The Romance Is Over

When watching a game at a bar you don't always get to listen to the play-by-play and commentary by the analysts. Instead, you may be watching to the game you deemed 'too big to just watch at home' listening to the two guys next to you trying to figure out who the group is that sings the song playing on the jukebox.

When you close your eyes
And go to sleep
And it's down to the sound
Of a heartbeat
I can hear the things
That you're dreamin' about
When you open up your heart
And the truth comes out

Saturday night I hobbled out to a bar on U St. in Northwest DC in my blue 'away' Rasheed jersey. The hobbling was due to someone having stepped on my toe with a cleat in the soccer game I played earlier. It's either badly bruised or broken--not sure which at this point. The bar we went to features three different beers for $2/bottle from 10PM - 2AM Saturday night, which is inline with my new initiative of avoiding the $4 Miller Lites when I go out. This, in The District, is not an easy thing to accomplish, especially during the weekend.

You tell me that you want me
You tell me that you need me
You tell me that you love me
And I know that I'm right
'Cause I hear it in the night

I arrived at the start of the second half after watching the first at my home, ordered a $2 Harp, and locked into the game while Cleveland fans Detroit haters gave me shit. It was good natured, however, and the guy bought me and my girlfriend a beer when he left (easy to be generous when they're $2). First Pistons shot: Rasheed misses a three. Fuck. The third quarter, like many quarters that Pistons fans have become accustomed to, is painful to watch. Cleveland ends it up by a point but neither team scores twenty.

I hear the secrets that you keep

When you're talking in your sleep
I hear the secrets that you keep
When you're talking in your sleep

"Aw, shit, who the fuck is that? It was one of those bands with the big hair. Something like Loverboy, but not."

"The Romantics. It's The Romantics."(other guy looks it up on his cell phone)
"Shit, you're right. Fuckin' a."

Unlike game five, Lebron was not dominating and watching it I got the feeling that it was the Pistons game to lose. And losing the game seemed frighteningly likely, especially the way the third period went. It was the other Cavs that were hanging with the Pistons. The Cavs picked it up during the fourth quarter, led by the bombs from Daniel Gibson. The Pistons gave up 31 and only scored 16. It was painful to watch.

When you close your eyes

And you fall asleep
Everything about you is a mystery

When you watch a game at a bar with the juke box music on, you not only get to listen to the big hits from mostly forgotten eighties bands and the taunting from drunks that are happy that your team is losing, but you also get to form your own opinion about what you are witnessing. It's the same thing when you go to a game. For me, what happened to the Pistons Saturday night was what happens to less than great teams in crucial situations. They missed their shots. There were plenty of good looks. They just shot and missed. I don't particularly care why they missed them. I don't think that their head coach had anything to do with it. When a team gets in position to take open shots, and they miss them much more often than not when the other team is shooting the lights out...well, that's just going to happen sometimes.

What is unsettling about this series is how the Pistons were eliminated by losing four straight games after barely pulling out wins in the first two. More unsettling to me is how impossible it seems to say "We'll be back next year". Yeah, I know they have two 1st round draft picks, but I'm just sick of this team. I'm sick of the sixteen point quarters. I'm sick of Mason. I'm sick of Rasheed and his replica jersey I bought that comes down to my fucking knees. I'm sick of Rip's mask. Lindsey Hunter? Fucking retire, please. Webber? Thanks for coming out.

What would get me excited for next year would be a starting five with Prince, Hamilton, Billups with less than a max contract, and two new big men--preferably twenty-five years old or less, but even that bores the shit out of me right now. A few months ago I wrote about all of the sports going on and how it would be a challenging time of year to be a boyfriend. That time is now just about over. Sure, the Stanley Cup playoffs is going on and the NBA finals is about to start, but after that? Just like the Pistons, the exciting Spring sports season is just about dead.

It's Indaface!



I was not able to tune into the Pistons game last night until there was about 8 minutes left in the fourth quarter. I grabbed a seat at the bar next to a guy who was fixated on the game.
"What's the score?"
"Pistons are up by a couple"
"How has the game been?"
"It's been pretty tight. Pretty good game." (failed to mention the McDyess ejection)
"Nice. Are you a Pistons or Cavs guy?"
"I'm a LeBron James fan."
"Yeah, I'm a Pistons fan so I'm just glad we're playing the Cavs and not him. How has he played tonight?"
"Pretty good, he's been more of a set-up guy for his teammates tonight."

Maybe up until then he was. From the moment I sat down until about an hour later when the game ended, I watched my beloved Pistons, a team, play basketball against one guy, and get their butts kicked. I may have seen a more dominant performance by an individual in a team sport, but I cannot recall one. The game where Michael Vick ran for the touchdown in overtime against the Vikings was close, but only for a few moments. Last night was Vick scrambling for twenty straight plays over a few drives, scoring touchdowns at the end of each, in the playoffs, on the road, against the Ravens or Bears.

It was a strange feeling watching the end of that game as a Pistons fan. Of course I wanted the Pistons to win, but how can you not appreciate a performance that will be preserved in history? There will undoubtedly be some sort of display or artwork in the basketball hall of fame in Springfield, MA commemorating the play of one LeBron James on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 in Auburn Hills, MI. It didn't feel fair. It didn't feel fair that one man could be so much better than everyone else on the floor. Combined. Imagine yourself as one of his teammates at the end of the game. Would you dare shoot the ball with what was going on? Fuck no. From the point in the game when I started watching until the final buzzer sounded, the ego of every person associated with the game of basketball was flattened. This Detroit Pistons team was built by Joe Dumars to be a collection of excellent basketball players who play as a team, executing in all of the unglamorous ways it takes to win against a team built around a superstar. Excellent team defense. Balanced scoring. Good decisions. Last night LeBron James micturated upon the Joe Dumars model of winning basketball games.

For the first time this season, I found myself wishing that we still had Ben Wallace. Watching LeBron soar through the middle of the lane to dunk the ball unchallenged was painful. I'm not sure if Ben could have prevented some of the emasculation that took place last night. His faults in other aspects of his game could have made things worse, but it was clear that Deee-troit bass-ketball had nothing on Lebron and its reign over the Central Division is over.

Fortunately for the Pistons, this series is not over. As brilliant as LeBron was in game five, it is not certain that he will be able to repeat it in game six or seven, if it gets that far. All a Pistons fan can hope for now is that they play at least as well as they did last night and for LeBron to play like a superstar instead of whatever the fuck he was last night, which was basically the AIDS virus of the game of basketball.

"You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him."

Requiem For a Disease-ridden, Unloved, Unsightly Pussy --
An open letter to the collective pussy of Jon, Joe, Nick, and the unknown man

The main problem with getting back at West Coast friends who leave drunken messages like the second one in the post below is that you really want to handle that business when you too are shithaused and know that when you call there will be no chance that anything but voicemail will come up so that you can leave a long, uninterupted soliloquy of stupidity. Well, with the invention of the personal computer (Thanks, Datapoint!) and the internet (thanks, Uncle Chester!), and smooth bourbon (thanks, Makers!) an EST hombre can get back at his PST amigos without having to actually talk with them.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to remember our least favorite pussy that we somehow still wanted the best for. Over the years we discretely sprayed their joint pussy with 'hope' scented Lysol. We dreamed of the massive cesspool crevice to be sealed with concrete, cement, or at least filled with Gold Bond powder. We had nightmares about conversing with your nightmarish slit on sidewalk subway vents or while laundering your 'whites'. But we're now just thankful that the growling and hissing coming from you has been silenced and replaced by peace. A thatchy, boil-covered, contagious kind of peace, but a peace none the less.

We didn't judge you when we walked in on you masturbating with a garden weasel. We tried to understood how thick it can get in there and how satisfying the angled, staggered, triangular blades could be on the outside of the dense thicket that was your pussy. Overgrown, but perhaps underloved. Or at least underscrubbed.

We tried to stop everyone from mocking you for having to stuff in a sandbag downtown during your menstruation periods. We blamed the bloody discarded sandbags on the Iraqi insurgents when you tried to ditch your bloody bags of disease in downtown Baghdad. Too bad the smell from the bags led to several Iraqi men being hanged for swearing off vagina forever. It was unfortunate, and not all your fault.

We were thankful when you got our buddy off the schnide, even if you let him scratching feverishly. We tried to make sense of the dermatologist saying that poison ivy could, technically, be a sexually transmitted disease. We ignored how you supposedly had no rash, but quite possibly in fact had the plant growing, thriving from your dark, moist, diseased abyss. Wrigley Field has ivy and everyone loves that, right? Just like your labial growth, and we will forever miss you. We will visit your grave on Yucca mountain as often as we can, and always try to remember the good times, like when we simply removed the vacuum seal around you when our Senior prank fell through or when we hid that weed from the drug-sniffing dogs in you that time we went to Canada. That dog died, but fuck it. It was a fuckin' pig dog, right? Ashes to ashes. Bluff to bluff.

From One Carpenter to Another

One fun thing about having some dickhead friends on the West Coast is knowing that, on a whim, you could fly out to frolic in their dry sunny climate and drink to the point of vomiting on their glass kitchen tables and leave it overnight for the cats to sample and for the smell to seep into the wood cabinetry to long outlast your stay. Also, you get to wake up to listen to incredibly drunken messages left for you. If you have really great friends out in the land of commie pinko, hippy pansy semen-surfing cock forests, you have to leave your phone on the other side of a closed bedroom door.

This first one is an example of a playful, fun message probably left in the afternoon (names -'d for non-statistical disclosure limitation):

Jon: "Hey there ----, your buddy Jon here, just calling from the streets here of San Francisco with a gentleman called Joseph -------. we're at Walgreens. He's returning a pack of cigarettes because he found a tobacco store adjacent to this particular tobacco store and, Wow! they've got an Astroglide 2 for 1, 2 in 1 pleasure massage, actually, Jesus, it's $12.99 for only 70 fluid ounces. But uh, just wanted to make sure that you don't have a flaccid Johnson, cause the last I checked it's pretty much not cool to have a limp cock"

And now for last night's gift:

Jon: "Please hold for Joe -------..."
Joe: "Mr -------, I can tell you just unwrapped your pussy because I could just see the glossiness from here. That shit was blinding. Your pussy's so bright I've gotta wear shades. Damn right. Your pussy's sooooo bright. I just put on some 30 UVB fuckin sunscreen. Your pussy's so glossy, shit it's so lubed up and moist. it's blinding. Good thing I got a base tan down at the fucking tanning salon to make way for your pussy rays."
Jon: "Yeah, Joe and I put pussyblock on because we knew that your pussy was going to come shining and we know that the elliptical pussy's going to come soon so we're kind of awaiting the glory. we really appreciate everything that you do, because we know that you recently used Summer's Eve and so that's why we know it's going to be coming bright. We just really appreciate everything that you do. I'm going to pass the horn on. can you something to ---- about his pussy? anything..."
Unknown: "I don't know, your pussy must be shit by now because it was dirty the last time i saw you. I'm not sure when that was, it's gotta be a census at least. i don't know, anyways OK..."
Nick: "pussy in a box. a swong of a loin of choicewise reefus"
Jon: "----, i just wanted to give a big shout-out to your twat. and uh, we know that you got some kinda bluff issues, but if you scrape the scabs off it's going to be fine. in fact, rumor has it that if you put some kinda flame to it you'll get the bugs out and you could just start fresh. from one man to another, i just really appreciate what you're doing. I'm going to pass the phone along now.
Joe: "----, when I've got cobwebs, you know i just dust my pussy off real quick with a swiffer. the swiffer's a beautiful invention because it dusts that pussy off real nice, gets it real glossy. when it's all moist it's ready to just jamb right in, you're all set. it's got no dust mites or nothin'. thanks for the swiffer. i might call it a pusswiffer."
Jon: "now ----, you got a mahogany stained pussy and so, if you've got pledge, and you put ample amount of pledge on a rag, you'll get anything out. i mean, from one carpenter to another, you just apply the pledge, a little summer's eve, a little pledge, and you just wipe out all those webs. i mean we just want to appreciate what you're doing because you're just representing the east coast and 'W' and all those great things that we love as a nation. all of us on the west coast appreciate what you're doing here for the nation there on the east coast. so just wanted to extend our thanks, memorial day, you know, we really appreciate everything you know. a lotta great things: Iraqi children dying, and you basically. kinda hand-in-hand, you know, you and the death of many people, so thank you! have a good one."