April showers bring... something from the Bone-chives

I'm off to Cincinnati, where there is a 70-90% chance of rain all weekend. Hopefully, they'll be able to fit a baseball game in there somewhere. Even if there's a four-hour rain delay, the game doesn't end until midnight and there are only like fifty fans left in the stands, I'll be one of them. And there's a 100% chance of that.

This would have been a perfect opportunity for stop number two on the Blog Reality Tour. Unfortunately, I don't believe I link to any bloggers in Ohio. There used to be one in Kentucky, and maybe a couple in Tennessee, but I guess they've all found other ways to occupy their time.

I shall return on Monday. That is, unless a Reds scout notices my surprising athletic ability and the agility of someone fifteen years younger as I scamper to chase a foul ball, and they decide to hire me on the spot as a full-time ball boy. Or, ball man, whichever. Until then, and in honor of Earth Day, I am recycling a post.

It's poetry month over at Cooper's. (OK, so as I google it now, evidently it's National Poetry Month. Who knew!) So I figured I'd do a poem for one of my three posts this month.

I would never claim to write actual and decent poetry. I'm way too literal, and always end up feeling like somewhere the words have to eventually rhyme. I'm more of a lyrics guy. Lyrics without music, that's me. I think I would have collaborated well with Bobby McFerrin.

Now that I have hopefully lowered your expectations to a sufficient level, here is an attempt at poetry, originally posted in 2007:


Perfume hint caught
Memory sparked
That year I was in love

Eager heart leapt
Lesson relearned
Forever is but a word

Freely falling fast
Feeling remembered
And missed

Past replaces present
Eyes now tightly closed
Smile grazes lips

Midnight phone calls
Sultry afternoons
Slinky black dress

Past recedes to past
I'll always believe
I loved you best

"Ain't no sun. Ain't no blue sky. The wind blows cold now that you've gone away. And tomorrow, just like today, there's a hundred percent chance of rain..."

Wonder whatever became of me?

Let's begin today with a little humor. Very little.

Phone call from Dad the other day:
"Did your sister tell you I'm getting an iPad?"
"What! No you are not."
"Yes, I am. I'm getting an iPad."
"Oh, Lord help us." (Thinking, how will he ever learn how to work it?)
"The doctor says I have cataracts, so after they do surgery I'm gonna have to wear an eye pad."

*smacking self on forehead*

These are my comedy roots. Knowing this, I think it's quite remarkable that I have ever made anyone laugh at all.

Easter has come and gone since the last time we commenced. Highlights included Nephew Bone hunting eggs. Although they weren't really hidden, they were just sort of strewn across the yard in plain view. Back when I used to hunt, the eggs were hard to find! They would be up in trees, across a busy street... Then again, I was thirty-six.

Then, of course, there's the Easter candy. How they came up with the combination of hiding eggs and eating candy I'll never know. Asking me to pick my favorite Easter candy is sort of like asking me to pick my favorite Wham! song -- virtually impossible and even the bad ones are pretty good.

However, Marshmallow Peeps are a perennial favorite around the Bone household. I especially appreciate the extra effort they take in putting two brown dots for the eyes on each and every chick. What was the thinking behind this? "No! You can't market them like that. No one will ever believe they're chickens unless they have eyes!"

This past Saturday, I ran my first 10K of the year. I say first, which would indicate that there will be at least one more in the lead-up to the half marathon of a still-to-be-determined date and location. I ran a 48:35 Saturday, good for a solid 66th-place finish. I also realized that I have the same thought when I get to every race and see hundreds of people milling around: Am I the only person here who isn't normally up at 6 AM on a Saturday!?!?

In other news of note, I think we may have skipped right over spring this year in the heart of Dixie. We had about two days of windy, 65-degree weather. Otherwise, we pretty much went straight from not-really-cold-enough-to-be-winter-but-too-gray-to-be-spring to may-as-well-call-it-summer. I briefly considered inventing another new season -- perhaps Spummer or Suing -- but I figure one new season is enough for one person for one lifetime. I don't want to be too prolific, else people will start expecting things.

Not that I'm complaining about the weather, mind you. I enjoy warmth, whether it's an inappropriate hug from a grandmotherly old lady who I don't really know or simply basking in the glow of our yellow sun. Temps have been in the 80's most of the last two weeks here and I've been taking full advantage, doing plenty of grilling, golfing and running.

Next weekend, I'll be heading up to Cincinnati to see my beloved Reds play. It'll be my first visit to Great American Ballpark, or Cincinnati for that matter, land of Johnny Bench and Johnny Fever. We're going to the game on Saturday. I'm open to suggestions for something to do that Sunday, as apparently there is, much to my dismay, not a WKRP In Cincinnati museum.

"From some other planet, I'd get this funky high on yellow sun. Boy, I bet my friends would all be stunned..."

Blog Reality Tour: Nashville

Last Friday evening presented me with the most interesting of decisions. I could either drive to Nashville to hang out with three girls, or I could sit home, watch basketball in my underwear, and slink further away from human interaction. After careful contemplation, I decided to ward off dementia at least for a few more years and go to Nashville.

Through the medium known as electronic mail, I had received word several weeks ago that avid IYROOBTY reader OK Chick, Oklahoma City's foremost blogging runner, was going to be in town for a wedding. And so, after five-plus years of reading each other's blogs, we finally met!

It will go down as one of the great meetings of all-time. Right up there with When Harry met Sally, when Charlie finally met the Angels, and of course the most famous of them all, Act 1: They Meet after the second board of Ms. Pac-Man.

The four of us -- OK Chick, her sister, friend and I -- had dinner downtown at Jack's BBQ and listened to some live music at Tootsie's and Legends. In between dinner and music, we also took in a little taste of Old Nashville with a carriage ride.

The first time our driver (Is that what they're called? Driver?) quipped, "I'm Bill. This is Pete. He's the brains of the operation," it was folksy. When he said it the second time, two minutes later and with no apparent recollection of having already told us, I began to seriously wonder just where this guy was going to take us. (I was also thinking that if I had the Darryls with me, I could have responded with "I'm Larry. This is Darryl...")

But it went off without a hitch -- well, other than the horse being hitched to the carriage. Actually, there was a point near the end of the ride when a foul odor began wafting through the evening air. Apparently, Bill feeds Pete Beefareeno.

It was a fun night. (What a well-crafted line! Never say you don't get exceptional writing here, ladies and gentlemen.) I discovered that I kinda like being called "Bone" in social situations. Not to mention I scored two more Facebook friends from the outing. And really, isn't that what life has come to be all about?

This has also rekindled my interest in an idea I had several years ago, when I wore a younger blogger's clothes. You remember my Blog Reality Tour?

No?

Well, it was an idea conceived by me, circa 2006. The gist of it is that I would tour the country visiting the people on my blogroll. Of course, I had quite a few more readers back then. And I posted much more frequently... (It strikes me here that if one is reminiscing about blogging days of yore, it is entirely possible one may have been blogging far too long.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh right, resurrecting the Blog Reality Tour. While thinking about this the other night, I realized that in all the times I've pondered this idea in my mind I've always just assumed that all bloggers would be perfectly fine with me staying with them overnight. Overjoyed, even. When in reality, that probably would not be the case at all. It's funny though, the little things we assume and how we see ourselves.

Sometimes I think the difference between how I view myself and how others view me is a deep, yawning chasm.

Nah! Surely not.

Until next time, this is your ruggedly athletic but sensitive, capable-of-grand-things-yet-accomplishing-very-little blogger, Bone.

"He says, Bill I believe this is killing me, as a smile ran away from his face. I'm sure that I could be a movie star, if I could get out of this place..."

With apologies to CCR

Before we begin today, I have a confession to make: I kinda want to see Hot Tub Time Machine.

I know! It's just, the previews look rather hilarious. Also, I've never been in a hot tub or a time machine. And while I'll always consider the latter a definite possibility, the former -- given my chronic germophobia -- will likely never happen.

Whew, I'm glad to have that off my chest. Now we can move on to more pressing matters. (Could it get any less pressing?)

The NCAA Tournament has taken up quite a bit of my time these past two weekends. I wish I could say the same for the Kansas Jayhawks, my pick for national champs. Unfortunately, they couldn't be bothered with more than a couple days of March Madness this year.

The Bone bracket was a mixed bag. I correctly picked St. Mary's and Cornell for the Sweet Sixteen. However, I also had Georgetown in the Elite Eight. And only one of my Final Four picks made it: West Virginia.

Finally, I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention a topic that is on the minds of many Americans these days. And that is, how to fix our current fantasy baseball team naming system.

Last year my team -- Los Rojos -- finished 3rd. For some people, that might be satisfactory. But I say no! When did 3rd place become good enough? This is America! No one goes around shouting "We're number three!" They don't sell big foam hands with three fingers extended at football games.

Combine that with the fact that I finished in 4th place the year before, and it became obvious to me the current system wasn't working. It was time for a change.

So I put a lot of thought into coming up with a plan which would select the best fantasy team name possible. One which would both display my right-brain creativity and inspire my left-brain baseball knowledge, thus resulting in a first-place finish.

After narrowing down my choices to five finalists, I consulted with several of my trusted inner email circle, then submitted my final choice for approval. Well, the right-wing anti-Bone fat cats at Yahoo Sports were having none of it. Clearly clinging to failed policies of the past, they had placed an ultra-conservative 20-character limit on all fantasy team names. Therefore, the greatest team name in fantasy sports history -- Between Bill Buckner's Legs -- will not be used.

Forced to scramble and come up with an eleventh-hour compromise -- my fantasy draft is Wednesday -- I did my best. I know some of you may view this as nothing more than a heavily watered down version of my original proposal, but my hope is that it will at least be better than what we had.

And so, without further adieu, allow me to introduce you to your 2010 Bone fantasy baseball team: Rolen On The River.

Is this change we can believe in? Time will tell.

"Left a good job in the city, workin' for the man every night and day. And I never lost one minute sleepin', worrying 'bout the way things might have been..."

Asking out a guy

As a guy, one of the toughest things to deal with is rejection. I know times they are a-changin', but for most of my dating life, I have been the one expected to ask out the girl. Sometimes I did and she accepted. Sometimes I asked and was rebuffed with great prejudice. And sometimes I never asked and spent the rest of my life up to and including this very day wondering what if...

Where was I? Oh yes. There is one thing tougher than being rejected by a girl, however. And that is being rejected by a guy.

If a girl rejects you, in a lot of cases you probably never have to see her again, or at the least can avoid her most of the time. But if a guy rejects you, it's likely one of your guy friends, and it can be awkward. Not as awkward as having your hands accidentally touch as you're riding down the road -- that's the single most awkward situation known to modern heterosexual man and must never be spoken of by either party as long as they both shall live -- but awkward, nonetheless.

I dealt with this very situation recently. The being rejected by a guy, not the incidental hand-touching. I called Wolfgang -- OK, texted, everyone knows we don't talk on the phone -- to see if he wanted to hang out one Friday night. For months, we'd (the Darryls and I) had a standing date every weekend. But things were different now. We hadn't been out in weeks since he acquired a significant other (another significant other, other than LJ). As I thought about all the good times we had, I waited nervously for his reply. Then piercing the stillness of the room with my sonar-like text alert, there it was:

"I already have plans for tonight."

OK, so it wasn't outright rejection. But it was still a declination. And still awkward.

Now, once the initial awkwardness subsides after the man-date rejection, you then have to decide when and if to ask this guy out again. And it's a difficult decision, because the only thing worse than being rejected by a guy is to be rejected a second time by that same guy. Am I right ladies?

If you ask a girl out two, three, ten times, you might be considered persistent. But if you ask a guy out more than two times without him accepting, just... don't... ever share that with anyone else.

Being rejected by a girl is also much easier in part, I think, because as guys we almost expect it sometimes. I know I do. I mean, the average guy is probably turned down, what, tens of times in his life, if not more?

Lastly, if you're turned down by a girl, well there are three billion others out there. But if you're turned down by a guy, well you only probably have a handful of guy friends, and at this point in my life anyway, I'm not really out there trying to meet any new guys. Should I be?

That is why I think guys generally just accept any man-date we are asked out on. We understand how difficult it is to ask someone else out, whether it be a girl or another guy. If we really don't want to do something with another guy, then we just won't answer the phone when he calls, thus avoiding having to say "no" and all of the awkwardness that would thereby ensue.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to man-dates. Maybe someday we'll look at some other topics of interest, including who pays, how long should you wait for your man-date to show up before leaving, and last but not least, man-shakes and fist bumps -- how soon is too soon?

"Tell me, why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?"

I waited three years for this?

December, 2006. Oh what a night.

Do you remember where you were?

I sure do. For that was when I somehow coerced a female into an evening out with me. We went to the movies. The film? Rocky Balboa, not surprisingly. That was also the last time I had been to a movie theater. Until last weekend.

I don't know what it was that brought me back. Maybe it was all the talk about the Oscars. Maybe it was the lack of anything better to do. Or maybe it simply took me this long to coerce another female into spending an evening with me. Whatever it was, the almost-three-and-a-half-year streak is over.

It will go down as one of the great streaks of all-time. Right up there with not drinking any carbonated beverages for sixty-three consecutive days in the late nineties, my 18-game winning streak in online Scrabble, and of course, "The Streak" by Ray Stevens.

So what did I see? Well, I considered the usual suspects -- The Blind Side, The Hurt Locker -- but you don't end a streak as impressive as this one with some run-of-the-mill Oscar-nominated Hollywood fluff. Also, neither of those were playing at the quadplex that we attended. No, our choices were Valentine's Day, Alice In Wonderland, Shutter Island, and Cop Out.

So naturally, we/I decided on Cop Out. If the streak was gonna die, it was going out with a classic. Co-starring Tracy Morgan and the incomparable Bruce Willis, along with special guest star Stiffler from American Pie, how could we go wrong?

The theater was pretty much state-of-the-art... for the 1980's. I half-expected to see a Tab dispenser on their soda fountain. And as someone who has only been to the movies twice in the past three-plus years, I won't attempt to do a movie review. But let me just say this was the best Bruce Willis movie I've seen since Sixth Sense.

Of course, it's also the first Bruce Willis movie I've seen since Sixth Sense. But now I'm just splitting hairs.

"Oh, what a night. Late December back in '63. What a very special time for me, 'cause I remember what a night..."

Men will be boys

It snowed this morning. In Alabama. In March. I don't think there's any doubt we are headed for 2012. I never saw the movie, but as I understand it 2012 is a year the ancient Mayans predicted would occur a couple of years from now. It is going to be like Y2K on crack. And there will be mayhem. And Prince will write a song about it. It is our destiny. It is inevitable. And there is nothing we can do to stop it. (Which, I believe, would be the definition of inevitable.)

In other slightly less doom-impending news, I nearly relapsed this weekend.

After venturing out Friday night only long enough to get some catfish, Saturday found me in the familiar position of wanting to spend the entire weekend in Hermitville. This desire was intensified exponentially by SoapNet airing a 90210 marathon during the period of time in question.

It wasn't even the good 90210s, either. It was after Dylan and Brenda left. Jim and Cindy had moved to Hong Kong. Kelly Kapowski had joined the cast and everybody was pretty much living, partying and/or spending the night at Casa Walsh. Still, that theme song gets me every time. Duh-duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-duh, chh-chh...

So there I was, having the classic devil-on-one-shoulder-angel-on-the-other moment. Active social butterfly angel was imploring, "Get up you lazy schmuck. It's a beautiful day outside. You should go and play golf." Meanwhile, hermit devil was doing his best to lure me back into the throes of hermit-itis: "Stay in bed. You love it here. You can golf anytime. How often does SoapNet have a 90210 marathon? Besides, they might go back and show an old episode like Donna Martin Graduates and you wouldn't wanna miss that, would you?"

As convincing as hermit devil was, after two-and-a-half episodes I'd had my fill of Donna and David's incessant bickering. So I decided to call LJ and we went and golfed. It was fifty degrees and sunny out, but the wind chill must have been about four. I had no idea fifty degrees could feel so cold!

It soon became apparent that my carefully chosen ensemble of khaki pants and thin black mock turtleneck pullover was not going to provide the warmth I desired. One of my fingers did that losing-color-and-going-numb thing from holes three through eight. But after that, the feeling returned, my frostbite fears subsided and it was fun. And for it being my first time golfing this decade, I played OK. I only lost two balls.

And one club.

That's right, upstanding citizen and otherwise mild-mannered blogger Bone lost a nine iron in the lake, accidentally. And by lost, I mean chucked. And by accidentally, I mean sort of on purpose. Cringe.

In my defense, the club did not appear to be working properly. It was supposed to hit the ball high into the air landing on the green. Instead, it scooted the ball along the ground about forty yards. I just as well have hit it with a log.

Oh, I couldn't be more embarrassed. When I wrote the Nine iron over the starboard side post three years ago, I never dreamt it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe the anger management classes will be on the same night and just down the hall from the 90210 support group.

"I didn't go to boarding schools. Preppy girls never looked at me. Why should they? I ain't nobody, got nothing in my pocket. Beverly Hills, that's where I want to be..."

All I am saying is, give curling a chance

I was all ready to share at considerable length the story of one man's struggle to survive sports purgatory for yet another year. You may recall sports purgatory is the barren wasteland of the sports year, lasting from the end of college football until the beginning of fantasy baseball, with a couple of oases included in the form of National Signing Day and March Madness.

Highlights were to include, and pretty much be limited to, iTunes adding Eddie Murphy's Party All The Time at long last! Though I know by mentioning that, I risk you rushing to the iTunes store immediately and never coming back.

But something happened on the way to that blog post. A new oasis emerged from the British Columbian countryside. And that something was the Olympics. Perhaps you've heard of them.

Oh, twas a shrewd move by Bob Costas to schedule the Winter Olympics right in the midst of this yearly sports abyss. It's like a get-out-of-purgatory-free card. And more thankful I could not be, as I've been able to add three hours of curling viewing and google-imaging Julia Mancuso to my daily routine of Wii and... breathing.

What? Let he who has never clicked to enlarge an image of Lindsey Vonn throw the first stone.

Speaking of throwing stones, is it just me or does curling seem to be on like five times as much as any other sport? I've watched so much curling that now when I close my eyes, all I can see are those curling rings -- green outer circle, white middle circle, and blue inner circle. They're etched in my brain.

I'm learning curling terms -- the button, the hack, in-turn, out-turn, guard, draw, freeze, peel, biter, in the house, and my favorite: shot-rock. One thing I really like about curling is that it's one of the few Olympic sports I could still possibly medal in at my age. Think about it, if I devoted my entire life to curling for the next four years... who knows? Although I tried playing a curling game I found online last week to help me learn the rules. Didn't help.

I actually had a 45-minute conversation about curling with Axl last night. I'm not sure I've ever had a 45-minute conversation about a single topic other than Alabama football in my entire life. Actually, scratch that. I just remembered my sometimes rather intense discussions about General Hospital with the Darryls.

Something I'm always curious about during the Olympics is where they find some of these announcers. They're experts on all these rather obscure sports, and fairly competent broadcasters as well. My question is, what do they do the other three years and fifty weeks between Olympics? I mean, is curling televised somewhere in the world year-round? And if so, how do I get that channel?

I prefer the sports where there is a tangible way of keeping score or time rather than the sports based on judging. I especially enjoy watching the splits as a skier or luger makes their way down the course, just a few hundredths of a second ahead or behind the leader. But while I enjoy watching the luge, I have no idea what makes one luger better than another. The luge announcer the other night was like, "Oh, he lifted his arm slightly in that turn. That's gonna cost him." What?

Another of the more interesting comments I've heard this Olympics was, "He started luging when he was ten." How does that even happen? Do they luge in gym class? Was the kid outside sledding with his friends one day when the Bela Karolyi of luge was driving by, saw the kid and spotted something special? Or is it like piano lessons, where the parents push the kid to luge even though he doesn't want to? "No, Ma. I don't wanna go down the icy track at eighty miles an hour." (For some reason, I just said that in an Eric Cartman voice.) "You'll luge and you'll like it! Now get in there!" Actually, that might make a good Lifetime movie, or ABC Afterschool Special. That is, if they had made ABC Afterschool Specials after 1996.

Finally, there is ice hockey. For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, ice hockey in the Olympics is the sport that makes me feel the most proud and patriotic. Maybe it's because we're never one of the favorites. And I'm sure it has something to do with the Miracle On Ice. Whatever it is, I was cheering and chanting as the United States skated to a 5-3 upset of Canada last night. "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

But the most inspirational story of these games had to be Wednesday night when Carrot Top -- who after a failed career as an aging comedian decided to take up snowboarding -- brought home gold in the half pipe.

Anyway, just a few more days until the games come to an end. At that point, it'll only be a month or so until baseball, which doesn't do a lot for me except that it also means fantasy baseball. Then at least I'll have my spreadsheets to keep me busy.

"My girl wants to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time..."