In spite of his constant dirty play and thuggish move on Thanksgiving, the most controversial player in the NFL is not Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. No, the player who is probably the biggest lightening rod is Denver Broncos “quarterback” Tim Tebow. While his play is a small part of the controversy, it is certainly other aspects of him that make him among the most talked about players in the entire league. See, Timmy is a Jesus freak. Wait, that is too light of a term. Perhaps Jesusaholic is more fitting.

From his time at Florida, his faith has always been front and center in that he never shuts up about it. He carries on and on about it that even other big time Christians such as former quarterback Kurt Warner has said that he probably needs to tone it down a few levels. Tebow even went as far as to make an anti abortion commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. And how’s this for going a bit too far he even said over the weekend that he did not see the game winning field goal because he was busy praying. Seriously, if you can’t pull yourself away from your God long enough to see the game winning field goal then you have some serious heavenly daddy issues.

Of course, because of his views and how he shoves them down your throat, people dislike him which in turn causes his supporters to support him that much more, such as replacing his name on his jersey with Jesus or inventing a new prayer stance called Tebowing. And speaking of shoving things down your throat, it is my opinion that Tebow is probably gay. His mannerisms and lisp when he talks suggests to me that he might be gay. The fact that he lays the Jesus talk on so thick leads me to believe that he is trying to cover up something. Honestly, I can’t believe I have not heard anybody else suggest this yet. And it is not even that he is anti gay or homophobic, (although I’m quite certain that is probably the case) as I haven’t heard him say anything about gays. And he seems to believe totally in love with a dude who may or may not have lived 2,000  years ago.

Now I should mention that I am a Denver Broncos fan. I should also mention that I am gay and an Atheist, all three of which directly conflict each other. But, I find myself rooting against Tebow. It’s not only that I find him to be a bad quarterback, but obviously it is because of his views and the disgusting manner with which he constantly flaunts those views that has me rooting against him. And it is not like he is a bad guy. I mean he does seem nice enough. And certainly if he is gay and comes out of the closet tomorrow I would run and buy his jersey and support him like no other, which in a way, makes me quite the hypocrite. But, I still find myself rooting against the guy.

All that being said, fuck Ndamukong Suh, now that guy is a total fucking asshole. 

As sad as it may seem, I’ve never been the type of person who sets goals for myself. But at the beginning of 2010 I made a decade resolution to go to three places by the end of the decade: 1. The Kentucky Derby 2. Mardi Gras 3. Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Much to my surprise, I managed to actually already accomplish one of those goals when I was in Times Square last New Year’s Eve. At the start of this year, two of my goals were to learn how to swim and to remodel my kitchen. Well, I recently learned how to float and kinda swim and have remodeled my front room, hallway and bedroom. While it was not my kitchen it was still a pretty big accomplishment.

So now I’ve been thinking about the future should I be so lucky to live long enough. See, in about 5-6 years I should have my house paid off if I continue to keep paying extra on my mortgage each month. This means I will have no mortgage at a young age; my late 30s/early 40s. Of course, this frees up tons of money each month. And since I have been bit by the travel bug and seem to be getting more and more comfortable flying, I’ve decided that after I pay my house off, I want to start traveling the world.

I’ve always loved traveling. I would go as far as to say that it is even a bit of a passion of mine. Yet, I have only been out of the country once and that was to go to Puetro Vallarta in Mexico in 1999. Of course this means there is still tons of the world to see. I’ve long said that I want to go to every country in the world. Except of course the ones that behead Americans. Or execute gays. I guess that means I can pretty much cross the entire middle east off my list. And much of Africa as well. Leaving me with the rest of the continents which in spite of what dumbass Justin Bieber thinks, does not include the north pole (last week on Letterman when asked to name the seven continents, he struggled to come up with all seven, eventually saying the north pole).

Now I would like to ease into this whole thing so the first place I will visit after I pay off the house is London. I would not have to learn another language and of all the world’s countries, England is probably the most like America and in the grand scheme of things, is not an extremely long flight. Plus my poor looking teeth would actually look great compared to the British.

So now I’ve got more goals and or plans. The key to these though are only paying off my house but also having the money for such expenses and also most importantly, being alive and healthy enough to take these trips. Oh, and ideally hopefully finding somebody to travel the world with but that is not as essential as actually being alive to be able to travel.

Man, what can be better than long holiday weekends? Oh, right, long holiday weekends that have vacations attached to them! Wednesday I spent pretty much the entire day cleaning the house for Thursday. With all of the remodeling we did, the house was a total mess. My brother was also kind enough to agree to come over after work and help put up some more trim and move the furniture back into the house. I didn’t have the whole night to work on the house though, as I was meeting friends for pizza for dinner and then went out to a bar afterwards.

So the big day was finally here. The house was not 100% done by Thanksgiving, but it was pretty damn close. In fact, it was not just presentable, but about as close as we could get to being done. We had trim that needed to go around a few doors but the most important part, the front room was done…………except for the trim around the door. Thanksgiving went down without a hitch; we had a great time, great food and no major hangover the next day.

Last night I went to a benefit show for the family of a friend of a friend. See, I’ve got this friend who plays in bands and whatnot and a friend of his who he used to play with died recently. So there was a benefit to raise money for his wife and kids. The story of his death is downright sad and a lesson to those of us still fortunate enough to still be here. He was only 42 years old and about a month ago he thought he was having a heart attack so his wife drove him to the hospital. On the way, he unrolled the window to get some fresh air and started to feel better. So they turned around and went back home. He went upstairs to splash water on his face and that is when he dropped dead of a heart attack. As tragic as the situation is, there are lessons to be learned here mainly to pay attention to your body and know the warning signs of a heart attack. Had he just continued onto the hospital there is a good chance he would have lived.

Onto a happier subject, I have this week off work and am looking for things to do mainly on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Wednesday afternoon I have a dentist appointment and Thursday I’m going to the World of Chocolate AIDS benefit in Chicago, but before then I have two wide open days with nothing or nobody to do. Any suggestions?

Recently we have been remodeling part of my house, mainly my front room, hallway and bedroom. I say we because none of this could have been done without a ton of essential people. My goal all along has been to be done by Thanksgiving. Right now, we are literally about 97% complete, we just have a little bit of trim left to put up and then move the furniture in. Tomorrow I’m off work (in fact, I don’t work again until December 5! Fuckin Yaaaaaay for vacations!!!!) and will probably spend most of the day cleaning in order to get the house ready for Thursday. It is unlikely that we will have all the trim up, but there is a chance we can have the furniture moved back in. This project has been going on since October 15th and while it seems like the project that never ends, it wouldn’t even be a quarter of the way done without the help we have received. And even though none of them read this blog and none of you know them, I’m still going to take the time to mention them in no particular order:

1. My brother’s best friend, Rusty. A few years ago he put the bug in my ear about doing this. When it came time to actually do it, he came through big time by not only using his truck but also his tools and knowledge even though he is not part of Project Days.
2. Our friend Todd. He had the idea of Project Days in which each month we pick a different house to work on. Not only was he here the two Project Days, he also has been here countless times and countless hours working his fucking ass off even after he has gotten off work or before he has gone in. Also, he is very knowledgeable about these sort of things; he is kinda like the Yoda of home improvement.
3. My twin brother, Mark. Now he used to live here so he has a special connection to the house. But, over the course of the past month and a half he has treated it like he still lived here. In fact, last night when I got home from work he was already here working on the trim. He also got us access to Batman. Allow me to explain.
4. Mark’s father in law, Ron. If Todd is Yoda than Ron is Batman. He was kind enough to spend two Saturdays in a row helping to hang drywall. He also seems to have every tool imaginable. Shit, even now we have his nail gun here to help us nail the trim.
5. My best friend and the best friend anybody has ever had, J.T. He has consistently done everything he can to help me with any problem I have ever had over the course of the past 18 years or so and this is no different. Fuck, just a short while ago he told me he was willing to come over Thanksgiving morning to finish up.
6. The Moe to mine and J.T.’s Larry and Curly, our friend Dave. He is not part of Project Days, but when I sent him a text at the first Project Days flipping out because of how horrible things were he dropped everything and came right over. And proceeded to come over several nights a week to do whatever was needed.

Honestly, the list can go on and on as there is no shortage of thank yous to the people who have helped, so just a quick shout out to Corli, Kristine, Heather, Scooty, Brian, Rene, Keith, Heather, Kris, Pam, Connie, and Kelli. All of you totally fucking rule and make life worth living. I’ve never been one to do a whole big Thanksgiving post giving thanks to people in particular, but if ever there was a time, now is it.

Every year the Saturday before Thanksgiving, my friends and I have a huge Thanksgiving. We started in 1999 in a two bedroom apartment with somewhere around 11-13 people. In the years since we have gotten bigger in every aspect. The next year we moved it to my house. After a few more years we moved it to another friend’s house; actually the same couple who hosted it in the apartment. About five years ago we outgrew any house. Yet we still had it at the same house. This year we decided to rent out another couple’s clubhouse. Oh, and we were expecting 46 people. How’s that for growth?

The plan was for some of us to meet up there at 4:30 so we could set up. My brother and I were driving together. He made ravioli which was in a bowl and the gravy (or as you non Italians call “sauce”) was in a crockpot which was in my trunk. Well you might know where this is going. We got to the damn clubhouse, open the trunk only to find that the lid had come off the crockpot and spilled gravy and one meatball over a good portion of the trunk of my brand new car. I was PISSED.

The rest of the night was great. We wound up having “only” 40 people. The whole thing wound up being almost like a wedding, complete with a couple of speeches/toasts, a conga line and some kick ass food. I had bought a hat (it was supposed to be a fedora but was not) specifically for this night. Yeah, I looked pompous and kinda ridiculous in the thing, but it wound up being the hit of the party. Most of the girls and kids wound up wearing it at least for part of the night. And at the end of the night, I let one of the little girls keep it.

By the end of the night I was good and drunk on quite a bit of wine. I was so drunk that I was kind of oblivious to everybody packing up and leaving; so much that I didn’t do a damn thing to help. I really feel bad about this; it makes me feel selfish, self centered and self involved. But, as my brother told me, it was probably best that I didn’t help as he put it, I was so drunk I could barely stand. And to add to my feeling of self centeredness, I had the worst case of drunk ADD I’ve ever had. The whole night I could not maintain a conversation with anybody for longer then what seemed to be a few seconds. Same with eating. I’d take a few bites and up I would go. I remember much of the night, but at the same time it all moved so fast that it was like blur.

Then this morning I woke up wide awake at like 10 to fucking 6 in the morning. I had a pounding headache, was thirsty as fuck and needed to get my contacts out. And for some reason, in spite of having a nasty hangover, somehow I was also horny as fuck. And it took me almost two hours to fall back to sleep. Go figure.

I’ve long been a big Kevin Smith fan. I’m assuming most of you know who he is, but in case you don’t let me list some of his movies, Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma, Zack and Miri Make A Porno, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Chasing Amy. I’m guessing that you have seen at least one of the above. I have a hard time picking my favorite Kevin Smith movie, I think it is a toss up between Clerks and Chasing Amy. I have not seen Chasing Amy in, shit probably 10 years so recently I decided to go back and watch it just to see if it held up to the test of time and if I would still find it good now that I’m a little older.

I can answer that question with a resounding yes. I’ve always said Smith’s dialogue in his movies is amazing and watching it again only reconfirmed that belief. The movie is not as funny as Clerks, but it is a very compelling story and not your typical love story. If you haven’t seen it, a young Ben Affleck plays a guy who falls in love with a lesbian and they start dating. This was before Ben Affleck was BEN AFFLECK; hell it was even before Good Will Hunting.

As for Kevin Smith, in all honesty, he hasn’t made a lot of good movies over the course of the last decade. Oh sure, there was Zack And Miri, which I loved and of course Clerks 2 but he also made Cop Out which looked awful and Jersey Girl which I didn’t even bother seeing. And then of course, there was that little incident on that Southwest airlines flight a couple of years ago. But as for Chasing Amy, it is a classic and you should certainly try to catch it.

Yesterday morning I had the carpeting installed in my front room, hallway and bedroom. They were supposed to arrive at 9 in the am but were a half hour late which of course, pissed me off. Fortunately though it looks fantastic and I was very excited to finally get it done. You have to understand that I’m not exaggerating in the least when I say the carpeting was over 30 years old; in fact, it was at least 33 years old. I know some people say that you should replace carpeting every 10 years; while I don’t know if it should be that often, certainly it should be more often then every 33 years. Needless to say, this was desperately needed.

When they left, I stood there staring at the carpet with an excited and relieved smile on my face. Even though I had tons of help and have not done any of this on my own, I still felt quite a bit of a sense of accomplishment at the work we have done in this house over the course of the past month. My goal has been to get it all done by Thanksgiving and right now, all that is left is to install a three foot by four foot section of laminate flooring as soon as you walk in the house and the trim, along with a light fixture in my bedroom. And then of course, move all of the furniture back into their respective rooms.

Like I’ve said, this whole thing was long long LONG overdue and quite honestly I never thought we would actually do this but yet here we are. At the beginning of year I said my goal was to remodel my kitchen. While we didn’t quite get that done, this was certainly the next best thing and because of the work we have done it will save some money on the energy bills. I have spent a ton of money to do this but in the end it is all going to be worth it. Oh, and had I paid a contractor to do it, shit, the price would have probably been triple.

Friday night I went out with me and my boys. I guess I should give them names. Let’s say “Brett Favre” and “Mrs. Krabappel.” We pretty much didn’t have a specific agenda as to what we were doing; only that we had not hung out together in a while. We started off by playing darts at a local bar. I guess it was kinda fun, except that Mrs. Fucking Krabappel won every game but one. Fucker. We also ran into a dude we went to high school with who I had not seen in, shit probably 15 fucking years, if not more.

Now I should mention that I was the driver and of course, meant that I would not be drinking. The boys on the other hand…………well they were drinking it up, which concerned me as I was worried one of them would puke in my brand new car. What made it even worse was that they were mixing drinks and alcohol. And one of them is a semi regular puker and had puked in my old car years ago. So I think my vomit worries were justified.

As we were leaving the bar, I saw that there was a pizza place in the same strip mall. I wanted to see how big it was inside to see if it could hold a large group of us. As I walked over to peer into the window, Mrs. Crab Apple decided to piss right on the side of the building. I guess it wasn’t so much on the side of the building as much as it was on the corner of the building. He was not peeing on the actual building, but in the area right the fuck next to it. So what does my other friend do? He tries walking into the pizza place which was closed and locked, however the owner was still there. So he comes to the door and opens it, pushing it towards my pissing friend. The didn’t let us in, but instead just stood there holding the door open to talk to us oblivious to the fact that literally about five feet from him a guy was pissing on the side of his building. So Brett motherfucking Favre starts asking him how many people they seat and tells him that we are part of the Chicago Pizza Club with the Chicago Tribune and we go around to pizza places and yadda yadda yadda. I swear it was like he was purposely extending out the conversation just to increase the chances that my friend would be caught pissing. Meanwhile I stood there in vain trying to rush the conversation. It was hilarious; somehow my friend managed to avoid getting caught pissin.

From there the plan was to go to the casino but hit up two other bars on the way for a shot at each. The first one we went to we walked right up to a waitress who as it turned out, wound up knowing Brett Favre’s sister in law. Shit what a small fucking world. The next bar we went to was a tiny fuck bar that was damn near empty. After a quick shot, we were on our way to the casino. While there Brett Favre had a great idea of each of us pooling $20 each together to play a slot machine. First though, they did another shot. Fuck. At this point, they had mixed so much booze and in such a short period of time that I know it was inevitable that my car was going to pop it’s vomit cherry. On the other hand, we wound up each winning $50 on our pooled money.

We wound up staying at the casino until about 1:30. For much of the night, I was STARVING and was bugging them to go eat. So we went old school and went to about the only place that was open that late at night: disgusting Denny’s! We used to hang out at Denny’s on a fairly regular basis back in the day. And by fairly regular basis, I mean every fucking night. We got seated next to a table of three Spanish speaking young Mexican dudes or as Brett Favre put it, some small Chinese dudes. Except they weren’t all that small. And of course they weren’t Chinese. After we got our drinks, Mrs. Crabby Appel did the thing that we always do anytime we are in a restaurant: he blew the wrapper of the straw at Brett Favre. Only this time it bounced off him and hit one of the “small Chinese dudes.” Mrs Crabs apologize but Brett Favre turned around and kept telling them that he hit them on purpose. At first I don’t think they knew what he was saying but then they seemed to get a little pissed. Ahhh good ol’ Brett Favre, always doing shit to get other people in trouble. First he nearly gets Mrs. Crabs Up And In My Crotch arrested for pissing on the side of the building, then he almost causes him to get in a fight. Good times, gosh I miss hanging out like this more often.

Oh, and when it was all said and done, much to my surprise there was no vomit in the car.

As you know from my previous posts, I’m currently in the slow and agonizing process of remodeling part of my house. Earlier in the week I wrote that I was desperate to find somebody to mud the new and old drywall in my house. Well, today the mudding, sanding, and taping was completed. When I got home from work I was shell shocked to find that pretty much the entire inside of house was covered in a thin, dusty layer of drywall. Hell, even the dishes I washed last night (sure, I’ve got two dishwashers, they just happen to be the same things I’m using to type this sentence) were covered in dust and I had to rewash them tonight. But, it was well worth the trouble; I’m very excited for this part of the house to be updated, it is a LONG time coming.

So the next step is to prime the drywall tomorrow night in preparation for painting on Saturday. Then on Monday, the month long project will finally be completed: the new carpeting will be installed.  If you think I know absolutely nothing about fashion, well guess what, I know even less about interior decorating. But, I have managed to pick out my own paint and carpeting with some advice from friends along the way. I wound up getting a primer that is also paint which I will be using to prime. Then, we will actually use paint to paint the walls and ceiling. I have no idea if this is good or bad. All I know is that in my bedroom, I will be painting the walls blue and I’m worried that the blue paint will not go over well with the primer/paint mix. I will also have a different shade of blue for the carpeting, almost the shade of blue jeans. I’ve got to wonder if that will suck. Will it? You tell me, I have no clue. And of course, I’m kinda concerned that neither the carpeting or the paint will match. In the living room and hallway I’m keeping it simple with something I know will match: white walls with a light brown carpeting. I know, boring right? But way better than what I had before.

I realize it is a bit late to ask for advice, tips or suggestions, but if anybody has any, I can certainly use it now. The carpeting is already ordered, so I don’t know if I can change it. The paint though, I can always call an audible between now and Saturday.

The other day I was walking through the parking lot at work on my lunch. I came across a couple of guys from a landscaping company who had a truck parked as they were starting to do work. One of the guys was eating a banana. After finishing it, he threw the peel on the ground on top of a sewer cover. I was pretty bothered by this and though about saying something to him but let it go. Yet, as I walked on, I kept on thinking about how I should have said something to this slob and started to want to go back over there and tell him to pick it up.

Eventually I made my way back over to where they were. I saw that the truck was still there but no sign of the workers. At first, I thought about picking up the banana peel and putting it on their windshield. Then I saw they had left the back of the truck open. So I decided to pick the damn thing up and throw it in the back of the truck. Then I looked to the left and saw that they were indeed around. So I picked up the banana peel and walked over to the dude and handed to him, saying “Hey, you seemed to drop this earlier after eating it.” At first he stood there with a stunned and shocked look on his face. I told him that we would appreciate it if he put it in the trash. He told me that it was biodegradable to which I responded “I don’t know if it is (which was a lie, I know it is, hell it was already starting to break up) but we like to put things in the trash to keep the animals away.” I could tell he was shocked and pissed and wanted to get into it with me, but I really never gave him a chance as I handed it to him and pretty much just walked away.

There is another unknown person at work who likes to leave trash laying around the damn lunch room. For example, they would eat an ice cream sandwich and leave the damn wrapper on a fucking chair. Or they would finish their lunch and leave the trash on the table as if we have a fucking wait staff that comes and cleans up after them. So one day I decided to leave a note for this fucker. In the note I kindly asked the slob to clean up after themselves and if they didn’t want to, if they left me a tip I would gladly clean up after them. Of course, somebody tore the note down from the chair I taped it to.

 Seriously what the fuck is up with people? How fucking inconsiderate, rude, lazy and selfish could they be? Are they so fucking stupid that they don’t realize that the damn trash is not going to grow a pair of legs and voluntarily throw itself away? Or perhaps they are just so fucking lazy that it is too much to drop the trash into the garbage can while on their way out of the room, you know, the very same trash cans that are guess the fuck what, you have to pass to leave the room? Somebody has to clean that shit up and that somebody should be them if they had the decency to actually pick up after themselves.

It’s the same thing for those fuckers who litter on the roads. Perhaps I’m being a little bit over sensitive and you know, not fucking rational when it comes to this, but is it asking too much for people not to throw a fucking shoe or bottle out the window while they are driving? I’ve got to wonder what these people’s motivation is for doing shit like this? The only thing I could figure is that they are lazy motherfuckers who don’t give a shit about other people or keeping the land clean. I think somebody should punch those people in the fucking face. Okay, maybe that is a bit harsh. But, they should at least be yelled at by the poor SOB who gets stuck cleaning up after them.