3....2....1....Happy Everyone!!!

As I lay here amongst my kirmans—a potpie cooking evenly in the gaggenau—I can’t help but look back over the year that was. A year of heartbreak, sorrow, pain, suffering and not a few snooty e-mails and phone calls demanding the blog/freedom fight “get funny again.” Thankfully, for us, it’s never been about the laughs. Or the size of the readership. Or, even, the quality of the posts. Instead it’s always been about one thing: That An Doof Ass is an idiot and the world will be a better place as more and more people discover this. Now we freely admit we’ve lost sight of this at times, but we’ve never lost our conviction even after one year on the job. Sure, sometimes it’s important to talk about the parties, the exotic women and the free hooch that all Noononsaturday contributors enjoy on a regular basis. It’s good for the pasty masses to know that there’s a whole world of decadent luxury and high cuisine that they will never get to experience but through our various escapades. And it is true that, unless you work here at Noononsat, you’ve almost certainly never known happiness. But what's really important—the thing that gets us up every morning from whatever 70th floor penthouse featherbed ensconced in Pratesi where we awake to find the butler delivering melong balls drizzled in rubies—is the fact that An Doof Ass is thelamestthingever. And it infuriates our good taste and sensibility to know his hairy, monkey arms and perpetual mustache could jump out from any darkened corner wielding a pottery shard at any moment and demand hooch or—worse still—more flannel shirts. Not surprisingly, his general demeanor and reckless ways have caused the formation of 3 primary schools of thought on how to deal with him.

The first is called The Denial School. The primary adherents to this thought process are usually family members and longtime friends. Their general position is to deny that there is really anything wrong with An Doof Ass. “Sure,” they say, “he’s not perfect. But who hasn’t tried to steal money from Irish bare-knuckle boxers while intoxicated, or been robbed by Mexican gang bangers over a bottle of Old Irish Rose? Who hasn’t spent upwards of 16 hours a day watching A.L.I.A.S reruns with a loaded air-soft gun ready for the enemies first appearance on the screen?” Longtime friends who take to this stance are often times apologizing for him saying, “Yeah but when he wasn’t a bobble headed, booze bag, he was actually a great guy to pick last during gym class.” Needless to say this position is neither popular nor much respected outside these exclusive circles.

A second school is called The Pity School. This position does not deny his abominable nature or his grotesque appearance. Instead, adherents accept these things for what they are and encourage others to pity, to placate, to his sad dispositions. This philosophy is very popular and we admit to being adherents to it ourselves for a time. It is most commonly forwarded by casual acquaintances and, unfortunately, ALL women.

For the acquaintance there is something in An Doof Ass that inspires one to believe there is more beyond the shower sandals and ridiculous pronunciations. They often times cite the handful of intelligent things he has somehow managed to call forth from his Swiss-cheesed hemispheres as if they were more than the fortuitous tangents of a pickled brain.

And then there are the ladies. Even for us, hardened over time, it’s sad to see An Doof Ass suffer with the women. While he’s had his share of exotic sexual adventures and left as many broken hearts as any Don Juan or Orlando Bloom, for some unkown reason he always ends up being the one pitied. It’s like second nature for him to blow whatever class he had acrued within a week, two tops, after the relationship ends. And it doesn’t even matter if he does the breaking up!

A.D.A: Sorry baby, it’s over. I can’t be tied down. I’ve got too much to see. To do.
Woman: Don’t leave me! You’re so wonderful!
A.D.A: I gots to!

*****3 days later****

Woman: Have you seen him?
Friend: yeah.
Woman: the poor, pathetic bastard.

Gasps of, “Good lord that’s pathetic.” Can be heard across the country as word spreads through the various channels of An Doof Ass’ most recent fuck up. In fact, there’s an entire cottage industry of trading cards and board games based on his almost otherwordly tales of relational whoa!

And this brings us to the third school which is called The Holy Rage. Adherents to this position are almost all converts from The Pity School. These individuals have the advantage over Denial School practitioners in that they have not wasted so much of their life on An Doof Ass as to have no recourse but to pretend it was worth it, or, at least, not entirely wasted. As for Pity School adherents, Holy Ragers do not have to deal with the emotional baggage that accompanies pity. Instead, they are able to look at the cold hard facts: bad bone structure, debauchery, sloth, poor hygiene, shower sandals, crying fits, and call them what they are—pure insanity. They believe strongly that without their constant efforts to enlighten others, An Doof Ass might engage decent society to the determent of the entire world. It is their duty to stop him by any means necessary. With their unvarnished, objective accounts of actual events and those embellished for the sake of clarity and conciseness, these warriors of class fight the flow of good faith, charity and pity that An Doof Ass laps up like so much spilt rubbing alcohol. Holy Ragers wake up in the morning, shave, eat endangered animals for the helluvit, write awesome poetry, get six figure book deals and then say:

“Today I will find some new way to stem the tide of An Doof Assery. Today I will
fight those wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt! Today I will call him
and remind him that everyone thinks he’s witty and smells great after a handle
of cheap scotch!”

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but we here at Noononsaturday are Holy Ragers. And this past year has been a great opportunity for us to spread the word:

Lock your doors! An Doof Ass stalks the night looking for a free cigarettes and
gold toe socks! Beware! He’ll acted shocked and appalled when your liquor is
gone and offer to go out an buy some more ‘if only he had the money!’ Beware!
He’ll use your toothbrush and leave the lights on! Beware!

It’s been our privileged to serve and inform you about this most diabolical of social ills. And we look forward to continuing to strengthen the ties that bind us together. Finally, as we celebrate this anniversary time, we encourage you to check back regularly as we will be posting naked pictures of celebrities.

Yours ever,
The whole staff

Like you never heard....

My recent lack of output is for no other reason than that I have been out of town. Where have I been? Where haven't I been? Come'on!

Moving on, it has been brought to my attention tomorrow will this illustrious blog's 1 year anniversary. While readership has fluctuated and the comments consistently blow, we none the less persevere. That said: it will be a bitchin' celebration....maybe.

USA! USA! USA!

There needs to be some truth telling. During these troubled days of “World Cup frenzy,” it’s easy to get carried away in the excitement of hours of poorly struck balls, own-goals and Europeans holding their ankles and rolling about. We need to take a long look in the mirror and admit it—Soccer seriously, SERIOUSLY, sucks ass. Luckily, however, this isn’t a deathblow to the game; it just means it will be nothing more than a Saturday morning acitivity for the Pimms and cucumber crowd and their little “Landon’s,” “Kasey’s” or whatever the name was of the anti-Regean protagonist in that political best-seller from Knopf 22 years ago. After all, soccer isn’t afflicted by the intrinsic fault of built in obsolesce that affects certain games such as basketball and bowling (i.e. bowling’s problematic nature of being “too easy," causing professional play to be little more than a contest of who blinks first. And, of course, there's basketball’s ridiculous rules that make is basically impossible to stop teams from executing innumerable passes into their respective “big guy” and watching him pivot and shoot a lay-up over and over and over again. The only reason there are still fast breaks and turnovers is because the quality of play has degraded to that of the “school-yard.”) No--soccer is by no means “too easy” nor does suffer from rules that limit creativity and competition. Nor, even, does suffer from football’s pure ugliness or laughably unorganized stumbling about.

In fact, soccer has some acceptable qualities. For one, it is nonstop action. I watch as many World Cup game as the next guy and probably scream and swear more than most precisely because it is damn exciting. Unfortunately, excitement alone does not a great sport make. Look at hockey after all. Nor is soccer problematic because of low scores. All the great sports involve low scores: baseball, minor-league baseball, Legion baseball, Rounders. Even the fact that teams can “tie” is not a determent to the game. For the most part, the teams are so evenly matched in ineptitude that anything more than a draw would be an insult to the concept of victory. While these qualities make soccer clearly better than football, basketball or bowling and only slightly more impressive than, say, bocce ball; it still suffers from some serious flaws. Flaws that make it impossible and downright dishonest for a self-respecting Americans to accept it for anything more than a quaint spat between silly little countries with nothing to their names than hordes of blue-collar hooligans and economies that can’t support much more than a ball and an open field. So what are these laughable qualities?

For one, it is the embarrassingly poor quality of strikes. Half the passes on the world-stage are intercepted or just plain miss the intended target. And the shots on goal? For starters, a shot “on-goal” doesn’t mean it could actually go in the goal. It just means the camera angle is suck that the goal and ball are both in the shot. 15 feet over the goal? “A shot on goal!.” A slow roller 10 feet to the right. “A shot on goal!” The fact that Brazil plays “a beautiful game” means nothing more than that they execute the basics of the sport more or less consitently. Any sport where world-class players look like idiots sending half-struck balls 10 feet wide of an embarrassingly large goal is just unseemly. Of course, the fool might object that baseballers have a similar inability. But, of course, the difference is that baseball intends to make striking the ball difficult; soccer however is premised on an ability that few seem to actually posses and it is just plain embarrassing.

Secondly, there is the gross subjectivity. L-A-M-E. Any sport so dependent on the subjective whims and partisan flubbery of a man with a pocket full of colored cards needs a serious reworking. Like basketball, soccer suffers from being a contact sport where contact is forbidden. As a country built on the myth of the self-made man forging his own destiny, being captive to the whims of a unduly elected whistleblower strikes at the very core of our native stuff. Suspension without representation will not stand.

Finally, we have what is the ultimate and final blow to soccer. The players themselves. Perhaps there is nothing more infuriating and ignoble about the game than the fact that a man can trip on his boot laces, roll about screaming in agony, be taken off the field on a stretcher, have a can of liquid nitrogen sprayed on his ankle and be back out playing in less than a minute. It’s inexcusable and idiotic. “The Dive” makes soccer nothing more than a sport built on the Western Europe’s work ethic and mental prowess (i.e. laziness and snake oil.) And the fact that they spend the better part of a match cringing in feigned agony looking for someone else to make it better is why soccer is the sport of a rather pedestrian “world.”

All that to say, the South American teams are pretty kick ass and the USA isn’t that great but doesn’t suck like everyone else. GO USA!!!

hairbags!

Today is "Bike to Work Day" in Chicago. What this entails is the presentation of free food in Daley Plaza accompanied by all form of advertisement for bike stuff and Balley Total Fitness. I got a free water bottle from some bike shop and the Balley display had attractive young people lifting and pulling things slowly. I signed a two year contract under duress from one sassy number who said I have “awesome ‘delt’ and ‘lat’ potential.” There was also a rock-n-roll band.

*

The night previous an overabundance of refined spirits had brought about a fit of morning sweats, a really grand headache and, due to the intake of tobacco cigarettes, a congested sinus. Hoping my biking brethren would help ease this pain with dignified talk of car-pigs, wipeouts, increased bikeridership as the second coming and hooting and catcalling at bikes as if they were flaming gams (i.e. Work that Shimano derailer, Oh Baby, she/he/it knows what she/he/it is doing. Don't stop baby, keep rolling. Never stop, baby. Oh yeah!), I arose. My excitement was such that I forwent my regular morning routine of drinking coffee and swearing at animals so I could arrive as early as possible. Visions of defined, ambitious young professionals standing next to sensible road bikes drinking vodka Red Bulls in rolled up Domenci Vaca trousers and Luca Luca skirts danced before my eyes as I pulled my chariot out from the basement.

*

These visions however were quickly dashed when I arrived to discover nothing more than common hippies parading around in all form of bead, macramé and homespun spandex. Some had even decorated their bikes for the occasion with streamers and the scraps of signs and banners from last week's swinging protest against Facists/Republicans/Bush/War/Supply-side economics/America/Public Decency, etc. This caused me to wonder if these people even had jobs to bike to or just simply rolled off of whatever filth mattress they found themselves on the night prior and came down for the free banana halves. I would have left immediately except I had done more or less the same and was desperately hungry. So I got in the food line next to one of the hairbags.

*

Hippy: I’m totally ripe from my ride down here.
Working Boy: The smell is overwhelming. Do you clean yourself regularly?
H: No way I’m protesting our “nation’s” dependence of foreign oil by not using hot water which is heated by natural gas which is strip mined in West Virginia by Haliburton which, if I’m remembering rightly, controls everything that is evil and Al Gore is trying to save us. Did you participate in Critical Mass last week?
W.B: Is that the event where young people get together and ride around in a large pack causing havoc on the roads in order to show how we have reached a “critical mass” of car drivers?
H: Yeah, we really stick it to them.
W.B: I can’t think of any better way to make such a refined statement.
H: Together we can turn this terrible country around!
W.B: Yes, it is pretty terrible. This free bagel I received? It’s gross.
H: Yeah, man, the times they are a changin’, you know? Sweet ride by the way.
W.B: Are you referring to my Murray Spectra?
H: Mos def, I haven’t seen a Murray since I was like 7 years old. But why are the handle bars warped and your bike rack held together by bungee cords?
W.B: As to the former, because my bike is made of outstandingly bad materials and common usage apparently destroys it. As to the latter, without these bungee cords my milk crate would fall off the bike rack and the rack would crash about on the ground while being joined to the bike by only the most precarious combination of screw and nut.
H: Your bike sucks.
W.B: No truer words have ever been spoken, my disgusting new friend.

*

My life is signifcantly more busy these days...

Spent the weekend in Washington D.C. It was fun. I bought a suit. And popped a collar or two. One interesting thing about that area is the high percentage of Graham-like characters. One final note, I just learned Son Volt is playing a free show on Friday. Actually, it’s not free. Technically, there is a 10 dollar suggested donation, but screw it. After all, there are few joys like looking someone in the eye and saying: I think I’m just going to go in without donating anything at all.

I got some free Chinese!

This past week has been busy. I have been to underground rock shows with An Doof Ass. Drank Gin and Tonics to the determent of class and grace at a Memorial Day picnic. Gone to all the big indie movies. Had brunch, etc. But of all these events one in particular has had the greatest impact on my personal development: bike riding.

Of course there’s the obvious. For one, I’m way hotter. My already golden olive skin has a vibrant new glow from the increased capillary circulation. Also, my inspired physique is none the worse for wear considering I’ve greatly increased my Type I skeletal muscle fiber mass and even transformation some of my type II B’s into II A’s. But it’s not all random hot babes hitting on me and jealous boyfriends begging me to wear baggy sweatpants instead of my blue spandex with embroidered yellow flames; there are also some minor problems. For one, it has caused some tension around the homestead. Since I no longer eat red meat or engage in the act of chewing since one promotes heart disease and the other unaesthetic tooth-wear and potential stains due to cracked enamel, I’ve demanded only fresh sashimi sole blended into a fine paste with V8 and beet juice. This is has not been received popularly. But fuck it—I’m feeling better than I ever have. My endorphin levels are sky-high and I’ve never enjoyed anything more than my South African crystal facials performed by only the shortest Cambodian widows.

Surprisingly though there is a downside to this new improved lifestyle. While my bike has brought me enhanced beauty it has also forced me to ask myself some tough questions. Now, being an aged philosopher, I’m accustomed to asking question and finding sweet answers that make other people look like jerks, but biking has brought up questions that make it possible to construe me as the lame-ass. For example, “I am now a no good hippy?” or “Why do get scared when you’re going down an incline?” But the real question—the kicker—is: “Why are chick/burger cyclists passing you like you are some kind of pussy?”

Now I’m not a very competitive guy. I’ve spent most of my life being completely pedestrian. My best friend won “most unique” in high school. My brother was the one with GPA and national merit honors. In college, yes, I was the biggest, most famous guy on campus, but that was almost 2 years ago and I’ve come back down from that interstellar orbit to a more refine, comfortable scotch and cigar kind of lifestyle. But that said: I still get pissed as hell when I’m passed on the road by a girl. Nothing else bothers me like this. I’m no racist. I don’t begrudge the Afro-Caribbean’s sexual potency or the Latinos efficiency in tattoos and beating-up drunk roommates. Or, even, the analytical skills of the East Asian or work ethic of the East Indian. I’m cool with all that. But the second a girl on a Peugot zips by me while I’m stuck between two gears on the Murray I get embarrassed.
Yesterday this screwed me pretty good.

The situation: Me happily cruising along in what has become the bike’s default mode of half-in, half-out of gear behind some hippy guy on mountain bike. Everything was cool. The guy looked to be one of the many homeless bike-messengers so his bike sucked like mine and he enjoyed the easy pace. I was cool with this when, out of nowhere, a sleek 21 speed Bianchi blew by us on the uphill portion of Washington and Canal. Stoned as a Scotsman, the hippy didn’t take much notice of this. But through the dust cloud I distinctly made out feminine legs and hair. Worse yet, she wasn’t wearing a bike helmet and I, like some baby 5th grader, was puffing along with my navy blue “Arius” strapped across my braincase. “Screw it” I said to the hippy, ripped my lame ass helmet from my head and began the chase. As if reading my mind, the Murray fully engaged and I was off like some moderately priced Chinese buffet. Sweet, I said to myself as my completely not thinning hair blew in the wind like a great shock of diseased wheat. And indeed I was making up time—only seconds from overtaking her when the light at Washington and Wells changed. Ahead of a bus and Accord were squeezed together, confident in her slow rolling skills the cyclists began the slow coast between the vehicles and appeared unscathed on the other side ready to take off during the first break in traffic. Desperate not to loose her I pursued. Unfortunately I had to revert to the waddle technique as I tiptoed my bike between the two behemoths when it became clear my bike and body could go no further. Thusly wedged I apologized to the Accord’s driver as he opened his window to see if I was in fact scrapping the hell out of his car. Luckily the light changed before much in the way of pleasantries could be exchanged and the bus gave way just enough so I could make my getaway. Unfortunately, the rival was already well on her way.

All that to say: I think I’m going to Wisconsin to eat fish tonight with some Irishmen. It has the potential to be the best time ever.