I was surfing a series of tubes last night and came across something called the Urban Dictionary. Has anyone ever heard of this? It’s incredible. It’s a virtual dictionary of, get this, slang words. I know, right? Million dollar idea. Kind of like the guy who created this:

Anyway, I came across a whole bevy of new slang words and terms I had never heard before, like “hobosexual” and “Gary Coleman dolls”. But some words were so old I wondered how they could only now have made it into the UD, like “sike” and “dine and dash”. These aren’t new slang terms. They’ve been around since the 80s. I should know since my friend Scotty and I once dined and dashed at our local Denny’s.

We didn’t do it because we were short on money. We didn’t do it because we thought the waiter was a prick. We did it because neither of us had ever done it before and we thought it should be one of those things teenagers do. This was before I became a waiter myself and knew we had to pay out of our own pockets for any checks people skipped out on.

We hatched a plan. Scotty would leave first and go get the car and drive it up near the front door. I would wait two minutes, then casually stroll out the door. I waited those 120 seconds scared I would get caught and go to Denny’s jail, which is probably a place where you have to serve French Slams all night to ungrateful customers like us. (Yes, I used to eat the French Slam all the time.)

I then got up, made for the door, and told myself if I were stopped, I would act indignant and claim unfair oppression, kind of like the time a 7-11 manager accused me of shoplifting a bag of chips. Man, that pissed me off. It was a Twix bar.

I made for the door and as I walked outside, I heard, or thought I heard, a noise. It could have been anything. But to me, it might as well have been the po po. I panicked and ran for the Scotty’s Corvette. Scotty panicked as well and hit the accelerator. I yelled at him, “Open the door, asshole” and the passenger-side door swung open with the car still in motion.

I Dukes of Hazzarded into the car and we took off. He asked me why I ran and I asked him why he started to drive. We laughed and bonded over acting like pussies. I still feel guilty about screwing the poor waiter out of $15 or so, but I’m sure it didn’t bankrupt him.

In any case, dining and dashing is too old a term to be in the UD. Still, the web site does have a lot of other words and terms I haven’t heard of. Since it’s only a matter before these words hit the mainstream, I decided to memorize as many as possible and get a head start on being hip and cool. Like I need it.

The first word I came across was “manther”. This is the male equivalent of a “cougar”. This word was added a week ago and is defined as:

“Single, usually divorced, and at a minimum 10 years older than a cougar.”

I don’t think this word will catch on because there are already words for manthers. They’re “dirty old men”, “Peter Pan complex cases”, and “male bloggers”. Besides, a manther sounds more like some half-man/half-panther genetic freak you’d find in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Wait, that might have been Panthor.

A cougar, though, is not a lazy portmanteau but rather a real animal. And a real person: an older woman who goes after younger men. I dated a cougar once. I was 29 and she bought me a beer at a bar while I was playing pool with Baby Bien and my dad.

I don’t remember her exact age, but it was definitely older than 35 and younger than 40. I remember, more than her age, the fact that she had a kid. A son. Whose photo she showed me that night. It didn’t bother me, really. Probably because she was hot and she bought me a beer at a bar. I’m pretty easy when you buy me a beer at a bar. That’s how Foxymoron got me to participate in Movember.

Some people look down on cougars, though, or say unilaterally they would never date one. Why? I have no idea. One of the most attractive women at my last job was this older woman in her 50s I used to see during smoke breaks.

And recently I learned that Jennifer Tilly is 49 years old. Look at her. Does this woman look like a woman nearly half a century old? Hell, I hope I look this good when I’m 49 and I’m a guy.

In the end, though, I think the age difference would have been an issue since I wouldn’t be able to relate to watching the moon landing and she wouldn’t understand what it means to be “rolling deep”.

Hey, that should be an Urban Dictionary word!

The first moustache I ever saw was my father’s.

He wasn’t a cop, a lounge singer, or a porn star. He was Argentinean, which, apparently, was enough reason in the 1970s to grow bigotes.

And though the practice of growing a whiskery pushbroom above your upper lip has since grown out of style in the U.S., relegated merely to certain professionals like Mr. Belvedere and a couple of guys from the Village People, it has continued in Latin America to this day as a veritable — though perhaps misguided — display of masculinity.

My dad finally shaved his moustache when I was 15, emerging from the bathroom cleanly shaved and nearly traumatizing my siblings and me with his new, strange face. Though I never followed in my Papi’s facial hair footsteps, I have sported a goatee and/or beard since I was in college.

Still, who says we don’t all turn into our dads?

In honor of the moustache, several friends and I – Foxymoron (team captain), , Nickels, I Now Pronounce You, Klein, and Rory — have formed the Committee for the Restoration of Trebek’s Upper Lip Hair, a team that will participate in Movember, a month-long charitable event designed to raise money for the .

(There is something poetic, I think, about helping combat the very affliction that strips a man of his manhood by growing the ultimate outward display of said manhood.)

Participating in Movember is, as I see it, an easy two-step process:

1. Start October 31st with a clean-shaven face.
2. Don’t shave for the entire month of November.

Since I figured karma would be pretty happy with this act of charity and would reward me later in life by NOT afflicting me with cancer of the ass, I agreed to take part.

Also, I’ll agree to just about anything short of eating coconut when I’m drinking.

I have said for years that if I could actually grow a big, bushy moustache or beard, I would. Unfortunately, the Jew and Latino DNA in me didn’t combine to create dermis that could push hair out of my face in droves. Left unchecked, my beard merely grows to pubic hair length, after which it gets scraggly and, well, pubic-hair-like.

Still, I am looking forward to my Movember participation and progress. The day before the event starts, my team and I will be going to a barber for a straight-razor shave. We’ll be taking donations and, at the end of Movember, will host a party to celebrate our facial hair efforts.

So if you value your erection or your boyfriend’s/husband’s/friend-with-benefits’ erection, click here to donate for my moustache. You can donate as little as $1, but a $2 donation gets you a tax exemption and a better seat in Heaven, closer to the Jews. I’ll be updating my team’s Movember growth as the month continues.

Thank you.

A British child prodigy named Georgia Brown became the youngest member of Mensa this year when the Stanford-Binet IQ test revealed her to have a score of 152, making her a certified genius.

I was obviously skeptical of this little girl’s IQ score and the test methods used to figure out her intelligence, so I decided to run my own tests and see if I was more intelligent than her.

The first test I ran was to analyze what Georgia could do and compare them to my own skills.

Georgia:
She was crawling at five months and walking at nine months.

Arjewtino:
I wasn’t allowed out of my crib until I was 2.

Georgia:
By 14 months, she was getting herself dressed.

Arjewtino:
I still defer to The Princess and my gay friends for my fashion choices.

Georgia:
By 18 months, she was having proper conversations.

Arjewtino:
I often slur my words, have a slight lisp, and my mom likes to remind me that no one could understand me until I was 4-years-old.

Georgia:
Puts her shoes on and on the right feet.

Arjewtino:
I wore Velcro shoes from Target until I was 12.

Georgia:
Sings “I Can Sing a Rainbow” perfectly.

Arjewtino:
I can karaoke to Green Day songs at blogger happy hours.

Georgia:
Counts to 10.

Arjewtino:
I remember once trying to count to infinity and gave up around 150 when I realized I would never get there.

Georgia:
Uses words such as “arrogant” in conversation.

Arjewtino:
I’m Argentinean. I was born arrogant.

Georgia:
Distinguishes between pink and purple.

Arjewtino:
When The Princess and I painted our apartment last year, she asked me to choose between falu, mauve, and vermillion. They all looked like red to me.

Georgia:
Swims

Arjewtino:
I wore flotation wings on my arms until I was 7.

Georgia:
Dances the ballet.

Arjewtino:
Georgia’s got me there.

Georgia:
Draws an almost perfect circle.

Arjewtino:
My dad’s an architect. He taught me how to draw a perfect circle before I learned how to play soccer.

Georgia:
Distinguishes between a square and a rectangle.

Arjewtino:
I got a ‘D’ in Geometry in 10th grade and got busted for cheating on a quiz.

Georgia:
Explains difficult words to her friends.

Arjewtino:
When my best friend Blue accused me of not being a responsible person, I told him, “I’m not responsible, I’m accountable.” When he asked me what the difference was, I shrugged my shoulders.

This test was obviously inconclusive. I needed an empirical examination.

So I took an online IQ test I found when I Googled “Stanford-Binet IQ test”. I spent 15 minutes answering a variety of questions designed to test my spatial, mathematical, and verbal skills. At the end of the test, I clicked for the results and navigated to this page:

Maybe a two-year-old is smarter than me.

Late during last Friday night’s blogger happy hour, INPY drunkenly punched me in the face. I told him to take off his glasses and I slugged him right back, square in the jaw. We then hugged it out like men.

The next day, I got this text from him:

“You punch like a girl”

The truth is, I have never been in a fistfight. I have never taken part in this essential rite-of-passage, which for most men is right up there with “unhooking your first bra” and “entering a stupid tequila shot contest”.

This is NOT, however, due to a lack of trying.

Being an angry, hormonal, “woe’s me” kind of teenager, I constantly looked for fights whenever the opportunity arose. My condensed list of people I wanted to fight includes:

• A 7-11 cashier who falsely accused me of shoplifting.
• Some guy who sneaked into the swimming pool of my apartment complex and threw a chair into the pool.
• The Little League pitcher who knocked me down after throwing me some chin music.
• My bully.
• The party crasher who called me a kike.

But no matter how often I tried to instigate or escalate the potential fistfight, my would-be opponents backed down. Always.

As recently as last week, some guy at a bar on Capitol Hill, upset that I was joking with his kickball friends and threatened by my ability to make them laugh, called me a “scumbag” as I walked away. I turned around and marched aggressively back up to him and said, “What? What did you call me?” only to have him back down and apologize.

Why is this? I am not, physically speaking, a large man. I am, what you might generously call, “soccer player-sized”. So it can’t be my tangible presence that intimidates my adversaries.

I’ve developed a theory -– the reason my rivals acquiesce is that at the very moment a fistfight becomes a very real possibility, when the moment of truth intensifies, they must be thinking, “Holy shit, if this little guy wants to fight he must be able to beat me up.”

In retrospect, I’m ambivalent about never having been in a fistfight. On the one hand, I missed out on a masculine event that every man should go through, like climbing a mountain or not caving when his girlfriend starts to cry.

But on the other hand, I’ve never had to experience this pain:

Thanks for the link, Wonkette.

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:

When I was a kid, my dad told me the only thing he wanted from me was to “not grow up”.

I didn’t listen. Neither, it seems, have “my campers”.

I spent my summers in college working long days at Camp Sharwood in Woodland Hills, California, singing songs, playing patty-cake, and doing arts and crafts with hundreds of kids. These kids, though, have since become adults. Real, live, full-fledged adults. Who are on .

My campers, who used to call me “Radar” (part of the fun was having the campers call us by our nicknames; I called myself Radar because I loved the show M*A*S*H), are on the popular social networking site and are forgetting that, to me, they’re supposed to stay sweet and innocent forever.

These “adults” are the same kids whose hands I once held when they were too scared to ride a rollercoaster; the same kids who I taught how to hit a softball; the same kids who I read bedtime stories to when I babysat them; and the same kids whose scraped knees I would bandage when they fell down.

Instead, I see pictures of them on Facebook going on beach trips, graduating from college, going skydiving, getting drunk, and hanging out with friends – all things my friends do.

But they’re just children, I thought as I accepted each of them as Facebook friends this week, how can they be kissing boys?

Here is one of my favorite campers, who thanked me for giving her the courage to ride the Matterhorn at Disneyland, wearing a bikini saying “We’re the shit lol” in one of her photos.

They’re only kids.

Here’s another camper who’s now taller than me who I used to entertain with impressions of Mike Myers’ SNL character of “Simon”.

They play with toys.

Here’s another who is now a 6’2” man-giant and who describes his occupation as a “cop killa”. I used to take him to the “emergency room” whenever he overreacted about being hurt.

They wet their pants.

Seeing these kids – er, adults – again brought back memories: The boy who threw up on me while we watched the Batman show at Knott’s Berry Farm. The girl who showed me during a night of babysitting a video of her being born. The ADHD kid who ran away and who I had to haul back to camp over my shoulder. The time I temporarily “lost” a kid at Raging Waters. The “Final Shows” we put on to entertain the kids’ parents.

But my favorite memory is the story of a 6-year-old boy (I wish I remembered his name) who was so shy when he started at Camp Sharwood that he wouldn’t play with other kids, kept to himself, and stared at me without saying a word whenever I talked to him.

I encouraged him slowly without pushing him and after a week or so, he became much more social. After a few weeks I noticed he started combing his hair slick back like mine. At the end of the year, this boy’s mom came up to me and asked, “Are you Radar?”

When I told her I was, she hugged me and said, “You have no idea what an impact you have had on my son.” She went on to tell me how shy he once was but how happy he had become since meeting his “favorite camp counselor”. She added that every morning, she combed his hair but he wasn’t happy until it looked “just like Radar’s”.

To me, that kid will be six years old forever.

Below is a group picture of Camp Sharwood counselors. Can you find me? Click to enlarge.

Courtesy of MLB

If we do nothing else noble or heroic in our lives, men at least adhere to one rule: Never Go After Your Friend’s Wife or Girlfriend.

We can add another one: Never Go After Your Friend’s Celebrity Crush.

Alyssa and I (can I call her Alyssa? No? Ok, Ms. Milano and I) first met 20 years ago when she was signing autographs at the in Canoga Park, California. She was there with Scott Valentine, who played Nick from Family Ties, and who I was told was some sort of teen heartthrob. Mallory must have been hard-up.

I waited several hours to have Alyssa Milano sign my 8×10, black-and-white headshot of the only girl whose Teen Beat photos and posters ever graced my wall. I finally got to the front of the line in front of Mervyn’s and there she was. Alyssa Milano. Samantha Micelli, 15 years old (three years older than me), and gorgeous.

I had had plenty of teen crushes before. The Childlike Empress from The Neverending Story. That girl who played Annie in the movie Annie. My mom’s friend. But they all paled in comparison to Alyssa Milano.

She asked my name and I think I said the right one. She started to sign the picture, writing something like “Best Wishes” or “Meet me in the food court in 15 minutes” when I began to realize this would be the last — and only — time she would be in my life.

No, no, it’s going too fast, I thought, Scott Valentine wants to leave, Alyssa is a golden goddess, no, just wait, shut up, Nick, give me a second.

Mustering a level of courage I could never display with the cute girls in my class, I opened my mouth and asked Alyssa Milano for one favor, one memory that would comfort my acne-plagued, height-stunted teen years: “Can I have a hug?”

Oh, somewhere angels sing and saints are praised; somewhere beauty’s revered and the poetic lines of man lionized. But never was a place so perfect as that one, where the words that Alyssa Milano was about to utter so exalted and venerated: “Sure.”

She leaned in, placed her right cheek on mine, and squeezed. Not like the girls at school who got “grossed out” when they touched me. She gave a soft moan, I closed my eyes, and it was over.

I said thank you and left the mall. That memory never left.

So when a friend recently told me how he and Alyssa Milano started chatting through her baseball blog, and then forwarded me e-mail threads as proof, and I read where she said how funny he is and how great his blog is, and how she might come down in August and she coyly wrote “maybe we’ll have to meet up for a beer and a hot dog at the game”, I seriously considered ending the friendship. I think my exact words were, “I want to dismember you.”

Never has a prank worked so well.

INPY had me fuming all day, going so far as to forward seemingly real missives from Alyssa Milano’s own personal e-mail.

—–Original Message—–
From: Alyssa [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 11:39 AM
To:
Subject: re: Who Knew?

He let me “in” on his prank later that night when I threatened to disown him as a friend. Part of me was naturally relieved. The other part was sad that my chance of possibly seeing Alyssa Milano again when she visited in August was gone. I even had the whole conversation planned out:

INPY: “Alyssa, this is Arjewtino.”

Alyssa: “Nice to meet you, Arjewtino.”

Arjewtino: “Oh, we’ve already met.”

The rest, as they say, would have been history…

Thanks .

I played Wii for the first time recently and found it pedantic and boring, if not physically taxing.

A friend gave me a bootlegged copy of Baseball 2007 for Playstation 2 and I felt disinterested at best.

Culito invited me over to play Xbox and I yawned.

I thought my recent lackluster response to video-gaming was a sure sign that I had matured and started acting my age. Then I sang “Milk, milk, lemonade, ‘round the corner fudge is made!” and realized I was wrong.

The real reason, I believe, is that I miss the video games I used to play. I’m not talking about the games we, as a generation, used to play — like Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., or Q-Bert. I mean the games I loved. Here are five games I miss playing:

Cyberball, Atari.

Blue and I were addicted to this game. As teenage nerds with no girls to talk to, we would venture to the Fallbrook Mall arcade every weekend to play the futuristic football game featuring fallible robots. Sure, the science behind it made less sense than the flux capacitor, but you got to destroy robots who tried to gain yards.

Double Dribble, Nintendo.

Since even Super Mario and his brother Luigi could have beaten me at basketball (as long as they ate magical mushrooms), I had to turn to this game to feel like an NBA star. It eventually taught me how to shoot three-pointers from the corner, except in… well, you know… real basketball games.

NHL ’94, Sega.

I dominated this game. Whether I played as the Campbell Conference All-Stars or the weaker L.A. Kings or the awful Winnipeg Jets, I would beat all opponents. Even if I had a midterm I hadn’t studied for the next day and it was 2am, I always made time for this game. This was the version earlier than the one made famous in Swingers (“I can make Gretzky’s head bleed”).

Contra, Nintendo.

When people ask me where I developed my lifetime hatred of South American terrorists and alien life-forms hell-bent on human destruction, I cite this game. My friend Resnick and I used to record our games on my VCR and then watch them in order to analyze our skills and improve. Ballplayers call this behavior “watching film”. We called it “we have no girlfriends”.

Snafu, Intellivision.

This game and console are so old most people reading this weren’t even born when they went out of business. But I remember taking trips to Northern California to visit my uncle and aunt and playing this game for hours. It pretty much involved manipulating a snake-like figure that grew longer so it wouldn’t crash into itself. My sister and I fought over the controller every time we played but, luckily, I was bigger and would pound her if she took too long to play.

Photo credit: Cakeplow.com

When I was in junior high school, I had a bully. I called him My Bully because, like the ubiquitous My Buddy commercials of the 1980s, wherever I went, he went.

I had severe acne then and every day in P.E., My Bully reminded me that my pizza face was unacceptable. Also, he made himself quite clear that my ability to get better grades than he would not be tolerated.

As punishment for having hormone-charged sebaceous glands and a superior intellect, My Bully would push me to the ground and call me a FAG, which, for some ironic reason, stood for “Female Ass Grabber”. One day, I questioned his logic in front of the entire class and wondered if that made him a “Male Ass Grabber”.

This reverse psychoanalysis must have confused My Bully because I never did get an answer, only a violent shove. But it worked. He left me alone.

The problem with modern bullying is that kids rely too much on the instant gratification of hitting someone. Psychological warfare, though, can be a much more satisfying tactic if applied correctly.

My friend GoPats was a self-described bully when he was 11-years-old, but not in a physical way.

“I tended to dominate the conversation and get laughs at other people’s expense, kind of like I do now,” he told me.

I asked him if mental bullying was better than its physical counterpart.

“It takes more brains,” he responded. “Psychologically tormenting someone takes a little more thought. Walking by and punching someone is stupid.”

When my future kid gets picked on –- and he will — I’m not going to treat it like an ABC After School Special and tell him to talk it out with His Bully or that he’s just more scared than he is or any of that other Growing Pains bullshit..

Instead, I’ll help him design a fool-proof retaliation strike aimed at emotionally scarring the bully.

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll teach him how to trim bansai trees and enter him into the All-Valley Karate Tournament.

After all, not every bully has parents as awesome as this mom.

Photo credit: Frank Bellino/The Press-Enterprise

Two days in a row, Wonkette? I’m blushing.