the differences…

- Ham

- Stuffing

- Cheesy Broccoli

-Corn

-Dinner rolls

-Fried Mushrooms

-Cheesy Potatoes

-Strawberry pretzel salad

-And a multitude of pies

Literally the only differences are we have pig instead of bird and we don’t have mashed potatoes. It’s really original. I don’t think they even plan it that way. It kind of just happens that way. It’s still freaking delicious, I just think it’s kind of funny that we almost have the same exact meal for both holidays.

            The whole gift giving process is a real pain in the ass to. Thank God for the invention of the Amazon.com wish list, because I have been saved by that for a few people. But other than them, I have a terrible time finding good gifts. I mean, it gets to the point where I start to stress about it and literally sweat when thinking about it. God that makes me sound like a giant fat man, but it’s true. The worst is buying for my parents. I never have any idea what to get them. And whatever I do buy them, it’s usually something gender generic. I usually end up buying my father some sort of manly tool and my mother perfume and some girly CD. I remember a few years back, talking about shitty gifts, I actually bought my father like three different kinds of crow bars. First off, why would you need three crowbars and secondly who knew they made different kinds. But no matter what, they seem to love the gifts so that’s awesome. Even if they didn’t, they are my parents. They wouldn’t tell me otherwise.

            Christmas music is probably the worst thing about the whole damn holiday. I sort of dig it when it first starts up, which I swear gets earlier and earlier every year. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if satellite radio made a permanent fixture of a Christmas music station because there are actual people who would listen to it all year. But like I said, I sort of dig it at the start. It really just gets old after about a week or so. There are only so many damn versions of Sleigh Ride I can hear before you sort of get upset about it. I mean for God sake, they all sound the frigin same. And why can’t people come out with new Christmas music? That’s my question. I never hear new Christmas music around the holiday season. But you know what does come out every holiday season, these stupid albums by popular artists. I swear ever girl my age owns Hanson’s Christmas CD. And if they don’t own that one, I would be willing to put some money on the fact that they own one of Mariah Carey’s 81 Christmas albums. Seriously, she needs to calm down on those suckers. It’s like every month she releases one.

            This brings me to my least favorite holiday of them all. It’s actually one that I am torn over whether I should like it or not. But really, the only reason I would like it is for all the wrong reasons. I kind of dig it, or at least participate in it, because women dress really sexily and prance around without a care in the world. I told you it was for all the wrong reasons. But other than that I never really understood Halloween. Being a kid who never really got that sugar tooth, and I still really don’t eat candy, I went out but really never ate any of it. I think it’s just one of those things that you have to do when you are a kid. I make it sound like I was forced to go out and trick or treat, but it’s quite the opposite. I went out because it was the thing to do. But when I started getting older, meaning around 13 or so, I realized it was time to leave it behind. I had some pretty awful costumes growing up too. By awful I mean terrible looking and also downright offensive. You are probably thinking to yourself “what could he have possibly worn that was offensive.” Well why don’t you take a look at this picture, and then be the judge.

I would like to thank my parents for allowing me to walk around public in this. Yes, that’s me dressed up as pop culture icon and Family Matters star Steve Urkel. Sorry about that picture being sort of crappy, but all the rest of them were taken by the NAACP after they questioned me and my family. Not really, but you get the point. As Weird Al would say, I was young, dumb, and ugly when I was five years old and I had no idea that wearing black face wasn’t really culturally accepted. You know what’s even more fucked up about that picture? That was taken during an actual parade in the town my grandparents used to live in. They used to have all the kids in town march down the street showing off their costumes. I guarantee all of the educated people in the town were either appalled by the idea that I was dressed like that, wanted to find my parents and tell them a piece of their minds, or were laughing about it. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s kind of funny. I did one of the most offensive and racist things anyone could ever do. But it was cute because I was five. Suck on that Michael Richards.

            To sum up this chapter is sort of hard. I love holidays because I love my family and the friends that I spend time with. But there are just certain things about them that really bother me. It’s one of the only things that I can really love but there are things about it that I really despise. Like my next chapter for example...