Outside of Friday night, I had quite a busy weekend. Saturday “the man” was coming out to replace the hot water tank. I also had a dental appointment at noon, so I made my brother stay home while the dude replaced the heater. As for the dentist, it turns out that decades and decades of eating, drinking, snorting, licking, sniffing and wearing sugar with every meal is finally starting to catch up with me. Turns out, I have a cavity. Again. Its funny because I didn’t get my first cavity until probably about 6 or 7 years ago, but now I’ve had 3 in the past year. If only there was a way to prevent the cavities. Ohhhhhh sure, I could stop ingesting so much sugar, but let’s face it people, that just ain’t gonna happen.

By the time I got home, “the man” was gone. I walked into the utility room only to discover that the damn thing was leaking. Actually, it was more than just leaking, water was coming out of a pipe on the top of the hot water heater. So we called the fucker back out there and he quickly realized that he forgot to (I can’t spell the word, so I’m just going to go with weld, its close enough) weld the pipe. Just between me and you, I think he had a problem with short people.

Saturday night I played poker. The first game, I finished 3rd out of 7 people. While that might not sound all that good, and honestly, it isn’t, but it was a very close game between pretty much everybody the entire time. I very easily could have won the damn thing. The second game though, was much better for me. Once again, we had 7 players. I took out this one guy on the second hand of the game. And about a half hour later I took out two more guys on the same hand. A while after that, I took out another guy. I was beginning to think that I might have a chance of taking everybody out, which is not likely and actually kinda hard to do. Its not to say that I was dominating the entire game, because there were some times in which I got pretty low in chips and actually almost lost a few times. But, I won a couple of big hands and once again was chip leader. There were only 3 of us left in the game when the other 2 guys went all in. I decided to call them. We flipped up our cards and one of the guys had an ace and a 7, another had an ace and a jack and I had an ace and a 2. Well, as luck would have it, after all 5 cards were flipped, I was the only one with a pair as another 2 came on the board and with that, they were both done. Somehow my dumb ass managed to take out every single player in the game.

Long story short, recently, I started to move my stuff into another bedroom in the house. I even bought a brand new bed. I’ve had the bed for nearly 2 months and have not slept on it yet. I’ve done “things” on the bed with other people, but haven’t done any sleeping on it. Well, this weekend my goal was to get totally moved into the bedroom and sleep in there for the first time on the new bed. I got a chance to do that last night and coming from my waterbed to a new bed with an actual mattress was quite different. The bed felt all hard. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well. Today though I finished moving everything. Whenever one moves, you realize how much shit you actually have and start to wonder to yourself “why the fuck did I have this or that?” I spent a good portion of the day asking myself that very question. I’ve always  been the type to save shit for no good reason. For example, my paycheck stubs. I had stubs going all the way back to my first job in 1993. Why the hell would I save that shit? I swear there must have been 500 stubs. Of course, you can’t just throw them out, you have to actually shred them first. So I spent the better part of 45 minutes shredding paper like I was a Clinton. I had to empty my shredder 3 times and right now, its about 3/4 of the way full so I probably could empty it a 4th time. All I can say is stop and think about some of the shit you save before you get 17 years into something.

My company has a deal with the Bulls where we can buy tickets for half price. So this meant I could get some damn good seats for a really good price, in this case, $130 seats for $65. I went with a friend of a friend, a guy who I only met a few times a some Cubs games I went to through my friend Don. The seats wound up being like the 11th row behind the basket, which made for a good view, except that I was directly behind the basket and also behind a fat guy. Other than that, the seats were great. I guess I could show you how good the seats were with these pics.

This is the Michael Jordan statute just outside the United Center. I waited there for 15 minutes for my friend. The entire time, people kept coming up and taking pictures of it. About every 3rd jackass would pose in front it just like how Michael is posed. If I were to have my picture taken in front of it, I would totally be different and pretend to lick his ass or suck his cock…………not that I find him attractive, I don’t, but it would make for a funny picture.

This is the pregame view from our seats. Don’t ask me why the color is off, I have no idea, all I know is that some pics turned out fine, some turned out like this.

Obviously this is the scoreboard.

There is a referee getting paid to watch the game. Oh, and the Bulls Brad Miller with the ball.

Brad Miller shooting. I think he made the shot.

I’m sure you all know about the Kiss Cam at sporting events in which there is a camera that films people and shows them on the scoreboard and then they are supposed to kiss. Right as they announced that they would be doing the Kiss Cam, this young, hot girl (she was probably about 23……………she had a beer so she was old enough to drink or at least have a fake ID) sitting behind us asked me if I would kiss her if we got on cam. I said sure. So we stood there next to each other smiling and with our faces close together trying to get the cam to come to us. If never did. If only she knew.

And by the way, the Bulls did win 120-110.

Shocking news that I’m sure you have heard by now. Its so shocking that I’m going to ask that you sit down. If you are already sitting, than please stand up and than sit again. There. Only now are you adequately prepared to handle this news. Dick Cheney had a heart attack. I know, this probably shocks you so much that you get weak in the knees, which is why I told you to sit. I mean, who knew that Dick Cheney actually had a heart?

I’m on a goal right now to try to find out who my mother’s Godfather was. The rumor in our family is that my mother’s Godfather was a “Godfather”, to be more specific, one Tony Accardo. Don’t know who he is? He was only the leader of the Chicago mob for the better part of anywhere between 20 and 40 years depending on who you ask. I have no idea if this rumor of him being my mom’s Godfather is even true, but I would love to know if its true. For starters, Accardo was born in 1906 which would have made him 27 when my mom was born in 1934 (no my math isn’t bad, my mom was born in February and he didn’t turn 28 until April) meaning that he was indeed old enough to be my mom’s Godfather. I’ve always heard that my mom’s family had mob connections, although I have no idea if that is even true. Still, its interesting enough to want to know. Recently, somebody gave me the brilliant idea recently of checking baptismal records of the church in which she was born. I have a call into the Chicago Archdiocese and am pending a call back from this lady who will probably not call me back until I call a few times. And even then, I still don’t know if they will have record of it, I mean my mom was born in 1934 for fuck’s sake and who knows if that church is even still around. I tried to look in my parent’s wedding album assuming that they would put the name of the church they were married in but they didn’t write it in there. Seriously, who the hell doesn’t write where they got married at in their wedding album? Now I don’t want to just ask somebody in my family because that is exactly how the rumor got started only to be disputed by another family member. Still I hope to find out someday so that I may use it to exploit people for money, food, sex and Cubs tickets.

Several of yous people (see, I’m already talkin’ like a mobster!) wanted to know how things went with my friend who I came out to recently. As tough as it was, it went well, to a point. She is still in a state of denial about the whole thing. We went out on Thursday night and spent a couple of hours talking about nothing but my homosexuality. What makes it so tough for her is that she likes me. A lot. That has been the hardest thing for her, is finally realizing and understanding why all those years I did not want her. Now she knows. And she has been supportive and accepting and not mad at all.

I also had a bit of a dispute with another friend recently regarding my homosexuality. After a long night of drinking, he said some things that were…………..well, to put it bluntly, bigoted towards gays. I thought long and hard and wrestled with the choice as to if I were going to forgive him. In the end though, we talked it out and although I still believe he might be homophobic, I decided to forgive him and move on, as my not forgiving him affects quite a few people.

As for the title of this post, about 10 years ago I worked with a guy who heard many of the stories about my crazy family. He said that I  had issues and started calling me Mikey Issues. I always thought that would be a great mafia nickname.

A couple of you have been asking how I somehow managed to piss off the American Cancer Society…………………or more specifically, how I got banned from a Relay For Life event. Well, fortunately, it happened during my Xanga years and I posted on it on Tuesday June 7, 2005, which means all I had to do was copy and past what happened here:

“Today at work, I found out that I fucked up a couple of weeks ago. Our work is participating in something called Relay For Life. I wrote about this a few weeks ago. Its a charity thing for cancer in which you hang out at some place all night and do shit.  They had a little seminar thing at work, in which you can ask questions and shit like that. Well, I was asking questions and in my own little goofy way (you really have to know me and know my sense of humor to understand) asked if “I raise enough money, can they bring my mom back to life?” (my mom died of cancer 5 1/2 years ago). They didn’t seem upset by this and just sorta laughed it off and said no. Well, today, I was told that I was not being allowed to participate in this because I was “rude to them.”. What I find amusing is that I managed to find a way to get banned from a volunteer charity thing to raise money for cancer. And it wasn’t just work. No. The American Cancer Society was there and heard me say this and said specifically that they did not want me to participate. Anywho, I thought it would be a good idea to apologize. I told this one girl who was in charge of the whole thing for our department that I was sorry and wasn’t thinking……….you know, all the shit you are supposed to say when you apologize. She said I should watch what I say, because sometimes I offend people and hurt feelings. She suggested that I go to the HR lady that was in charge of the whole thing and apologize. Not a bad idea. So, I had a couple of hours to think about this. I wanted to apologize directly to the people I offended. I walked into HR and repeated what I said to the other chick. I asked her if I could talk to the others I upset or even write them a letter, but she said she would just pass it on. I guess what I said was so awful, that she didn’t even trust me to make it right with them. Now, obviously, I didn’t intend on hurting anybody’s feelings. And maybe I’m being insensitive here, but you tell me. Are they over-reacting, or am I being insensitive? Or both? It was not a comment or joke about cancer. I would never make any joke about cancer, after all, I know how awful it is. It was merely my way of finding humor with every situation. I can understand them being a little upset, but to ban me from the whole thing is a bit much. I can, however understand that I would be representing my work there and whatnot. But, as is my understanding, the American Cancer Society doesn’t even want me to go even if I were to go and not be a part of my work…………you know, just go on my own. After all, the comment was about my own mother, and it wasn’t mean or derogatory at all. Damn, I’m a social fucking idiot at times.”

I still remember exactly how it went down too. I was on the phone and a lady was part of our company’s committee came up to me to tell me. When she noticed I was on the phone she told the guy in front of me to tell me that I can’t participate in the event. When I got off the phone he told me and started laughing. At first I thought he was kidding because I’m a lot of things, but I’m usually not rude. So I walked over to where she sits and asked her and the rest as they say, is history. To this day though, a lot of people at work know about it and won’t let me live it down, and rightfully so I might add. One would think I learned from such a situation but really, all I’ve learned is that if what you are joking around about is not bothering at least one person, well then you are just not trying hard enough.

You might not know this from reading me, but I’ve got a very big personality. Its not to say that I’m flamboyant, but the phrase “the life of the party” kinda fits me perfectly……………….if that party were an adult only party with non easily offended people who appreciate dirty humor. My friend Danel, who I recently came out to, is pretty much just a female version of me when it comes to humor. Her friends and family on the other hand……………..

Well Danel’s birthday was Friday night. She had a bunch of people over at her house for a game night and to just hang out. She has this one friend who actually hates me. And I don’t mean the hate in which you are kidding around saying you hate somebody. I mean she actually hates me. She has good reason. The first time I met her some 8 years ago, I told her off because she was being a total bitch to Danel’s best friend. Well, you know how they say always try to make a good first impression? Yeah, that would be why. She fuckin hates me, even though I’ve not gotten into it with her since then. I don’t care if she hates me, while I don’t hate her, I’m not exactly very fond of her anyway. So back to Friday night. Throughout the night she kept on making comments about how much I annoy her or how much she hates me even at one point saying she wished I would die. I truly find all of this very funny. My response to it all was to mockingly tell her how badly I wanted to be friends with her. I told her that we should take a road trip to Vegas together and how it would be just me and her in this car, alone for hours and hours and thousands of miles.  At one point though, she mentioned something about Faceboook and I said that I should friend her on there. She told me not to because while she has hundreds of friends, she would block me and how she has only 2 other people blocked. So my thinking is that I could be really unique if I could be one of only 3 people to be blocked from her Facebook. So of course when I got home at 2:30 in the morning, I went right onto my computer and sent her a friend request on Facebook! The more she talked about hating me, the more I told her how much we should be friends. Of course, once she finally cooled down on it all, I stopped antagonizing her. Most people would say that makes me a dick. Hmmmm……………….I kind of agree with them.

Danel has another friend who my personality progressively rubbed the wrong way throughout the night. I have met this girl on several occasions throughout the years. She has a very depressed and sad personality. I could see her getting more and more annoyed by me throughout the night, it was great! Danel had made several jokes about people making out in her basement. Well when I said to this girl that she and I should make out in her basement, she flipped me the finger to which I promptly responded that she would want to use at least two fingers to shove up my ass. Danel and I found this funny……………….everybody else, not so much. Gee, I wonder why?

Now this was a game night so we played one of my favorite games, Trivial Pursuit. I love this game because to put it bluntly, I am damn good at it. And whenever I play, I feel like the New York Yankees, the team everybody loves to hate because they are so good. Well, its the same way with me and my team for that night. Danel’s sister in law was pissed because we were doing so good. Oh and throughout the night, I had been using the word fuck a lot and making jokes about sex and stuff like that, much to Danel’s amusement.

Danel said she doesn’t understand why just about all of her friends hate me, she said it makes her sad because she finds me so damn hilarious. I say I don’t care because hey, they aren’t my friends. And its not like every single person there hated me. There was this one couple who laughed at just about everything I said and when they left, the girl told Danel that being around me was like being on an acid trip. I’d like to think that is a compliment.

What can I say though? I’ve always been the type that you either love me or hate me.

I’m sure just about all of you can relate to this, but I’m going through a little bit of writer’s block, which certainly helps to explain why yesterday’s post totally sucked. Its not often but every now and then I will just not have anything to post about. Sometimes when I get like that I post about things that have happened to me before I was on Xanga, but I just really don’t feel like posting on stuff that happened before. Usually ideas for my posts will just pop into my head at the oddest times; while I’m at work or driving or in the shower or when I’m peeking in my neighbor’s window to try to catch a glimpse of him fucking his wife. But for some reason nothing has been popping into my head lately. Meh……………….it happens, I’m sure at some point next week all sorts of things will be flowing and going through my head. Of course, you can feel free to give me ideas if you want. Anywho, for now this is about all you are going to get.

As you might remember from my December 14th, January 4th, January 19th and February 3rd posts, I’m reading a book about American history. I’m just zipping along in this book, when we last left off I was about 400 pages into it, now I’m on page 524. The book is around 630 of readable pages and I’m reading about 8 pages a day. This means I should be done sometime in August or right about the time the Oscar telecast is over. I would probably have more time to read if I drove a Toyota and got everywhere faster because I didn’t have to stop at, well, anything, but I just as soon not die, which is a potential downside of driving a Toyota. So just what I have I learned in the past 125 pages? Well, there is this:

• Senator Joseph McCarthy started his anticommunism smear campaign because he was bored. Oh, and he was a really really big asshole.
• The Korean War was started because Dwight Eisenhower’s dry cleaner lost his suit. The irony of it all is that his dry cleaner was Polish.
• For the first 45 minutes his was on the moon, Neil Armstrong was convinced he was in Kansas.
• Richard Nixon was so paranoid, he was convinced that people didn’t like him………………oh wait, turns out nobody liked him.
• Ronald Reagan thought the war on the t.v. show M.A.S.H was actually happening at the time it was airing. 
• Jimmy Carter kicked a man to death for trying to sell him a subscription to T.V. Guide.

Ohhhh, you should be so excited, you are probably only going to have to put up with one more lame post about the book I’m reading. Honestly why the hell would I think somebody would care about the progress I’m making reading a book?

Now a post about my bladder control problems……………..well I’m sure everybody would read that!

Just kidding. I don’t have any bladder control problems. Just a colon control problem.

I decided the other day that I wanted to do a post about my personality. Its not to say that I’m so self involved and self centered that all I want to do is talk about myself, but the thing about blogs and emails and things like that is that you never get a full  understanding of a person’s true personality. I always attempt to make light of things and make jokes on Xanga but a lot of times people think I’m serious when I’m not. So I figured it would be good to explain the type of person I am so that it might convey more about my personality and people understand more where I’m coming from.

First of all, I’m the type of person who kids around. A lot. Even when its not always appropriate. A lot. Some people call it immature. Others call it being funny or making light of a situation. I just simply like to make people laugh and when I see an opportunity to make somebody laugh, more times than not I tend to go for it, although sometimes the joke is lame and falls flat or offends somebody. I’ve also got a very dry, often times sarcastic sense of humor, which does get me into trouble from time to time (hell I still don’t think the American Cancer Society has forgiven me………………but that was detailed in another post). Because of this dryness and sarcasm, a lot of people don’t know that I’m kidding or don’t get the joke. Its weird, I find this annoying and funny at the same time.

I’m a naturally hyper person. I’m always on the go and moving around. Its often tough to shut me up. There are times when I get going and I tend to completely dominate a conversation like I’m hosting a talk show. Some say it makes me a bad listener, but I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention to them, just trying to think of what I wanted to say next (see, that would be my humor). Others say it makes me self centered and selfish to an extent. I have to say, I kind of agree with all of the above.

Speaking of self centered, I am a little self centered, self involved and egotistical. You might say “well Mike, why don’t you work on those flaws” and all I can say is that I’m too important to waste my precious time working on those things. Actually, I’d like to think that I have it all within check to a healthy level. I know this because I’ve got a decent amount of friends and people seem to like me and like being around me.

I’m not afraid to speak my mind or tell somebody what I think (I realize the irony based on some of my posts recently, but that is a different situation altogether). I do love to argue, but usually try to start off being soft when I tell somebody something they don’t want to hear. Sometimes though, I can be blunt and borderline rude, but that’s usually not my intent.

I’m a big pussy. Sure, I may be brave enough to tell people what I think no matter how much it might upset them, but overall, I’m a wuss, pretty much afraid of just about damn never everything. You know how if you hear a noise in the house, the man checks it out? Well I’m not that man. You know how when you see a big spider you might kill it? Well I run the other way and buy shit to defog my house (that was the story in another post from a few years ago). Generally, I’m about as far away from brave as you could imagine.

Although I don’t have an anger management problem in the least, I do tend to get mad easily from time to time. I wouldn’t say I’m an emotional person, as I normally go years without crying, however I am a passionate person and get easily agitated if I feel I’ve been wronged or see something that I believe is an injustice. People say that is the Italian in me coming out because I’m full Italian, but I really don’t know if that is true or not. I can be a very patient person though; sometimes when things are at there worst and out of control, I am at my best. Part of my job is dealing with people who are yelling, swearing and generally pissed off so my job is to remain calm and in control, which I’m usually able to do and I’ve carried that trait with me outside of work.

So there you go, now you know a little bit more into the window of my personality.

Does this ever happen to you? You have an idea for a post and by the time you get around to posting about it all that is left is the icky leftovers but forgotten is the juicy meat of it all? Well that was yesterday’s post.

Yesterday with about 3 minutes left in the third quarter of the Super Bowl, I get a phone call from  my friend Dave. Now keep in mind, I’m at a Super Bowl party at my brother’s house. I answer the phone and say “Dude, why are you calling me during the Super Bowl?” He said he didn’t know. I asked him if it was important, when he responded that it wasn’t, I promptly hung up on him. I then sent him a text telling him that he should call Jt. Less then two minutes later, Jt’s phone rings. He told Jt that he was calling because he was bored. Now Dave is a football fan, so I just couldn’t understand this, here we are in the middle of a great game and he was bored. Honestly, I think he should lose some man points for this one. What red blooded, sports loving man calls another red blooded, sports loving man during the 3rd quarter of the Super Bowl.

See, for men the Super Bowl is kinda like a holiday; for us, its our Valentine’s Day. We spend the whole year waiting for the Super Bowl, reading shit, watching football, watching highlights of football, playing fantasy football, betting on football, all sorts of crazy shit with anticipation of the Super Bowl. Its kinda like how a kid’s whole year revolves around Christmas. The kid is good all year around, tries to do good deeds, does homework and chores and all that shit all so that Santa will think the kid is good and bring gifts to the kid. Its kinda like how Christians pretend to be good people and fake doing good deeds and convert people to Christianity and kiss God’s ass so that they can improve their odds of going to Heaven. Of course, the only difference is that there actually is a Super Bowl and we have seen Santa, whereas all Christians have to show for their kiss ass behavior is a coffin with a corpse.

Last night a group of us went to a dueling piano bar in Hoffman Estates (about a 40 minute drive for me) called America’s Bar. It was the second time I had been there, the first time was last June for my friend Dave’s birthday. For those of you who haven’t been to a piano bar, well its probably not what you think it is. Most people when they hear piano bar, they think classy lounge singing music in a place where you have to dress up to get into. Well, that’s not the case at all with dueling piano bars. For the most part, every piano bar I’ve been to is a great time complete with the piano players playing all types of music and getting raunchy and dirty with some songs for birthday parties and bachelorette parties. Well, this one was no exception to the rule. There was a guy piano player and a lady piano player, and while they are both great and put on an amazing show, the girl really stands out, she does a great job of coming up with these really funny and filthy toasts that make everybody laugh. We had a wonderful time, except that they started late around 9pm and ended early at about midnight. Well, I don’t mean that they were supposed to play later, but they just ended much earlier than other piano bars. Also I think the owner of the bar didn’t like us. Actually, to be more specific, I don’t think he liked me. During a break in between sets, he was giving away a bunch of prizes (nothing too good, just beer hats and t-shirts and shit like that), and I do mean a punch of prizes, he must of had about 20 things. We were sitting right next to the stage and he pretty much avoided throwing us anything. At one point, I got on my friend Danel’s shoulders and he yelled at me to get down. A little while later I slid on my belly across the stage and he again yelled at me to get off the stage. Ok, so he had a very good reason to not like me, but it doesn’t mean he had to make my entire table suffer.

I went to my brother’s house to watch the Super Bowl today. Although I was rooting for the Saints, I thought that the Colts would probably win the game. Well, much to my surprise, the Saints actually won which made me happy because I like Drew Brees and the Saints coach, Sean Payton who is actually from Naperville, a town so close to me that I work in it. Also, I wanted to the Colts to lose because I’ve never much liked Peyton Manning or my cousin who happens to be a Colt fan. So imagine my glee when Manning threw an interception that pretty much sealed the game for the Colts.

Perhaps I shouldn’t take too much joy in the misfortunes of others……………..then again, it is only sports.

I’m not one to talk much about the Super Bowl commercials, but did you see that one with David Letterman and Oprah and than of all people, Jay fucking Leno? I can’t believe Jay and Dave made a commercial together. And what’s even more surprising, it was a commercial for The Late Show With David Letterman. My jaw literally dropped when I saw that.