Perpetually Dishevled

“He’s been haunting my dreams at night. I’ve been bleeding from tripping in the dark trying to turn on the light.”

Today, Seattle City Council voted on whether or not they were willing to give up South Occidental Ave to an investment group with intentions to build an arena to house the NBA in downtown Seattle. The council did say that they are open to bringing back the NBA to Seattle and are interested in exploring other options. Whether that’s believable remains to be seen.

This is a massive blow to basketball fans who are still very upset about losing the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City in 2008, and they came in droves to show support this afternoon only to see their hoop dreams be crushed by a 5-4 vote.

I’ve been watching you, disgruntled former NBA fan. You’re living up to those Lovable losers, Lloyd Dobbler archetypes. Carrying a boombox outside of Chesapeake Arena hoping that someone will have a change of heart and rightfully return the NBA franchise where they truly belong. HOME.

But there comes a time in life where you have to realize that chasing after something that left so long ago is not productive whatsoever. You need to look inside and start working on you. There’s a great big world out there with a lot of great, smart, funny, attractive NBA franchises that are just dying for you to buy a ticket to their game. It will feel a little strange at first to play the field, and you may think the Sonics won’t approve. But when they left, they said that ultimately they wanted you to be happy.

This is a great time to think about lifting that NBA boycott as the playoffs are heating up and there are going to be some interesting storylines not only in the playoffs but also in this upcoming offseason.

• The Warriors beat the record for most regular season wins by an NBA team EVER with 73. They just lost their best player Steph Curry for a few weeks, but he will be back shooting threes from 50 feet out in no time. They are probably going to win the title and they have cool uniforms. Jump on the bandwagon.
• The Toronto Raptors always have Drake hanging out courtside and they are in the second round for the first time in fifteen years. They also have cool uniforms.
• Kevin Durant is going to be a free agent this offseason (maybe) he could go back to OKC (CALM DOWN) he could go home to the Wizards (He’s from DC) or maybe he could replace Kobe with the Lakers.
• OH! Kobe is gone, he retired. The Lakers were very bad this year so they could get a nice draft pick to replace him. Bad Lakers were actually sort of fun to watch this year, and I feel gross typing that.
• Tom Thibodeau is going to be running the Minnesota Timberwolves. The T-Wolves are a very talented, young team and a coach like Thibs could be what finally puts it all together for a playoff run.
• Space Jam 2 is coming and it will be starring a young upstart named LeBron James. You may remember him from Trainwreck. No, that was John Cena. The basketball player.

I can’t tell you what to do. But your friends and I have been talking and we’re worried about you. It’s been eight years, and you’re still talking about this. The boycotts, the Twitter meltdowns, the trips to Portland when they go up there to play. We normally wouldn’t get involved like this, but we feel we need to intervene. We know you’re capable of being happy. We’ve seen you happy before. We miss that side of you. We love you either way, but at the end of the day it’s hurting us all to see you like this. Just maybe check out the semifinals and see if any team speaks to you. If not, we can watch the lottery and the draft and try building something from the ground up. Looks like you could use a hobby anyway.

I like to think that I don’t fall victim to marketing. I don’t see a commercial for a pizza and then drop everything I’m doing to order a pie. Or I want see a trailer for a movie and then plan my weekend around the date at the end of it. This isn’t to say that I’m not a weak willed person, because holy shit. I am. But I don’t see an ad for something or hear some killer word of mouth and then instantly jump on the “take my money” bandwagon.

That being said. God dammit. I think I want an Apple Watch. It’s an internal debate. On one hand, nothing has made me feel like we’re in the future more than the prospect of having notifications and all sorts of sweet trackers on your watch. On the other, I get away with a lot by claiming I haven’t checked my phone. If I’m getting notifications on my wrist directly, then I have no excuse to say “oh, I must have missed that.” Yeah yeah, I’ve read the reviews and I know the battery life is supposed to last a day and the processor isn’t that fast and that I should surely wait for a second generation that should be coming sooner than I think. BUT THE ALL CAPS IN ME SAYS HAND IT OVER.

There’s an ALL CAPS side in all of us. Some of us do a great job of hiding it. But if you suppress it too much you turn into a bad person. But what do I know?

OTHER THINGS

Went on my trips. Both were super relaxing. I don’t really have that urge to go somewhere with the idea of needing to see everything. Google image search has made it super easy for me to see whatever I want. I don’t need to look off a cliff at an ocean that someone has as a desktop background. I go on vacation to get away from work. Drinks some beers with some good brothers and be genuinely surprised that strangers don’t find me nearly as endearing as they should.

Hawaii was great. The brewfest always seems to be the star of the show. It was March and the first beer I sought out was called Bad Santa because it had the highest alcohol volume. Happy Hours in Kona rule and I was able to do a lot of drinking on the cheap. Maybe I can renew this domain now.

Spring Training will echo that Happy Hour sentiment. We also took some serious advantage of Lyft promotional codes and did not have to pay a ton for our cab rides. We also have a fairly solidified plan for next year and may or may not have already made hotel reservations. 

PICKS

MUSIC: WALE – ALBUM ABOUT NOTHING

A lot of cool hip hop records have come out in the last month or so. Everyone has a hot take about the Kendrick Lamar record. I don’t mostly because every Kendrick Lamar album I’ve ever heard doesn’t make sense to me until about six months after it comes out. So I am going to go with Wale’s Album About Nothing. Bringing in Seinfeld for it obviously doesn’t hurt. But it’s not too long. The tracks are solid. It doesn’t feel dominated with Seinfeld clips and it’s been all around enjoyable.

TV: Better Call Saul

I’m not caught up all the way with this yet. But I’m very impressed with the entire show. I think a lot of people were not exactly sold on a spin off thinking it would either have too much or not enough fan service in it. I feel they have found a great balance and have really developed all of the characters in great ways. It’s really easy to get caught up in hype and forget the fact that these guys behind Breaking Bad really know how to make great TV shows.

That might be it for tonight. I have to hit the gym tomorrow. I want to update this more often. But we’ll see what happens.

When we think we have a good idea of what we want to do with our lives, we cut our teeth in different ways. That said, there was a point in my life where there was nothing I wanted to do more than to make a disgusting amount of money wearing a tie and selling cellular phones for Verizon Wireless. I loved wireless technology at the time, the product sold itself and it was a good opportunity for me to wear a tie like I had a real job.

At the time (this was probably 2007? I don’t remember, check my LinkedIn) big red wasn’t looking for any scrubby Joe 12 Pack out of community college, they were looking for people with experience. Not real life experience just cell phone sales experience of any type. Much like Vince Gilligan had to write for the X-Files before creating Breaking Bad (this is the exact same situation) I started my career in wireless sales with RadioShack.

So when I read the news this morning that RadioShack is on its way to a watery grave, I felt it was my duty as a former employee to give it a fitting send off. Something that means well, but will probably be forgotten about just past fourteen days.

My RadioShack journey was a strange one. It was right around the holidays and they were hiring seasonal help. My friend Cunningham had been working there for a while and recommended that I apply along with three of our other friends. One by one we all were hired. Before long our group of friends outnumbered previous store employees. 4-3.

This was my first actual retail job that wasn’t a fast food chain, and it was at this time when I realized that most human beings are impossible to help let alone interact with. Something I thought would change when I got a job in Seattle or with a better company or in a better part of town. Turns out it doesn’t. People are the worst.

Here is a quick, top of my head list of things I remember enjoying while working for RadioShack

• During the holidays, we had about five copies this 3 Doors Down DVD that was marked down to $2.97 and we had a contest to see who could sell the most. I sold 3 at one point using the pitch “Hey ma’am, does your grandson like ROCK music?”
• There was a pizza joint nearby called Pizza Time and we had a pen that advertised a delivery special. Any time any of us would call, we would make sure that we let them know that the deal came from the pen.
• At the height of the Nintendo DS popularity, we had multiple Mario Kart sessions in the store.
• Cunningham had set the Direct TV DVRs to auto-switch to ECW on Tuesday nights infuriating the manager.
• Everyone dropping everything we were doing and buying the returning Italian Chicken Sandwich from Burger King.

I eventually did move on to Verizon Wireless to try my hand over there and spent a little over two years there (about six months away from my 401k vesting, but I digress) and had some great memories too. But you never really forget your first.

OTHER THINGS

I spent eight weeks on the keto diet and ended up with some pretty baller results. I spend the following week as a cheat week and I ended that week a lot lighter than I thought I would. Still weird feeling gross at the weight I’m at.

Speaking of feeling gross, I’m telling anyone that will listen that I ate 6 cheeseburgers at Leonard’s house during the Super Bowl. Nobody was watching me.

Doing some traveling in the next few months. Heading down to Kona, HI for the Kona Brewfest in mid March. Then a few days later, I’m heading to Peoria for Spring Training. In July there is a Las Vegas trip coming which is being known affectionately as SOLVT 2015. We’ve got about ten good brothers committed to going, we’ve compiled a google doc, and it is going to be a lot of organized fun.

I am by no means a taste-maker.

People don’t ask me what I’m into and that’s fine. To be frank, I am not crazy about saying more than a paragraph to most people. Some find this standoffish and insincere but those who truly know me know that’s how I am. There’s no ill will, I’m just wired for one-liners (write that down)

There are some things that have caught my eye lately from all different aspects and I bought this domain through wordpress so I may as well use these as some sort of place to jot a few of these thoughts down.

I am going to try to throw some up here at least once a week. But sometimes I get busy, dogg. Which brings me to the first thing.

Personal: I’ve been using the word “dogg” lately
I don’t hate this, but I also don’t like it. I’ve surveyed few on it, they’ve noticed the word use but haven’t thrown stones at me about it yet.

TV: Episodes is something
I drunkenly stumbled upon a subscription to showtimes on demand service and on an admiral nelson induced whim, I decided to check out a few episodes of Episodes.
For the uninformed, Episodes is a show on Showtime that features a married couple of sitcom writers that are selected by a Hollywood studio to take their successful UK show to the US. After a comedy of errors, the network asks them to cast Matt LeBlanc (Joey from Friends he plays himself) to star in their show. It’s really great and even though I have no actual experience, it’s exactly what I would imagine Hollywood is like.

Music: Fireworks – Oh, Common Life
I SLEPT ON THIS RECORD WHEN IT CAME OUT. You can’t come out with something that sounds like this in summer. This album is perfect for the end of the year. It’s that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach that you probably didn’t do enough with the past year. These songs pack a huge punch that you feel blindsided by. None of that is a bad thing, it’s a good thing. We all have those records in our collection that we go back and revisit even when you’re in a good spot and it just consumes you. It’s strangely therapeutic.

Random: NJPW – Wrestlekingdom 9
Holy shit. If you haven’t tuned out yet, this is where you probably will, but last night a few friends and I went to another friends house (Garage Mahal) and watched this Japanese Wrestling Pay Per View event. I’ve spent a lot of my life being a fan of the WWE and if I can be honest for a minute, there’s definitely an episode of Monday Night Raw running on my television as I type this. But it’s so weird to see a product that feels so much more polished in ring. It’s like eating McDonalds Cheeseburgers your entire life and then having a nice steak one night. Once you taste blood, wine is too thin. Tremendous performances and I hope that there will be some shows like this stateside in the future.

COOL.

So these are some things I’ve been into the past week or so, let’s see if I keep this up. It could be a fun little project we’ll see where it goes.