Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Dave Zabriskie is a time-trial specialist for the Garmin/Chipotle cycling team.  Yinz will no doubt remember them as the team for which I am rooting in this year's Tour de France, but Dave Zabriskie is not riding with them.  He's sitting out this tour after crashing and fracturing a vertebra on the second stage of the Giro d'Italia last May.  Ordinarily, missing the world's premier cycle race might be a bit of a disappointment for a professional cyclist, but in this case it's offered Dave Zabriskie the opportunity to pursue other interests.  Like developing his own chamois cream.  I gotta hand it to Dave Zabriskie: his marketing slogan - the title of this post - makes the name of his product seem downright subtle.

DeeZ Nuts

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Most people, when invited to a Saturday evening wedding in New York City, might make a weekend out of it.  Not me.  Now to be fair, until yesterday I was supposed to spend tomorrow riding roller coasters, but somebody (let's call him, oh I dunno.... D. San.  No, wait - Daby S.) fell down playing his hippie frisbee game a week ago and is still bitching and moaning about it like a little baby.  My original itinerary was to leave this morning around eight, and drive back home tonight after the reception - getting here around three or four in the morning.  I could get a couple hours of sleep, and nap in the car on the way down to Williamsburg.  It was to be a couple of long-ass days, for sure, but not completely unreasonable.  And ever since I talked myself into the ridiculous notion of making the wedding a day trip, it's been difficult to contemplate alternate courses of action.  Even considering my now-cancelled Sunday plans, I went to sleep yesterday thinking that I'd be back in my own bed the following night.

Now I don't know what to do.  I'm up way too early.  By which I mean: I'm up at the same time I usually wake up.  My plan hinged on sleeping in until about seven.  Under other circumstances, those two and a half hours might not matter.  But staring down a potential twenty hour day, those two and a half hours could be the difference between making it home safely or ending up in a ditch along the New Jersey Turnpike.  I suppose, should things go sideways, there is a hotel room available to me, but that brings up a whole nother mess of issues.  Like, what the hell would I do tomorrow?  Does anybody know if there's anything to do in Manhattan?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

[Editors' note:  Sheesh!  We retire to bed and our Vox site retires to bedlam.  And an unexpected meeting this morning means that we have only now - just shy of noon - discovered this little security breach.  But rest assured, order has been restored.  As for the content of the breach, we have discussed at some length with our Board of Directors and we have decided that while we do not condone Jodi's shenanigans, we appreciate her candor.  We wish she would have chosen another outlet for her confessional, but we will let it stand.  We sincerely hope this will be the last of this sort of outburst, and we wish Jodi all the best in her struggle with the inhalants.]

As you may have noticed, Hotrod made fun of my avatar so I changed it.  What you didn't know is that I have been in cahoots with Vanna, and she's given me the password to his Shell account.  Yes, Hotrod is such a fool.  He seriously misunderestimated me.  And to prove this is really Jodi, here's a few things I've been meaning to get off my chest.  They're lazily bullet-pointed;  that's how you can tell it's really me.

• I hate writing.  I really do.  I only started that charade because I thought it would sound way cooler to say that I am a writer than to say I work at a bowling alley.  Now I have to pretend to make stuff up all the time, which hurts my brain, because I really just want to watch television.  I don't even like to read.  Seriously.  I just like people to think I am smart.
• Pie is AWESOME.  Who on earth would like brownies?  Nobody, that's who.  I can't believe that idiot Hotrod actually thinks I like that shit.  He's so fucking stupid.
  
• The Replacements are terrible.  There, I said it.  Their early records are juvenile and banal, and their later records - though much better (especially the somewhat underrated Don't Tell a Soul) - are boring.  Sometimes I wish they actually did write the Friends theme song, because that would ensure that my useless favorite band won't be completely forgotten.
• I agree with almost every opinion Hotrod has.  Dabysan too, to a lesser extent.  I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't entered my life when they did.  I was beginning to think I had no purpose.  It's safe to say that they saved me, and I am eternally grateful.
• Deep down, I know I am a Post-Ironic Hipster.  One day I will have enough courage to move to a coast where I belong.
• Apple sucks, and has conned many, many idiots into spending more than they need to on a computer.  I use a Dell.
• I sniff glue.  That's why so many of the things I say are so deranged.

Whew!  That was cathartic.  ("Cathartic" is a word Hotrod taught me.  I might have just said "cool" there.)  I'm glad I could finally clear the air here.  I've felt like such a fraud for so long.  I hope we can still be friends.

Yours truly,
Jodi

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Once upon I time, I made coffee for a living.  It was the best job I've ever had, and I was really fucking good at it.  I knew most of my regular customers by name, and those few I didn't could at least count on me to get their order right without being asked.  Many of them waited until I was free to order.  "Hotrod's got it," they would say to my co-worker.  I could tell you the difference between a Full City roast and a French roast and why the people who really take their coffee seriously prefer the Full City.  I could go on about the subtle differences between the Tanzania Peaberry and the Ethiopia Yrgacheffe.  I could describe in detail exactly why Starbucks is utter shit.  Still can, as a matter of fact.

But the very best thing about that job was that I basically had carte blanche to be an asshole.  We took our coffee seriously, and we didn't suffer fools lightly.  My favorite question was when people asked me "what flavors we serve."  My response was always:  "We serve coffee-flavored coffee."  They'd protest, of course.  They always did.  "That's not what I meant."  I was unflappable.  "Oh, I know.  We serve coffee-flavored coffee."  We dumped our drip coffee if it sat too long, we timed our espresso shots, and we didn't offer flavored syrups.  Our regular - our tipping - customers knew not to ask for a blueberry latte.  As for everyone else.... well, there was a Starbucks just a few blocks away.  I gave directions on numerous occasions.  If they protested, I was authorized to invite them never to return.  It was bliss.

So it may be easy to guess where I come down on the issue of iced espresso.  It's an abomination.  The customer is not always right.  In fact, the customer is often wrong.  And in this case the customer is too stupid to realize that the barista in question is doing him a favor in trying to educate him about civilized coffee etiquette.  This is the level to which our society has devolved: a dedication to craft and quality will get you nowhere because some yuppie jackass will scream more loudly.  I just wish I had thought back then to threaten to punch my more belligerent customers in the dick.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Last weekend, when I was in Pittsburgh, Vrabel and I got to talking about movies.  That's no surprise; we always do.  One of the films that came up was Rescue Dawn, the Werner Herzog picture about Dieter Dengler - a German-born Navy pilot who escaped from a Laotian POW camp.  The story obviously resonates with Herzog, as this was the second movie he has directed about Dieter.  Little Dieter Needs to Fly was a documentary; Rescue Dawn was the dramatization of the same story.  Christian Bale was cast as little Dieter in the not-quite remake.

Now, Rescue Dawn had been on my rental short-list for a while.  I remember hearing about the movie when it was filming (one of the scenes in which the stars eat bowls of worms was apparently not faked) and it was fairly well reviewed.  The Video Vault tagged it as one of their best of 2007.  So I was a little surprised when Vrabel remarked that he could barely finish watching - that he figured it must be a spoof.  (These opinions were later verified and echoed by Vanna.)  Without going into too much irrelevant detail, it was determined that I must watch the movie as soon as possible, because public opinion was both divided and emphatic, to the point that we wondered semi-seriously if there were two different versions of the movie out there.  My email to Vrabel after last Monday's screening said simply: "Why did Christian Bale choose to play the part as if Dieter was retarded?"

So Bale's appearance this morning on the Today Show might shed some light on the subject.  To wit: maybe it isn't Dieter who is retarded.  If anybody can offer an explanation as to what the fuck is going on with this accent, I'd like to hear it.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Return to Supermans

The punchline here is that this.... whatever this is.... is better than the latest Superman movie and the latest Spiderman movie put together.  Meanwhile, The Dark Knight continues to garner rave reviews and generally capture the collective imagination of the populace.  It's safe to say once and for all (as if there was still any doubt) that the great superhero debate is officially over.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Well, it looks like those jackals in the liberal media are at it again.  Instead of reporting on real issues like Barack Hussein Osa--  'scuse me: O-BA-ma, and how his Muslim Indonesian upbringing influenced his hatred of America, they've gone and launched a vindictive smear campaign against John McCain for an innocent remark that just so happened to be contradicted by his autobiography.  Those bastards!

Look, first of all, it's not like this misstep is that much of a stretch.  The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers are both old-school NFL franchises with long and proud histories in key swing states.  And what's more, I do this all the time, too - even without the additional confusion of lights and cameras and being almost seventy-two years old.  The Steelers have been my favorite team for as long as I have known what football is, but I've lived outside of Washington, DC for over a decade now.  If I had a quarter for every time Dabysan has asked me "Hey, Hotrod, who's your favorite football team?" and I responded "Why, the Redskins, of course.  No, wait - the Steelers!  Duh!  How on earth could I be so darn forgetful?" I'd be able to afford Redskins season tickets.  Crap!  Steeler tickets!  STEELER tickets!!

[UPDATE: Oh, how I loathe that lefty mainstream media.  This non-story moved yesterday beyond the local Shitsburgh airwaves - where it should have died a natural death - into the national spotlight.  Smug Rachel Maddow, filling in for smarmy Keith Olberman, continues the slander of an American war hero.]

John McCain: Blog Item

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past several months, yinz know it's an election year.  I decided a while back I was going to cast my vote for the candidate least likely to continue the disastrous foreign and domestic policies of the past eight years, and I've been pretty confident in that decision.  Until today.  You see, I learned today that John McCain is a Steeler fan.  This, naturally, gave me pause.  "Hey!" I thought to myself.  "I'm a Steeler fan too!  Maybe I was hasty in my decision to vote for the candidate who is unquestionably better for the country.  Maybe I should vote for John McCain instead.  After all, he roots for the same football team as me."

John McCain: Steeler Fan

But here's the thing: in the clip above, McCain mentions admiring the Steelers when he was in high school and he graduated from high school in 1954.  It's fairly common knowledge among football fans that the Steelers' long and storied history has been long and storied only since Chuck Noll became the head coach in 1969.  Through the fifties and the sixties - indeed, for most of their early existence - the Steelers were a league laughing stock.  They made the playoffs for the first time in 1947 (they were founded in 1933) and did not make another appearance for the next two and a half decades.  For young John McCain, who then lived in Northern Virginia and had no connection to Western Pennsylvania, to have been a Steeler fan throughout some very lean years is an astounding display of dedication.

And what's more, he also recounts in the clip above giving the names of the Steelers' presumably formidable defensive line - under the pretense that they were part of his squadron - to his Vietnamese captors after his imprisonment in 1967.  Those players, by the way, would have been Ben McGee, Ken Kortas, Chuck Hinton, and Lloyd Voss.  Did yinz know that?  I didn't.  I had to look it up.  In fact, I've never heard of any of them, and I've been a Steeler fan my whole life.  Granted, I wasn't watching in 1966, but still - I know more than a few players from before my time.  Loyal fans like John McCain and me take the time to learn about the history of our favorite team.

The point here is that John McCain is no mere opportunistic bandwagon fan.  He's obviously stuck with the team through thick and thin.  Based on his extensive knowledge of the franchise's more arcane history, he's probably a bigger Steeler fan than me, and I assure you I am the biggest Steeler fan you know.  But for all his dedication to the team, he didn't even get to see their second ever playoff appearance in 1972 because he was still in that Vietnamese prison camp.  How difficult must that have been?  Yeah, that's the kind of loyalty I want to see in a Commander in Chief.  Oh, hey!  You know know who else was called "the Chief?"  Steeler patriarch Art Rooney, that's who!  I think the choice is pretty clear.  Screw the country, I'd be a bad Steeler fan if I didn't vote for John McCain.  And I just know yinz wouldn't want that.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The Tour de France kicked off over the weekend, and with Monday and Tuesday off of work I had plenty of time to relax to the soporific pleasures of televised professional cycling.  I'm pulling for Garmin/Chipotle this year - ostensibly because of their commitment to ride cleanly, but mostly because I like burritos.  After placing a rider - tour rookie Will Frischkorn - on the podium in an unusually thrilling Stage Three on Monday (in which the peloton spectacularly failed to get their shit together and allowed the breakaway to stay away), I hiked on down to my local franchise for some tacos.  The team had another very good day yesterday, with David Millar taking third in the individual time trial.  And now I think I want Chipotle for lunch again.  I might have to re-evaluate my rooting interests and select a team with less tasty sponsorship.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend