Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Former Big Ten Coaches Celebrity Look-Alikes

Well, my Big Ten Coaches Look-Alike post was such a smash hit that I have received at least one request to have a post with celebrity look-alikes for some former Big Ten coaches. So, here you go:

Bob Knight (Indiana)


Gene Keady (Purdue)*


*This completes the Purdue/Goonies sweep, with Matt Painter coming in as Sloth's twin.

Jud Heathcote (Michigan State)


Tom Davis (Iowa)


Lou Henson (Illinois)


Clem Haskins (Minnesota)

In Memorium: Superwoman

On the same day as Kirby Puckett's passing, Christopher Reeve's widow, Dana Reeves, died at age 44 from lung cancer. And what better way for Yahoo to honor her in her obituary article than by posting a picture of a bra-less Mrs. Reeve with her nipples screaming to escape her dress. You stay classy, Yahoo.

Monday, March 06, 2006

In Memorium: Kirby Puckett


The news that Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett died today just scrawled along ESPN's Bottom Line. From all I can tell, in addition to being one of the best baseball players of the last 20 years, he was a hell of a guy, at least in his playing days (apparently he pissed in a mall parking lot during retirement). Anyway, I'm not a Twins fan or anything like that, but it's still sad when someone dies of a stroke at age 45. Rest in peace, Kirby.

Big Ten Basketball Coaches Celebrity Look-Alikes

The Big Ten Conference, long considered by GMYH to be the best all-around conference in the NCAA, has eleven head men's basketball coaches. And all of them look like someone famous. Before the impending off-season coaching changes, I figured I would have a celebrity look-alike post. So, here you go:

Bruce Weber (Illinois)

Mike Davis (Indiana)

Steve Alford (Iowa)

Tommy Amaker (Michigan)

Tom Izzo (Michigan State)

Dan Monson (Minnesota)

Bill Carmody (Northwestern)

Thad Matta (Ohio State)

Ed DeChellis (Penn State)

Matt Painter (Purdue)

Bo Ryan (Wisconsin)

CD Review: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Now and then I buy an album within a week or two if its release. And from now on, when I do, I'll try to write a review for all you GMYH'ers out there hungry for new music.

If you haven't heard of the Arctic Monkeys yet, you probably soon will. They have been an Oasis-level sensation in the UK, with their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, debuting at #1 on the British pop charts and becoming England's fastest-selling debut album of all-time.

Hailing from Sheffield (yes, the very same Sheffield that gave us Def Leppard), I would describe them as neoclassical British punk, if that makes any sense. The album cover (shown above) kind of sums up the album: straightforward, brash, honest, and youthful, but not entirely innocent. Lead singer Alex Turner has a classic, decidedly British punk voice, both frantic and eloquent, depending on what the situation calls for. The Arctic Monkeys are more punky, raunchy, and edgy than Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party, but that's not to say that they don't have elements of both of those bands. On the same note, they are more melodic than the Buzzcocks or the Sex Pistols, but their sound is certainly derivative of the early British punk sound (that's not meant to be a knock in any way--the Arctic Monkeys do a great job of adding their own sound and not coming off as copycats).

If they were a mixture of other bands, here's what they'd be:
-The Buzzcocks (27%)
-Bloc Party (16%)
-Franz Ferdinand (16%)
-The Clash (12%)
-The Sex Pistols (9%)
-Razorlight (8%)
-The Replacements (5%)
-Sublime (4%)
-Television (3%)

The songs tend to run together a bit the first couple listens, but the more I listen to it, the more I like it and the more the songs become distinguishable. While I'm not ready to crown it the fifth best British album ever (as one British publication did), it is a well-crafted, catchy album.

Their first single, which you may have heard, is "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor." It's a fast-paced dance-punk song, featuring pounding drums, well-placed call-and-response, and driving guitars. Other highlights on the album are "The View From the Afternoon" (catchy, Buzzcocksy song that starts the album off rockin'), "Riot Van" (a slow and almost a capella song about bored cops harassing/beating drunk young adults), and "When the Sun Goes Down" (about seedy characters, it starts off slow, but then changes to more up-tempo).

Overall, I give Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not a rating of 5 Handrews*.

Arctic Monkeys on the Web:
Arctic Monkeys Home Page
Arctic Monkeys at MySpace.com
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not at Amazon.com

*GMYH CD Review Scale:
-6 Handrews - Buy it now. NOW!!
-5 Handrews - Excellent album that you should seriously consider purchasing in the near future
-4 Handrews - Very good album that you should at least check out on iTunes
-3 Handrews - If you want it, download it illegally
-2 Handrews - Somewhere between Britney Spears and William Hung
-1 Handrew - Ashlee Simpson
-0 Handrews - Kevin Federline

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Mr. 10,000 - Jon Dudek

***This is a fake biography. It is purely satirical and devoid of truth. Any names, places, events, etc. discussed in the following biography are not real and are purely coincidental to and have no connection whatsoever to any names, places, events, etc. that may exist in the real world.***

December 21, 1977
It was a blisteringly cold night in Rapid City, South Dakota. But the scene was red hot inside Diamond Dan's Disco. Fred and Roberta Dudek, Polish immigrants who had moved to South Dakota from Krakow several years earlier, had a full-blown case of disco fever. Since the release of Saturday Night Fever only five days earlier, they had seen the movie three times and gone to discos every night, despite the fact that Roberta was well over eight months pregnant with the couple's second child. The movie spoke to them in a way that no movie had before, particularly to Fred, who, like John Travolta's character Tony Manero, was a painter by day and a dance floor magician by night.

Fred and Roberta were fast becoming the darlings of Rapid City's disco scene, which included Diamond Dan's, The Rocky Raccoon, and Mt. Dancemore. Known colloquially around town as "Tweety and The Birdman" (Dudek means "bird" in Polish), Fred and Roberta were so good that they had already memorized all of Tony and Stephanie's dance moves from Saturday Night Fever. Their disco days, however, came quite literally to a crashing end. On that fateful Wednesday night, Fred and Roberta were in Diamond Dan's weekly Wednesday night "Badlands Battle" couples dance contest, the winner of which got $100 and a free hi-fi stereo system from Rex's Rapid City RCA Repository. During a bold and hotly contested final round dance, Fred threw Roberta into the air, and she landed on the illuminated checkerboard floor in the splits, as was planned. What was not planned, though, was for Roberta's water to break. Jonathan Van McCoy Dudek was Rapid City's first dance-floor-born child.

August 12, 1979
Fred and Roberta begin to get more attention for their dancing. With the prize money that they were winning, Fred was quits his day job as a painter and focuses his time and energy entirely on disco dancing. Roberta quits her day job as a blacksmith and does the same.

June 1, 1981
With the decline of disco, Rapid City bars move away from dance contests and toward rock-paper-scissor tournaments, which, for some reason, Rapid City residents take to like Gary Glitter to 11-year-old Vietnamese girls. Fred and Roberta decide to retire from competitive disco dancing. Fred, also an artist in his spare time, decides to move the family to Minneapolis because of the city's well-respected art community.

December 21, 1981
On his 4th birthday, Jon receives an electric guitar from his parents, even though he asked for an AT-AT. He was also given hockey tickets to see a game between the home town North Stars and the visiting Chicago Blackhawks. Despite his inability to grasp the intricacies of hockey, Jon became enamored with the sport and for some reason quickly grew to hate the North Stars and love the Blackhawks.

January 20, 1985
While watching Super Bowl XIX, Jon develops an unhealthy obsession with Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins. Years later, the movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective would be made. It is loosely based on a series of events that occurred with Jon and Marino. The writers of the movie changed the script just enough so that they were able to avoid seeking Jon's permission or paying him anything. For instance, in the movie Jon's character is played by a supposed woman (Sean Young) who is actually a man. Also, Roger Podacter did not die when he fell 20+ stories from a high-rise balcony. In real life, he died on the way to the hospital.

May 29, 1985
Having become enthralled with Minneapolis's growing punk scene, as well as the city's now-legendary "Uptown" funk scene, Jon and his older brother Fred, Jr. (or "FJ") form a band that would revolutionize the way Minneapolitans looked at tribute bands. The band itself did not have a permanent name. Instead, they would play different shows featuring the looks and songs of various Minneapolis artists, and naming themselves differently depending on the artist. Here are some of their incarnations:
-Duke (Prince)
-The Replacements' Replacements (The Replacements)
-Jonny Night & The Era (Morris Day & The Time)
-Hüsker Dü Tü (Hüsker Dü)
-Sheila F. (Sheila E.)

June 15, 1988
After a heated dispute about the direction of their band, FJ kicks Jon out of all of their bands. Distraught and angry, Jon packs some of his belongings and runs away from home. He heads west to Nevada, where he had heard there was enough silver to make every man, woman, and child a millionaire. FJ soon after dissolves the band and eventually becomes a very successful dog catcher.

June 18, 1988
After several days of wildly unsuccessful prospecting and extreme ridicule from the locals, Jon leaves Nevada on a train bound for New York City, where he hides in the cargo bay of a transatlantic cruise ship, arriving in London on June 27, 1988. Soon after his arrival in London, Jon begins to work a series of odd jobs to earn money: bootblack at Kings Cross Station, chimneysweep in South Kensington and Notting Hill, tour guide for "Jack the Ripper's London" in Whitechapel, street musician and sword swallower outside the Covent Garden Market, and bird food merchant at Trafalgar Square.

October 29, 1989
Fred, Roberta, and FJ move to LaGrange Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Fred buys a scrap metal yard with hopes of using the metal to make abstract sculptures of the heroes of the disco era. Demand is surprising. His first sculpture, "Fly Robin Fly," sells for $10,000 to a private collector in South Beach. After "Love Pains: A Tribute to Yvonne Elliman" is featured in the Spring 1991 issue of Sculpture Review Magazine, Fred's sculpture career takes off. The organizers of San Francisco's 1991 International Lesbian & Gay Freedom Day Parade commission him to create "Village People" for the parade's featured float. His "Barry Gibb" will sell for $231,000 in a 1992 Christie's auction. The buyer? None other than Barry Gibb.

September 12, 1990
While working as a clerk in a Carnaby Street clothier, Jon meets a 33-year-old London-based Uzbekistani treasure hunter named Shavkat Mirziyayev ("Shav"). The two become fast friends, despite their 20-year age difference. As Mirziyayev would recount in a 2001 interview with National Geographic, "I'm not gay, nor am I a pedophile. I just love treasure hunting with young men." Shav invites Jon to join his crew on the Tashkent, Shav's 90-foot treasure hunting yacht, for the crew's next mission: to find the lost city of Atlantis and all of its gold. Jon accepts Shav's invitation.

June 12, 1991
Buccaneering for nearly a year suited Jon well. The hours were good, and despite the fact that they didn't find Atlantis or its gold, the pay was pretty good. And it didn't hurt that Jon was making some great friends that he would have for the rest of his life. Or so he thought. On this day, the Tashkent began to experience trouble around Cape Agulhas, South Africa. Thirty-six hours later, the Tashkent stalled about thirty miles south of Mauritius, just in time for a group of Madagascarian pirates to prey on the Tashkent. The pirates raided the Tashkent, stealing the crew's most recent findings, and then killing 29 of the Tashkent's 38 crew members. Shav and several crew members escaped via a small motorboat, while Jon was able to escape with two of his shipmates on a lifeboat. The pirates, however, noticed Jon and his compatriots, and sent a hail of gunfire toward the lifeboat as it slowly got away. Jon was shot in the left arm and right calf, while the other two took the brunt of the gunfire, dying instantly. Knowing that he would be killed otherwise, Jon pretended to be dead. Once the pirates left the area, Jon used his friends' clothes to make tourniquets for his own wounds, and then shoved their bodies overboard so as not to attract birds of prey.

June 15, 1991
At about five in the morning, Jon's lifeboat drifted ashore about five miles east of Souillac, Mauritius, about 200 meters from where University of Mauritius marine biology professor Deolall Daby was doing some marine-life research under the watchful eye of his 13-year-old daughter Ameenah. Deolall and Ameenah rescue Jon, and take him to the University Hospital in Moka, where his bullet wounds and dehydration are treated. Once hearing Jon's story and sensing that Jon is a good person, Deolall invites Jon to stay with their family in Port Louis for as long as Jon wants.

June 30, 1991
Ameenah introduces Jon to surfing. She is a fast-riser on the Mascarene Islands Surf Tour (MIST), having already garnered a first-place trophy at the Rodrigues Surf War and a second-pace finish at the Tamarin Surf Club Winter Nationals. Jon takes to surfing like Dudley Moore to shitty movies. More importantly, he takes to Ameenah like Ted Kennedy to scotch. The two fall deeply in love, while dominating the MIST together. In the next nine months, Jon and Ameenah would finish 1-2 in seven different MIST events.

January 15, 1992
With the money he's earned on the MIST, Jon splurges on himself and buys a LaserDisc player, believing it to be the successor to the VCR. At the same time, for the price of 73 Mauritian rupees (about $34.98 USD), Jon purchases his first movie on LaserDisc, Cool As Ice.

March 4, 1992
Jon and Ameenah embark on a midnight stroll down a beach on Pointe du Diable. By 12:04, neither Jon nor Ameenah would be a virgin anymore.

March 5, 1992
The MIST Championship is held on the very same beach where Jon and Ameenah achieved coitus less than twelve hours earlier. Tragedy strikes, however, as particularly rough waves during Ameenah's final surf throw her board straight into the air, hitting her head in the process. By the time she is fished from the water, Ameenah has inhaled enough water and been unconscious long enough that, while she remains alive, she will be nearly brain dead for the rest of her life.

March 6, 1992
Jon packs his LaserDisc player, withdraws all of his money from the bank, and gets the fuck out of Mauritius. He heads to Plaisance International Airport and uses all of his money to hop the first flight to Antananarivo, Nairobi, Cairo, Marrakech, New York, and finally Chicago. Fred and Roberta are overjoyed at Jon's return. Upon his return, Jon enrolls at Park Junior High, and somehow graduates in June, despite having no formal education for nearly four years.

July 17, 1992
Jon's friend Tony Zumpano walks to Jon's house with a rented copy of Double Trouble, the latest movie starring the Barbarian Brothers, Peter and David Paul, which Tony had been raving about to Jon. After a near-freak accident involving the Dudeks' possibly Satanic dog, Mac, and Zumpano, Zumpano leaves immediately to train in Spain with famed bullfighter Antonio Ordonez, leaving behind the copy of Double Trouble. Jon watches the movie (his first Barbarian Brothers film viewing) and instantly falls in love with the hilarious antics of the Paul twins. As Jon recalled in 2003: "They were just so damn huge and wittily dumb that anything they did was comedic gold. And that hair! Have you ever seen something more ridiculous? They looked like Jose Canseco on 'roids. More 'roids than he actually took, that is. Come to think of it, no one has ever seen Jose and Ozzie Canseco in the same room as Peter and David Paul. It's becoming so clear to me now that they are one in the same. How did I not realize this before?"

January 19, 1995
After having watched (over and over again) the Paul brothers' other feature films, The Barbarians (1987), Think Big (1990), and Twin Sitters (1994), Jon founds and becomes President of the International David and Peter Paul Fan Consortium. To this day, he is still President. The IDPPFC's international membership is up 700% from its inception, and includes David and Peter Paul themselves.


June 8, 1996
Jon graduates from Lyons Township High School in LaGrange, Illinois. Among his classmates are future porn czar Adam McClure, Junior Ultimate Fighting Champion Greg Weeser*, and world-renowned bullfighter Tony Zumpano. The same night, Jon masterminds and carries out what he deems "The Mother Load," which involved driving with four friends to Burger King in a car with no license plate, ordering massive amounts of food from the drive-thru, most of which was specially ordered, putting on sweet Halloween masks, pulling up to the drive-thru window, stopping just long enough for one of the passengers in the car to look at the confused Burger King worker and yell "this ain't no fairy tale," then speeding away to an Arby's a few miles away where the group would disperse into other cars.

August 26, 1996
Jon enrolls at Illinois State University. One of the young men on his dorm floor by the name of Clinch Stephenson, who is from Omaha, Nebraska, beats Jon in a game of beer pong, bragging hellaciously afterward. It is at this moment that Jon develops an intense hatred of all things Omaha.

January 15, 1998
Destitute and in danger of being evicted from his apartment, Jon comes up with JD's Laydeez, Bloomington-Normal's first escort service comprised entirely of ISU students. In the twelve days JD's Laydeez is in operation before it is shut down by local police, Jon is able to make approximately $22,123.

January 28, 1998
Despite the fact that JD's Laydeez gets shut down, Jon realizes his purpose in life: exploiting women for personal profit. He changes his major from botany to entrepreneurship, and begins to think of new and creative ways to use the supple bosoms of ISU's co-eds to his advantage. His "Titors" (topless tutors) venture not only earned him some straight cash, but once screenwriters Brent Goldberg and David Wagner heard of Titors, it gave them the inspiration behind the movie Van Wilder.

May 10, 2000
Jon graduates from ISU with a B.S. in Entrepreneurship. The next day, Jon moves to Reno, Nevada, where he will soon begin working for Ronald "Slim" Sanders, a garish venture capitalist with wild blond tupee, and a flair for the exotic, the erotic, and the downright strange.

September 12, 2000
Jon and Slim found GLOAW, the Glorious Ladies Of Arm Wrestling. In the its first year, GLOAW will net Jon and Slim several hundred thousand dollars apiece, behind the star power of such femme fatales as Helen "Boom Boom" Armstrong, Margot Kidder, Wendy Savinovich (more commonly know to wrestling fans as former WWF Womens' Champion Wendy Richter), and a young, up-and-coming Rachel McAdams, who arm wrestled under the name Rachel Rocket. With over-the-top pyrotechnics, cheap theatrics, and sparse clothing, GLOAW took the nation by storm.

January 7, 2002
After a highly publicized steroid scandal, Jon and Slim announce that GLOAW will cease to exist. Undaunted, Jon and Slim revamp the JD's Laydeez franchise, forming an escort service within Reno, as well as a brothel outisde the county lines. Jon buys a cream fedora and a purple velvet overcoat with mink lapels, which he wears almost at all times, including a popular television commercial that aired on local Reno stations, in which Jon was shown with a gaggle of good-looking women in the back of a limo, saying, "If you want the hottest women in Reno without any chance of gettin' a skeez, you ain't got but one choice: JD's Laydeez. So if you're lookin' for a good time tonight -- and you know you are -- just dial 775-375-2939. That's 77-JDS-LAYDZ. You could makin' sweet love to one of these delicious ladies in less than an hour. And you better believe we do anal. After all, our motto at JD's Laydeez is simple: Ain't a damn thing we won't do, even anal." The commercial makes Jon into a local celebrity, and it's surprisingly graphic subject matter strikes a chord with Reno's resident and many tourists. JD's Laydeez quickly becomes the most profitable escort service and brothel in the Reno area.

February 19, 2003
With his newfound fame and money, Jon turns his attention to high-end cooking classes, with hopes of being able to make the best chicken wings in the world.

December 12, 2003
Shavkat Mirziyayev, Jon's former treasure-hunting pal, becomes Uzbekistan's Prime Minister.

May 5, 2004
Jon meets Danish volleyball player Tracy "The Storstrøm Stormtrooper" Larsen at the 25th Annual King of the Wings National Chicken Wing Cook-Off, held at the Buffalo Convention Center. Jon's "Holla-At-Ya-Boy Hot Wings" take first prize, while Tracy's "Ringkjøbing Lørdagskylling Wings" take the runner-up prize. Jon and Tracy become enticed by each other's wings and soon take to each other like Canadians to jean shorts. In addition to wings, they both like dogs.

March 3, 2005
Upon hearing that the Calgary Flames' American Hockey League affiliate was going to be reestablished in Omaha, under the name the Ak-Sar-Ben Knights, Jon becomes enfuriated. Not only did he still have some unresolved hatred of Omaha left over from his encounters with Clinch Stephenson, but he thinks that the name Ak-Sar-Ben Knights is the worst name for a professional franchise that he has ever heard. He realizes that he cannot let it slide. He decides to part ways with Slim Sanders and go to Chicago to work for the Chicago Wolves, who play in the AHL with the Ak-Sar-Ben Knights.

October 9, 2005
Jon and Tracy move in together and convert to Scientology together. As Jon explained in a May 2005 interview with Everything Wing Magazine, "Really, it all makes perfect sense. Seventy-five million years ago, an evil falatic warlord named Xenu controlled 76 planets in this corner of the galaxy, which, by the way, was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up about 13.5 trillion beings, give or take a couple billion, and then flew them to Earth, where, as you can probably guess, they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and implanted with a number of false ideas-including the concepts of God, Christ, and organized religion. I know it's probably obvious, but many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all our emotional and physical problems, but the root of all problems of the modern world. If only someone would have explained this to me when I was younger."

February 20, 2006
At 1:36pm Central time, during his lunch break, Jon achieves greatness once again. Not only is he able to indulge in one of the year's first Shamrock shakes, but he is also the coveted 10,000th reader of the hilarious and sometimes verbose web log (or "blog"), Give Me Your Handrew.

Friday, March 03, 2006

"It All Seems Funny, Kinda Like a Dream"

Not like I have to tell you, but it's Hair Band Friday here in my office, as it is every Friday. Things are winding down after our five-day bender following the US Men's curling team's Bronze Medal victory last Friday. I'm busting out some cross examination outlines, which is enough to make several of the ladies in here more moist than well-baked banana bread. Tawny, who might have had a little too much coke, can't stop dancing on the north stripper pole. She's been at it for like four hours. Meanwhile, Brandy took some X and is making out with the window. And Heather is passed out spread-eagle at the bottom of the south stripper pole, wearing nothing but clear stilettos and thigh-high red fishnet stockings. Lesson learned: never bet a former stripper that she can't finish a half a bottle of Stoli in 15 minutes, especially after she's taken and handful of quaaludes. Dead-horsing just isn't the same as the real thing. Maybe it's the mesacline, but today has been a sentimental Hair Band Friday. The last three songs to come through my totally oversized speakers were "To Be With You" by Mr. Big, "Love Song" by Tesla, and "Ballad of Jayne" by L.A. Guns. In honor of Hair Band Friday, and the barrage of buxom bosoms that bounce into my office each Friday for a chance to one day say that they were "given my handrew," I invite you to check out this delightful link from a British bra maker (probably not safe for work, unless you work in bra design and testing, cosmetic surgery, or an office with only dudes, lesbians, or a combination of the two). Thanks to "NaviKate" Rohrer for sending me the link. Rock on Kate. Rock on.

And I swear to God, I will finish and post Mr. 10,000's bio either later today or sometime this weekend.

Is This Life Imitating Art or Art Imitating Life?

You may or may not know that my lovely wife teaches an introductory art history course at the local community college. One thing she requires her students to do is keep an art journal that has 3 specific questions for each journal entry. So today Jessie sends me what she describes as "weird and worrisome" journal entries from one particular student. These journal entries are below, with absolutely no changes to spelling, punctutation, capitalization, or overal craziness.

Question #1: "What role does art play in your daily life?"
Response: "I had never recognized art being all around me, I have been a semi-sleepwalker, I have Had a creative awakening, the car I drive is a form of art, the way in which the world Is incorporated around art and me, my daily perceptions of images my own visual fields The art that I chose to surround me are my daily life chooses."

This woman apparently didn't answer questions 2 and 3, but instead gave a daily play-by-play of her "encounters in the art world." Jessie encourages the students to write about art in current events, exhibits they may attend, etc., but I guess this lady took the "art journal" concept quite literally. As Jessie said, "no one else seemed to be confused about this, they just answered the 3 questions." Here is an excerpt from the woman's daily entries (again, punctuation, spelling, etc. are her own):
2-14-06: "My sister had surgery, the hospital is building a new wing, I had to walk thru an area of starving artists portraits they stood out, I'm motivated!"
2-15-2006: "I'm driving thru the county die to the city, the country side is in it self is creation of art. I've been sleep walking."
2-16-2006: "Watch art creations on PBS"
2-23-06: "I went down to the convention center and studid the large sculpture installation, it's a traffic hazzard, a waste of tax payers money!"

Sometimes crazy is the best kind of funny.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Lent

Happy March. In addition to the first day of the month that features the greatest three weeks in sports, today is the beginning of Lent. You might be asking, "What gives, GMYH? Are you some sort of Catholic nutjob?" While, I am a nutjob, it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm Catholic. In fact, the only thing Catholic that I do each year is give something up for Lent. There's your good old fashioned Catholic guilt at work.

Anyway, this year I'm giving up drinking during the week and fried foods. This is a bit tempered from my past givings up, but with good reason. Let's take a look at my last three years:
2005: Drinking, smoking, and fried foods. My intentions were good (to lose some weight before my wedding), but by giving up three things, I found myself more willing to cheat come Saturday night at midnight (because you're supposedly allowed to cheat on Sundays) or on days celebrating saints who ridded Ireland of snakes. You'd be amazed at how much you can drink in the hours between midnight and 2am or 3am on Sunday mornings.
2004: Along with my roommate at the time, Marc "Tron" Wiescinski, I gave up beer, and it ended up being my drunkest Lent ever because I would drink double Jack and Cokes as fast as I would normally drink beers. The race between Easter and cirrhosis was neck-and-neck, and I'm still not sure who won.
2003: Meat. I did this out of sheer laziness because I knew that if I gave up meat, I wouldn't forget to not eat meat on Fridays.

So with that backdrop, this year I decided to give up fried foods (not really too much of an issues, since I rarely eat them anyway--kind of like when I gave up banana Now & Laters in 1989 because I hated them anyway) and drinking during the week. It's not like I usually get hammered during the week, but a couple beers here and a couple beers there can add up. So there it is.

I also thought of some things that other people may want to give up. Some of them are for specific people, and other suggestions are ones that I'm just throwing out there for anyone still looking for something to give up. So, you can give up:

  1. Chastity (I pitched this one to the wife--she was less than amused)
  2. Sleeping
  3. Not killing yourself (Kevin Federline)
  4. Letting yourself go (Britney Spears)
  5. Feeling ashamed when you look at tranny porn several hours each day
  6. Not wiping (I'm looking your way, fecal phantoms)
  7. Chemotherapy
  8. Not paying hookers (or paying hookers, depending on your current practice)
  9. Dressing up in drag (Barry Bonds--holy shit, that was one ugly woman)
  10. Masturbating in your cubicle
  11. Wearing that fucking fedora everywhere (to the guy that I always see around town wearing a fedora)
  12. Your obsessive cricket playing
  13. Work (and if your boss gives you any guff, call him/her "nothing but a typical, bigoted, elitist Protestant bastard")
  14. Following the Gregorian calendar
  15. Shitting (this is mainly for the men, since women don't shit)
  16. Not speaking with a Scottish accent
  17. Dying
  18. Brooding (Ryan Atwood--although that's about as likely as him giving up kicking ass)
  19. Not collecting model trains (choo choo!!)
  20. Being considered for the men's basketball head coaching position at Indiana University (Steve Alford, Kevin Stallings)
  21. Paying alimony and child support
  22. Not ending every sentence (spoken or written) with a question mark?
  23. Making love out of nothing at all (Air Supply)
  24. Drinking (Ireland)
  25. Referring to self in the 1st person
  26. Herpes
  27. Wearing a sport coat and jeans or, alternatively, thinking that wearing a sport coat and jeans is in any way acceptable
  28. Dognapping
  29. Not dying at the hands of an Islamic militant (some Danish cartoonist--man I hate Danes)
  30. Catholicism

"Resumes from Hell"

Special thanks to the wife for sending me this link from CNN.com about resumes from hell. Good stuff. I'll put it on the links section about GMYH's Guide to Interviews.