High School Doesn't Last EIGHT YEARS!

I know this twentysomething dude who can't or won't stop mentioning high school, the sports he played, and how grand it was. He is Al Bundy. His interminable overemphasis of being, well, a run-of-the-mill athlete is strictly aggravating.

From bits and pieces of our scattered conversations that I'm bizarrely replaying in my head, he'd probably paint himself as a white Julius Peppers but with better hops. His reality is that he was a legend or a folk hero. Have you seen Slap Shot? If he'd have played hockey in high school, he'd say that he was the Hanson Brothers rolled into one. If he and I were friends, I'd ask to borrow his Hoosiers and Varsity Blues DVDs.

High school football. High school basketball. Cheerleaders. Away games. Playoffs. State. Circle jerks. It never ceases! The topic could be the racial divide in the United States, and he'd interrupt with a vapid story about catching a pass or shooting a free throw or fingering a husky cheerleader. I'm waiting for him to say, "This one time, at band camp...." I only see him when I'm out getting my drink on. He invariably makes me want to drink more. "How many until I black out? Yeah, I'll risk liver failure just to quiet his prating."

I'll temporarily lift my self-imposed ban on profanity. Holy shit! You're how old? Quit talking about high school. It is so queer. It's as queer as a rainbow over San Francisco. It's uncool. It's uninteresting. It's unbecoming. It's borderline loathsome.

Yeah, talking in glowing terms about your exploits from six or seven years ago may impress your erstwhile shop teacher but it engenders no respect or adulation from your peers. It doesn't one bit. I'm sorry. Someone who cares for you should pull you aside and give you a talking-to or have a heart-to-heart with you. If neither approach cuts ice, I proffer electroshock. Consider it. (I am not wrong, person whom I'd tepidly call an acquaintance. You're in the wrong.) I think I speak for all of us—and by "us," I mean greater Lincoln—when I kindly say that you need to look deep within yourself tonight, pray for an epiphany, and hope against hope that you can conclude this battiness once and for all. Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with a sixer of Rolling Rock on top. Wise up. For the love of Sargent Shriver!

High school, touchdowns, lay-ups, and track duals were not your apotheosis. High school was no one's apotheosis. How could exuberantly screwing off for forty-five hours a week for four years be any clear-headed person's apotheosis? High school wasn't Everest. It was a molehill. The mountain is still heretofore unknown. The actual glory lies in waking up to the uncertainty that tomorrow could mysteriously present the first steps up the real mountain. That's what you should be yapping about, not how, as an eighth-grade football player, you verbally abused another team's cheerleaders from the opposite sideline.

The future is calling. It wants you to zip it about the past. Be a pal. Look forward, or at least become a mute.

Let it go. The sun has set.


You're an addict. Reminiscing about high school is your addiction. Seek help. Call that show Intervention. You'd be doing it for mankind.

Drunk, or Lying Pathologically?

Are you lying for your sake or my sake? Both?

I was at a bar—The Downtown—last night with some friends when a friend of said friends, a somewhat cool dude whom I'd never met before, sat beside me in a booth, and we began volleying jokes back and forth. I said something like, "You know what I hate about the bars? It's like an amateur bodybuilding convention." He said something about why these neckless dopes buy five-sizes-too-small shirts. I then tossed out a sentence with the phrase "let themselves go." His smirk vanished. He was all serious now. I don't know if it was vanity, Dutch courage, or full-on mendacity, but he said, "I've been getting back into shape lately. I've lost twenty-five pounds in three weeks." A barefaced lie. "Ah, nice," I said, nodding, gritting teeth, squinting at him to make sure he wasn't Larry the Cable Guy in some take-it-to-the-streets advertising blitz for NutriSystem. (Why won't Larry the Hayseed fall asleep on a couch on a front porch and never wake up? Larry the Cable Goon is why the terrorists hate us. You can't tell me that KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed], in between waterboarding jags, isn't in his cell at Guantanamo Bay cursing Larry's name and plotting an attack on a doublewide somewhere.) Boiling I was.

Do I look stupid or fatuous? (Maybe so.) I was about to scream to Mr. Minus 25 in 3, "Who the hell do you think you're kidding? I'm Jeff Skilling! Jeff. Mother. Effing. Skilling. I'm the smartest guy in the room, you deceitful schmuck." I bit my tongue—I prefer the facade of niceness—and left for the restroom, never to see him again. But his "black jelly bean" lie still resonates, ringing in my ears like a point-blank blast from an air horn. Why this lie? What did he perceive he was gaining? I was ogling women's legs like there was no tomorrow, so he wasn't trying to line up any sweaty bathhouse sex with me. I didn't and still don't see his endgame.

Some lies are necessary. Some lies are risky. Some lies are strategic. Some lies are innocuous. Some lies are fun. Some lies exist solely to concoct more lies; they snowball; before you know it, you've got a village of snowpeople and you're desperately trying to keep them upright, frozen, and free of piss. Some lies are unapologetically and intentionally malicious.

This dude's lie was an uncreative, thoughtless boast with high improbability. I'm clean mystified. It served zero purpose. Maybe he was in that blissful hammered state where logic and reason don't belong in what little blood is still in the brain.

Hey, what if he believed his lie was the truth? It's possible, I guess. Is it even a lie if you truely, wholeheartedly believe it?

I mean, if you're going to lie to a complete stranger—and we're all strangers in a wonderfully strange land when it comes to the bars—tell a whopper. The big lie. When you don't know someone, it's hard to discern fact from fiction, especially if he or she is convincing. When Grey Goose saturates your gray matter, you don't know what to repudiate.

I once claimed to have dated Amber Valletta when she was in her modeling heyday. This was daft on its face, as I would've been a squeaky-voiced, Married...With Children-obsessed adolescent at the time. She's an unknown, more or less, so the lie was decent. It didn't land but it didn't have gaping holes or totally bomb either. Yes, yes, yes, I could lie another day. (Just look at this goddess! Who wouldn't commit quadruple homicide for her?)


I lied about dating her because she's a Venus, and it's admirable to have ties to Venuses, whether those ties are real or fabricated. I don't know why Mr. Slim Fast lied about shedding weight. Maybe that's how he befriends others. Maybe he's related to Nixon. Maybe he's a defective. Maybe it was the gin talking. I have no clue whatsoever. Maybe he wants to bend over Kirstie Alley.

In the end, he told a good-for-nothing lie. What a shame. Lying willy-nilly does a disservice to liars everywhere. He gives us a bad name. (Exasperated sigh.) Doesn't he understand? A lie is a terrible thing to waste, like a party ball.

Lying is a science. It requires time and ingenuity. It requires vast field studies. It requires dedication—"my mission in life is to lie day in, day out with burgeoning aplomb." Lying is best left to the professionals.

Cable News: One Giant Muckheap

I love cable news, but it's broken. (Mitt Romney would say it's "fundamentally broken." Ah, Mitt, can I plug some of your extra wives?) It needs a fixer—like Mr. Wolfe.

CNN skews left. Fox News skews right; "fair and balanced" is such a con job. MSNBC skews, oh who cares about that hanging-by-a-thread, excremental network? Headline News is trivial.

Errors and homophones litter the tickers. Graphics and color schemes are garish. Men wear shiny monochrome ties. Talking heads use big words like "inexorably," "sectarian," and "Zimbabwe." Stylists and cosmeticians excessively preen Brit Hume, Anderson Cooper, Nancy Grace, Keith Olbermann, and their otherwise average-looking ilk.

Anchors try to sound competent and informed. They segue painfully between stories. They're powerless against "hard" commercial breaks. They seem to care and wrongfully assume that they're still cool on some level. They're respectful to guests. Why?

New female hires are mostly lip-glossed, hot-as-Hades airheads who wear short skirts and cross and uncross their legs so often that it seems as if it's a contractual obligation. It's a small miracle that some of these twits can even read the teleprompters.

New male hires are mostly fit Caucasian tools with dorky haircuts, blindingly white teeth, forced smiles, erectile dysfunction (You're telling me that Bret Baier doesn't have a saggy noodle?), and pitiful senses of humor.

As a mid-twentysomething, I've had it with these decrepit newspeople in their suits. They may reach the Me Generation and those older than that, but their overall seriousness falls damn flat with me.

CNN's flaws

Wolf Blitzer's beady eyes and pointing at camera.

Candy Crowley is a butterball who wears inordinate rouge.

Larry King is a fuzzyheaded hunchback whose "interviews" go nowhere.

The Situation Room is three hours of Obama-bashing.

Contributor James Carville's persona is the largest and most fascinating on CNN, and the network still underutilizes him and his rage.

Anderson Cooper isn't a tenth as hip as he believes.

Carol Costello's tan was so orange that I emailed them to complain that she resembled an Oompa-Loompa.

Headline News's flaws

Nancy Grace is shrill, tiresome, and anything but telegenic.

Glenn Beck is a former alcoholic who thinks that he speaks for and to the masses. He's such a clueless sap. He fabricates statistics. His name is Glenn Beck, which sounds like that of a gay pornstar. "What ratings?" is how TV execs refer to his show's numbers.

MSNBC's flaws

They haven't fired Dan Abrams.

Chris Matthews won't shave his head.

They haven't fired Dan Abrams.

Keith Olbermann is such a hair-trigger paleoliberal that he's almost as bad as Sean Hannity.

They haven't fired Dan Abrams!

Fox New Channel's flaws

Fox and Friends is three hours of meaningless, head-scratching blather. Why not call the show Fox and Dross? It has a nice ring to it.

Bill Hemmer is a phony. He's not fooling anyone. Just look at him. He has small-man syndrome.

Megyn Kelly is nearing forty and has Michael Jackson's nose. Oh, you're a lawyer? Hello? Earth to Megyn! That's irrelevant. You're on Fox News! Your life is over. Done. Goose? Cooked. Give up. And wipe that ridiculous smirk off your Botox, er, face.

Jon Scott is creepy. The Night Stalker would find him creepy.

Shepard Smith is an odd, glassy-eyed megalomaniac who seems to have an unhealthy "thing" for J.Lo.

Neil Cavuto's neck is trying to swallow his head.

Brit Hume is a cougher. "The Grapevine" is a two-minute segment that attacks the left and props up the right. His "All-Star Panel" is a dud. Special Report with Brit Hume? What's so special about it? Snores with Brit Hume.

Bill O'Reilly is a blowhard with a turkey neck. He's obsessed with Jessica's Law. (I don't have a joke for that.) He claims that he revived and brought back "bloviate" into the American lexicon. Really? Shouldn't you be as or more proud of keeping Little Debbie afloat since 1974?

Greta Van Susteren is a scientologist [sic]. I refuse to capitalize that word.

Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld is a laugh-free, inane disaster.

Fox News only treats its viewers as partial idiots but not complete idiots. This isn't helpful.

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There's room for a new cable news network—say, The SAD News Channel, aka the Sex, Alcohol, and Drugs News Channel—a network that's amateurish, cheap, unprepared, and tactless. The correspondents and anchors: bright but unskilled twentysomethings who never dress up and utter oaths and phrases like "that's queer," "this story sucks," "I hate these people," "I don't know what this story's about," "I didn't read my notes," "I don't give a shit," "We're all going to hell," "My earpiece doesn't work," "We really should have a news director," and "What's on CNN? We'll ape that." It'd be entertaining. It'd be a train wreck. It'd be no worse than what we have now, which is, categorically, nothing.

Mein Führer-ious Orgy

Formula One president Max Mosley getting busy in a Nazi-themed S & M orgy with five prostitutes—by the way, it reportedly lasted five hours—is the juiciest story since the Spitzer scandal.

First of all, how much Viagra and Levitra is a sixty-seven-year-old popping to keep his guitar "strumable" for five hours? Fistfuls of pills? Bottles? Fifty-five-gallon drums? Does he wash said pills down with prune juice or Maalox?

Second, who combines prostitutes with reenacting the unknowable hell of an SS death camp? That's five circles and a square peg. It's incongruous. Mosley should have considered other sensitive themes: The Last Supper; 9/11; any Kennedy assassination ("Oh, yeah! I'm about to shoot some magic bullets!"); Hurricane Katrina ("You'll leave the Superdome when I say you can leave! Now play with my berries").

Third, has any trollop anywhere heard of Nazi Germany, Hitler, Eichmann, Auschwitz, or the Third Reich? Hookers aren't Oxford-educated. They're not educated, period. In high school, they were turning tricks instead of reading My Ántonia. They think Falstaff is a risky sexual position. A hooker with a GED, or one without a social disease, is as rare as the Ghost Orchid. There isn't a dirty pross on the planet who could make heads or tails of this sentence: "All right, I'm gonna teabag you until I bruise both your eye sockets." (Now in a playful voice.) "Here come the panzers."

Note: I don't call hookers "call girls." It's showing them undue respect and giving their sordid profession a touch of class. Forget that. These women, okay, these soulless, icky tarts have about as much cred on the streets as Air America has on the airwaves.

My friends and I had an interesting back-and-forth on this iniquitous tale. Some of our one-liners:

"Watch it, you whore, or else I'll go all Josef Mengele on your ass."

"No mention of Eva Braun, I'm out."

"The man is delusional if he thinks this type of stuff still flies in the world today."

"He's like Dr. Strangelove, only different. 'I can cum!'"

The Nazis hated and exterminated Jews but they loved money and treasure just as much. Prostitutes love money and heroin and crack. I guess you could say that the Nazis were prostitutes for genocide. Ah, Nazis and prostitutes. The lines of distinction between the two blur significantly, leaving them indistinguishable, except when SS lieutenants have black-and-blue eyes or brownshirts have noticeable stains.

Your Pee is Too Good for This Newspaper

I'm sitting in CBA 143, a large lecture hell, listening to a lawyer talk about S corporations. There is garbage everywhere. And by garbage I mean Daily Nebraskans. They blanket the floor.

Joe or Jane UNL: "This paper is shit. What a joke. I don't even know why I pick one up. The writers blow. They blow hard, man. The cartoonist couldn't draw a dong on a passed-out guy's face. I'm tired of reading about residence halls and Nebraska football minutiae and prank calls and student government and how the chancellor bought a new tie and, you know, like, education. The editorial board needs to die too. Death by a million paper cuts. I'm not going to throw this paper in the trash can or some recycling bin. Why would I do that? I hate the DN. Let some asshole janitor throw it away. I have texting to do."

My mom said she called it The Daily Rag when she was at UNL in the seventies. The Daily Rubbish was, is, and always will be pure crap. I'd rather watch Disney movies and pork Roseanne than read this "newspaper."

Omaha Women Vs. Lincoln Women

Preface: I'm an egotist. When I go out, I drink to get drunk, to feel like I'm floating down a river while listening to the Zep's "Whole Lotta Love," and to keep everything in perspective. My only concerns are alcohol and cracking wise. Stiff drinks, cold Budweiser, and sharp jokes. "Am I plastered and are my chums laughing at my supposed witticisms?" That's it. (A successful night of carousing in Lincoln ends with drunk-speeding down 180, across Superior, and up 27th while praying that all LPD radio cars are elsewhere.) Unknown women are secondary. They're inessential. I think as "highly" of Tucker Max as I do James Frey. I didn't care about amassing notches on my bedpost when I was twenty-one. I don't care now. I don't carry a rubber in my wallet. I don't see women as toys—"just crank and wind and hope she hops on my pecker." No, not at all. So, this kind of affords me a fresh or different view and interpretation of the boozy estrogenic wilderness in our feculent, er, fair cities.

This is not a debate. The ladies of Omaha are the winner—by a landslide. The scattered nature of the bar scene in Omaha definitely plays a role. It's as if all the driving from this bar to a collection of bars to that bar somehow dissipates bitchiness or diffidence (no, not "indifference") or snottiness. I dunno. It's beyond me. (Generally, men in both cities are flagrant, unabashed douchebags. Each is a sea of clowns. [I would make a joke about Gacy but I won't.] I'm both a douchebag and a clown.) The following, which may be just my jadedness talking vis-à-vis Lincoln, is, jestingly, a combination of speculation, observation, and putative fact.

Lincoln women:

Immature (Asking, "Who's Robert Palmer?" Expecting 475-RIDE to show up after just two hours. Drinking more than one at Woody's.)

Blockheaded (Going to Bodega's and not anticipating thirty guys to attempt to line up a one-night stand with you.)

Touchy (Getting peeved at Bodega's after someone sees a tat on your arm and asks if you're in a gang.)

Unapproachable (Cold shoulders. Shooting fire from eyes. Eyes betraying wrath. Nails as long as knives.)

Delusional ("I don't wear underwear but, no, I'm not having sex with anyone tonight.")

(An actual Lincolnite. Will you look at this crazy?)


Omaha women:

Conversational ("Yes, I've heard of Hillary Clinton. But I don't follow politics. I'm not a registered voter. When is the election?")

Attractive on more than just a physical level (if only because they're not from Lincoln)

Unhurried (Standing on the dance floor at the Draft House, holding their purses, gazing about like elephants in the Serengeti.)

Worldly, well, somewhat (Chastising straight men in a gay bar for their choice of clothing.)

Chill, the good way (Laughing at profane, homophobic, racist, sexist, and taboo jokes more than once. Flat-out owning the vocals on "Dead on Arrival" on Rock Band.)

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I will say that, so far, Lincoln women tremendously outshine Omaha women when it comes to after-hours; however, my sampling data are limited and incomplete. (Last weekend in Omaha, one gal even refused to cheat on her husband who's serving in Iraq. Say what? You have scruples? Why? For what? "You need to come to Lincoln.") Ninety-five percent of said data went down in the L Word, but I'm not ready to count Omaha women out just yet. As for Lincoln, do-nothings don't have to work the morning after, so more women show up at over-hyped yawn-fests posing as after-hours.

Lincoln is fun until you turn twenty-three. After that, it's Omaha or NyQuil and MIKE AND IKE®.

Baseball or a Lobotomy?

Baseball sucks. It's boring. It's long. The uniforms are gay. Heckling is often a chore. No cheerleaders—not that those purposeless bimbos belong at any sporting event and especially not on a football field. Foul balls zinged down the foul lines are like Scud missles. Teeball. A baseball game is a convention for fatsos, where smaller fatsos orbit around bigger fatsos.

Sidebar: The Lincoln Saltdogs banned me, ahem, for life from Haymarket Park years ago after I harassed the Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks's plump third base coach so relentlessly and viciously. I must've screamed "insatiable lust for hot dogs" a thousand times. Saltdog fans were even scolding me for my crass behavior. One fortyish woman said, "You're ruining the game for everyone." I said, "Oh, what do you know? You're a soccer mom. Go back to juice boxes." Seriously, who goes to minor-league baseball games in the first place? Free tickets and the promise of a free beer barely got me to go. The Saltdogs? That's the best they could come up with? Retards.

Okay. Where was I? Highlights of MLB games on SportsCenter are painful to sit through. Baseball jerseys look stupid. The average first baseman is morbidly obese. Most of the crowd is morbidly obese. The commentators are tying nooses in the broadcasters' booth halfway through the second inning because calling the "action" on the field is a fate worse than death. Red Sox fans omit "r"'s from too many words and sound like dunces in the process. The Brewers likely frown on public drunkenness and running out onto the field with a beer in each hand. What kind of messed-up double standard is that? The seventh-inning stretch. "Apartments on My Forehead Start at $1,400 a Month" Barry Bonds. "Don't Look at My Eyeballs" Jose Canseco. "Scarface" Mark McGwire. Rudolf Hess (just kidding). Once heroes and icons, these former players are spittle. Swinging a baseball bat at a baseball is far less fun or exhilarating than maniacally swinging one at (wherever your perverse mind takes you).

Rain stops games. Rain, for Pete's sake! The best place for a baseball card is in the spokes of a ten-speed bike.

And I don't want to hear about the College World Series. In point of fact: For most twentysomethings, the CWS has nothing to do with baseball. You just like the nonstop partying, women from out of town, and loading up on Rodeo Cheeseburgers after the bars close. The only gloves you care about were made by Trojan.

Baseball has fleas. Pass it on.