Things I Don't Like Happening At the Gym

Believe it or not, I have encountered all of these in just the last couple of days.

1. A guy two days ago playing "Candy Crush" on his phone while on the crapper.  The fact that he left the sound on incredibly loud makes me think that this was an older guy who didn't know how to turn the sound off of his very own phone that he carries around every day.  I actually went back to my locker on the other side of the locker room and still heard this guy racking up points, and at that point I had to laugh.

2. A guy tonight singing in the shower.  This guy wasn't just casually singing or humming; he was belting it out, putting all his emotions into it, and it still wasn't very good.  It was a soul song along the lines of John Legend, and it sucked.  

No clue what's happening here, but it comes up on Google Images if you search "John Legend + Shower."

3. When you wipe your face hard with the gym towel and it nearly scrapes off a layer of skin, which damn near happened to me yesterday.  One needs to remember to dab the sweat off the face because a hard wipe could leave you looking like Freddy Krueger.

Freddy Fitness?  Shasher-'robics?  Yes!!!!!!

4. Dude today taking selfies with his shirt off in the locker room.  Your physique is very impressive, and I'm sure it's important to you to chart your progress - but that is a glamor shot that you should be doing at home.

And perhaps I'm just tired of these dudes twice my age in way better shape

That's all I got for now, Seven Readers.  Now, if you go to the gym and play "Candy Crush" on the dumper, sing in the shower, wipe your skin off your face with a towel, and take a locker room selfie to cap it off, you're off my blog roll, tough guy.  And I mean that.  : )

These Are the Top 10 Awful People At the Bar. The People That You Meet Each Friday.

10. The Jukebox Saboteur.  Some jerk played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida three consecutive times, but no one there will fess up to it.  More than likely he keyed that up and left to another bar just to stick us with 19 minutes of crappy drum and organ solos.

9. The Jaeger Bomber.  You have already told this guy that you don't want to do any shots because you have to go into work the next morning, but every time you turn around there is a tray of shots coming your way, and usually something disgusting like Wild Turkey.  You see, the Jaeger Bomber is not happy until we're all slobbering drunk and peeing on ourselves.  Like him.

8. The Barfly Loner.  He sits there alone every single night, knows all the staff members by name, and he is sipping his drinks and slowly killing himself.  And that's totally fine, so long as he doesn't talk to us.  It's when he chimes into everyone else's conversations that he becomes a problem.  We know, you have it all figured out and know the answers to all the world's problems.  But why haven't you found out how to avoid spending all your time and money perched at the end of this dark and dirty bar and dying a lonely death?

7. No Game and No Quit.   Sometimes the ladies just want to go out and have a few drinks, maybe dance a little, and yes, meeting some cute guys is a bonus.  However, you have got to know when your very presence has begun to ruin their night.  There are some guys out there who just don't know when to cut bait and move on.  Some men will tell you that all women are bitches, but the truth is they have to resort to being a monster bitch just to get guys like this to go away.

6. The Ping Pong Ball: This guy just doesn't seem happy with any bar you've gone to all night long.  The minute you walk in, he has immediately surveyed the scene and decided that there aren't enough women in there, the TV's aren't in high def, the bartenders aren't good looking enough men's room attendant has shitty mints, and the hardwood floors need to be refinished.  So he keeps convincing the group to bounce to another bar, which will be another one he will hate.  It seems the Ping Pong Ball is content spending more money and time on taxis than in bars.

5. The Stumbler.  He is blind drunk, falling over, making no sense, throwing up and falling asleep, but he won't leave!  If the bouncers won't do the right thing, sometimes someone in his group of friends needs to physically grab his pickled ass and show him to a cab, and usually tell the cab driver where he lives and maybe pay him (as it doesn't seem as if he is capable of doing anything on his own at this point).  Once everyone has had a good laugh and stored up enough stories to thoroughly embarrass him the next time you all get together, it will be well worth it to send this man home and absolve yourselves of babysitting duties.

4. The Inescapable Bad Conversation Guy: He has honed on you.  Yes, he has chosen you to share his wisdom of a particularly boring topic, be it to which route to take to shave 3 minutes off your commute, who to draft in fantasy football, or how to totally own the chumps in your condo association.  You have tried going to the bar to get a drink and going to take a pee, and you really didn't have to do either one - you just wanted to get away.  But he will keep finding you because he has you pegged as someone too nice to tell him to please put more beer in his mouth and make less boring words come out of it.

3. The Crop Duster.  The drinks are flowing, the music sounds good, everyone is looking beautiful, but suddenly there is the foul smell of rotten eggs blasting out of someones diseased intestines, and everyone is pulling their shirts over their noses, clearing out an entire section of the bar as fast as possible.  And the worst thing about the Crop Duster is that he never owns up to it, so you could be talking to someone and will have to convince him/her that it wasn't your own putrid ass that just unleashed hell.

2. Fishhooks in the Pockets/Alligator Arms.  You're out with all your friends, and every time it's this guy's turn to buy, he is sneaking outside for a smoke, to the men's room, or anywhere he and his wallet won't have to get involved.  Or better yet, he wants $12 craft beers all night, but when it's his turn, it's Bud in cans all around for his men.  What a swell guy!  

1. Dude Thinks It's Roadhouse.  Some guys out there don't feel their night is complete unless they have gotten into a fight, and it doesn't matter what it's about.  Sometimes it's insane jealousy, others it's about who's sports team is better, but It could be an argument about something as stupid as Mac VS PC, Star Trek VS Star Wars, or "Little Mermaid" or "Lion King."  What matters is that they are finally going to get to punch someone in the face and possibly get arrested, where they could very well land in the same cell as the guy they fought and kick back up that "Little Mermaid" debate and ring the bell for round two.  Listen, pal, you'll never be as cool as Dalton in "Roadhouse," you'll never rip out a throat, but you will either land in jail, get beat up by four bouncers, and have to explain your shiner at work on Monday.  So just relax and drink your beer, maybe try some yoga or something, and put away your dukes.

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A) All this being said, I think I have been, I have been 7 out of 10 of these fellas, and sometimes more than one in a night.  But at least I'm conscious of which bar behaviors are bad, and that is half the battle.  How about you?

B) Honorable mention goes the Overzealous Drinking Game Guy.  He wants everyone to play his drinking games, but we just want to have good conversation.  Is it possible he has nothing worthwhile to say, and that's why he insists on these stupid games?  And what's more, I don't need rules to tell me when to pour gallons of booze down my gullet.  I do just fine without being forced, so shut up, right?  Should this guy crack the top 10, and if so, who should get bumped out?

C) Any other additions that you would like to submit?

I was working in a not-so-good neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago today, and one of my coworkers stepped across the street to get coffee at a greasy spoon called G & N Breakfast.  The older gentleman who said he was the owner asked her nationality, she told him Irish, and he discerned that she is probably a democrat.  Sloppily shoveling his breakfast into his mouth, he then asked if she worked at the school across the street and asked how she can stand working with all those niggers.  She said that's not a word she is okay with, to which he said it should be fine to say that because they call each other that all the time.  Of course, rather than realizing or caring that he had offended his customer, he went on spouting off anti Black statements and said the N in his business' name stood for niggers and the G for some other racial slur (Roughly 70% of his business would be African American on a day-to-day basis).  She was mad, but remaining calm, she just told him that being Greek, he is only a few shades lighter than those he hates so much.  This made him really mad, and he started spitting his hash browns all over the place while he yelling God knows what as she left.

Later I told the Mexican maintenance man (who I call Amigo and he calls me Amigo) at the work site about the exchange, and he said he has known that guy for years and he's a right prick who yells at his staff and calls them idiots all the time in front of customers.  Amigo said he told the guy he would whip his ass if he ever talked to him like that.  Apparently the owner was a Chicago cop who bought the place since 1959 after getting shot in the arm.  Doesn't sound like his world view has changed much since 1959 . . .

So, if you ever want to get in a time machine and meet a real live racist from the days of the Civil Rights movement, go visit him at G & N Breakfast on the West Side of Chicago.  If you would like to bring along some fire hoses and dogs to turn the tides on him, I certainly would not object.

A special place in hell for the turd who shot and killed Dimebag Darrell. If you're crazy, go get some help, and if you're a crazy with a gun, shoot yourself before you decide to shoot anyone else.

Toddler Fight Club Tests the Doctor's Joke Limits!

I recently got wind of the Toddler Fight Club story the same way I get all my news: from Facebook.  Apparently some daycare workers made toddlers fight one another for sport.  I quickly wrote a blog post in my head that was full of sick humor, starting off with saying how if the story leaked, someone involved must have broken the first rule of Toddler Fight Club.  The jokes I wrote only got more in depth and sick from there . . .

Then I read the story.  I love kids so I got a little angry and nauseous when I read about these sick individuals doing something so heinous with children they were trusted with taking care of.  I have written about all kinds of things on this rag through out the years, but even I couldn't joke about this one.  I had to scrap the blog post.  

Sorry, readers.  I guess I'm getting soft . . .

How about you?  Any blogs you guys almost wrote or jokes you had to stop yourself from making?

Is Mark Wahlberg an Asshole?

Well, you be the judge. I did a search on google of whether or not he was a jerk or an asshole, and this is what I found. Now if anyone else searches, I hope this post is the first thing they find because I think I put this Asshole Assessment together quite nicely.

Here's a clip of him threatening to beat up a guy interviewing him just because he calls him an action star. He's doing it in jest but it's a little too much - Mark seems like a bully type that's not yet fully grown up.

Here he is saying that with all his boxing training in movies, he could knock out Manny Pacquiao if he could get in a sucker punch. Also, he says that he punched someone recently and fish hooked another guy's eye socket.









According to his biography on IMDB, this is where he came from:

Wahlberg dropped out of high school at age 14 (but later got his GED) to pursue a life of petty crime and drugs. He'd spend his days scamming and stealing, working on the odd drug deal before treating himself to the substances himself. The young man also had a violent streak - one which was often aimed at minorities. At age 16, he was convicted of assault against two Vietnamese men after he had tried to rob them.

Yes! Beating up minorities! I knew he was an asshole, but this extends to straight-up evil.

What got me on this quest was listening to his commentary in "Boogie Nights" where his phone keeps going off loudly and he never bothers to silence it and at another point he takes a call from his travel agent. The director of the film, Paul Thomas Anderson, had great conversations with the other members of the cast, all of them pointing out scenes they liked and elements of the characters, often characters that weren't theirs, that they enjoyed, while Mark Wahlberg just asked when it was over because he had to go, bitching about the movie being too long. With the other cast members, the conversation just flowed, but with Wahlberg, he had to be prompted to say things, and without fail he would let out a big loud yawn and talk through his yawn. Really, Marky Mark? You didn't know how long the movie was going to be, and once there, you couldn't muster up some enthusiasm or turn your damn phone off? Without that movie, he would never be respected as a serious actor the way he is now, just a serious asshole, so the least he could do was act mildly interested.

Then during John C. Riley's, a much more talented actor, let's face it, portion of the commentary, he tells a story about how during the pool party scene, Wahlberg had his whole entourage with him, now made famous by the overrated HBO series, and he was testing everyone, seeing who would put up with his crap and who he could get a rise out of. People were pushing one another into the pool, but Marky Mark would do it to the same person four times just to get under their skin. Riley says that he doesn't have an angry streak, but he had low blood sugar from not eating and was tired of Wahlberg's crap, so when he got hit square in the forehead in front of everyone with a Marky Mark thrown marshmallow, he just lost it and attacked him. Good job, John C. Riley. Someone needed to stand up to the bully, so I'm glad you had that low blood sugar that day (Also, John is from Chicago so that makes him awesome. I really don't like that for his IMDB biography, the first line is "With a homely mug . . .")

I guess I wouldn't have gotten so mad about Mark being such a turd in the commentary if I didn't love this movie so much; "Boogie Nights" is my favorite film of all time, and when I hate the actor, it ruins the character for me. Dirk Diggler, or really Eddie Adams from Torence, was a sweet innocent kid swept up into a world of sex and drugs, latching onto Jack Horner, the director, and one of the female stars like a father and mother, whereas Mark Wahlberg just seems like an outright butthole. Hopefully with time, when I watch the movie, I'll just see him as Dirk and not the a-hole bully. After all, I was worried that all "Seinfeld" reruns would make me just think what a racist dumbass Michael Richards seemed like at the time, but now he's just Kramer.

Anyone have any thoughts on this guy or know of another celebrity being a jerk? How about one who is supposed to be a jerk but you found them quite nice/misunderstood?

Asshole Bird on the Loose!

There is a bird dive-bombing people at Navy Pier on a daily basis. I have been attacked three times myself. He is a small, black bird with red lines on his wings. My dad is more than likely going to look it up, so I will soon be able to discern whether this is common practice for this species or if we have a rogue, psychotic bird on our hands. His assaults don’t hurt, but it scares the shit out of you. He comes swooping in from behind, hits you in the head, with what some have said his feet, but I don’t know how the hell they can tell, he lets out a squawk, and by the time you turn around he’s gone.

Some have said he may be protecting a nest, which I don’t buy. I mean, I’m just walking by with photographs to sell to people, and I’m not even looking at your nest. Now that you’re hitting me in the head I want to scramble up your unborn children and make a hobo skillet out of them, but If you had just left me alone I would have never entertained this notion. My theory is he’s just an asshole. I can tell by his little squawk that he’s an asshole. Keith, a coworker of mine, has been hit a few times too. He said one day he sensed he was coming, so he turned around just in time to see him come to a stop and backpedal flap away like a little bitch. So, we’ve learned that he only attacks those who don’t look. We thought about putting our sunglasses, which I lost the other day (shit!), on the back of our heads in the hopes that he will think we are looking. If that doesn’t work I’m going to get John Rambo on his ass.

I was all for settling this matter peacefully, but the other day I was hung-over and crabby and he delivered his hardest blow to date, knocking my sunglasses (which I need to buy now, damn!) off my head, and causing me to yell, “God damn it!” at the top of my lungs despite the fact that there were kids everywhere. I have come to the conclusion that the ultimate tool to send this little prick to birdie hell is a tennis racket, so I’ll be bringing a Head racket with shock absorbers tomorrow. Sorry if this offended any animal lovers out there, but he started it and I’m going to finish it.