The World Famous DC Blogger Happy Hour is coming soon…details next Tuesday.

Here’s a hint: September 7th.

“When we first met, I thought you were a jerk.”

It’s Saturday night and I’m celebrating the end of the softball season with my team at Cue Bar. My teammate Vu has sprung this nugget of information on me. She’s had a few glasses of “liquid courage”.

“What?” I exclaim. “Why?”

This is not the first time I made a bad first impression. Some people just don’t like me. Even my best friend Blue, who I met in third grade at , couldn’t stand me when we first met as 8-year-olds. In his words, I “ran around too much” during recess and “couldn’t keep still”. Twenty-four years later, he’s still the guy I’d call to bail me out of jail.

“No,” Vu continued, “I mean, when I first met you I thought you were a jerk but now I know you’re not.”

We all know the importance of good first impressions. I, apparently, don’t give them. Sometimes my reputation even beats me to it. Eight years ago, a co-worker who joined the newspaper I worked at thought I was a snob before she even met me. She told me this during a work happy hour. When I asked her why, she explained it was because I was from LA.

There are a lot of reasons, I think, why people don’t like me upon meeting me.

• I come across as arrogant.
• I correct people’s grammar (sorry, Tits McGee, but I was implying something, not inferring it).
• I’m not from the east coast.

We all make these pre-judgments –- of people, of places, and of things. That’s actually the ironic thing. We place so much emphasis on first impressions yet are so often mistaken down the road.

For instance, this flash advertisement popped up recently on some web site I was visiting:

My initial thought was, “Nice. Just a couple of lesbian women who enjoy hugging.” A few seconds later, exactly what the advertisement was about became clear:

Oops.

But it happens all the time. Our brains are just trying to simplify an already complex world by breaking it down into readily understood parts. The brain’s act of generalizing explains stereotyping and why some people liked the movie “Fever Pitch”.

Back to Saturday night — Vu assured me she didn’t think I was a jerk. I told her it was ok, that I can be sometimes, but I was glad she and I had become friends. She smiled and turned around.

That’s when I snapped a picture of her ass.

Monster has calculated that at my current rate of income and savings I won’t make my first million dollars until I’m 75 years old.

Little do they know my cunning financial planning has already started.

Some of you may remember the e-mail I received back in January from a bank manager in Burkina Faso who wanted to give me . Others may recall the time I won 1 million Euro two months later in the “Lottoria Spanish”.

Intelligent investments take longer than most people think so I’m not worried that the promises of riches have yet to come through. A less gifted financier would “panic” or “not send money to strangers”. You know what I call those people? Losers. They just don’t have my pecuniary aptitude.

Yes, I know, I still haven’t collected a dime despite these people’s assurances. But just when a less wily investor would lose hope or think he was swindled, I have been approached — again! — by yet another stranger who has recognized my fiscal talents and promised to make me millions in undeserved money!

A woman named Hajia Mariam (how could you make up a name like that?) wants to cut me in on 20% of her late husband’s deposit of $12.6 million to a security firm — a cool $2.52 million. She is the widow of General Abacha, the “former head of state of Nigeria” who died in June 1998. Here is a copy of the e-mail she sent me.

Click to enlarge.

Some readers may think I’m a sucker for even considering this offer. Some readers might say it’s just some 419 scam. What these readers don’t know is that Mariam is as honest a woman of a corrupt President as there is! Everyone should trust an African widow who’s seeking her dead crook of a husband’s millions. It’s just common sense.

Still, I’m not an idiot. I did some research. For myself and as a virtual public service announcement for my blog readers. I compared the assurances she made in her e-mail to what some cynics would call “facts” to arrive at my conclusion. Here are my findings:

As you can see, Mariam is an honest gal who’s just down in the dumps and needs me right now. After all, one man’s “obvious e-mail scam” is another man’s “long-awaited payday”.

And when my Burkina Faso and Spain deals go through, I’ll be looking at a cool $10 million. Forty-three years earlier than Monster predicted.

Alarm clock didn’t go off. Trains were slow. Passengers were rude. Early meetings were scheduled.

I hope my day ends better than this guy’s:

Click to enlarge. Via Yadogg.

Photo Credit

I came upon a disturbing realization recently: I may not hate the Yankees as much as I thought I did.

The Brazilian soccer team? Definitely. Boca Juniors? Of course. ? Yup.

But the Yankees? I’m not so sure anymore.

My friend HAL brought up this nugget of revelation over a few Miller High Lifes at Bedrock the other night. While watching SportsCenter, I was blasting the Yankees for being so Yankeeish when he said:

“You don’t really hate the Yankees.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, stunned at the mere mention of such an unsettling theory.

“No, you don’t,” he continued, “you only think you do.”

HAL went on to explain that a sports fan can only hate –- really loathe -– one team per sport. Having never heard such conjecture, I pressed him to explain.

“You’re a Dodgers fan. You love that team, right?”

“Right.”

“How do you feel about the Giants?”

“Ugh. I wish they went 0-162 every year.”

“Exactly. There is no situation in which you would ever pull for the Giants. But the Yankees, you could.”

HAL was right. In the 2005 playoffs when the Yankees played the Angels, I actually pulled for New York because I was so disgusted by the Angels’ attempt to supplant themselves into Los Angeles with a stupid name change. And when the Yankees and Dodgers both made the playoffs last year, HAL and I agreed to root for each other’s teams so they could meet in the World Series.

But the Giants are a different story. I still get upset when I think about Bobby Thompson’s Shot Heard ‘Round the World, even though it happened 26 years before I was even born. Their orange-and-black color combination reminds me of puke. I don’t even like the Yomiuri Giants of the Japanese Central League because of their influential American counterpart.

With one sentence by HAL, my sports world was turned upside down. I had always known myself to despise the Yankees. As sure as there are 108 double-stitches in a baseball, as sure as Gibson would make a great name for my firstborn, I had been sure the Yankees were in my personal column of “Things I Wish Would Die”.

I started thinking about my other sports allegiances to see if HAL’s theory held up.

Soccer? I hate Brazil, that’s not news. And while I say that I hate England, I kind of admire their level of play. And I respect Germany’s talent though last year’s World Cup loss to them still stings.

College? As a UCLA fan, there is only one school that epitomizes evil to me: USC. I don’t care for Duke or most Big-10 schools, but USC stands alone.

Football? As a Redskins fan, I hate the Cowboys but I only mildly dislike the Eagles and Giants. I’m kind of a fan, actually, of McNabb.

So maybe HAL is right. Maybe you can only truly hate one team per sport. Maybe the Yankees aren’t so evil. Does this make me a bad Dodgers fan? Will never marry me now? Does it make my pleasure at seeing the Red Sox beat the Bronx Bombers any less enjoyable? Probably not.

But I definitely still hate Jeter.

I hope you at least enjoyed the blog post.

Photo credit: Chosang

When I called my friend MJ last Friday night to invite her out, she told me she and HC were busy.

“We’re going to Clarendon Ballroom to meet Perez Hilton,” she said in my voicemail.

Clarendon where? Perez who? Oh right, that gossip blogger who built his career on smarmy and often cruel comments about celebrities.

That’s what MJ said anyways. But this is what I heard: “There are other bloggers more important than you who I’d rather hang out with.”

Perez Hilton, aka Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr., is kind of a big deal in celebrity blogging. He has the 16th-ranked blog in the Technorati universe (for comparison’s sake, mine is ranked awesomely at 49,721st), gets about a gazillion hits a day, and was dubbed “Hollywood’s Most Hated Web Site”. If you’ve never heard of him, welcome to the Internet. There’s a lot of porn here.

Perez came to DC last week as a guest of Hot 99.5 radio station for something called the Lil’ Black Dress Party, an event big enough to wrestle my friends’ attention away from, well, me. Even the covered it for some reason.

“Seriously, we felt like celebs,” MJ told me yesterday over e-mail while recapping the night. “They had a red carpet and were taking pictures inside. So we’re on the radio station website. It was fantastic.”

That night, while she and HC partied in Virginia, I rode the 42 Metrobus thinking about Perez and thought, How does a blogger become a celebrity? How do his nights out become “events”? Should I start announcing my social calendar on my blog?

Perez’s celebrity status was cemented for me when MJ sent me this text later that night, at 12:43 a.m.: “I just got a pic w/ perez!” I texted her back: “Loser.”

Celebrity blogging can be attained. It’s just a matter of figuring out what the celebrities do right and comparing that behavior to your own. So I did some side-by-side assessments of Perez and myself to determine if I was on my way to becoming a blogger celebrity, too:

Be Latino

Perez Hilton is Cuban. I’m Argentinean. Everyone knows Latinos are awesome (even Guatemalans who ). But I’m Jewish, too, which makes me better than him.

Have blog haters

People hate Perez. They visit his blog EVERY day to tell him that. Everyone loves me, though. That’s what my mommy told me.

Have a distinctive look

Perez inexplicably dyes his hair blondish, wears thick glasses, and shows off oddly patterned shirts that don’t match his ties (see photo above). I have a skinny black tie I still bust out that reminds people of Flock of Seagulls.

Have an attention-grabbing site banner

Be gay

Perez is a ‘mo who exploits his sexuality to befriend female celebrities. I’m a straight man who thinks about many different women naked every day. Hmm. Might have to work on that one.

Be rich

Perez charges exorbitant fees for ads on his blogs because his site traffic demands it and advertisers are willing to pay for it. Though my blog is ad-free, I am still waiting for the or the 1 million Euro check from Spain to come in.

Post lots of photos

Perez posts photos of celebrities with “clever” captions that he doodles. I post photos of LNS celebrities with my own “clever” captions that I take an entire 5 seconds to come up with.

In general, just act like an unapologetic prick

Perez outs gay celebrities like Lance Bass, prints paparazzi photos without permission, and has a selective memory to accommodate his agenda. I my friend’s fragile fingers, print my friends’ embarrassing stories without permission, and have a selective memory to accommodate my agenda.

According to this comprehensive list, I have already achieved celebrity blogger status. The day will soon come when new “It” girls MJ and HC forsake a night out with Perez Hilton to come meet me in some Virginia bar.

And maybe they’ll send him this text: “I just got a pic w/ arjewtino!”

Hermanita, Abuelo, and Arjewtino at a sidewalk café not named Starbucks

Starbucks recently announced it is invading expanding the company into Argentina, a cotuntry where, along with its traditions of great wine, beautiful women, and World Cup championships, is rich in coffee and café culture.

The prospect of ordering an acidic “cup of José” from a surly — yet gorgeous — Starbucks barista is pretty depressing. After all, stopping in to sidewalk cafés in Buenos Aires for a cortado is part of the charm of visiting the city.

I remember meeting my grandparents for coffee after school when I was 9-years-old. Mi hermanita and I would chat over glass-bottled Coca-Colas while people-watching on Avenida Cabildo. And on my most recent trip to Buenos Aires, joining for breakfast at her favorite café/restaurant was always the best way to start the day.

It’s not that I hate Starbucks or boycott its shops. My mom regularly sends me $25 gift cards to Starbucks for no reason, which I happily spend on dulce de leche frapuccinos.

It’s just that I know what Starbucks does. It takes over. It shuts down independent coffee shops and other chains as easily as Guatemalans bow down to Argentineans. It overruns local coffee commerce like Maradona shredding an England defense. It sucks the life out of unique, independent shops with its homogenized and ubiquitous green logo.

I really have no idea if my fellow porteños are excited by this infection expansion or not. I’ll e-mail my cousins soon to find out.

But for now, let’s hope the next time I visit Argentina and sit down for an espresso and medialuna, it doesn’t cost me more pesos than my uncle makes an hour.

Update: sent me this photo of McDonald’s in Cairo; if you look closely at the left side of the photo, you can see the Little Caesar’s:

I’m on the Metro train, end of the day. My Express crossword is finished. My book, An African in Greenland, doesn’t have enough pretty pictures to entertain me. I need to be entertained. I must be entertained on this hour-long commute. This is when I play a game called “One-Sided Eavesdropping”.

Much like Garfield would be funny if you took out the strip’s dialogue, eavesdropping is much more fun when you can only hear one side of the conversation. It leads to incongruous segues and mystifying comments.

Earlier this week, I could not help but listen to some dude guy talking to his friend while on the Orange Line:

Dude Guy: I usually get motion sick when I ride backwards.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: It’s usually when I’m reading or playing poker on my phone.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: It used to be worse when I was a kid and I’d throw up.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: Which one are you talking about? The hot one? She wasn’t there last week.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: It would have come in handy since I have a dog.

I’m actually happy I couldn’t hear Dude Guy’s friend’s meek voice, it made for a more entertaining conversation.

We each have something to which we are addicted.

For Jennifer Connelly, it was whoring herself for heroin. For Robert Palmer, it was love. And for , it was writing really pathetic poetic songs that made college girls want to kill themselves.

For me, among many other things (see Dodgers, photography, and coin-flipping) it’s blogging:

65%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Thanks to for this one.

Janet at Love is Blonde wrote a pithy comment last week that resonated with me when she asked whether she should avoid fantasy football this season: “…am I already overbooked on life?”

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been spreading myself too thin, signing up for this and that on the web, wanting to see friends and hang out with The Princess, watching movies, listening to music, reading all the books I want, talking to my family, planning trips abroad, kicking ass at my new job, playing softball, taking weekends in NYC, improving my blog, etc. In short, becoming overbooked on life.

No? Everyone’s like this? I should stop whining? Ok, good.

Here are some things I’ve been overbooking on addicted to recently:

GoodReads

Imagine if Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon had a dirty threeway only no one’s feelings were hurt for feeling left out of the proverbial orgy. If you can imagine that, you’re sick.

What do you want to do with your life? Well, don’t tell me, tell this Web site and maybe you’ll figure out how to turn your sad life into an interesting one. One of my 43 things is “Bang Natalie Portman”.

If I could create the ideal photoblog without having to try too hard, this would be it. Ohad’s photos are vivid and creative and his presentation is as close to perfect as I have seen. Check out, in particular, his “miniature effect” of scenes, like taken at a baseball game.

Imagine if MySpace and “travel blogging” got it on because they weren’t invited to the dirty threeway with GoodReads. Plan your trips and get great advice and reviews from people who live in places you want to visit or have traveled there and not had their wallet stolen.

Paintball: The Game

I dare you to click on this, play one round, and quit. If you can do it, I’ll pretend you’re my friend the next time we hang out.

It’s not what it sounds like. I mean, it might be, but not as far as I can tell. If you ever wondered what it would be like to travel from the North Pole to the South Pole using only natural power and blog about it, this is the site for you. The Web design and customizations alone are worth the click.

Online cartoons

The first one has been cracking me up all week and has even inspired an idea for me and Chosang to create our own comic strip. It would be called Tyrone Goldstein and would be about a black Jew studying for his Bar Mitzvah. The second cartoon is pretty self-explanatory: left-handed ‘toons drawn by right-handed people.

In case you were feeling underbooked on life, click on some of these links and get busier. Or share what you’re addicted to these days.

Just don’t say Fiona Apple.

cites me for the strangest blog posts: