DOWN WITH PANTS!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Keep up the good work you 100 car length stopping distance leaving bitches,

I was thinking that maybe I would like to write for Snackiepoo's new Snackie Teevee blog. All the cool kids are doing it. But then I read Karl and Kapgar's list of shows that they watch and started thinking about my own list and realized that I may not be qualified. As you can see, I don't really watch that much network TV...

Sunday
Nothing

Monday
Nothing

Tuesday
Gilmore Girls - if they aren't complaining too much
Veronica Mars - Only show that I won't miss, ever.

Wednesday
Nothing

Thursday
My Name Is Earl
The Office
Scrubs
30 Rock

Friday
Nothing

Saturday
Nothing

I mainly watch cable TV or syndicated shows. Almost every night I watch...

The Simpsons reruns - although they only show, like five different episodes anymore
Seinfeld reruns
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
The first 15 minutes of Late Night With Conan O'Brien
Bits and pieces of whatever sporting event is on
Sportscenter - at night and in the morning before work

Some other shows that I will watch if I run past them surfing around...

Project Runway and Top Chef - I watch these when they are new
What Not To Wear
How Do I Look?
My Super Sweet Sixteen
Best Week Ever
Any of the shows about really weird and cool houses
Mythbusters

And that's pretty much it. Yet somehow I fill the entire evening watching TV. I've decided that I need to cut the syndicated shows (Simpsons and Seinfeld) and all the surfing (except Best Week Ever and Mythbusters) out of my diet. When there isn't something new to watch, I need to turn the TV off and either do some blogging or some reading or go to the gym.

Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

I know some of you don't like it when I talk about sports, but this pisses me off so much, I can't believe it and I just have to say something about it...

My hometown Seattle Supersonics of the NBA and the Seattle Storm of the WNBA were sold last year by Mr. Starbucks himself, Howard Schultz, to a group of Oklahoma City businessmen who have been on the lookout for a basketball team to move to OKC once the Hornets move back to New Orleans permanently.

Of course these businessmen claim they want to give it a go in Seattle but are pushing for massive subsidies from the state for a new arena in suburban Seattle. Sentiment against public financing is very strong and the proposal that the team recently sent to the legislature for consideration has been roundly criticized as too reliant on citizen's tax dollars.

Their proposal was, at best, a joke. At worst, it was one of the biggest slaps in the face that Seattle sports fans have ever had to endure. Basically, it is an unsupportable proposal that doesn't have a chance in hell to pass and the Sonics are pretty much certain to be gone within the next two years unless the state caves in yet again to the uber-wealthy (see Safeco Field, which was defeated by voters but passed by the state later that year).

As if all of this backstabbing and drama wasn't enough to hate these out-of-towner owners (and Schultz for selling out the city that made him rich), today The Stranger's Josh Feit dug up the fact that a couple of the principal owners of the Sonics/Storm made major contributions in 2004 and 2005 to Americans United to Preserve Marriage, an anti-gay foundation run by conservative whack-job and former candidate for president, Gary Bauer.

I think I'm going to be sick. As much as I never wanted to see the Sonics move, combine their attempted rape of Washington taxpayers with this bigotry and I am now fully prepared to let them go to Oklahoma. Just sell the Storm to a local owner (what self-respecting Storm fan can support this ownership group now?) and get the fuck out.

If somehow the state does buckle and gives them the money to stay, as long as these two continue to be a part of the ownership group, I cannot and will not contribute even one cent to either the Sonics or the Storm and I will not vote for any state representative that voted to approve their proposal.

I sure am glad that I am no longer on the payroll.

As the husband of a Cornell University alum, let me just say how disappointed I was when I surfed over to The Cornell Daily Sun and didn't find any mention of the funniest line uttered all night on network television. So I went ahead and took the liberty of creating the front page that I was hoping to see...

Watch your back Editor in Chief, Erica Blair Fink '07 - Once the Cornell community sees what I have done with your quaint little newspaper, you're going to have a mutiny on your hands. If you want to avoid such a revolt, please feel free to use my layout in the next edition.

Also, to the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, if you don't use the the line "right on fat ballz...that's a good program!" on the cover of your promotional materials, you truly are missing a great opportunity to connect with today's youth.

I'm surprised I'm saying this, but 30 Rock rocks. Go Big Red!

Today at lunch we somehow ended up on the topic of Alaska and I was describing to my Latina co-worker, whose English isn't perfect (it's pretty good, she just is missing some words from her vocabulary), how moose just randomly wander around downtown and through the neighborhoods in Fairbanks.

Second day in a row that I need to warn you about spoilers. Massive Veronica Mars spoiler at the end...

1. I hope you had a good time tonight celebrating Fat Tuesday even if you aren't in New Orleans or, better yet, Rio De Janeiro. We enjoyed ourselves with a big fat steak while I drank myself silly with Pepsi and Mountain Dew.

"Why did we celebrate with meat and carbonated beverages" you ask? For Lent Death? decided she is going to go vegetarian and not to be outdone, I decided to give up soda. I drink a lot of soda, so it could be a difficult 40 days for me. Maybe I'll just start drinking beer instead. Yeah, that is a good way to replace the four to five sodas I drink each day.

By the way, we are not Catholic, just in need of some discipline in our lives. Is anybody else giving up anything for Lent?

2. Hey Los Angeles area DWP!ers - got any plans for April 1st? I didn't think so. Why not head down to The Grove at 3rd and Fairfax (by the Farmer's Market) at 6:00 PM with an ass whoopin' pillow for the big Pillow Fight Club pillow fight. I'll be saving some feathers for you. And no, I don't think this is an April Fool's joke, it's for real. Check out these pictures from the San Francisco pillow fight last week.

3. I played basketball at my gym for the first time yesterday. I played with a bunch of black guys who play together quite a bit and are pretty damned good. The guy that was guarding me told me straight up that he wasn't really going to guard me because they would never, ever pass me the ball. Well, they finally did pass me the ball and I took a wide open jumper from the top of the key that I thought I would make no problem. Unfortunately the guy who was guarding me must have been able to jump 15 feet in the air because he managed to come block me all the way from the baseline, gather up the ball and put in the game winning layup. That most likely was the last shot I'll ever have the opportunity to take at the gym.

4. I keep meaning to respond to some of the comments about my blogrolling habits, but I keep forgetting so I'll do it here while I'm thinking about it. I don't use my blogroll as a way to read other people's blogs, just a way to recommend blogs to others who happen to come here. I usually read blogs through Bloglines but since my employers are now blocking Bloglines, I'm gradually making the switch to Google Reader. Unfortunately, I still can't visit any of your sites at work to comment but at least I finally have something to read during the downtime.

5. Ok, I warned you, Veronica Mars spoiler in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

What an incredible episode. This season has lacked some of the urgency of the first two seasons, but this episode definitely ranks right up there on the exciting scale. So much happened, nearly every single second was full of suspense, foreshadowing, hilarity, action...whatever. And next week's episode looks equally as good. Too bad it's the last episode before the Pussycat Dolls take over for six weeks and it very well could be the last serialized episode of, by far, my favorite television show ever.

On a sad note...R.I.P. Sheriff Don Lamb. You will be missed, maybe not by the residents of Neptune, but definitely by all of us devoted VM fans. It's good to see Keith back as sheriff, but it's hard to see that bumbling idiot go.

If you want to see Bridge To Terabithia but are scared that I will ruin it, here is your quick spoiler alert.

Let me start this off by saying that growing up, I never read the 1977 novel by Katherine Pearson so I can not attest to how well the film Bridge To Terabithia does at sticking to the book. And having never read the book, I let the trailers shape my first impressions of the film. I expected a film with less of a real-world plot and more fantasy. Luckily my wife had read the book as a child and properly warned me of the basic premise of the film...loner boy meets loner girl and become great friends and spend their time after school in the woods where they have created their own fantasy world, but loner girl is killed one day and loner boy has to come to grips. I realized as soon as we sat down that most of the parents in the theater did not do their homework and subsequently walked away with upset and confused children. Now many parents are upset with how Disney supposedly misled them and they are taking their own failures out on an otherwise wonderful movie.

Admittedly, the trailers and much of the advertising for the movie make it out to be a fantasy within the realm of The Chronicles of Narnia (that's what I originally thought it would be like). The Cronicles of Narnia it is not. Instead, at it's core, it is a very real story of Jesse and Leslie (played ably by Josh Hutcherson and the bright shining light of the film, AnnaSophia Robb) that deals with issues as complex as isolation, fantasy, religion, love and death in the real world. It is an exceptional film that presents these themes as delicately and with more grace than most similar children's dramas usually do.

But it's not a film for really small children who will only be bored and unaware to what is going on. It isn't for children whose parents that are unable to talk to their kids and explain and explore what they just saw. It also isn't for lazy parents who don't bother to research the movies they are taking their kids to see. And it isn't for parents that want to shelter their kids from these issues as long as they can. Or, in other words, it isn't a film for people afraid to do any actual parenting.

These are the people who are actively complaining and protesting against this film just as these were the same people who made the novel one of the biggest targets of library censors. But with just a click of the mouse or, ironically enough, a library card these parents could have made an informed decision as to whether or not this would be the movie for them to take their impressionable children to this weekend. If the trailer on television was the only research that they did, then they have nobody to blame for their children's questions, comments and tears but themselves.

I'm not a parent yet and maybe it isn't my place to say, but I think that doing this kind of research is a very important but very easy part of parenting that helps separate the good parents from the bad ones. If parents can't do these simple things to inform themselves, then they have to suck it up and talk to their kids about what they saw. If they are unable or unwilling to do this, they need to face facts and admit that they are indeed crappy parents who are willing to risk their children's emotional development because of their inability to do their job.

But instead of looking in the mirror many have blamed the trailers and unjustly put down a beautiful and touching movie. Gullibility on the part of crummy parents isn't the fault of director Gabor Csupo, Pearson, Hutcherson, Robb, Disney or Walden Media. The value of this film shouldn't be judged by those unwilling to do their jobs as parents but should be judged based on it's merits and the opportunity it gives good parents to help their children learn some important life lessons.

I was checking my stats the other day, something that I do compulsively, and I noticed a new blog linking to The Sports Logo Pundit. It's been a long time since a blogger linked to The SLP. I get a lot of traffic through other non-blog sites, but there are very few blogs that link there, so naturally I was exited.

I usually will automatically link to you if you link to me so I checked out his site hoping to add him to my blogroll. It's a new site that hasn't been up for very long, but he is a long established blogger that had his old site go belly up. I guess he linked to me before and I think I even posted a comment, but I must have forgotten about him and never fully examined his site. One of the first things that I look at when reading a new blog is the sidebar and the blogroll, it gives a lot of good insight into what the blogger is all about.

I have a long standing policy of not linking to people who make it loud and clear that they are Republican and crazy conservative. You know the sidebars and blogrolls that I'm talking about. Full of conservative buttons and blogrolls linking to Drudge and big "Stop The ACLU" banners and whatnot.

I'm under no illusions that there is nobody reading my blogs from the complete other side of the spectrum politically, especially readers of my sports blog, and I don't care if my readers are Republican or not. But when it comes to promoting a blog to my readers, if I see those buttons, I usually just move on.

So when I came across this blog and his blogroll, the first two things that jumped out at me were the names Michelle Malkin (just barely a step down from Ann Coulter) and Olbermann Watch (a consvervative site bashing my favorite cable news host, Keith Olbermann). Normally, Michelle Malkin would be enough for me to hit the back button, but he also has links to The Huffington Post and A Work In Progress, both fairly liberal blogs. Color me completely confused.

I guess it was a bad joke about Al Franken running for office that ultimately made me decide not to give him a link, but I did debate long and hard about it. It just really bums me out that my blog has a fan that I cannot give love back to.

So what do you do? How do you decide who to link to or not to link to? Do you feel bad like I do when you can't justify linking back to somebody?

Valentine's Day. Let's be honest guys, if it didn't exist, we'd be just fine with that. I personally don't mind Valentine's Day, in fact I kind of like it, but then I don't have a particularly high maintenance wife and I have learned the hard way about the value of the card. Plus I really love my wife and I love to give her things, but I'm a terrible random gift giver so it's good to have a day that reminds me that I need to do better.

One thing I do hate, hate, hate about Valentine's Day is restaurants. We all know restaurant reservations fill up pretty quickly if you want to go somewhere nice. Such is the case this year, most of the decent Ventura places are full. But that's fine, because I didn't really want to go to any of them. Due to the special occasion, most restaurants now throw their menu out the window and prepare a special Valentine's Day three course meal and gouge you for every last penny. I'm sorry, but the one choice meal isn't something that I find appealing. I want to go to a restaurant on V-Day and have the normal menu but with a little bit of special embellishment, is that too much to ask?

Anyway, in the spirit of V-Day, here is a meme about my lovely wife and my wedding, courtesty of Avitable...

1. Where/how did you meet?
We met in high school. The first time we met was after a NTHS Drama production of some play when my dirtbag friend (a senior, I was a junior) invited my future wife and her friend (both freshmen) out to get some grub at Denny's (he was always trying to get with whatever freshman he could. Denny's? I didn't say he was smooth). We all went out and had dinner and that was pretty much it. I think I came off pretty good because I wasn't sleazy in any way.

2. How long have you known each other?
That was late 1993 so we have known each other for over 13 years.

3. How long after you met did you start dating?
About a year and a half. Our first official date was my senior prom.

4. How long did you date before you were engaged?
Nine years and two days, but we did the long distance thing for almost four years during college so it didn't seem like that long.

5. How long was your engagement?
One day less than one year.

6. How long have you been married?
Two years in May

7. What is your anniversary?
We started dating on May 6th, got engaged on May 8th and were married on May 7th so you can say that we have an anniversary weekend.

8. How many people came to your wedding reception?
Probably about 165 or so.

9. What kind of cake did you serve?
I think this is the one question I'm not sure about. I think it was a chocolate cake with a vanilla stripe in the middle. I'm fuzzy about what it tasted like because I don't think I had but what we fed to each other. I do remember clearly that it was white with yellow sunshines and red, yellow and orange flowers on the outside. Also, one of Death's "Moms" made a groom's cake that was shaped as sporting gear.

10. Where was your wedding?
The Lacey (Washington) Community Center, the reception was there as well. At first we didn't think to highly of it as a space probably because we went to a dance there once and it was so poorly decorated by our dance committee that we just assumed that it looked that bad. But it turned out to be just about the perfect place to have a wedding in the Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater metropolitan area.

11. What did you serve for your meal?
Olympia's Casa Mia catered our wedding and it was soooooo good. The cheese manicotti that they make is so rich and so good so we had to have it. We also had meatballs and chicken parm and all the other typical Italian stuff setup buffet style. Maybe I'm just saying this because I am biased since it was our wedding, but that it by far the best meal I've ever had at a wedding.

12. How many people were there in your bridal party?
Seven bridesmaids and four groomsmen. My wife is better at making friends.

13. Are you still friends with them all?
Yeah, although a couple of them we haven't been very good in keeping in touch with.

14. Did you or your spouse cry during the ceremony?
Oh yeah. I cried like a little baby and my crying made Death? cry and our officiant cried to the point that she had a hard time reading what we had prepared for her to read. All tears of joy of course. Damn, I'm getting teary eyed just typing this.

15. Most special moment of your wedding day?
When her mom walked her out early in the day so that we could do pictures. I imagined her looking beautiful in her dress, but I wasn't fully prepared for just how beautiful.

16. Any funny moments?
My vows got a pretty good laugh and overall with us and all of our friends and family equally being goofballs there were lots of funny moments. My 85 year-old grandpa drunk off his ass was pretty good too.

17. Any big disasters?
None. Only minor thing was that there was extremely bad traffic from Seattle and almost everybody coming down ran late. We held up the ceremony for almost 20 minutes but it wasn't a big deal.

18. Where did you go on your honeymoon?
Maui, or as I like to call it, heaven. Perfect.

19. How long were you gone?
A week.

20. If you were to do your wedding over, what would you change?
Spring for a better and more professional photographer. Our pictures turned out fairly mediocre. It was one of those things that we wanted but thought that he would do a good enough job that it wouldn't matter. Oh well.

21. What side of the bed do you sleep on?
Right.

22. What size is your bed?
Queen.

23. Greatest strength as a couple?
Our greatest attribute is that neither of us has any need for drama in our lives so no arguments or disagreements ever blow up into anything bigger than it needs to be. We seriously have never had a major fight. A few minor ones here and there but nothing that has lasted more than a couple hours tops.

24. Greatest challenge as a couple?
Decision making. I'm terrible at it and Death? just doesn't have the time to make the big decisions. I know that it frustrates her at times and I need to become more serious about the big things and start taking care of business.

25. Who literally pays the bills?
We both do. We still have our own bills and bank accounts.

26. What is your song?
We have lots and lots of songs, but none that I would consider "our song".

27. What did you dance your first dance to?
Ben Folds - "The Luckiest"

28. Describe your wedding dress?
Avitable's answer was too good, I can't improve on it.

29. What kind of flowers did you have at your wedding?
Calla Lily's were used quite a big as well as some roses and orange, red and yellow gerber daisies. They looked great.

30. Are your wedding bands engraved? What do they say?
Mine says "A loves B" and hers says "B loves A"

I just want to thank everybody for their kind words of support as I bared my face, chest and soul in yesterday's post. From Dutchy's "OMFG! Those first 2 pictures should be banned from the internet all together... They could cause serious mental damage!" to my own little brother's " You could have at least put your shirt back on for the photos", people couldn't have been kinder today.

Death? was working last night so she had yet to see me back to being baby-faced. Surprisingly, she stuck to her non-complimentary guns. All throughout the beard growing experience I asked her what she thought and every time she replied with "I don't have an opinion". That usually is a really bad, bad sign so I figured that shaving would elicit some kind of response. But the best that I got was an explanation about how she hates having my mustache hair go up her nose when we kiss. I guess I'll have to take that as a compliment.

My co-workers reactions were equally as kind. Adela, who doesn't speak great English and couldn't quite find the right word, said "you look weird", "you look strange", "you look...uhhhh" and finally after I suggested it, "you look different", which is what I think she was trying to say all along.

I would also like to acknowledge my little brother's astute observation that "...immediately following this post about not wanting to see your "own mug that much" you go ahead and post seven self portraits..." Yes, it's true. I thought about that right after I hit publish but at least it will cycle off of the page shortly.

By the way, my face is still fucking freezing.

Part 1: I have been growing my beard since early November now. Three and a half full months of growth have gone by and I am very surprised at the success that I have had growing it. My family has never been known for their great beards despite the fact that my dad has almost always tried to wear one and my previous attempts at mountain man-dom never came together. So this big bush on my face was sort of unexpected and turned out to be pretty cool.

But every good thing must come to an end and I feel like it's finally time to go back to my old, goateed self. But since I have a full face of hair for the first time in my life, I should experiment a little, have some fun, maybe come up with a new look.

The first thing to go is the mustache. I hate mustaches, I grew one last year and after seeing pictures of myself with it, I swear I will never grow one again on it's own. Plus, I really like the area above my upper lip. It sounds silly, but I think it is one of my best facial features. The results of taking off the mustache are predictably very Amish. Feel free to call me Jebediah, I suddenly feel like building a barn.

The Amish look definitely wasn't going to work for me, my hair isn't nearly gray enough yet. But my next move I had to debate about, should I go for mutton chops or try something a little more stylish? I decided to split the difference and go with the greaser sideburns, and thanks to my really bad hat hair, I think that I am pulling it off pretty well. It looks almost too good, could this be a new look for me? If I trim up that chin, I might have something going.

But before I could do the other side and see if this might be a good look for me, disaster hit. Well, not so much disaster as just an irritating delay. My razor ran out of batteries and now I'm having to charge the darn thing up. So as I sit here typing, one half of my face is greaser and the other half is still fully Amish.

So I think I will make some dinner (I sure as hell ain't going anywhere to get some) and let my razor charge itself up and I will be back a little later with Part 2 of Brandon Shaves!

Part 2: Finally, after a couple of hours of charging, my crummy razor has enough juice to continue on this amazing journey of shaving and discovery. The more I thought about the greaser look, the more I liked it, so I got rid of the remaining Amish, got out the guard and trimmed the the chin down and thought that maybe, just maybe, I had something going here.

Then I turned my head and realized that yes, from the side it looked pretty darn good, but from the front, not so much. My head was severely lopsided from straight on. Somehow one side was much bushier than the other and the tips of the sideburns didn't even come close to ending on the same plane.

Now this is always where I go wrong when I'm experimentally shaving. I try to get one side to match the other side, but then I go too far with one side so I have to trim up the other side and invariably, I mess that side up and have to go back to the other side and trim it until I get sick of this back and forth and lose my patience and just say "fuck it" and end up with 90210 sideburns.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've been sporting the 90210 since, well, since 90210 was big. But it does make me curious, what is the status of the sideburn? Is it still popular to wear them long? I've been wearing mine ear length for so many years now that I have lost touch with what's popular. Is the younger generation wearing theirs long anymore or have I become a dinosaur?

Wait. Don't answer that. I know that at age 29 I'm already a dinosaur, and it doesn't bother me. I'm looking forward to being a crotchety old man. But at least after a quick shave of three months worth of beard I no longer look like a dinosaur. In fact, clean cut, I look ten years younger. I look like the young, dorky, hairy chested, big foreheaded man that I am proud to be today.

That being said, my face sure is cold. Godammit anyway!

If you haven't noticed, I'm taking a break from Down With Pants! I don't know when I'll start posting on here again. Hopefully this blog funk I'm in won't last too long, but who knows.