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The Cyber-Boys of Summer

My fantasy baseball draft was held two weeks ago and I think I came out with a well-rounded team. I was a little nervous heading into the draft because I hadn’t switched gears from NCAA basketball to MLB – I doubt that I will even think about baseball until the summer. I can see it now: I‘ll sit idle for a few months after the tournament, letting my fantasy team collapse on the weight of its own suckiness, only to wake from my slumber in mid-June to make a few nominal roster moves and mail it in for the rest of the season. With that said, I really surprised myself when no one laughed (out loud) at any of the picks that I made. I let out a sigh of relief when some dude took Pedro Martinez with the 4th overall pick because I knew that I couldn’t possibly make a worse pick. I’m a big Pedro fan, but he was shaky while playing for a World Series Champ last year and now he’s playing for the Mets, who will always suck. If the ESPN the Magazine fantasy baseball preview that I read a few minutes before the draft and used to select my players with is at all accurate, my team should be a contender.

Anyway, here is a rundown of some of my key players:

Vlad Gurrero: There’s a good reason why they call him the “Impaler.”
Curt Schilling: Starting the year on the DL, but he’ll be good when he plays.
Derek Jeter: His season stats should be something like .300 BA, 20HR, 25SB and 200H
Barry Zito: Now that Alyssa Milano is gone, he’s due for a rebound
Aubrey Huff: Girly name, but manly numbers
Rich Harden: I’m betting that he will be on the periphery of All-Star status this year
Aramis Ramirez – You’ve never heard of him, but he’s good for 30-40 dongs
Jeff Kent – He’s a few years removed from his MVP-season, but he still has that sweet mustache
Travis Hafner – He might strike out 200 times, but he’ll hit at least 30 dingers
Carlos Lee – I’ll be happy if he replicates his ’04 season of 30HR and 100RBI
Jose Guillen – Will either end up as an all-star or an in-mate
David Wells – He’s pretty fat
Johnny Estrada – If only he were Eric Estrada
Cristian Guzman/Zach Day – Drafted because they play for the Nationals

There are some other good players as well, but I have nothing interesting to say about them.

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I misplaced my wallet the other week, and after dreading having to cancel all my credit cards AGAIN but not wanting to go through with it until I actually cleaned my room for once and confirmed for real whether I had actually lost it, I finally broke down and cleaned my room enough to find it. In the days between "when I knew I had to clean my room to know with certainty whether it was lost or not" and "when I actually did clean my room" I had some time to think about lost objects and realized I just can't wait for when we as a society are advanced enough to have little nano-bots zipping around inside our bodies cleaning our blood and fighting diseases, maybe even gently massaging our muscles in carefully measured periodization so that we all have olympic physiques. We could also have a team of nano-cameras hovering around us constantly keeping careful track of everything that happens, that way if you lose something you can simply backtrack to where you think it might have gone, then scan the video record and see what really happened.

Also, i wrote this little poem today

news news news
all the news that's fit to print
and maybe some that aint
with our greasy inkjet finger
and bulging eye
we taint

The tax man cometh

The following was written around 1:30 this afternoon:

That no-interest loan from the federal government was pretty sweet, but it’s too bad that I sat on my hands and didn’t put it to use. I could have maybe invested it and made some money, which would have been awesome on my part, but since I had no idea that I even took out a loan, that scenario seems improbable….that and the fact that I am lazy. I doubt that paying back a loan is fun, but I know for sure that paying back a loan that you weren’t aware that you took out sucks. I’m talking about the tax payment that I owe to the United States Treasury. I’m assuming that I got myself into this mess that fateful day I started my most recent job and penned in a ‘1’ on my W-4. When I was kicking myself this morning about putting down that stupid ‘1’ a co-worker suggested that maybe I knew what I was doing that day and had planned to do something with that extra chuck of change in my paycheck. I said to her, “Uh, no.” Writing this check isn’t going to put me out or anything, but I am not going to pay up until the last minute because I am determined not to let those fuckers collect any extra interest on the money that I owe.

I checked my W-4 at around 3 this afternoon, and this is what I saw:

Download file

So basically someone fucked this up – and it wasn’t me. I wrote someone an email about it, but I don’t think anything can be done at this point.

THIS ONE'S CALLED BOBBING FOR BRISKET

"Are those sheets blowing in the wind?"

"Why YES they are Paul!"

"Is that meat hanging from those clothes pins?"

"Absolutely Paul, Brisket infact!"

Or maybe I will go see Ambulance at Black Cat

Black Cat wasn’t as nice as I imagined it would be, but this didn’t particularly bother me as I only paid $15 to see 3 bands. The venue reminded me of Lavino field house at the Lawrenceville School where I first saw moe. play. The only difference was that this time I was surrounded by a bunch of indie kids and not a bunch of hippy kids.

The of-age girls there were pretty hot, but a different kind of hot than your conventional hot D.C. girl hot. There were no $150 jeans and none of those pointy shoes that every girl wears these days, but there were lots of studded leather belts, dark mascara, short skirts and Ugs….basically, a lot of chicks that dress like Alex from the O.C.
I love hot girls with indie street cred.

While walking around the floor I noticed a vaguely familiar face, a girlfriend of a friend of a friend. We made eye contact so I knew that I had to acknowledge her at some point in the night. Luckily for me, Robbers on High Street started playing. I thought that these guys had the best set of the night. They combined Strokes-like guitar with Beach-Boys harmony for an edgy sound that was softened by a pop sensibility.

After Robbers finished their set I decided to suck it up and go say hi to that girl. I walked up to Lauren and the following conversation ensued:

Me: hey Lauren, what’s up? It’s me, Sam
Her: I’m not Lauren
Me: Yeah you are
Her: No, I’m not. My name is Julie.
Me: uh, sorry?
Her: But that’s a good pick-up line
Me: Thanks
Her: I always wanted to be a Lauren
Me: you could definitely pull it off

When I realized that she wasn’t who I thought she was and thus didn’t have a boyfriend that I was aware of, I decided to do what any hetero-sexual male would do: chat her up and make as much incidental contact as possible. Actually, I didn’t really hit on her because she was with a dude, and I would have felt like a dick hitting on another dude’s girl right in front of him. I actually didn’t know for sure if they were together, but I just apologized a few more times and left to surreptitiously ogle other girls from the concert floor.

Up next was VHS or Beta. They took like 30 minutes to set up and that made me think they were a bunch of prima-donnas. There was probably a legitimate technical reason for them taking so long to set up, but I wasn’t in a particularly understanding mood at the time. The band had a DJ, which was interesting, but it also meant that they were a few missteps from sounding like Orgy. They managed to avoid this pitfall however and actually put on a good show. I’d say these guys sounded like what the Cure would sound like if they were formed within the last few years – the fact that the lead singer of VHS stole Robert Smith’s voice has a lot to do with my assertion. The performance pretty much erased all of the bitterness I directed towards them because of the prolonged set up time.

Ambulance finally took the stage a little after midnight and played 6 songs, of which 5 were from their EP. They sounded good and all, but I expected a little more material from these guys since they were the headliners. I wasn’t deeply offended by their only playing 6 songs, but I came away feeling a little empty. They show a lot of promise on the EP and I was hoping that they could follow through on this promise via a live performance. I guess I’ll have to pick up their LP and really dig it before I can mention them in the same breath as their NYC contemporaries, Interpol and the Strokes. Not that Ambulance sounds anything like those two bands.

Maybe J Mascis will show up

Anyone going to see Lou Barlow at Iota on Saturday?

head butt ryan cabrera .com

could someone please hit this no talent assclown


(click on it)