I’ve been chatting with this guy the past couple of weeks and over the weekend it got to a point in which he wanted to finally meet. The best time that worked was Sunday night. Big conflict though for me. Sunday night is one of the biggest t.v. nights of the winter. There was a major event being televised with tons of stars, the best and brightest in their field and something that only comes along ones a year. Of course, I speak of nothing else but the NBA All-Star game. I didn’t want to miss it. But, I decided to go meet the dude.

He lived on the far north side of the city, which the GPS said would be about a drive of an hour but I guess everybody was inside watching the All Star game (after all, what else could they possibly be watching?) because there was not much traffic and it wound up taking about 40 minutes. Unfortunately though the GPS was kinda goofy because it had no fucking clue where it was going. Perhaps it was busy watching the All Star game.

Nevertheless, after I got unlost, I called him and he met me outside. He was quite a bit bigger than I initially thought in fact I found out later that he was double my weight. But, he seemed cool. The plan was to grab a drink at a local bar before going to a Greek restaurant and than whatever afterwards. We walked down to this German bar and he got a beer while I got a pop since I was driving. Instantly though I could see he was very friendly and outgoing. He carried on a friendly conversation with the bartender which was cool.

He is really big into traveling so we spent a good portion of the conversation at the bar talking about traveling. Unfortunately though, he is also very self centered which is something I’m guilty of. He never seemed to pay close attention to what I was saying and even seemed a bit dismissive of some of the things I was saying. He also would frequently interrupt me to start a conversation with the bartender or to play with his phone. He was also pretty flamboyant and had this really loud and obnoxious occasional laugh. Normally I’m able to make people laugh but with him he seemed to either not get the jokes or was too focused on himself to realized they were jokes.

After a while a couple of other ladies came in and were sitting at the end of the bar next to us. So he struck up a conversation with them. No problem there except that he seemed to turn his body entirely to them and kind of ignoring me. I told him I was going to the bathroom and he quickly said “okay have fun” and went back to his conversation with them. There was some sort of event being broadcast on t.v. that was not the All Star game that they were commenting on. He even got their phone numbers.

After a while we went to the Greek place where it was, get this, Tango night. That’s right, people were dancing the Tango at a Greek restaurant. It was pretty cool though. He insisted on taking video of the people dancing which was fine and cool, but I found it a little bit odd when he turned the camera on me and told me to say something. Also he decided at one point that he just had to call his mom to tell her that he was at a place and it was Tango night since he and his mom went to Argentina together. So right there in the middle of dinner he calls his mom and talks to her for like five minutes right there at the table. Throughout the night, I found his manners to be poor and was really bothered by it. Oh, I wasn’t bothered enough to not go back to his place after dinner, but needless to say, I don’t think he will get getting another date out of me.

Last night I went out for a late dinner to Red Robin with my boys. For those of you that don’t know, Red Robin is a burger chain that serves these massive sized burgers and yadda yadda yadda. Anywho, my two friends and I have been hanging out together for YEARS. Things are always a little bit goofy with us; we like interacting with people and carrying on conversations with strangers or the waitress. Well last night was no different. Our waitress was a younger looking lady who as my friend put it, looked like Blossom if you remember that 1990s NBC show.

One of things we have started doing lately with the wait person is to say to them “one of us at this table is gay, can you guess which one?” For the record, one of my friends is married, the other is engaged to be married to a wonderful girl in 67 days. So obviously, you can figure out who the gay one is. So the waitress was reluctant to answer but she went back and asked quite a few of her co workers, none of whom would answer for fear of getting in trouble. She even asked the young, hot bartender who she thinks may or may not be gay. He refused to answer as well, which sucked because I was totally hoping he would guess me and then say he was interested.

So at the end of the night when we were paying the bill, we finally told her that I was the gay one. I told her I thought the bartender was hot and she said maybe I should give him my  number. I was reluctant on the account that, shit, what if he was straight and wanted to beat the shit outta me. But, my one friend wrote my number on the receipt and she gave it to him. Instantly though I wanted to get the fuck out of there because, hey talk about awkward if he was not actually gay. But, this was the first time I have ever done something like this in which I gave my number to somebody in a situation like that.

Now flash forward to this morning. I woke up, exercised, ate breakfast and watched a little tv. And guess what? Lo and behold, I came on here and made this post. That is all.

I just read an article on Yahoo about how the Mormons have baptized Anne Frank. Oh, this is such a relief. I don’t know about you, but ever since the day I learned about Anne Frank back in high school all I could think was “that evil Jewish bitch, if only somebody would come along and make her a Mormon so that I can feel bad about her dying in the Holocaust.” Although the Mormons gave up the practice of baptizing Holocaust victims back in 1995, apparently not everybody got the memo. Literally. 

But, the Mormon church released a statement saying “”The Church keeps its word and is absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism.” You know, because it is acceptable to baptize non Jewish dead people. Now you might be asking why they do this, their thinking is that it gives the dead one last chance to convert to Mormonism. Ahhh, I see, since I knowingly of sound mind made the choice not to be Mormon when I was alive I guess the best thing to do is wait until I’m dead so I have no choice in the matter. You know, I didn’t have any straight sex while I was alive, can somebody please promise me that within minutes of my death there will be a group of females who will spend the next three months having sex with my rotting corpse? Or, since I chose to never go skydiving while I was alive, can somebody please bring me skydiving after I die, I mean after all the potential of death from skydiving is so much less once you are a corpse.

See this is one of the many things that makes religions so fucked up. Oh sure, Jewish people are (rightfully) pissed about the Anne Frank thing. But really, aren’t they just as fucked up in their own way? I mean, they hold a party to chop off the tip of a baby’s dick. Or how about Muslims? It is believed that at puberty, an account of each person’s deeds is opened, and this will be used at the Day of Judgment to determine his eternal fate. Really? Puberty? So that pretty much means that your whole fate is based on what you do in the first 12 years of your life. That’s for men. As for females, well………..let’s just say that according to Muslims, females don’t exist.

It’s not just Mormons, Muslims, and Jews that are so fucking crazy. It’s all of them. Christians? Yeah, they believe a dude had a conversation with a burning bush. Buddhists believe that after you die you get reincarnated as another animal. Scientology? Some dude brought billions of people to the Earth 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes and then blew them up with H bombs. How about one you never heard of, Falun Gong, founded by some Chinese dude in 1992. That’s fairly recent so it can’t be all that nuts, right? Well turns out they believe that demonic space aliens seek to destroy humanity. Rastafarians? Well they believe pot was given to them by God so they must smoke……………hey where do I sign up?

But, my point is that to the unbiased observer, all of them require you to take one hell of a giant leap of faith and also practice a bunch of things that, well, quite frankly, are fucking crazy. Now I’m not claiming to have any of the answers. And I sure as fuck have no clue as to what happens after you die. The one thing we all have in common is that nobody knows. Anybody who claims to know for a fact is full of shit and should not be trusted. Let people believe what they will believe and mind your own damn business. All I’m saying is that everybody needs to be tolerant of others and accept them for what they believe and live and let live. Or in the case of the Mormons, die and let die.

I’ve become convinced that a serious long term relationship is never going to happen for me. Not that I’m all that sad or upset about it. I guess I’m disappointed enough to post about it. But it’s not like it keeps me up at night or preoccupies me. I’m 36 and the longest relationship I’ve had lasted about a month and a half. I recognize that is kind of pathetic in a way. I also fully recognize that my lack of a relationship is pretty much my own fault. Which is why I can probably accept it more and also why I’m not miserable about the situation. It’s not that I’m even all that disappointed not to be in a relationship; I just wonder what it would be like and to at least experience love. Oh, I’m quite certain I could never tolerate anybody to want to be with any one single person for the rest of my life. Shit, I don’t even know if I could tolerate somebody enough to be in an open relationship for years.

In addition to not being fully out I’m a picky guy. Always have been. Always will be. Like many guys gay or straight, I’m superficial. Yes personality is important to me. In fact, in an ideal mate, it is a 50/50 split in terms of looks and personality. I mean, I couldn’t be with somebody sexually if I wasn’t physically attracted to him. But, I couldn’t be in a relationship with somebody unless we had a non physical connection as well and he had a personality. But, at first there needs to be a physical attraction. That means he needs to be in a least halfway decent shape. And I know people who would call me racist, but for the most part, I’ve always only been attracted to white guys. And usually younger, in fact, I’ve never been with anybody older than me. This really limits the playing field. I know this. And I accept this.

And honestly, I’m not even sure I want a relationship. All I know is that 20 years from now when I look back on my life, I want to be able to at least say that I was in love once. I just don’t know if I’m ready. And if I can put up with somebody. And, while I have hook up with a ton of guys sexually, I have been rejected more times than I can count. For a normal person, the rejection would take its toll. Not for me though. I think I’ve grown numb to it at this point.

I understand that I’m not everybody’s type, shit not everybody is my type. But, I’d like to think I’m a pretty good catch. No, let me rephrase that in an arrogant way. I’m a damn good catch. While I’ve been called hot and also called average, I don’t think I’m neither but instead somewhere in between. I can be hot at times. I can also look kinda not so good at times. In spite of what you see me write on this blog, I’ve got a pretty damn good personality. Although some friends recently called me an intellectual, I don’t think I would go that far, after all I don’t even have a college degree. I guess I’m smart, but not brilliant. I can hold a pretty damn good conversation and the one thing I can guarantee is that people are usually never bored around me. The question is, not why am I single, but why do I not draw interest from more men?

Ohhh, what a day! Holy cow I hope your President’s Day was as fun and exciting as mine. I was very disappointed that I had to work though, I mean working on President’s Day is a sin for crying out loud. I know most families got to spend the President’s Day morning having breakfast with loved ones and opening up President’s Day gifts under the President’s Day tree. Sadly I had to work, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t go all out and still celebrate. I spent most of the day dressed up like Millard Fillmore going around spreading President’s Day cheer to schoolkids. I certainly hope I didn’t frighten them too much, after all, Fillmore has been dead for damn near 138 years so to really get the Fillmore look I had to stop showering for the past 6 months, shave my entire body and go the past 10 weeks on a strict diet of lava beans and water, you know, so I can really get that corpsey Fillmore look.

And then there was after work. Fortunately we had some good weather to go President’s Day trick or impeaching. I didn’t want to repeat myself so instead of going as Fillmore, I went as Rutherford B Hayes, after all he has only been dead for 119 years. Much to my shock, I had 14 doors slammed in my face, the cops called on my eight times, three dogs sicked on me, and hit on by two naked housewives. Oh, so much better than last year’s President’s Day when I went as assassinated JFK.

And now I’m just sitting back, listening to all my President’s Day records including such songs as:

“We Are The Mediocre Presidents“
“Hot For Intern“
“We Built This House (With Slavery)“
“Don’t Stop, Impeachin‘”
“It’s Gettin Hot In Here (So Veto All Those Bills)“
And the legendary “There’s No Sex Like Presidential Sex“.

Oh and it is so sad now, the holiday is nearly over. And to think, we won’t hear another thing about any presidents or anything presidential for another 365 days. Oh, shit I just thought of something. It’s a leap year. We won’t have another President’s Day for 366 days!

Today was an eagerly anticipated day I’ve been excited about for quite some time: Green Day’s American Idiot the musical in Chicago. As fortunes would have it, I did see it on Broadway in New York City last year on January 1, which was the very first musical I’ve ever seen. I felt the performance was amazing and love every second of it, especially since Green Day’s lead singer, Billie Joe, was playing one of the characters. The whole show left quite an impression on me and I knew that eventually it would come to Chicago and I would see it again. I just didn’t think it would be this soon, just 13 months later.

The first time I saw it was at the small St James theater and we sat in the very last row but still seemed very close to the stage. I’m guessing this was one of the reasons why it was more than double the cost of the ticket in Chicago which was at the much larger Oriental theater. This time I went with my good friends Heather and Kelli and our seats were in the back of the balcony. Not a bad view; certainly a different experience than New York when we were on the first level and had the show partially obstructed by the second level above us. This time, while further away, we were able to see the entire show unobstructed, which made for a more complete experience.

The first time I saw it, it was almost a surreal experience for me; I couldn’t believe where I actually was and what I was watching as I honestly never thought I would see it on Broadway. But, this time was pretty cool too. I still left there blown away by what I had scene and left wanting to be some sort of an entertainer in front of crowds of people.

The performance leaves such and indelible impression on me in part because of how much of a connection I seem to have with the album. Green Day’s “American Idiot” is my favorite album of all time. While I certainly can not relate to the stories of the guy being in love or being a drug addict, what does resonate so strongly with me is the feeling that the main character has of being a misfit or an outcast. It is no big secret that I’ve always had trouble fitting in which is why I use humor so much to connect and reach people and get them to like me. But, I’ve never felt like I totally fit in really, in any aspect of society. I’m a gay atheist living in what amounts to a straight, Christian world. And in the gay world, I’m a masculine guy who can’t seem to fit in with the typical homosexual world. While the main character is not gay (although I’m quite certain many of the actors are gay…………..and holy shit they are hot!), he is at times a misfit.

In addition the song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” has long been one of my two favorite songs of all time. First of all it’s a great song. When I’m walking alone whether it’s in the city or just walking alone outside of work, my mind seems to automatically default to that song. But, the big reason why it means so much to me is that it got me through a lonely and sleepless night once, playing on an endless loop in my head as I tossed and turned, sadly wondering if I would have any friends left when I got up in the morning.

I don’t know if any of you who read this are into musicals or Green Day. But, it is touring the country until July, hopefully it comes to an area near you so you can check it out if you so desire.

Quick, $5 to whoever can guess who said that? WRONG! It was legendary Washington Redskins coach Vince Lombardi. Looks like I keep my $5. See I watched an HBO documentary the other night on Lombardi. Turns out that before he coached the Redskins, he had some moderate success with the Green Bay Packers going 7-5 in his first year. You know, it’s a helluva thing, I don’t remember much about the rest of his Green Bay years.

Now being a big Chicago Bears fan, I probably shouldn’t admit to it, but after watching the documentary, I found myself not only very impressed with Lombardi but actually liking him a lot. Being Italian, I guess I should automatically like  him since he is among other things, nothing short of an Italian legend. But, there are no shortage of reasons not to like him in addition to his unprecedented success. First all all, unlike many successful celebrities (especially in sports and coaches in particular) he didn’t seem to be a dick. Not only did he not seem like a dick, he also seemed like a loving, caring guy below the gruff exterior. He felt it was very important to love his players and for his players to have love for each other. He was also appalled by racism saying that he was determined “to ignore the prejudices then prevalent in most NFL front office in their search for the most talented players.” He also let all of Green Bay know that if a business was off limits to black players, than it was off limits to all of the Packers.

And it wasn’t only racism that appalled him. He was also accepting of gays in an industry that is still to this day known for being anti gay but also in a time when it was not exactly hip to be gay. One of the reasons is because Lombardi’s brother is gay. He also knew of some of his players being gay and supported them among the team, even saying he would get rid of anybody who questioned the gay players manhood. Mind you this was the 1960s; shit you would be hard pressed to find any coach at any level in any sport talk like that today.

Being accepting of everybody regardless of race or sexual orientation is not something you find in most Italians, trust me I know. Italians themselves have been victims of prejudice against them prior to say, about 1950 in America. I think this is in part a reason why so many Italians are prejudice. Yet, in spite of this, Lombardi rose above it all; using the prejudice that he faced as a reason to be tolerant and accepting of others. This and not winning is probably the biggest reason why he should be admired and celebrated. Everything else is kinda like the point after touchdown.

There is a reason why the Super Bowl trophy is named after him and it has just as much to do with the content of his character as it does with his record. Packer or not, the man should be a hero to not only athletes and coaches everywhere but to many people in all different walks of life.

A few months back I wrote about how I was going to try to learn how to swim. I took six lessons each of which were 45 minutes long. By the end of the lessons, I still did not know how to swim very well but could float. So I decided to take more lessons which started the first Thursday of the year and lasted until this past Thursday. The lessons were in a different location and lasted an hour instead of 45 minutes. I swear to you, the one hour I was in the water was the longest fucking hour of my week. In fact, each Thursday I would absolutely dread it.

It was not so much that I was afraid of water or that I do not like the water. It was just that, for a variety of different reasons, being in the water that long was a miserable existence for me. For starters, the water was cold. Okay so 80-83 degrees doesn’t sound that cold but keep in mind that our bodies are 98 degrees so that is still much much colder than the human body. And being that I’m a small guy, I was told that I get colder quicker.

I always thought that I drank enough water but it turns out, I probably don’t because after being in the water for a half hour or so, I would start to cramp up and get dizzy which are signs of dehydration due to lack of proper water intake. Just imagine trying to swim for a half hour with cramps in your feet and legs and occasionally getting dizzy.

Then there was the breathing or lack thereof. Did you know that approximately zero humans can breath underwater? Yep it’s true. That total includes me, which meant that I needed to try to learn to breath while my head was out of the water and exhale while it was underwater. This left me choking a great deal which probably did not help the dizziness in the least. Plus, it probably contributed to me getting tired faster.

And let’s not forget about the swimming itself. I was having the hardest damn time swimming on my back or side. Even at the end of the six weeks, I still did not feel like I was all that much closer towards learning to swim sufficiently to be able to go into water that is over my head. In fact if anything, I feel like I might even start to have a little bit of a fear of the water knowing how much it can affect me in such a short period of time.

So now I don’t think I’m ever going to fully learn. Although I’m going to Jamaica in May, I’m not exactly in a rush to get back out there and take another lesson. Ugh, I wish I could just have gills installed and be done with it.

Every year right around Valentine’s Day weekend, my friends and I gather at the home of one of our friends for a weekend long party. It actually all started years ago when he was going to medical school in Springfield and we would go down there for the weekend to hang out with him. He moved back into the Chicagoland area in the summer of 2004, however we all decided that just because he was about 20 minutes away (and even closer for some of us) we would still hang out for a weekend, because, why not? I mean we all love hanging out together and if nothing else, it provides a good excuse to party. And now that just about everybody in the group is married and has kids, it is even more important to get sometime away and act like college students for the weekend.

So this weekend was spent at his house again from Friday night until Sunday afternoon. Although it was not nearly as raunchy as it normally is, we still had a great time and left me wanting to do it again and again and again. But fuck, I’m tired, but shit getting a combined 7-8 hours of sleep total for the weekend and drinking the volume of alcohol I drank will do that to me.

Normally I’ve got pictures to show and stories to tell, but I don’t have any pictures and just am not up for writing a much longer post. So this is all you get for now. Hope you all had as good of a weekend as I did.

Recently I discovered that a mole on my chest had gotten considerably darker compared to last year at this time. So I went to the doctor who referred me to a dermatologist. Long time readers with REALLY good memories would remember this doctor as the doctor that removed a couple of warts for me. I referred to him as Dr Freeze because he freezes the warts off and he is thin, tall and totally bald and kinda creepy looking.

As I always do, I arrived at the appointment much earlier than I needed to. After waiting in the waiting room for about 25 minutes I finally got back to the exam room where they asked me to put my clothes back on. See, I had completely disrobed in the waiting room in part so that I wouldn’t have to in the examination room. Also I wanted to creep out the other patients in the waiting room.

At first the nurse thought I was there to have warts removed. I mentioned that I did have one wart that never went away from the last time I was there, but this time I was actually there for a mole. She asked a few questions and left and a couple of minutes later the doctor walked in. He asked to see my mole and then compared it with moles on my back before deciding that he should take a chunk of the damn thing. I assumed it was for his dinner at home that night, but he insisted it was so that they can run some tests on it. He left the room and returned with the nurse, and his canister of the frozen air to freeze the wart to death. He instantly got to work, first on the nurse, fucking her like a $1,500 whore. Next he had me lift up my shirt where he proceeded to give me raspberries on my belly for about 90 seconds. Then he took an ice cream scoop and scooped the shit out of the mole. Oh for fuck’s sake, I felt like he was skinning me alive. So I farted in his face. True story.

I should know the results of the biopsy in about 7-10 days. Wait, that is what it was, a biopsy right? I guess so. I dunno, I’m not too overly concerned with it at this point.