Kramer goes to a fantasy camp? His whole life is a fantasy camp. People should plunk down $2,000 to live like him for a week. Sleep, do nothing, fall ass-backwards into money, mooch food off your neighbors and have sex without dating… THAT’S a fantasy camp.” – George Costanza, “Seinfeld”

Years ago, when I was a tiny Little League all-star, I made a bet with my best friend Blue.

The bet was simple. Twenty bucks that one day, someday, I would have one plate appearance for a Major League Baseball team.

That was it. It didn’t matter when or for what team, and it definitely didn’t matter if I struck out, walked, or nailed a single. Just one time up at bat. For $20 (I guess that was a lot for us back then).

Now an adult and considered “over the hill” in baseball years, I have a sneaking suspicion that my chance to made good on this childhood wager is dwindling. I just don’t have too many professional ballclubs calling me up these days asking me to fill a roster spot.

But where reality sets in, there is always a world of fantasy. A world where our imagination expands faster than our regular lives. Where a grown man can reach back into his childhood and snatch the eager years just a bit longer than we’re supposed to.

This is why, next week, Blue and I will attend Los Angeles Dodgers Adult Baseball Camp.

Set in Vero Beach, Fl., the Dodgers’ spring training facility known as Dodgertown is in its last year of existence. The session I am attending will be the 50th camp in Dodgertown. Next year, along with the pro club, it will move its facility to Arizona, effectively ending a long-standing tradition.

Regular readers of my blog know how much I love baseball. And, especially, how much I love the Dodgers. When I was 12, I would hide my radio under my pillow and listen to Dodger games late at night, hoping against hope that my parents wouldn’t catch me and make me go to sleep. I can still recall Vin Scully’s voice emanating through my pillow as I would fight off sleep just to hear the Dodgers win.

This is why I cannot fully explain just how excited I am. I realize this is a handicap for a blogger. But I have yet to process the full weight of living out my boyhood dream of playing baseball.

For one week, Blue and I will stand on the same fields as the Dodgers do every spring, playing daily doubleheaders, and receiving instruction from former Dodger greats like Maury Wills, Burt “Happy” Hooton, and Rick Monday.

Dodgertown gives each of us two uniforms – the pure white-and-blue home uniform and the steely gray road one, both emblazoned with the familiar cursive lettering of my home team, my last name splayed across my back, and my uniform number, #27, my Little League number.

They will film us, photograph us, and make baseball cards of us. We will get plenty of playing time (I have already asked to play shortstop), run drills, hit the batting cages. We will live our lives like we are in the midst of a one-week homestand, playing ball, talking about our favorite sport, and meeting some of the greatest Dodgers to ever put on the uniform.

I have told a few people about fantasy camp, but I haven’t really broadcast it. Some of my friends have reacted with bewildered stares. Almost always, the first question everyone wants to know after “What the hell is Dodger camp?” is “How much did it cost?”

It cost a lot.

Blue, who went two years ago with his dad, and I talked about going together shortly after he got back from his initial trip, which sounded like the greatest experience of his life. That very moment, I started saving as much as I could and, 18 months later, my dream to attend the camp is coming true.

Though I play softball every summer on the Mall with my friends, I haven’t played hardball since I joined a recreational team when I was 23. Sure, I can bat .650 with 5 homeruns and a team-leading 1.975 OPS when the pitches are being lobbed to me. But when you put on that uniform and have to step up to the plate to face a 75 MPH pitch, everything changes.

To prepare for camp, I went last weekend to the batting cages to see how I would do. I hacked away inside the Fast Pitch cage, unable to find my groove. I started doubting whether I could do this, if the baseball talent I had as a kid had waned.

Then I realized what I was doing wrong. I was holding my hands too low in my batting stance, taking too long to cock my arms and swing through the pitch. I adjusted my swing and started bashing baseballs right and left.

No one else was there. Why would they be in January? Fighting the cold, I paid for 172 pitches and blistered the palm of my hand. Afterwards, The Princess and I went to the Sports Authority for some equipment shopping.

While I was looking at sliding shorts, The Princess picked up a bat off the rack and modeled her batting stance. She took a cut, following through as the bat struck the clothes rack with a loud THWACK.

“Oops,” she muttered over my howls of laughter, quickly putting the bat back where she found it.

I also recently started reading Jane Leavy’s acclaimed Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy. Using my 1988 Topps baseball card of Mike Scoscia as a bookmark, each page has brought a smile to my face as I read about Duke Snider (who is rumored to show up for one day), Dave Wallace, and, of course, Koufax, the greatest Jew to ever play the game.

My chance to feel like a major leaguer is coming and when I step up to that plate that first time wearing that beautiful Dodger blue, I’ll know it’s as close as it’ll ever get for me.

I wonder if that means I win the $20.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to update my blog while at camp next week. They have Internet connection but Blue assures me that I’ll be too tired and there will be too many activities for me to write anything. So stay tuned. If I can, I will update my time there.

First three photos taken by Gary Bogden and courtesy of ESPN.com. Photo of me in the batting cage taken by Hermano in Agoura, Calif.

I have known my friend Big I since the 2nd grade. When he married the love of his life last March, The Princess and I met Erin, an amazingly kind, sweet woman who had converted to Judaism before the wedding. I won’t even pick up the phone when he calls, so to meet someone who would change religions for him and their marriage made me curious as to what she went through. This is her story:

When Arjewtino asked me to write a guest blog on my funny experiences while converting to Judaism, I was having a very hard time trying to figure out what to write about.

See, the whole experience was a lot of work, pretty emotionally draining, and really just not that funny. To me the decision to convert was never just about getting my husband Big I to decide I was worthy enough to marry, but it needed to be something I could live with too. There was also the issue that I didn’t think of Judaism as being so much a different religion as it was a different/foreign culture all together!

Case in point – I come from a quiet, Midwestern family where our family get-togethers included maybe six people and it was usually a quiet, relaxing, enjoyable experience. My husband comes from a large family of New York Jews – there is a BIG difference. So, besides the fact that I had believed one thing for my entire life and now was being asked to believe something else, I was expected to interact with all of these crazy, loud people with who I had nothing in common!

In the end, I ended up taking the conversion class, taking a swim in the Bay here in Tampa for my Mikvah, and becoming Jewish ( if it weren’t for Jesus, wouldn’t we all be Jewish anyway?).

I learned quite a bit during my experience about what I needed to do to be a “good Jew”. Ask Big I - I tried to do everything “right” at first (which is extremely exhausting). I was very big into the whole Friday night Shabbat experience (complete with challah, prayers, the lighting of the candles, and going to Temple). I even attempted to make my own challah once (it was never attempted again because the bread could have doubled as an anchor it was so dense).

On our first Rosh Hashanah as a married couple, I even hosted dinner and prepared food for 14 people all by myself (my mother-in-law kept saying I was crazy – I had fun doing it though). More than anything, I have been afraid of doing something “wrong” and disgracing the whole religion.

Big I: “You can’t serve a Honey Baked Ham at Rosh Hashanah!”
Me: “Why not – we eat it at Thanksgiving?”

I have found that the hardest part is that there are all of these rules to Judaism that I don’t always understand or agree with (in Christianity it was easy and fairly basic – be a good person, do unto others, etc.). There weren’t all of these rules about things you couldn’t eat, either.

When I started the conversion class I was told the following: don’t eat pigs (“But I LOVE ham”), don’t mix meat and cheese (“No more chicken and cheese quesadillas?”), don’t drive your car on Shabbat (“But we live 30 miles away!!”), etc. What I have come to understand is that most people understand what you “should” do but kind of make up their own rules and follow them as they see fit.

For example, we are meat-and-cheese-eating, Shabbat-driving Jews who observe the high holidays and go to Temple on the occasional Friday night. We have some friends who keep Kosher in their home but eat Cheeseburgers when they eat out and go to Temple on Friday AND Saturday (that’s commitment!).

Then we also have other friends that follow more rules than most, eat Kosher-style at all times, but have been known to drive and spend money on Shabbat. But on Rosh Hashanah, he made his wife, who was 8 months pregnant at the time, walk the 3 miles home from Temple because it seems you must be stricter on the High Holy Days. This is one of those rules that I don’t understand - isn’t that one of those things that could be overlooked in the special circumstance of being 8 months pregnant? I looked at Big I and told him if he ever thought to pull something like that – HE could walk home while I took the car (with a few other choice words thrown in for emphasis).

So, it was a long journey to get where I am today, and it is far from over. But in the end, I am glad that I made it. It certainly wasn’t always easy and there have been many heated discussions between Big I and myself about the handling of some situations – but now we are happily married, I’m knocked up and we are expecting our first child in July!

Along with our new addition will come many more experiences and traditions that I know nothing about and will have to wade through and hopefully do them “right”. I will say one thing, though - our kids will go through all of the things that Jewish kids are supposed to – they won’t get the choice of whether or not they are going to Hebrew School and having their bar/bat mitzvah. I went through a lot of trouble so that our children could have that experience. I don’t care if they complain and say that don’t want to do it – ungrateful little buggers.

Torah Photo Credit

After the New York football Giants lost to the Washington Redskins 22-10 more than five weeks ago, the team’s chances in the weak NFC playoffs didn’t look so hot.

Though the Giants’ record was 9-5 and they had come back from an 0-2 start to the season, they weren’t playing consistent football and quarterback Eli Manning looked so bad every Sunday I half-expected to see his brother Peyton give him a priceless pep talk over his headset.

That’s when my friend Baby Bien made a bet he couldn’t lose. Except he did.

Baby Bien bet his buddy Terry $300 the Giants wouldn’t make it to the Super Bowl. Terry, being either a huge Giants fan or some sort of clairvoyant freak, picked a team that would have to play on the road throughout the playoffs, a team that seemed to be in a constant state of chaos, a team at least one fan blogger picked to go winless for the year.

I told Baby Bien it was a good bet. Everyone told him it was a good bet. And it was. Why would anyone gamble 300 clams that my third least-liked NFL team would make the Super Bowl unless he was crazy?

But then Baby Bien did something he probably shouldn’t have. He angered the sports gods.

Look, I don’t believe in fate or ghosts or that Jesus is magic. But I do believe in sports superstition. You think your team is winning because you’re watching them on TV? Or not watching them on TV? Or because you’re sitting in a certain spot? Or because you dress up in your wife’s underwear? Then they are winning because of that.

And any universe where something as illogical as superstition can have an effect on your team can sure as hell get pissed at you for blaspheming another team. So when Baby Bien decided to start calling Eli Manning by his given name — Elisha — and get cocky about his iron-clad guaranteed win, it was only a matter of time before he would kiss his $300 goodbye.

The Giants beat the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night to win the NFC championship, playing one of the most exciting games I have ever seen involving two teams I cared nothing about (for a great live-blog post that I was following during the game, read THIS).

I must admit, there was part of me that took some pleasure in Baby Bien’s misfortune. I mean, he lost $300. On a bet. That he should have won. That he couldn’t lose. Thanks, in part, to a man with a girl’s name. Who he made fun of.

I’m not saying that Baby Bien calling Eli “Elisha” made the Giants win. I’m sure, from a rational point of view, his bet had absolutely nothing to do with the game’s outcome.

But every sports fan knows you should tread water lightly in the pools of fate. These games come down to something greater than anything we can understand. How do you explain the 1988 Dodgers? Or the 1980 U.S. hockey team? Or Nitro on “American Gladiators”?

Baby Bien, I’m sorry you lost 300 bucks, mostly because you won’t be able to buy me a Miller High Life anytime soon. I’m sure you can’t see the moral from your tale of woe yet but believe me, there is one.

I’ll bet you anything there is.

Photo credit

“Not shaving is the new shaving.”

My friend Foxymoron told me that last year. He seems to be right. Everyone is sporting a beard these days, even me. One of my managers at work has even taken to calling me “Wolverine”, which is a much better nickname than “Subcontractor”.

And as it turns out, someone knew this would be the style — 70 years ago. In the February 1, 1939, issue of Vogue magazine, designer Gilbert Rhode created an artistic drawing of what he deemed the “21st Century man”:

The man of the next century will revolt against shaving and wear a beautiful beard, says the designer of boilers, pianos, clocks, and metal furniture. His hat will be an an antennae - snatching radio out of the ether. His socks disposable, his suit minus tie collar and buttons.”

Look at this guy. How comfortable does he look? Aside from that empty bread basket on his head, this dude really does embody the contemporary man.

Think about it: all men now have beards, we wear silver one-piece turtleneck jumpsuits, and tuck our pants into our disposable socks.

Ok, well, maybe Rhode’s prediction wasn’t exactly right. I haven’t worn a belt that big since I did karate for two years when I was 12. But I do sometimes wear slip-on shoes, I no longer own a watch thanks to my cell phone clock, and strike a pose whenever I gaze my steely look at what looks like the Matrix.

Besides, Rhode’s rendition is a much better prediction than some others. Check out these 1900 postcards made by Hildebrands (a leading German chocolate company of the time) showing what the world will be like in the year 2000. (Photos courtesy of Paleo-Future.)

Walking on water

Roofed cities

Winged personal travel

Of course, not all predictions were so crazy. This image I found on the Google shows what appears to be the “futuristic” living room of the 21st century. Look carefully. What do you see? Anything familiar? I see a (1) big screen TV, (2) voyeurism, (3) the Internet, (4) a CD player, (5) a robot to do your bidding, and (6) an iPod. Not bad.

What kind of a sick, demented mind does it take to want to be President of the United States? Why would anyone spend months kissing babies, eating pancakes, and begging for money just to win the right to be vilified for 4, and if they’re lucky, 8, thankless years?

Luckily for us, there are plenty of crazy nutjobs who don’t mind selling their scruples to the highest bidder. Forget Clinton vs. Obama, McCain vs. Huckabee. Those candidates represent the status quo and one of them, in all likelihood, will be our next leader.

With only 293 days left until we elect our next president, you should instead turn your attention not to the ones with money and power, but to the lonely longshots of this race, the unsung Seabiscuits of politics, the deluded ones who, against all reason and common sense, have decided to “run” for the U.S. empire presidency (vote in the poll at the end of this post).

Frank Moore (Web site)

Who is this guy?

I think Moore is the only candidate who is not at least a little earnest about his candidacy. What tipped me off? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because his running mate, Dr. Susan M. Block, is into “erotic theater”. Or maybe it’s because he’s a performance artist who started his own political party and dubbed it “The Just Makes Sense Party”. Or maybe it’s because his slogan is “We mean business!” and I don’t trust anyone who means business.

Why should I vote for him?

Not a bad choice, considering. Moore says he’ll give every American a minimum monthly income of $1,000/month and will make sure we all get to ride public transit for free. Moore also promises to “destroy” 10% of nuclear weapons every year. Probably by launching them at some asteroids.

Best reason he should lead our country.

He would let all of us call him “dude”.

Level of delusion as indicated by his own words.

“Hey, what do I look like, a fortune teller?”

Lee L. Mercer, Jr. (Web site)

Who is this guy?

Mercer is a man who loves run-on sentences, finds punctuation optional, and believes the U.S. Army ordered him to invent a new discipline of education.

Why should I vote for him?

On his Web site, he outlined 70 reasons why he is a candidate. Pretty impressive. Among these reasons, he lists “to prove” that every person in the U.S. is hooked up to an “Eye Spy Community” surveillance system, “to prove” that he can make up words like “intacted”, and “to prove” that he has “1 million U.S. Military Intelligence Negro Female Lawyers and All the Negro Certified Public Accountants”.

Best reason he should lead our country.

He was in the ROTC at the University of Texas. That’s already more experience than our current President.

Level of delusion as indicated by his own words.

“I will be the 2nd Negro President of the United States of America in 2008.”

Steve Adams (Web site)

Who is this guy?

The most interesting things about Stephen Adams is that he likes to go by “Steve”, rides a motorcycle with something called the Patriot Guard Riders, and chose a running mate named “Bob”. Come on, Steve, you look like a Social Studies teacher.

Why should I vote for him?

He actually has a position on gerrymandering. I guarantee you won’t find out Mitt Romney’s position on gerrymandering no matter how hard you try.

Best reason he should lead our country.

Being pro-life and pro-capital punishment, Adams wouldn’t be the first hypocrite to win the Oval Office.

Level of delusion as indicated by his own words.

“Those who know me personally know that I love humor, but I assure you that this is no joke. Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my sense of humor.”

Kat Swift (Web site)

Who is this chick?

A Louisiana native who shuns capitalization, brags about having “many adopted” parents, and has an older brother employed as something called a “fire spinner”.

Why should I vote for her?

This hippie chick wants to legalize marijuana, allow hot lesbians to marry each other, and boils down the otherwise complex issue of school prayer to: “if you want to pray at school, fine. If not, fine.” Sounds good to me.

Best reason she should lead our country.

She has a Facebook and MySpace account and published her cell phone (which is part of Cingular) on her Web site. That’s what I call transparent government.

Level of delusion as indicated by her own words.

“IM - MahaMonkeyMojo”

Don Cordell (Web site)

Who is this guy?

Holy Jesus Christ on a waffle, this guy scares the crap out of me! Look at this dude! His campaign motto might as well be “Get off my lawn!” His Web site is a diatribe of incoherent thoughts that scrolls down to the depths of Internet hell! Seriously, I bet Cordell would rip out my throat and bitch slap me with it if he knew I was linking to him. Good thing the Internet scares old people.

Why should I vote for him?

Because if you don’t, Cordell will kill you.

Best reason he should lead our country.

He has a “platform” in which he outlines a plan for lower gas prices ($1.29/gallon), no amnesty “for anyone”, and “no more gangs”. And when I say Cordell has a “plan”, I mean he has “batshit crazy ideas”.

Level of delusion as indicated by his own words.

“The fence, the fence, the fence, who’s got the fence? We don’t got the fence, we don’t got the money, Congress killed the money for the fence. Welcome more and more illegal aliens. Americans screwed again.”

Brad Lord-Leutwyler (Web site)

Who is this guy?

Lord-Leutwyler seems like a pretty normal person. He’s married to a really hot woman, has a 5-year-old daughter, and is a professor of Logic and Critical Thinking at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Looks like he’s an Aquarius. Yup, pretty normal dude. Oh yeah, he also has a MySpace page with 16,917 fucking friends!

Why should I vote for him?

Because in his defense of allowing gay marriage, he quotes Pepe LePew: “When you are in love, it is impossible to get insurance.”

Best reason he should lead our country.

Check out his awesome name. I don’t know why he has two last names hyphenated, but the cadence of that surname fills me with a feeling of optimism and a desire for good cheese.

Level of delusion as indicated by his own words.

“Hillary Clinton is now playing the vagina card.”

Kent Mesplay (Web site)

Who is this guy?

An ambitious Green Party candidate who wants to “improve our security” and “reform politics”. Easy there, big fella, how ’bout we concentrate on raising $10 first?

Why should I vote for him?

Because Mesplay promises a two-pronged “rock” attack, vowing to rock the vote and rock the debates.

Best reason he should lead our country.

His name sounds like a cross between “display” and “me play”, which has to be good for us. Then again, it also sounds like “misplay”, which is probably bad.

Level of delusion as indicated by his own words.

“I pledge to not give money to the Democratic or Republican parties/Or to their candidates/Until we have nationwide public funding of campaigns/And real debates/That are open to all ballot-qualified candidates/Having a statistical chance of winning their races.

Charles Maxham (Web site)

Who is this guy?

Maxham is an independent running under the “Give Me Back America” party, which I’m sure isn’t nearly as catchy as he intended.

Why should I vote for him?

Maxham likes to golf, lives in New Jersey, and loves country music. He pretty much sounds like your retired uncle. Also, he recently completed a book called Look No More, which he describes as a romantic adventure about an ex-ace jet fighter pilot and a concert pianist who end up fighting terrorists in war-torn Iraq.

Best reason he should lead our country.

He describes his wife Unni as “the angel that God sent to watch over me”, so clearly he believes in magic and unicorns.

Level of delusion as indicated by his own words.

“I’m not delusional and think that I can actually be elected President.”

There you go, eight Presidential candidates who should make you feel better about our country’s future. Who’s got your vote?

In his incredible book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman writes about how reading the obituaries made him realize that each of us, in the end and even during our lifetime, is defined by one thing.

J.D. Salinger wrote Catcher in the Rye; for all practical purposes, that’s it. He may as well have done nothing else, ever.”

For some of us, this phenomenon is not exactly like getting a raw deal. Neil Armstrong will always be known as “the first man to walk on the moon”. Lily Allen will always be “that adorable chick who got famous for her songs on MySpace”. Even Klosterman himself will go down as “that pop culture writer dude”.

But no matter what you accomplish with your life and no matter how long and varied you live it, you are, ultimately, reduced to one sentence.

Think about your friends and how you would describe them to a stranger. Think about what the lead would be in their respective obituaries. You can probably sum up their legacies using about 10 words.

Look at this online obituary I found yesterday from the Washington Post. This University of Maryland professor, who lived for nearly a century and I’m sure was a very nice person, left this world known as a Pompeian historian. Is that a bad thing? Probably not. I’m sure there are many advantages to knowing everything there is to know about the ruined and somewhat relevant city of Pompeii. But Wilhelmina’s life was reduced to this one thing.

The most incredible example of this type of reductionism is the story of Claudia Wells. Wells owns the boutique Armani Wells in Studio City, CA. She has a flair for men’s fashion and her Web site says she is “known for dressing the most stylish men in Los Angeles.”

But that is not how she is known. You most likely know Wells as that chick who played Jennifer Parker, Michael J. Fox’s girlfriend in the movie I have seen more than any other, Back to the Future. And 23 years after the movie was released, she is still telling people about that role.

Her Photo Gallery has a link to Back to the Future Photos. Her About Us page describes her stint in the movie as “memorable”. A photo of her shows her sitting in a freakin’ DeLorean! This woman, now 41 and still looking really good, reduced herself to a role that gave her just a few minutes of screen time and which she didn’t even reprise in the sequels.

Is this sad? Hardly. It is human nature, after all, to simplify the world around us, even at the cost of substance. It is an unfortunate fact of life — but a fact nevertheless.

Think of your own life. In your mind, you can probably wax poetically about your life accomplishments, filling the pages of your autobiography with interesting tales, events, and memories that make you a unique snowflake. That cancer scare that made you realize how strong you were. Moving to a new city and proving to yourself you could do it. Growing a mustache and raising thousands of dollars for charity.

But when people ask your friends about you, or when they have time to think about you, you will be condensed to a five-second blurb. This probably, in the end, doesn’t really diminish any of us, not really. But when there is so much of our lives left to trim, doesn’t it at least feel that way?

Little known trivia: the woman who plays Jan in “The Office” (Melora Hardin) was briefly cast as Jennifer but was fired because she was taller than Michael J. Fox.

Perhaps Ann Daly of the 100 Places blog best described skiing at Wisp:

This has been an exercise in learning to ride on a combination of ice and what appears to be little round balls of hail. There is no “swooshing” sounds on these trails, more like the crunch of glass being ground under your heel…to add to the fun, the runs are flanked by mud, muck, and a goopy mixture of dead leaves and twigs, about the consistency of wet cement. To help break your fall, large stones have been helpfully thrown into the mix. Just a little extra incentive to not miss that turn.”

As my friend Shiftless Badger would say: “Indeed.”

Badger, his boyfriend Foxymoron, The Princess, and I all headed to Wisp on Friday night to hit the slopes. It had been 7 years since I had last skied. That time was in White Tail, where I thought my first time snowboarding would be easy since I skateboarded as a teenager.

Ah, the hubris of youth. I ended up a mess of a man, my body and ego bruised beyond recognition.

I vowed then and there never to snowboard again.

We left Friday evening after work, hitting some random Burger King while driving north on the 70. The middle of this Burger King featured a large, pink booth sculpted in the shape of some extinct Edsel. Naturally, we had to eat in it.

I scanned the BK menu and noticed I could order a Whopper, double Whopper, or triple Whopper meal deal. For a minute, I seriously considered ordering a quadruple Whopper with cheese and doing the Whopper freakout when they told me they didn’t carry such a monstrosity.

“What do you mean you don’t have the quadruple Whopper with cheese?” I would have guffawed at the poor cashier on closed circuit TV. “You mean to tell me I’m supposed to eat only a triple Whopper with cheese? Give me my quadruple Whopper!!”

(Seriously, I can’t believe the reactions of these people in the commercials. If Burger King had punk’d me and filmed it for their commercial campaign, I might have been slightly perturbed. And then I would have ordered a BK Broiler.)

We kept driving and arrived at the Comfort Inn around 10pm. The rooms were large and we had a view of the Wisp ski lift out our window. We knocked around ideas for what a Discomfort Inn would be like (the hotel manager asks you about masturbation), downed a few beers, and called it a night.

We woke up at 7am and raided Comfort Inn’s surprisingly tasty continental breakfast. I’m not sure which continent inspired the food but it definitely infused us with some needed energy.

Wisp Resort is not exactly the greatest ski facility in the country. The runs are short, the employees are teenaged and obnoxious, and the cost is expensive. Though Wisp should not be blamed for the lack of snow, charging nearly $100 for ski lift and rental equipment probably explains why there were such few people there.

I was a bit nervous about my skiing abilities considering the 7-year-gap in between ski trips. After 3 minutes of skiing, these nerves took a backseat as my muscle memory took over and I started thrashing down the slopes with reckless abandon, picking up speed and flying past lesser mortals.

I’m Picabo Street, motherfuckers! I thought to myself, unable to think of a famous male ski celebrity. Bode Miller might have been a better choice.

SB and Foxymoron snowboarded and were really good at it. The Princess felt sick but still managed to hit the slopes for half the day.

Based on the recommendation of my friend Egyptian Sausage, I considered renting snow blades (short skis). One of the teenage guys at the rental store, though, told me: “You don’t want those things. They’re for doing tricks.”

In other words, for people younger than me.

As the day aged, it got warmer until the point when I thought of ditching my jacket. This also caused the terrain to get slushy and harder to grip with my skis. More people started showing up, too, especially teenagers snowboarders who thought it was sometimes a good idea to sit in the middle of the run when they wanted to take a break.

We tried different runs but enjoyed the green (beginners)/blue (more difficult) runs the best. I watched with some envy the few and fearless descend the black diamond runs (some of them were children).

We ate lunch inside the Wisp lodge and watched out the large window the snowboarders bailing on ski jumps. I was wearing my Good for the Jews t-shirt, which must have shocked the mostly white crowd because I got more gasps and double-takes than a whore in church.

“Did you see what his shirt said?” I heard an employee tell another.

Yup, there’s a Jew in the house everyone, run for your lives! The lodge cafeteria also featured multi-purpose spoons, which mystified The Princess, who wondered what made the forks and knives only single-purpose utensils.

In the end, I didn’t break any bones and I only feel hard once. This happened when I was trailing The Princess and decided to show off (of course) and do a quick swoosh move. My body, though, had different plans. I tripped and fell out of my skis, taking a header into the ice/mud/sludge.

A ski patrol woman slushed past me, barely stopping to ask if I was ok, before moving on. I looked for The Princess, who surely must have heard my embarrassing fall and turned around to check on me.

She was nowhere in sight.

“Oh, you fell?” she asked when I finally made it to the bottom of the run.

It’s a tough world, this skiing.

Here is a video of my last run of the day. At the end, you see me freak out Shiftless Badger as it looks like I nearly run him over. Should have given him a Whopper with cheese instead.

Banner photo credit

Remember 2007? Wow, seems just like last week we were all reminiscing about that crazy year.

Anyway, I’m only 11 days late but here are some photos from my trip to Missouri to visit The Princess’s family for Christmas, otherwise known as the Christian Hanukkah. We did a lot during that trip home: boiled some already dead lobsters, went sledding (my first time ever) and bruised my tail bone, punched her 8-year-old cousins in the face, threw a little girl through a window, and opened many, many presents.

I’m going skiing this weekend for the first time in 7 years with Shiftless Badger and Foxymoron. If I don’t blog next week, it’s because I pulled a Sonny Bono into a tree and am dead.

Too soon?

Being a Redskins fan in the Midwest isn’t easy. Luckily, I zapped whiny Chiefs fans with my one frenetic X-ray eyeball. The other eyeball is just for seeing.

Posing before our sledding expedition. The Princess looks like a friggin’ lumberjack. Her sister and brother-in-law chose to protect their privacy.

My VERY first time on a sled. I didn’t break anything but I came close.

My friend INPY is allergic to lobster and so has never eaten one. His dream is to order one on his deathbed, take a bite, and with his last words gasp, “Over…rated.”

Well fuck you, too, you overrated crustacean.

I know it looks like I’m playing basketball with The Princess’ best friend’s daughter Pipsqueak, but really I’m throwing her through the window.

We tortured Pipsqueak all night. When I wasn’t hurling her 2-year-old body through glass, The Princess was monopolizing her toy kitchen.

Opening presents Christmas morning. I got a tripod for my Canon Rebel XTi. I wanted to make the obvious joke so badly but decided it’s better that The Princess’ parents like me.

This was a really funny picture because of everyone’s expressions. Unfortunately, they like their privacy so I blacked them out. Too bad we didn’t have the black bar glasses.

I was down to nothing.

A few pairs of old socks I don’t wear anymore. Wife-beaters instead of crisp, white undershirts. And no underwear. And I mean NO UNDERWEAR. As in, I have to flip my underwear inside out so I can wear them again.

This is the worst time of any laundry cycle: When you find yourself scavenging the dark recesses of your dresser drawers for clothing you haven’t seen since college…when you’re wearing “I Heart DC” tourist shirts because you have nothing else to put on under your dress shirt…when you’re digging through the bottom of your laundry basket for a pair of boxer briefs that won’t repel society…THAT’S when you know you need to do laundry.

I suppose most of you reading this have a washer and dryer in your home. Maybe they’re in the basement of your apartment building, or maybe you own them and have easy access whenever you so much as spill dulce de leche on your pants.

But for The Princess and me, we have a laundromat. We have to pack up our car like we’re Clark and Ellen Griswold going on vacation. Every few weeks or so, when we find ourselves unable to find a decent outfit to wear, we load what feels like a dozen baskets of unwashed clothing and drive to Spin Cycle.

Spin Cycle is a great place to do laundry. They have a bunch of machines that rival in size the WOPR in War Games and attract nearly every Latino family that resides in Montgomery County to its vast facilities. Unlike the Suds laundromat we used to go to in downtown Takoma Park, Spin Cycle promises an amusing adventure nearly everytime.

Here is what I learned during our last laundry expedition on Tuesday night:

Central Americans don’t believe I speak Spanish.

When the “cold” button on a 5-load washer didn’t seem to work, I walked up to one of the Spin Cycle employees and asked him, “No funciona el botón?” The dude just stared at me. “El botón de frio, no funciona?” Nothing. The guy stared at me like I was a zombie. I led him to the machine. Again, I asked him if the “cold” button was working or not, pressing it over and over again like Coco the monkey trying to communicate. Saying nothing, he pressed the “warm” button, seemingly happy that he had helped me, and walked away. I took all the clothes out and tried a different machine.

Beating your high score in Galaga will give you a hand cramp.

Spin Cycle has many arcade games in its facilities. While we wait for the wash to finish, The Princess and I like to play Galaga, the fixed-shooter arcade game where we get to fire at pixelated spaceships. We’re pretty evenly skilled so I win about as often as she does. But on Tuesday night, I was on fire. I scored 100,290 points, securing the 4th best score for this particular machine and a personal best. The Princess was impressed. I know this because she gave me a high-five. Of course, I later tried unsuccessfully to get out of folding because my hand cramped up. It didn’t work.

Pregnant 15-year-olds are surprisingly happy people.

Seeing a pregnant teenager can make one feel pity for her. But seeing her surrounded by family — mother, sister, brother — and doing laundry almost makes one feel happy for her situation. That strength of spirit can overcome any odds. That having unprotected sex at 14 was not the worst mistake you could have made. Then you see her pull out her math homework and realize this is not a Lifetime movie.

The Princess has a mild case of OCD.

I bought a bag of Skittles and offered The Princess some. I poured a few in her hand and watched her as she took only two at a time, of the same color, and ate them. “You only eat two at a time?” I asked her after swallowing a handful indiscriminately. “Of course. I pick two of the same color and eat them together.” I thought this was weird. But then I remembered my friend J-Vo’s need to have the number on her TV volume control to always be even and realized, we’re all a little OCD.

When the dryer won’t take your quarter, smack it until you break it.

After the freaking dryer took not just one but two of my quarters without working, I did what any normal person would do: I hit the machine. Hard. Twice. And then it broke. One of the employees walked over and told me, “You have to be gentle. Wait a minute and it’ll reset.” I thought about asking him if the dryer was self-aware enough to feel pain and needed some time to cool off, but I just waited. Sure enough, about a minute after I had smacked it into showing the dreaded “ERR” message on its screen, the dryer reset. He put in a quarter for me. It swallowed it and didn’t work. This was one emotional machine.

I now have clean clothes. Fresh underwear (not inside-out) and warm socks and shirts.

For now.

PHOTO CREDIT

I walked into my bedroom Sunday afternoon to find The Princess relaxing on the bed, doing something girlie like clipping coupons or reading some book about cooking or food. I engaged her in the following conversation:

Arjewtino: Woman. Make me a sandwich.
The Princess: Make your own damn sandwich.
Arjewtino: Oh, I’m sorry. SIMON SAYS make me a sandwich.

She never made me that sandwich.

There was a time when preceding a command with “Simon says…” was like enacting your own fascist regime on your friends. “Simon says dance like a monkey and smell your own butt.” And people had to do it. It was like calling dibs on something, the ultimate game of social domination.

“Give me the Nintendo controller.”

“Screw you, I’m playing Excitebike.”

“I called it.”

“Fuck. Here you go.”

Somewhere along the way, though, we lost our way and community justice became about laws and absurd regulations. Imagine how much better the world would work if “calling ‘dibs’” was an act of suppliance and “Simon Says” was the support of that request. Ron Paul would be able to participate in the GOP debates. The TV writers would be fairly compensated for their online contributions. And Nitro would be back on the new American Gladiators.

I want to bring back the power of “Simon Says” and “dibs”. They are needed now more than ever.

My first act? Well, that would be this:

Simon says you CANNOT make a musical about the Diary of Anne Frank:

Does this story really need a song-and-dance routine? Does the most-read story about the Holocaust really need a cabaret? Should this fated girl’s last written words be turned into what seems like exploitative stage entertainment?

There is an old urban legend that when stage actress Pia Zadora starred in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank in the 1950s, her performance was so bad that an audience member yelled “She’s in the attic!” when the Nazis showed up.

This apocryphal story is not true. But it just goes to show the problematic ramifications of turning something tragic into something to be showcased.

UPDATE.