The Un-Top 10

For some reason I was thinking about this earlier today, the movies I really like but would never make it into my top movies list. These aren't necessarily good movies but movies that are really enjoyable for whatever reason.

10. The Police Academy series - "The old zoo, not the new zoo, but the old zoo."
9. The Naked Gun series - "It's a topsy-turvy world, and maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans. But this is our hill. And these are our beans!"
8. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid - "I hadn't seen a body put together like that since I solved the case of the Murdered Girl with the Big Tits."
7. The Lethal Weapon series - "I'm getting too old for this s***."
6. Major League 1&2 (but not 3) - "Strike this motherf***er out."
5. The Die Hard series - "Yippie-kay-yay, motherf***er."
4. Airplane - "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?"
3. White Men Can't Jump - "Yo mamma's an astronaut."
2. The Princess Bride - "I'm with the Brut Squad." "You are the brut squad."
1. Blazing Saddles - "Nobody move or the N***** gets it."

Having My Cake and Eating it Too

The weeks following a break-up can be a weird time. You feel a range of emotions pulling you in a variety of directions. There’s part of you that feels heart broken but that’s the part you never want to think about, and so I won’t. There’s part of you that feels a new, almost foreign feeling of freedom. Like you’ve just been released from prison(1) and you have no where to go and nothing to do. You could do anything you wanted but ultimately you just want to do the same stuff that got you in prison to begin with. And there’s also a feeling of loss. This feeling of loss is different from the feeling of heart break, which we will not talk about. The feeling of loss comes when you are reminded of her. But more specifically when you are reminded of the way the two of you used to be together. When something happens and you are reminded of the cutesy little vocabulary the two of you shared that no one else knew about. And you are left to wonder if you’ll ever find another person you can be that cute with. What new words or phrases will there be with this new girl and will they be as cute as ours? And how long will it take you to become that way with someone else? It happened so fast with her, will it happen that quickly again? Is it even possible to be like that with someone else? Would they even get it? Maybe it’s not possible? Maybe she was the one? Maybe I should call her?

You’re also left with a million questions as well.


But then you think about your new freedom and you get distracted from the questions. You feel a little like a kid in a candy shop, everything looks delicious and you want to sample it all, but you only have 30 cents(2) and you have to figure out what’s going to be the best value for your money. Do you want something that’s more filling and will stick with you longer, or do you go for something that’s amazing but will only last about a bite and a half. To stretch this food analogy even farther, imagine if you were only allowed to eat carrot cake(3). For a year and a half you’ve had nothing but carrot cake. That’s not so bad because you love carrot cake, it’s probably you favorite cake, so you can live with carrot cake. But then suddenly you are told you can have any cake you want. Suddenly every cake seems delicious. And not just cake, but any pastry is up for grabs. Even though you love carrot cake it certainly not as sexy as a chocolate torte or tiramisu. But you’re so excited about you freedom you’ll even snack on some stale Wal-Mart purchased baklava just because you can. But that’s when you realize that too much freedom is a bad thing and you should probably go ahead and choose a cake that suits you a little better. The tiramisu is delicious, but it’s also expensive and you know you would get tired of it after a while. There’s pound cake that’s cheap and readily available but who want to show off pound cake to their friends. “Hey guy, look what I brought, pound cake!” No, you can never get excited about pound cake. And then you start to realize that the carrot cake was really pretty good. You were content with carrot cake, carrot cake makes you happy. Carrot cake may not be perfect but it was pretty good. So you think, “Maybe I should just stick with the carrot cake”. But then out of nowhere, some angel food cake comes along, and you’re confused all over again.


1. I don't mean this as insulting as it sounds.
2. Literally in this case.
3. I'm actually referring to my mom's carrot cake here, which we all know is pretty bad ass.

Co-ed Naked Softball

I recently joined another softball team and our first game was Friday night. I found this team while looking around craigslist.com1. I saw an ad for a co-ed team needing a pitcher, and I said to myself, "I'm a pitcher, that's me." So I replied to the ad and the guy managing the team, let's call him Brian2, said that they had a pitcher already but could I play shortstop. I said, "I'm a shortstop, that's me." And thus, I'm the shortstop for the Fireballs of North Richland Hills.

I wanted to join a co-ed team, not for the competition and level of play as you might expect, but rather I thought this could be a way to meet ladies. There are two types of women that play co-ed softball: 1. The unattractive type who have played softball all of their lives, and 2. hot ladies who have no talent3. I was hopeful that this team would be the latter. I was the second to arrive at the field which gave me a chance to scout out the "talent" of our team as they arrived. The first two ladies to arrive were obviously good players4. But I was okay with that because every team need a couple of those so that we can compete. But as the rest of the team arrived I was reminded about the third category of ladies playing co-ed softball, they type that is neither good nor attractive. And when I looked across the field at the our opposing team I realized I was on the wrong side5.

A few notes from our first game.
-- We won 8-5, winning feels good.
-- Only in co-ed softball is it possible to hit a lead off triple and not score6. I sat on third and watch, in succession, a strikeout, an infield pop-up, and a grounder to the pitcher.
-- There was one cute girl who may or may not have flirted with me and may or may not have a boyfriend.
-- I genuinely had fun playing because this seems to be a pretty nice bunch of people.
-- The guys on this team are all pretty talented7.


1) I love craigslist. I look at it almost daily for one thing or another.
2) Because that's his name.
3) I mean no softball talent, I'm sure they are talented in other ways.
4) You know what I mean.
5) They didn't look like a good team because they were a good looking team.
6) And possibly the Rangers.
7) At softball.