DOWN WITH PANTS!

Since this seems to be sacrilege week here at Down With Pants! and Dave mentioned "flaming gay" in the context of yesterday's post, I thought why not talk about the man who seems to get all sorts of dudes to go gay for him. That's right! It's Jesus!

When you watch TBN, and I do watch a lot of TBN, you can't help but notice all the guys that are ridiculously gay for Jesus. He is all these guys can talk about. They sound like a gaggle of middle school chicks talking about their latest crush.

Jesus said this and Jesus said that. Jesus died for our sins. I wish Jesus would just swoop down and save me from my wretched life. Isn't Jesus sooooo dreamy. Will you find out if Jesus would go to the Sadies Hawkins dance with me? Me and Jesus are going to marry and live together in a Palestinian free Israel and he will have a great job as king on earth and I'll just sit around the house and praise him and eat Bon Bons.

I might go gay for Jesus. I especially would go gay for Jesus if he was wearing that sweet orange around his head (where the fuck did I find this picture?). But we would have to have an open relationship. Jesus is cute and all, but me and Buddha have a good thing going and you wouldn't believe what Brahma can do with those four heads of his.

Today while checking out the basketball team pages of some small colleges in the Seattle area I came across this mission statement regarding Puget Sound Christian College...

To develop in each student, through the entire curricular and co-curricular programming, a fervent, God-conscious Christian experience kindled with the flame of lifestyle evangelism and missionary passion.

The first thing I had to ask myself was...Huh? Then I read it again, and again, and again, and again and I still haven't really figured it out. I think I get the gist of the statement, but I'm not so sure I understand the individual parts of the sentence. So lets go ahead and break it down.

1. through the entire curricular and co-curricular programming - This apparently means everything that the college does. Seeing that this is a mission statement for a college, this portion could easily be dropped and not be missed.

2. fervent - According to Merriam-Webster this means very hot or exhibiting or marked by great intensity of feeling. Also known as zealous.

3. God-conscious Christian experience - Is there any other kind of Christian experience? I guess this is kind of a shot at all of the Christian colleges that don't require a "God-conscious" experience. Those bastards! Seriously though, I am God-conscious. I use His name all the time when having a "Christian experience".

4. kindled - Of course you can't just throw a log onto the God-conscious Christian experience. You have to slowly get it going with...

5. the flame of lifestyle evangelism - Lifestyle evangelism? What does that even mean? Whatever it is, it sounds like a big hurking log, not a little bit of kindling. Doesn't Lifestyle Evangelism kind of sound like a condom?

6. missionary passion - Oh boy! How I love me some missionary passion! Finally something in this mission statement I can get behind. Well, maybe not. That wouldn't be missionary passion would it?

So after further review I have decided to amend the Puget Sound Christian College mission statement to...

To develop in each student a very hot, God-conscious "Christian experience" kindled with the flame of missionary passion while using Lifestyle Evangelisms.

Now that is much, much better!

I owe league dues to my buddy Joshua for fantasy football and to the league commissioner of my fantasy basketball league. I don't know why I haven't paid these dues yet, other than I have an unhealthy (or healthy, depending on how you look at it) hatred of paying bills. But I have been threatened by unprecedented fines in my fantasy basketball league and I feel bad that Joshua paid my dues for football so I finally broke down and paid. So as not to feel the wrath of Donnie, here is proof that the checks are in the mail...

That was both painful and liberating. Nothing like taking the burden of a debt off of your shoulders. If my banker is reading, I want you to make sure that nothing STOPS these checks PAYMENT when they try to cash them.

Does it make me a bad American to admit that I didn't spend even one red cent today? I didn't go to a store, I didn't riot for an XBox 360, I didn't kill for a new Elmo. I just finished the dishes from last night's Thanksgiving dinner, watched football, watched Tremors (what a great movie!) and watched the Washington Huskies absolutely crush Loyola Marymount in basketball.

I finally got out of the house for a few minutes when I brought Death? a plate of leftovers at the hospital since she is on call tonight. After that it has been dinner, TV, blogging, and working on a new podcast. To me, it was a very successful day of not contributing to our country's economic prosperity.

For the last hour and a half I have had to listen to my downstairs neighbor, Trixie (as we like to call her) and her boy toy fight. This isn't the first time this has happened, in fact it happens quite often. But tonight it was taken to a new, disturbing level.

The fighting wasn't that bad. Although, if my neighbors are going to fight, I want it to be a knock down, drag out, you fucked my sister kind of fight rather than the psycho babble that these two were spouting at each other. "Ohhhh, you're just mad because you don't understand what it's like to have a kid! You're mad because you can't understand why I have been mourning my father for the past year! You can't understand me..." Boo fucking hoo.

But the fighting is pretty much par for the course. What killed me was that after about 45 minutes, they started playing music very loudly. So loud that I could make out the song "Crush" by the Dave Matthews Band and the voices of both Trixie and her boy toy singing at the top of their lungs. I haven't heard anyone belt out a DMB song like that since my college days. It was awful then and it is doubly awful now.

After about five minutes of more Dave Matthews, but luckily no singing, the music was turned off and the fighting began again. It only just barely stopped and the laughing began. A scary sign that Dave might not be too far behind.

Maybe you don't understand the concept of the escalator, so let me explain. An escalator is a lot like stairs but the trick is that they move and you have to step off of them when you get to the top, there isn't really anything else you can do.

But, and here's the rub, when some stupid bitch who can't read a simple and clearly marked sign that reads NO STROLLERS!!! at the bottom stops where you have to step off because she has nearly dumped her baby out of the stroller, one has to take evasive action to get around said bitch or risk plowing right through them possibly injuring baby, bitch and themselves.

Since I know how an escalator works, imagine my surprise when all I saw was a rapidly disappearing escalator, a wall of bitch ass and a nearly upside down stroller where the escalator was rapidly disappearing. You were lucky that I was able to shake off the shock and quickly squeeze my way around your negligent butt so as not to splatter all of y'all.

But you're right, I'm really sorry I didn't say excuse me. Like you said, you were the one with the stroller there. It was really rude of me not to take the time to be polite while attempting not to run over a sorry excuse for a mom and her baby at the top of the escalator. You have every right to be upset at us.

Like hell. Don't you dare have the nerve to curse me and my wife out because of your rampant negligence and idiocy. Go get yourself some hooked on phonics tapes, a half a brain, some soap for that filthy fucking mouth of yours and a map to the nearest elevator and then I will start being polite. But until then, you had better watch out for me because the next time, I might not go around.

Happy Thanksgiving you shitty mommy!

I feel like doing a meme tonight. I don't know why. I don't really do memes, but I just have a hankering to do one. So here are the first 20 songs that come up when I push shuffle on my iPod (thanks to Laura for the idea)...

1. Sleepwalkin' - Modest Mouse, from Building Nothing Out of Something
2. Nothing In This World Can Stop Me Worryin' Bout That Girl - The Kinks, from the Rushmore Soundtrack
3. Papa Was A Rodeo - The Magnetic Fields, from 69 Love Songs Volume 2
4. Bone Dry - Dub Narcotic Sound System, from the Bone Dry EP
5. Move Somethin' - Talib Kweli, from Reflection Eternal
6. Wig In A Box - Polyphonic Spree, from Wig In A Box
7. Am I Worth You? - De La Soul, from AOI: Bionix
8. B.O.B. - Outkast, from Stankonia
9. The Corn Rocket - Southern Culture On The Skids, from Liquored Up and Lacquered Down
10. Smooth Criminal - Alien Ant Farm, from ANThology
11. Howwhywuz, Howwhyam - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, from Devil's Night Out
12. Paragraph President - Blackalicious, from Blazing Arrow
13. Kung Fu - Ash, from 1977
14. Move On - Mike Doughty, from Future Soundtrack for America
15. My Mood Swings - Elvis Costello, from The Big Lebowski Soundtrack
16. Expo '86 - Death Cab For Cutie, from Transatlanticism
17. Spots - Pond, by Pond
18. Me And Julio Down By The School Yard - Paul Simon, from Negotiations And Love Songs 1971-1986
19. Motivation - Sum 41, from All Killer No Filler
20. Souljacker Part 1 - Eels, from Souljacker

A pretty solid set of music right there. I'm amazed there weren't any repeat artists. I have so many Outkast songs on my iPod (they have so many good songs, it's hard to cut any out) that it seems like they come up almost every other song which is fine by me.

Last night I was adding local college basketball teams to my links section and came across the Ventura College page and noticed a very big man in the back row...

After a double take and further examination of the picture to see if maybe he was standing on a chair, I clicked on the roster link and discovered Sun Ming-Ming, a 7-8, 360 pound freshman for the Pirates.

UPDATE...Thanks to Cammo who pointed out that this is the Sun Ming-Ming and thanks to my typing skills I found out a lot about this Ventura College behemoth and is a very interesting story.

Sun Ming-Ming had a lot of buzz around him when he entered the NBA draft last season. Despite his 7-8 frame, he went undrafted mainly because he had virtually no stamina and no speed.

It was later discovered that Sun had a tumor on his pituitary gland that needed to be removed to not only help him with his stamina but also to slow the release of growth hormone, a problem that would probably be fatal if not treated.

He had surgery to remove the tumor on September 27th and everything seems to have gone really well. Now that his life has been saved he can resume playing basketball and see if his game will be positively affected by the surgery. He wasn't able to even keep his arms up for long periods without getting tired. Hopefully these issues have been corrected. If it has, he will dominate the community college leagues down here and should become an NBA prospect again.

I'm definitely rooting for him. His story is so fascinating. He is from a poor Chinese family who couldn't even afford the right size shoes so he had to wear small ones that hurt the development of his feet. He is tall because of a tumor that eventually would have killed him, which is the ultimate mixed blessing. His surgery cost over $100,000, which he did not have, but thanks to a large loan, donations and the help of his agent he was able to get the surgery. He is in a massive amount of debt but at least he is now healthy and able to pursue his dream. And he can dunk without jumping! How cool is that?

He will be an interesting story to follow this season and that story will be played out about a half mile from my house at Ventura College. I think I can probably make the long trek to the gym to see a couple of games. Go Sun Ming-Ming and go Pirates!

As I mentioned before, we made a trip up the California coast this weekend and had a great time exploring the area. Here are ten things about said trip...

1. Hearst Castle is even more amazing than I expected. If you have ever been to Disneyland you have seen how ever single inch of the property is themed. Hearst Castle is just like that, but with art and gold instead of cartoons. It is absolutely gorgeous and opulent to the extreme. I would have given my right arm for an invitation to hang with old W.R.

2. Morro Bay isn't a typical California resort town. It is cheesy tourist rather than upscale boutique. Although I don't care for cheesy tourist that much, it was refreshing to be in a town like that away from the rich yuppies that frequent the boutique cities up and down the coast.

3. Don't you hate it when you have a really shitty meal on vacation? We had an awful lunch on Saturday (how do you mess up fish and chips or chili?) and I felt bad about it the rest of the day. Especially since we discovered the amazing amount of tasty options up the road in Cambria.

4. We made up for the shitty lunch by having an amazing dinner at The Sow's Ear in Cambria. Death? had one of the best Filet Mignons I have ever tasted and I had Macaroni and Cheese with chicken and andouille sausage and we shared an awesome plate of brie, almonds, bread and apples. I highly recommend The Sow's Ear if you are in the area.

5. I love driving through rural areas in the dark when it is clear and there is a full moon. There is something about being on a highway by yourself when all you can see is the outline of the mountains in the distance and the highway in front of you. If you can find a radio station playing old blues or jazz or something soft like that it is even better.

6. Speaking of radio, one of the radio stations was giving away a trip to see one of the weirdest concert lineups ever. Metallica is opening up for the Rolling Stones in San Francisco tomorrow night (and last night). What's next? I heard that Snoop Dog will be opening for Garth Brooks on his Wal-Mart tour.

7. Do I suddenly like wine? We did a little wine tasting around Paso Robles on Sunday. Typically when we go wine tasting Death? drinks and I drive mainly because I don't like wine. But I did some tastings at a couple of places and really enjoyed the majority of what I drank. Man, I am getting old.

8. I peed in earth's greatest urinal located at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.

9. We saw the ultimate pair of Uggs on a 40 year-old woman who was attempting to look 18 and failing miserably. I hate Uggs with a passion. Why anyone would wear them, especially in California, is beyond me. Uggs have got to go! Now!

10. 75 degrees at the coast and 80 degrees inland on November 13th. I guess this is the reason people live in California. Long live the Central Coast!

First of all, I want to apologize for the lack of posts last week. Now that I have been keeping myself busy with basketball and softball the weeks go very fast and then at the end of the week I look back and realize I didn't do any meaningful writing. So again, I apologize and I hope to do better this week.

Death? for only the third or fourth time in the last four months had an entire weekend off from the hospital. So we took advantage of it and headed north to the central coast to see Hearst Castle, do some wine tasting and explore the area (where we found a giant chess board, pictured above). More about our weekend tomorrow, but now I am off to watch the second episode of the Boondocks.

I don't know why but when I was leaving Von's (Safeway for all of you normal people) tonight I was struck with a profound sadness. I interrupted the automatic door slowly closing itself just before it was completely closed. It dutifully opened up for me, but it whined in a way that made feel really sorry for it. All it wanted to do was have it's two doors come together and it worked so hard to get there but I had to come along and ruin it. I felt like such an asshole.

P.S....Oh what a bummer. The Kings lost to the Red Wings for the second time this season, I think. This time in overtime but before the shootout. Nice work Machelle and David...

There are a whole bunch of things on my mind tonight including the California elections, French rioting, the Boondocks debut last night, the crappiness of Chicken Little and most importantly, lesbian cheerleaders. But I'm lazy so I just found a picture of some graffiti I saw earlier this year. He, he...it says Schlong!

Sweeps are upon us and The West Wing kicked it off tonight with a live debate between the two candidates, Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits - who Death? loves because he is a fellow Cornell alum and he is really cute) and Arnold Vinnick (Alan Alda - who I think is really cute, grrrr).

Now I have to preface this by saying that I am a big West Wing fan, even during the past two years when the show has fallen off, and I am a flaming liberal. Despite these two facts, I found this episode to be the biggest stinker in the West Wing's otherwise fine history. It was dull, it was contrived, it was poorly acted, it was too one sided and it was just plain lame. I was more entertained by the toe that I stubbed this morning and may have broken (you should see it, it is nasty).

I will give NBC credit for doing something different but I just kind of feel robbed of a normal episode by this snoozefest. Somehow they managed to make a debate even more boring despite the fact that it was supposed to be "real" after throwing out the rules in the beginning, an idea that seemed so contrived and ridiculous that I let out a big exasperated sigh as soon as it happened.

And although I hate to say this, I will agree that there was a strong liberal bias on this show. Matt Santos obviously won the debate and made Vinnick look pretty bad in doing so. All of the good points made were on liberal issues and all of the conservative points sounded extremely sinister and evil (which they are).

There were points made that had nothing to do with the previous storylines of the West Wing. When Matt Santos asked Vinnick to take the pledge to never go to war over oil, I cringed. This is not an issue in the Bartlett White House. It never has been. It made no sense in the context of the series.

I was happy to see all of the liberal points being made because they are right. And I especially loved the defense of the word liberal (I have always been proud to be liberal). But I expected more of a balance and more drama and more controversy.

I know where they are heading with this. Santos was behind by a major amount going into the debate and this should even it up. But this was a cheap and overly boring way to get the story back in line. I expect a lot more from the West Wing. Maybe my hopes are too high.

Tonight I attended one of the most highly anticipated high school football games in Ventura County this season between the crosstown rivals Saint Bonaventure Seraphs and Ventura Cougars. The entire city has been buzzing about this game for the past couple of weeks and it was widely predicted that this could be one of the greatest high school games to be played in this area this year, maybe even this decade, maybe even this century. This game featured so many stories that you couldn't help but be excited, even if you are a transplant who has no affiliation to either school.

The game featured the huge public school (Ventura) against the small Catholic prep school (Saint Bonaventure) who are huge rivals in every sport. Saint Bonaventure is a football powerhouse having won 18 straight and 89 of the last 92 games. Ventura is always a pretty good football team but has always played second fiddle to the Seraphs including two losses last year.

Both teams came into the game undefeated at 8-0 (3-0 in conference) ranked #1 and #2 in the region featuring explosive offenses that average more than 45 points a game. The team's quarterbacks, Matt Evans for Saint Bonaventure and Lee Mondol for Ventura, are both seniors who have been lifelong best friends. Both teams feature numerous players that will be playing division one college football next season.

The nearly 7,000 fans in attendance were hyped into a frenzy ready for the game of the year. The stage was set for an amazing football game. Unfortunately, what we got was the ass whooping of the year, or maybe the decade, maybe even the century.

Saint Bonaventure jumped down the throats of the Cougars immediately posting 30 points in the first seven minutes of play, 37 points in the first quarter and 47 in the first half. They were incredible shredding the poor Ventura secondary on every pass. They looked like a college team playing a middle school squad. I left at halftime when the score was 47-7 and the final score was eventually 60-14.

So the game didn't exactly live up to the hype. Saint Bonaventure was just way too good for the Cougars. But it appears that these two teams will meet again later this year in the playoffs and you can bet that both teams will have learned from this slaughtering. Maybe that will be the game of the year, decade or century.

I just finished downloading one of the greatest hip-hop albums to ever come out of the Pacific Northwest. Now granted, there haven't been very many hip-hop albums to come out of the PNW, but still, Sir Mix A-Lot's 1998 debut SWASS is a forgotten classic that deserves a spot in everybody's collection.

SWASS opens with Buttermilk Biscuits, one of two songs (the other is track 11, Square Dance Rap) featuring a high pitched, comedic sounding Mix A-Lot that originally pigeonholed him as a joke rapper but was a fun and different sound that got people interested.

But then you move on to a straight forward, old school rap song - Posse On Broadway, arguably one of the greatest songs ever written about Seattle and still to this day an anthem for all of us kids who grew up in and around Seattle. It gave me, an Olympia boy who wasn't very familiar with the big city other than the Kingdome, a quick tour around the town and introduced me for the first time to Dick's Drive-In.

Track four is the title cut SWASS which is a simple, boastful song that has the hook "don't you wish your boyfriend was SWASS like me?" This hook has been resurrected this summer with the Pussycat Dolls awful Don't Cha, but instead uses the lyrics "don't cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me?" The great thing about the Mix A-Lot song was we had no freaking idea was SWASS was. I still don't. That's what makes it so damn good and the Pussycat Dolls rip-off so offensive.

The next track is Rippin' and that's exactly what it does. This is Mix A-Lot at his rhyming and rapping best. Farther along in the disc comes Bremelo, and for anybody who has ever known anyone from Bremerton or even been to Bremerton, this song is a blessing giving us something to laugh at them about for the rest of our lives.

SWASS has a couple of stinkers and there is no doubt that, especially today, some of Mix A-Lot's rhymes sound corny. But every song has its own personality and quirks and each song conveys what Mix A-Lot was all about. Having fun, clocking dollars, wearing gold, Dick's hamburgers and ripping on Bremelos. What more could you ask for?

Many of you will recall the painful confession that I made last month in which I admitted to striking out twice in slow-pitch softball. Since that day my softball game has come a long way. Unfortunately it has come a long way to make no improvement leading me to nearly have a nervous breakdown last night about the loss of all of my once barely there athletic prowess after perhaps the worst softball game of my life.

I was never an athlete. I never lifted weights, I never ran, I never played on any high school teams, I just never had any interest. But I could at least hold my own on any court you put me on. I played a lot of pickup basketball, I played on numerous softball teams, I played intramural sports in college regularly. I kept myself busy athletically and typically performed at a pretty good level.

Working in baseball and working night jobs for the past five or six years I stopped playing sports. Softball was out because I worked most of the time. I moved around a lot and never found pickup basketball games. I discovered a lot of different kinds of foods that I loved and ate them until I peaked out at around 325 pounds or more. My athletic prowess was gone. I couldn't run, I couldn't shoot a basketball and I couldn't hit a softball.

Skip forward to today, I have lost a good deal of the weight. I, over the past year and a half, have started lifting weights and using the elliptical trainer for cardio for the very first time in my life. I am stronger and in better shape than I probably ever have been including high school and the first couple of years of college. I still have a long way to go to consider myself athletic but I am proud of where I am at in comparison to where I once was.

So why am I playing so damn bad on the softball field? Why haven't I been able to get myself back into the swing of things (no pun intended)? Why am I suddenly the worst player on the field? Am I over the hill at the ripe old age of 28?

I don't have any answers for this. Last night and all of today I was pretty down in the dumps. All I could think about was how bad I played and how I may have lost my athletic prowess forever. If you lose it once, can you ever get it back?

But I stopped my moping around and got right back up on the horse tonight. I went to the batting cages and hit for a half an hour totally breaking down my swing and rebuilding it from the ground up until I was absolutely crushing the ball by the end. I also taught myself some breathing exercises to calm myself down at the plate and I am confident that tomorrow night I can regain my game. This may sound excessive for rec-league softball that is just supposed to be fun, but I don't have fun if I suck that bad. For me to have a good time, I have to get better.

I also played basketball with some people from Death?'s hospital and was pleasantly surprised that I played extremely well. I expected to be run off the court within the first few minutes. I haven't run a full court game in at least two years but we played four games and I could have kept playing. This was a very good barometer for how far I've come.

So from down in the dumps to confident it was quite a roller coaster day. It is possible that my athletic prowess is back and in full force. I have a softball game tomorrow night to test this theory and my new swing out.