My Favorite Guys

(This article is part 1 of 2)

If you’re like me, you didn’t watch the NFL Draft, if you’re like one of my favorite guys, you went to the NFL Draft. Really, does it get any more hardcore than that? I love the NFL, and more specifically the Bengals, but these guys put my level of fandom to shame. That doesn’t mean I find it admirable, quite the contrary actually, to me hardcore football fans are some of the most ridiculous people I’ve ever seen in my life, yet I still love them, on a twisted, mocking level.

If you’ve never seen the draft, it takes place in New York every year, so it’s understandable that a few Jets' and Giants' fans may check it out if they have nothing better to do. Well not only do Jets' fans not have anything better to do, they’ve declared this day a gang green national holiday. These guys epitomize hardcore, not only by the fact they flock the draft venue in droves, but also because they are some of the most obnoxious and belligerent fans period.

The greatest thing ESPN has ever done is put together a montage of Jets’ fans reaction to their team’s 1st round picks through the years of 1980, ’81, ’83, ’87, ’89, ’90 ’92, and ’95. These were all years that Jets’ fans were less than pleased with their team's pick, so as soon as the commissioner read the Jets’ selection, the room exploded into shock, boos, and shear disgust. This was mixed with shots of other teams’ fans actually pointing and laughing at the Jets’ fans. It’s awesome. But one needs to actually witness each of these years to fully appreciate the moment.

Like in ’83 when the Jets needed a QB and opted for Ken O’Brien instead of Dan Marino. I love the eternally optimistic fan ESPN interviewed after selection, he’s like, “Maybe the Jets know something we don’t.” Yeah they know how to screw themselves. Or in ’95 before Paul Tagliabue read the selection, Jets fans are chanting “We want Sapp (Warren Sapp)”, and then you hear, “the Jets select Tight End, Penn State, Kyle Brady.” Before he could even finish his sentence you heard a collective moan of horror as the camera zooms in on a Jets’ fan whose head collapses into his hands before he likely sobbed uncontrollably.

But forget the Jets' fans for a minute, the one I really felt bad for was Kyle Brady, he’s on the stage with a look on his face like what the **** did I do to deserve this? That alone is enough to doom someone's career before it starts.

Could there be a worse venue to hold the draft, though? Year after year it takes place in a metropolitan area represented by a team that routinely makes some of the worst conceivable picks. Face it, due to their team’s draft selections, Jets’ fans are justified in their repugnance. It likely made them that way, or at least contributed to it. That’s why it’s so amusing now to seem them cheer for basically everything their team does.

It’s like they’ve decided after years of sucking, if they pretend to act excited, it may make things work out somehow. Like this year the Jets traded with the Panthers for the 14th pick and Jets' fans ignited like they won the Super Bowl. J-E-T-S, JETS!! JETS!! JETS!!! And at that point they had no idea who their team was even going to draft at 14 and what they gave up for it.

Jets’ fans have become the show, and the only reason to watch 12 hours of hearing people’s names being read. But the reality is Jets' fans aren't unique. You could move the draft to any other professional football city in the country, and the result would be the same: loud people whose only hobbies are football and alcohol. Can you even imagine what would happen if a draft took place in Oakland? The spotlight just happens to be cast on Jets' fans due to circumstance. So sorry Jet fan who attends the draft, while you're pretty hardcore, you're not the hardcorest. That distinction goes to those select few who actually make a trip to New York solely for the purpose of attending the draft. These my friends are the Real Men of Genius.

Everyone has seen them, the one Dolphins' fan wearing teal amidst a sea of green sticking out like a white person at a Roots concert. It's bad enough that someone would go the draft while living in New York, but it's unfathomable that someone would make a special trip across country to attend. It's even worse when the guy's team makes their picks and he's doing the Yung Joc rev your motorbike dance move while everyone else in the auditorium is just looking at him with blank stares.

I remember listening to a sports talk radio show a few years back when a caller was complaining about how much of a horrible experience it was when he and his family attended the Draft and how he actually feared for his family’s safety. Wow, really? You mean you didn’t have a blast with your wife and kids being around a bunch of inebriated, unemployed, middle-aged men wearing face paint and ridiculous headgear? Who in their right mind plans a vacation around attending a name-reading session at the end of April? That’s worse than sleeping in a tent in your backyard. Next year can we can attend a lecture on how they make cheese, dad?

Honestly, what were you expecting buddy? Party favors and the limbo? It’s the freakin’ draft, the only thing worse than watching it, is attending it, and the only thing worse than attending it or watching it, is living and dying by the results. For as much grief as fans perceive their teams subject them to, no one really knows how successful a player will be, so there’s no point of investing anything more than mild interest in your team’s selections 6 months before the season starts.

Could Ryan Leaf have won an MVP and Peyton Manning been a bust? It’s possible. There’s no such thing as a “sure thing”, and no one would draft players that didn’t believe had the potential to be productive. Yes, the draft can make or break your team for years to come, but there’s no way to tell now, so stop investing so much into such a pointless endeavor.

I realize there can only be one team that wins the Super Bowl each year, but I hope we as fans haven't reached a point where are we are so desperate to cheer for something, we cheer for literally anything? This is when know you have a problem and need to find a new hobby, or a life. It's like the gambler who refuses to admit his vice until he wakes up one day and realizes he just bet $8,000 on the coin toss before a football game. Get help my friend, get help. But in the meantime, feel free to keep making everyone else laugh.

The worst thing I have ever seen

It all started earlier this week when I just happened to be watching The Search for the Funniest Mom in America 3 on Nickelodeon (yeah, I do realize it’s MTV for pre-teens). And by “just happened to be watching”, I mean I have absolutely no good reason for why I was watching it and have felt guilty ever since. But despite the fact this show SUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS, I didn’t turn it off, does that make me a bad person? And given the numeral "3" in the title, I'd imagine it's safe to assume there have been 2 previous installments to this humorless charade.

Why? How? Who is watching this? Aren't there enough glorified, talent(less) shows already been televised; now we're even making them specific to certain demographics? I'm just waiting for Dancing with Blind Senior Citizens with Arthritis. But this is all beside the point, as this isn’t about that dumb show Search For..., it’s about a promo I saw during a commercial break during that dumb show.

It was announcing the arrival of America’s Funniest Home Videos to the 'Loden, and while I can’t say if was for a new series or reruns, it didn’t matter, what did matter is that what I saw had me mortified.

We all know watching someone get hit in the package is the quintessential “funny home video”, heck, the whole genre was established solely on the strength of it, so it goes without saying that the classic "kid swings a wiffleball bat at his dad’s crouch" and "kid punches dad in package" would make their way into the ad. But this particular commercial featured the cream of the crop, the haut monde, the freakin’ crème de la crème.

Picture this: guy is peacefully asleep on his couch, while his daughters are standing on the couch. Sounds harmless enough, but I’m not talking about standing next to him or on the armrest; I’m talking on top of the backrest. Yeah, high up. And these little girls couldn’t have been more than 5 years old, combined, but I could see it in their eyes, their pupils burned with the hellish flames of mischief. And I don’t know if one of them egged on the other or promised to let her play with her Tickle Me Elmo, but a moment later one of the girls took the plunge, like she was jumping from atop the Grand Canyon into the Rio Grande.

I don't know if the father screamed, there was no way I could have heard it over my shriek of horror, but like a heat-seeking missile, the little girl slammed feet-first into her father’s package. Instantly, his torso and legs sprung together like a vice grip; I had no idea flexibility like that was even humanly possible.

Unfortunately, I haven’t the slightest to what transpired after that. Whether the girl literally went through her father and the couch, or if the other little monster still perched atop sofa decided to finish her father’s vasectomy operation because my head refused to do anything but jeer away in horror. Even replaying the events in my mind now leaves me breathlessly cringing. And by the time my eyes returned to the television, they were showing this precious clip of a darling baby with food all over its mouth. It was cute. But back to the original topic, that was the worst thing conceivable thing a person, more specifically a man, could experience short of a sledgehammer to the same region.

What made it worse for this poor guy was that it happened when he was out cold. Here he is taking a pleasant stroll through dreamland before he's woken up to a shock of excruciating plain. If that were me, I would have thought I died in my sleep and woke up in hell. You can't breathe, you're seeing red, and there are two little demons prancing around you with delight, all they need is little pitchforks. Even if you were able to brace yourself, the pain would be unbearable, and here's this guy, totally relaxed, unaware, and unprotected, with his stuff just there.

If the government is looking for new ways to extract confessions from terrorists, all they need to do is tie them down and have a kid repeatedly jump on their junk from four feet in the air. I would spill my guts as soon as I see a rugrat thrust his arms back and bend his knees on the springboard. Now you maybe thinking "why not just have an adult jump on their junk, that would hurt so much more," but an adult's feet are too big. Tiny extremities are a necessity for pinpoint accuracy and absolute misery.

But then you might say, "why even have someone jump on it then, why not just smash it with a blunt object?" Fine, you got me, jeez, you've already made me think about this too much as it is. Let's talk about something else, like I dunno, HOW THIS ALL JUST HAPPENED TO BE CAUGHT ON TAPE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

It had to be by chance, right? I mean who doesn't tape themselves while they sleep on a couch? There's no way someone would script something as sinister as this for the chance to win a couple thousand dollars. Humans are waaaaay above that. Okay, actually that had to be exactly what happened, that or he cheated on his wife. Either way, it was soo not worth it.

A rose by any other name....

If there wasn’t enough reason already to believe everyone but me, my mom, and that guy who plays the saxophone for change on the bridge has lost their minds, recently a couple, Michael and Karolina Tomaro, in Sweden tried to name their child "Metallica", yeah, in honor of that Metallica, being as that it's their favorite band of all-time (or at least right now). And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was a girl that they wanted to name this. Actually, I guess metallica is technically the effeminate equivalent of metallic, but oh yeah, that’s right, it’s still not a real freakin’ name for a human being. Heck, if you named your dog this you should be smacked.

I'd like to know how this can even come up anyway. Okay honey, we've narrowed it down to three names: Kim, Amy, and Metallica, which do you like best? Wow, I mean wow, what a hard decision. Let's just go with Metallica, they kick all kinds of ass and it's such a pretty name.

I'm a heavy metal guy myself, but I’m not going to start naming my offspring after my favorite bands. How would that reflect on me if I named my son "As I Lay Dying", or my daughter "Norma Jean" -- okay, bad example, but you get the idea. What did your infant do to you to make you want to punish them for the rest of their lives? If you really want to show appreciation to your favorite group, isn't there some fan club you could join or something?

Where did this whole naming kids after things you like start anyway? It's ridiculous and pointless. Like the person/thing you're trying to honor even knows or gives a crap you named your child after them. And what are you hoping to accomplish by it, like if you name your daughter "Betty White", she's going to grow up and transform into Betty White. We all wish, but it's not happening.

Remember those weirdos that named their kid "ESPN" after the sports channel? Did they think the actual ESPN was going to come out and do a story about them? Come on. Oh wait, that's exactly what happened, but ESPN is a self-consumed, publicity whore, and that doesn't change the fact that Child Protective Services should have taken ESPN away from the parents, the kid and network.

But I can't decide what's worse, being named after something relevant, or something that people know of but no longer care about. Like in little Metallica's case, already the band Metallica is basically garbage, but by the time Metallica is in elementary school the band will probably be freakin' horrible and she'll have to walk around hearing:

10-year old jerk: Hey Metallica!
Metallica: What?
10-year old jerk who has a point: You suck!

And if the teasing wasn't bad enough, can you even imagine this poor girl trying to get a job? Who in their right mind is going to hire someone named Metallica, an employer will take one look at her resume and play wastebasket ball with it because he thinks it's joke. And who the heck would marry the chic? Steve and Metallica Jones? Dude, all I can say is she had better be really freakin' hot. Nice going Tomaro's, you have all but assured your daughter will be a future, lonely employee of the waste company.

I guess if they actually gave her a decent middle name she could go by that and be able to somewhat hide the fact her parents hate her. That's unless Mike and Karol decide to get really unique and choose "Rocks" as her middle name, in which case, should we schedule the therapy sessions now?

There is one upside to this story, however, if you noticed in the first sentence I mentioned they tried to name their baby this, that's because the Swedish National Tax Board is refusing to allow them to use this name. Thank you Sweden, the last thing we need is for this to be deemed acceptable and have other people follow in their crooked footsteps. It's too bad US officials don't have a similar viewpoint, maybe there wouldn't be so many strippers named after feminized sports cars. Some people may scoff at the importance of a name, but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, what else can someone named "Porscha" do besides dance on a pole, work for Porsche?

Unfortunately, it seems that the Tomaros want to persist on the name. Come on guys, the Swede officials are doing you a favor and are trying to do what's in your best interest, and more importantly, what's in the best interest of your daughter. I know it will be hard to find something else to name her given that there's only tens of thousands of other genuine names to choose from, but in the long run it will be worth it when your daughter doesn't try to kill herself, or you.

Where are they now?

Every once in a while I like to do a little research and discover what my favorite actors as a child have been up to since I last saw them. And since I’m pretty much out of touch with pop culture, I usually have absolutely no clue what I will find.

Jeremy Miller – Jeremy is most well-known for his forgettable role as the youngest Seaver boy, Ben, in the forgettable series Growing Pains; he seemed poised for greatness. But when the series was unfortunately cancelled in ’92, I, along with the rest of the world, wondered what would become of such a promising young star.

It turns out since Growing Pains, growing up has been a pain (ba-dap-psssh!) as Jer and I have had the exact same number of professional acting roles, zero. I mean what the heck, I do more acting at my crappy job on a daily basis than this guy has done in the past 15 years; someone give this man a job. Am I the only one that remembers that phenomenal scene in that one episode of Growing Pains where he did some emotional acting well? I’m sure there was one…………..apparently McDonald’s took notice, because I think I literally just saw him in a Dollar Menuaire’s commercial. A little bit older, a little bit harrier, a lot a bit heavier, but that is definitely him. Wow, that commercial is horrible, I hate McDonald’s.

Jodie Sweetin – Jodie played Stephanie, the cute-as-a-button little girl who always got overshadowed by that adorable little angel Michelle (I wonder whatever happened to the actress that played her?), in the seminal series Full House. I always felt we had this special connection being that she's only a month older than me and we both like to do jazz dance (what?). But it seemed as she went, the show went, so it came as no surprise when she hit puberty and made the show awkward for everyone involved, it got cancelled. I cried.

Since the show, it turns out Jod separated from acting in pursuit of a normal life. She went to college, joined a sorority, formed a crystal meth addiction, got married...wait.....formed a crystal meth addiction?!……..HOLY CRAP!! This is exactly why I love to find out what my favorite actors of yesteryear have been up to after all this time. This was the same girl that wouldn’t take a hit of a cigarette in the girl’s bathroom, how does she end up getting addicted to crank? And here I thought Uncle Jesse fell onto hard times when he started appearing in 10-10-987 commercials.

Thankfully Jod is now clean and sober and appears to have gotten her life together. But in another shocking revelation, Jodie recently announced that she was adopted. Well duh, I think everyone already knew Bob Saget wasn’t your real father, I mean the dude IS Bob Saget after all, that would just be creepy. What’s next, are you going to drop another bomb and tell us that the role of Michelle in Full House was actually played by a set of twins?

Christine Lakin – Christine played Al in the awful series Step by Step. The only reason I cared about this show was because Christine was freakin’ HOTT (yeah, two “t’s” for emphasis). Which proved how stupid this show was because she was cast as some tomboyish chic, when she should have been portraying my girlfriend -- wait, what?? Besides Christine, the only thing I remember about this show was it had the dude from Dallas, the chic from Three’s Company, and no plot. Making it fit perfectly into TGIF’s line-up and giving me an excuse to never stay home on Fridays, which ultimately led to me becoming an alcoholic. Thanks ABC! (note: I am kidding about being alcoholic, grandma, you don't have to hold a surprise intervention for me.)

A few years after Step by Step was canned, Chris apparently found her way into the movie Reefer Madness. I'm kicking myself right now for missing a film as critically acclaimed as this one. Oww. More recently she has been appearing in Nick Cannon’s Wild ‘N Out (yeah, that Nick Cannon), a bootleg version of Whose Line Is it, Anyway?, which is a bootleg version of something that’s supposed to be funny, but isn’t.

So yeah, she’s essentially been out of work, and it saddens me to find out she’s not nearly as hot as she used to be. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, because personality is much more important to me anyway, but she is on Wild N’ Out, so, so much for that. Final analysis, she tried to bring sexy back, but only got store credit.

K-State stop crying

Memo to everyone in Manhattan, Kansas: Get over it. I realize you lost your basketball coach, Bob Huggins, to West Virginia after only one season, but what were you expecting? You hired a mercenary. You knew about his questionable character and his past, but you didn't care, you wanted to make your basketball team relevant and win games. You used him and he used you, and in the end you made out pretty freakin' good.

I have some insight into this whole scenario being from Cincinnati, the place where Huggins used to coach before he aligned with Kansas State. Huggins is dry, sequestered, and talks like a cyborg, but overall he's a decent human being. And despite the fact he coached at my school's archrival, I regretted that he was fired. Though I was one of the few people in a 50-mile radius that supported the University of Cincinnati's President, Nancy Zimpher, in her decision to get rid of him after he was arrested for a DUI.

It was refreshing to see an action contrary to the philosophy of winning trumps all else. And there's no doubt about it, Bob Huggins wins games, so for most people that have a vested interest in the program, or any team for that matter, they could careless about graduation rates, DUIs, or anything else, the guy could be on heroin and wife-beater, but as long as he gets "W's", he's all good.

It's the hypocrisy of sports, fans of every other team like to point a condemning finger at a high-profile player or coach who has done something wrong, but would embrace the person in an instant if they were to join their organization and produce more victories. Did anyone care when Jamal Strong was suspended by MLB for testing positive for steroids? Exactly, who?? Yet, Barry Bonds is one of the most hated men alive, outside of San Fransisco, because he was suspected of using steroids. Despite this animosity, there are 29 other teams that would love to have him, well, the old, juiced Bonds at least.

What's even more hypocritical is the fact that K-State supporters feel like they took a chance on Huggy Bear and he stabbed them in the back? Really? What sort of risk or consequence was there to hiring him, I don't even recall there being any kind of backlash for hiring someone with Bobby's baggage. It was all reward, and in the event things somehow went awry or he didn't win enough games, he would have been dropped faster than The Nine. So much for loyalty, huh?

Face it, the guy did more for your program in one year than others have done in a decade, he had the #1 recruiting class on-tap for next year, and suddenly you had a sip of what it would be like to not suck and you're pissed that you're losing it. I would be upset too, but not at Huggins.

Trust me, I can relate, after Thad Matta took Xavier to the Elite 8, he jetted for Ohio State, that little school that just happened to play in the NCAA championship game this year, and I was furious. But I wasn't mad that Thad left, I was pissed about how he left. He told us he had absolutely no interest in the job, wasn't even considered for it, and loved it at X; the next day he was holding a press conference in Columbus.

That's a stab in the back, front, and face; what Huggins did wasn't. Huggs was honest the whole time; K-State just wasn't honest with themselves. If you really believed that Huggins would stay in Manhattan for any substantial length of time, you deserved to lose him.

You were the rebound chic. He got dumped by an attractive girl for being a drunk and ended up dating you. But you had to have known he would have never gone out with you if it wasn't for the fact that none of the other popular girls wanted anything to do with him due to the negative perception he created. He lowered his standards because he had to. But after his year-long relationship with you, he proved to other girls that despite the fact he's a drunk, he still brings home the moolah. And that's really what matters, right? So another chic, that's on his level, comes along and courts him, and you're left crying in your Häagen-Dazs.

Cheer up and just be thankful you got a chance to date a stud. He already gave you Bill Walker and if any of the recruits from his highly touted incoming class end up playing for you (the University should be ashamed if they force them to stay and don't give them the option), you owe the man a great deal of gratitude, not disdain.

Don't bother calling me

So the other day I decided it was time to upgrade my cell phone. The one I had pissed me off because the receiver volume on it was horrible and unless you were standing in an empty elevator, in the middle of the night, you couldn’t barely make out anything the person on the other line was saying. On top of that, it just wasn’t sexy enough for me. Being Simon Drasle, I need a cell phone that is as sexy as I am.

The first problem I encountered, however, was that the selection phones I could actually choose from was going to be limited. I could buy a phone from the company I already have service with, but they only allow you to get a discounted price once a year, and it hadn’t been a year since I bought my last phone.

Like they’re my parents trying to control my phone buying habits. Who gives a crap how long it has been, just give me the freakin’ sale price now, you’re trying to sell phones, right? There’s no way I’m paying full retail price when I already have service with you, forget that. So my only other option was to buy an unlocked phone, which is pretty much none of the cool phones.

Sure, I could always drop the reliable service with the local company I have now since there is no contract and get sucked into a 2-year contract with some provider that drops every other call just for a salacious phone that makes me make me feel like I’m important. But at this point in my life, I just don’t feel I’m ready to take that step since the only person that calls me is my Grandma, on Thursdays, when she hasn’t had a chance to read my blog.

I already knew what I wanted to get anyway. The cinder block-style phone that Zack Morris used to rock; it was just a matter of finding it. 7 hours of meticulous searching later, I was convinced that they only sell it in Canada or something. So now I was definitely disheartened, I mean had no idea where to go from there and I knew nothing about cell phones, besides the one I had sucked and the one I wanted was only available in exotic countries.

Then I recalled seeing Bob Saget with some kind of phone called BlackBerry. Well hey, Bob is a big baller, and I’d like to be a big baller, so it was settled. Then I remembered that whenever Sags used the phone it looked like he was talking into a TI-87. Then I went and found out the freakin’ things cost like $500!

Who in the heck is going to pay $500 for an accounting machine that makes phone calls? I’d be forced to invest in a man purse just to carry the thing around with me in public. It’s counterproductive. The +1 to my cool rating for owning something so high-tech would be negated by the -2 for walking around with an effeminate carry-all and a portable fax machine.

BlackBerry was completely out of the question. But even though I had absolutely no idea what phone I was going to get, I did know I was purchasing a Bluetooth headset with it because I saw a guy at the mall with one once, and they are awesome. Then I remembered that when the guy started talking, I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me, or someone on the phone.

It turned out, he was talking on the phone, but by the time I realized it, I had already awkwardly acknowledged his presence. Which forced him to complete the awkward exchange with an equally awkward acknowledgement. So he knew that I thought that he thought that I thought he was talking to me. And I felt like he owed me an apology for thinking that I thought that he thought that I thought that he thought that I thought that he thought that I thought -- basically I wanted to punch him in the face at this point.

“Guy with Bluetooth in public” has officially replaced “Guy pretending like he is talking on his cell phone in public” as the unofficial mascot for Enzyte. Even if Bluetooth’s weren’t the most obnoxious inventions ever invented and a surging cause of black eyes, I don’t understand the necessity of saving yourself the strain of holding a 2-ounce piece of plastic to your ear through the duration of a 3-minute conversation. Whatever, I still needed a new phone. So I decided I should be smart, actually do some research, and choose a phone based solely on appearance.

I ended up getting the vowel-challenged SLVR. I could have cared less about the mp3 player capabilities and video camera, I just wanted a small, inoffensive phone. Yeah, well it turns out the SLVR’s audibility is actually frickin’ worse than the Nokia 6102 I already have. Seriously, why is it that the more crap they throw onto a phone, the worse it works as an actual phone?

It’s amazing, you’d think that would be the first priority, but apparently there must be some sect of people more worried about playing their favorite Ashlee Simpson songs with their phone than communicating with other people. So how come my mp3 player can’t make clear phone calls? The phone obviously went back, but I’m still here without a phone that doesn’t suck. To be continued??

The end of an epoch

It’s with great regret and sadness that I must announce that Simon’s Mind will be shutting down all operations, permanently, and this will be my final column. I would like to say that I had a good run, but unfortunately I didn’t, and that’s the sole reason for the cessation. Outside of the fact that my ratings were lower than an episode of The Hills, no one seemed to be able to understand or appreciate what Simon’s Mind was all about. Why are you so bitter? Who is Simon Drasle? I thought your name is John. Why do you write about sports so much? Why do you say “guy” and “dude” so much? And so forth and so on.

I spent countless hours pouring my heart and soul into trying to create a monumentally mediocre blog that 38-39 yr. old males, who like heavy metal, sports, and knitting could enjoy. But alas, the messages of acerbity, pointlessness, nonsense, and self-inflating rhetoric seemed to have fallen on blind eyes and the recoil has left me exhausted.

On top of this, I just lost my job as a nurse, rendering me unable to afford the monthly bandwidth bill. So even if I wanted to keep this blog up and running; nope. I am, however, not opposed to handouts and charity, so feel free to paypal me as much money as you can spare, monthly. Seriously, I just lost my freakin’ job, now’s not the time be a stingy troglodyte. But to the apathetic groans of all of my 1.5 loyal readers (I only consider myself a .5 of a fan due to the conflict of interest), thanks and goodbye…………