Goodbye Sundays, Helloooooo Football

Words cannot adequately express my elation for the upcoming NFL season, so instead, I will resurrect a noise saved for such occasions that only Jason Kohn will fully understand:

Oi!

Football

is

BACK!

And it couldn't come soon enough. If I have to watch one more Sportscenter about baseball, Elin Woods, or the goddamn WNBA, I'll be forced to lock Neil Everett in club bathroom with Ben Roethlisberger. Good luck Neil.

But luckily, football is back and, consequently, this means my Sundays are gone. At times, like when summer decides to kick in only in late August, this can be a frustrating trade off. Glimpsing a beautiful sunny day out the window while sprawled out lethargically on my couch, laptop open and tracking all my players, a part of me feels like a lazy piece of shit.

To combat these feelings, I do make it a point to get in a ton of activities on Saturday, and the good news is, most of my friends are on the same page. Volleyball, basketball, AND tennis today? Sure, tomorrow's Sunday. Climb a mountain in the morning? Eh, fuck it, couch recovery to follow.

I'll admit, my commitment level wasn't always this high. And then came Fantasy Football.

Of course, like any sports themed bet, it's a gamble: injuries, off-the-field suspensions, and the elusive notion of the "perfect draft." It's also a frequent conundrum: Who do I root for when my quarterback is playing my defense? What about when my running back faces the 49ers? Maybe he can have a career day and we'll still pull out a W. What? It could happen.

But gambles and conundrums aside, and beyond the prospect of winning a nice chunk of change at the end of the season, the true value of FF is knowledge and appreciation of the game. Knowledge of extremely talented players you'd never heard of and would likely never see in a Gatorade ad (Elvis Dumervil?), and appreciation of the greatest team game there is.

There will be sick catches, ridiculous juke moves, and nausea-inducing hits. There will be blood.

So start making those Saturdays count, my friends, and wave goodbye to Sunday.

Car Mechanics and Anal Rape

If, like me, your understanding of cars is somewhere between "It has 4 cylinders" and "What the fuck is a timing belt?" at some point, you've probably had the horrifying feeling that you were being anally raped.

Look, rape isn't funny. And neither is car maintenance.

Since I lack the knowledge and resources to fix anything besides refilling the oil and changing a spare (which would surely be a colossal pain in the ass too), I entrust any and all other issues to a private mechanic. He seems like a nice enough guy and I know that at 95,000 miles, a foreign luxury car is not an easy or inexpensive fix. Truthfully, I blame myself for getting into such a money-sucking investment at only 24 (when I bought it). But goddamn, it was so SWEET!

Audi A4, black on black, leather seats, sunroof, tiptronic shifting; suffice to say a small step up from the perfectly reliable Chevy Prism I had before. (Believe me, it isn't lost on me that it would still be running problem free right now, and likely for another 20 years.) But an Audi! C'mon! Tony Stark had one, and I always liked 'em too. "My salary is good now," I thought in 2008, "and it could only go UP from here. What's that? It already has 73,000 miles? It's perfect."

Oh to be young and stupid. Actually, I'm still young and stupid, but decidedly less so.

Like a beautiful, big-breasted gold-digger filing for divorce, this car is now taking everything I have, including my extracted 401K, and constant help from the unbelievably kind Bank of Mom and Dad. If only I had signed a prenup.

Last week the bitch got me for $2,600; the entire coolant system, wheel bearings, and two new tires. Parts and labor, sans the oil to lubricate my ass before the financial gangbang. I would've paid the 7 bucks extra for the KY fellas. And surprise surprise, it was back in the shop on Monday, for an unrelated issue. Luckily this was a fairly easy fix, but I get the distinct feeling that she's laughing at me. Like this $120 tab was a cute little wink, she's jabbing me in the ribs, subtly, "Just kidding, not this time...but it's coming."

But, like a psychotic love affair, there's a piece of me holding onto the memory of what she was in that first year. Oil changes and premium gas were her only necessities. I indulged her with personal and thorough washes every week. It was a wonderful time for us. Maybe with a couple more little tune-ups we'll be back on track. Maybe? Maybe???

"Listen man," my mechanic tells me, "You need to know, you should expect to spend this much money every year from now on with this car. 2 - 3 grand at least." Thanks for the honesty, Dave, you kind sadistic British fuck. Cheers mate.

Word to the wise: ride a bike. Or have a lot of money. Or both.

Funemployment

Coffee Bean, Santa Monica. 3:45 pm, Tuesday.

Overwhelmingly crowded with young, old, and in between. The same was true at Starbucks and Trader Joes. In an attempt to beat the after-work rush, I've instead found others like myself: Day-Walkers. Not vampires who can somehow withstand sunlight (and honestly, can we stop with all the goddamn vampires?). These Day-Walkers are the unemployed, the retired, the confused, rich, weird, scheming, and lost. Good people; mostly.

While you're at the office, we're at coffee shops; on laptops and iPhones, guzzling skinny hazelnut lattes and chasing dreams, ours or someone else's.

Waiting in the "Express Line" at Trader Joes, behind 7 people, various size and age, I wondered: Who the fuck are these people?

Is this mid-day line a product of the recession and downsizing? And if so, how do they have the means to be shopping here? How do I? Are we all sucking from the government's miraculous tit?

Unemployment, or Funemployment depending on your current situation, is floating myself and around 2 million others in California alone. I should say more than floating. I know for fact I'm making significantly more for doing nothing than a friend at a talent agency does for almost 60 hours a week. Floating indeed.

It is my life-vest, my safety net, and my enabler. Like a drug with no side-effects, we binge hard on it, pushing the knowledge of its inevitable finality to the farthest recesses of our brains. We sleep, we relax, we eat when we want, and we save on gas, all the while "looking" for new jobs. But who wants to work? After months of making your own schedule, writing, reading, exercising on your own terms, the thought of any kind of structure or labor for others is a staggering notion.

Staggering, but necessary.

Senate Republicans, and even one Democrat (Ben Nelson, Nebraska), voted against the fed extension in June, immediately suspending all benefits to millions of Americans. It was a terrifying moment which lasted about a month. No more checks? What about rent next month? Why? When? How? FUCK.

The suddenness of the benefits ending sucked for me and was probably tragic for many. I wonder the depths I would've sunk to if not for the genius and prolific financial investment of my parents 13 years ago, which kept my head above water until the Senate re-adjourned and promptly removed their heads from their asses.

Having said all of this, I do believe there is some truth to their concerns. Extending unemployment was necessary, but it's also crippling to the same poor bastards it's saving. It allows our job-hunting to be more selective than "I just need a paycheck." For this, I'm forever thankful. But one thing's for sure: when those sweet-ass checks stopped coming, my search expanded. I was desperate, I was motivated, and I was willing to do anything for a salary.

Luckily I found one Bartending at a restaurant which will almost certainly go belly-up by the end of the year, but at least it provided some help in the mean time. Point being, when I needed a job, absolutely HAD to have an income, it became my only priority.

The current maximum time for collecting benefits is 99 weeks. To the out of work, the scared, the happy, the lazy, the unlucky, I say this: enjoy it while it lasts. Some day we will all look back on this confusing moment in our lives and, hopefully, we will laugh.