matthearn.com

No apologies this time. I’ve been unable to write due to severe writer’s block, and I refuse to apologize for something that is not my fault. I don’t really have anything good for today either. So what you’re going to get is a rambling, meandering column, and while this may prove difficult to read, it probably will not be funny, either.

No, I’m not drunk. It’s only 1pm! And it’s a Monday! Okay, that doesn’t really mean anything, but nevertheless, I’m sober.

I figured I could probably discuss the Olympics, and really catch the crest of that wave, but then all the American athletes headed back to the states to be on the MTV Video Music Awards. So there’s not really a human interest story left, particularly since people from other countries are rarely humans, and are definitely not interesting. GAIJIN!

My weekend was festive; we went to the Stone Balloon on Thursday night, with all the attendant revelry and offensive touching. Depressingly, I didn’t get hit on by anybody, despite my new svelte form. I can definitely see how people become anorexic. Must constantly get ego boosts from friends and coworkers!

Friday night we had the Ychromes fantasy football draft, which featured a few highlights:

• Fitzy and Rece consistently trying to pick players who had already been drafted.
• Jared drafting over the phone from a Richmond hotel room (he was filming this weekend) and putting his cousin on the phone just as Courtney handed the phone to me, such that I got very confused as to when Jared’s voice dropped an octave.
• Aaron pestering me to show him what picks he had already made until I yelled “EASE UP OFFS MY GRILL!” at him, followed by merely shouting “GRILL!” every time he bugged me, much to the amusement of Ungaskfajslssky.

Saturday I watched TV, as there was a college football game on. I nearly wet my pants. I have missed football so much. Also, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won at Bristol, and I’m pretty sure I did wet my pants there. Yes, it was a soggy weekend at HearndomII! Luckily, the fried chicken we ate was hell of crispy.

Sunday consisted of rehearsal for a play I’m in, which I haven’t mentioned before because I’ve been too busy rehearsing for a play I’m in. It’s called “Living Together,” and it’s part of a trilogy of plays collectively entitled “The Norman Conquests.” I play Norman, and I get all the chicks. <QUAGMIRE>Aw right!</QUAGMIRE>

The show opens 9/17 and runs for three weekends, with two Sunday matinee shows. Come one, come all! I’ll try not to suck.

It’s been a few days since an update, and I had one all set up for yesterday afternoon, until my computer lost it. ::sob:: I’ll try and have something for tomorrow. Meanwhile, sign this petition. And no, it’s not something about getting Bush out of office, or getting his Joseph-Merrick-lookalike opponent in. It’s for an cause with actual worth!

Sorry for no update yesterday, but I had a horrific herpes breakout, and spent all day in my doctor’s waiting room with a bowl of disinfectant (you know, for dipping) and some steel wool.

I mean, uh, I was, um, tired. That’s it. That other stuff was, um, a typo. Yeah, that’s the ticket, a typo! Ignore the previous paragraph. I was merely sleeping under my desk at work, periodically pausing to frantically scratch my groin and whimper.

I mean, um, get a drink of water.

Moving right along.

HW and I spent the weekend in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, as guests of our friends Steve and Ariann, who have a condo out there. A brief chronology (in list form, since I enjoy using that, mainly because it takes up space and makes me look organized):

• 6pm Friday: Arrive at Stone Harbor, only to discover that Ariann and Steve have not yet arrived. Found a bar. I know, this is out of character for us, but we figured we’d get into the whole “vacation” theme with a drink or 3.
• 7:30pm: Return to Ariann and Steve’s, dump our stuff off, and head to Sylvester’s for grub.

  A word about Sylvester’s: delicious seafood, and it’s BYOB, which makes it relatively inexpensive. We showed up with 3 bottles of wine, and stuffed ourselves with crabcakes, mussels, clam chowder, shrimp (aka skrimps), and mildly overdone french fries. We love food so much.

Okay, perhaps a chronological form isn’t going to work, because I lost my watch a few weeks back, and since the wine was flowing heavily, dates and times become a little hazy. After Sylvester’s we went to a bar, the name of which escapes me, and enjoyed a great deal of conversation and a large amount of booze. After that we went home and went straight to bed.

On Saturday I had to do work at 8am, which of course meant that the system I use to connect in to work was broken. I was, luckily, able to have my highly kickass coworker Matt do the stuff for me, and then we went out for bloody marys, followed by a few hours lounging on the beach. I even got some color! (Mostly red. Very red.)

Then we grabbed some lunch at a bar, followed by lounging at the condo, followed by meeting for dinner at some delicious restaurant (the whole building was quite tasty; I spoiled my dinner by filling up on stucco), and then: the club.

Oh MAN. You have not lived until you’ve seen the City Rhythm Orchestra. (I say this with my tongue planted so far in my cheek it’s about to plunge through my flesh like in “Species”.) It’s a “wonderful” band consisting of 2 saxophones, a trumpet, a trombone, bass, keyboards, drums, guitarist, and lead singer.

Oh, the lead singer.

But we’ll get to that in a moment. First, the guitarist. Looked like Beck, sounded like freck, thought he was John Mayer. Really kinda sad. He was no better a guitarist than I am (which is one way of saying he sucked), and definitely not as strong a singer. Clearly I need to get a band.

But the lead singer. He SO wanted to be Tom Jones! It was kinda sad. Tanned skin, all black outfit, bopped around like something from 1964, mainly because 1964 was the last year this guy was young enough to be the lead singer for a band in a dance club. He was easily 55-60 years young, and had enough gold chains that we really hoped he would start yelling “I PITY THE FOOL!” and “DON’T MAKE ME MAD! RRRRRRRR!”

We lasted about 8 songs before we went back to the house to play scrabble. HELPFUL TIP FOR BANDS: if, while you are playing, patrons of the club go home to play board games, you might need to improve in some areas.

Let’s talk about urinals. (Great lede, huh?)

The men’s bathroom on my floor of our office building has two urinals. A short one, and a tall one. This produces many a mental quandary when using the facilities, as when one enters, you have to weigh the various options and make a decision based on these factors:

1. Avoiding urine splashback on the hands: Gotta go with the shorty here.
2. Avoiding urine splashback on the knees of one’s trousers: A powerful burst into the urinal cake of the short stack results in spatter all over one’s khakis. Definitely the tallboy wins this one.
3. Feeling like a big man: Obviously, an adult male would use the taller urinal. Because to do anything else is unAmerican.

Obviously, if you are rather miniature, all of this discussion is moot. However, we don’t really have a lot of 8 year old children working in my office, and I haven’t seen any midgets¹ enter the building either. Additionally, assuming you wash your hands, #1 isn’t really that big a deal, unless you are friends with Bob.

Unfortunately, the problem I run into is “concern for others.” Meaning, should I take the lowrider so that the guy coming in after me can have the joy that is “the big boy urinal?” Or should I take the upperdecker so that should a short guy happen to come in after me, he won’t have to wait for me to finish with the mini-man pisser?

See, these are the kinds of mental exercises men miss out on if they refuse to use urinals and only pee in the poopers. Also, you should probably know that you will be the first people I have beheaded when I become emperor. It’s nothing personal; you all just REALLY PISS ME OFF.

hehehe I said piss

This edition of Fantasy Sports Expertise is brought to you by Scratcho-brand Anti-Itch medication! Just rub it anywhere, and ignore the permanent scarring!

It’s time for me to share with all of you why I am the fantasy football king. Okay, I haven’t won a championship since 2001. Okay, I’ve been steadily getting worse and worse every year. (I expect to finish roughly 17th in our league, which only has 14 teams, because of a variety of penalty appoints associated with stealing draft picks from people because I built the web application that handles the draft. Hehe, just kidding, guys! As far as you know.) And sure, my draft so far this year has been less than stellar, mainly because of Brigadoon related lack of preparation.

HOWEVER. The fact that I have finished an average of 2nd place for the last three seasons means that I am completely qualified to dispense advice, particularly in my area of expertise, The Draft. I’m kind of like Mel Kiper, Jr.! Only without all the amphetamines, ESPN contracts, access to players, research staff, and money. Anyway, here we go:

• The standard practice in Fantasy Drafts is to go for running backs first. The rationale behind this is that there are a very few top tier running backs in the NFL, and a great number of decent QBs and wide receivers. In the immortal words of Jet Li in some crappy Kung Fu movie, “That . . . mumble mistake.”

  Watch Sportscenter some time. How many highlights do you see of running backs? Maybe one or two per week, when some random guy manages to punch through a defense and score a fluke 97 yard touchdown. Do you know how often that actually happens? Well let me tell you: almost never! On the other hand, how many highlights do you see of guys like Randy Moss making a spectacular catch, sprinting 50 yards for the touchdown, and then running over a traffic cop on the way home with weed in the glove compartment of his Bentley? Roughly 39,473 times per week.

  Nobody uses running backs anymore, except in the college game, and then only in the “option offense,” which you’ll note has not won an NCAA Championship game since 1877, just like the Wishbone and the dime defense. What you want are wide receivers and quarterbacks, and lots of ’em, closely followed by as many tight ends as you can pack on your bench.

• In the middle to late rounds (like round 2 or 3, maybe even as late as 4) it’s probably a good idea to start looking for sleepers. You know, guys like Donte Hall, who usually got picked late in fantasy drafts, and then scored on kick returns in something like 47 straight games (for 5 different teams) last fall.

  My favorite kind of sleepers to find are recent retirees. The NFL is very much like prison: a lot of drug use, frequent rape, and, most importantly, a great deal of recividism, which is a hoity-toity term for guys that get out of the NFL/state penitentiary and go straight back in, either because they killed a rival drug dealer, ran out of money, or just couldn’t handle it on the outside.

  Look for Ricky Williams and Shannon Sharpe to be picked up by teams with a lot of salary cap space by week 4 or 5. Technically, because they filed their retirement papers, they wouldn’t be eligible to return until 2005, but technically, Ricky Williams is high on weed right now! So go with your best instinct there.

• Defenses aren’t even worth drafting, not even the really good ones like the Bengals and Jets. The reason for this is that with even a good defense, every time they allow a touchdown you LOSE points! Don’t draft them, and FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE PLEASE DON’T START THEM. You’ll thank me when your opponent posts a negative score for the week when the vaunted New England Defense loses 73-2 and the Texans defense you didn’t even bother to draft does nothing to hurt you!
• One thing you have to be careful to plan for is injury. For example, Fred Taylor was picked up by one of my leaguemates late in the first round; a strong pick if Fred stays healthy, which I believe he will. Many people were concerned that Fred’s groin will be injured again, as it has been in almost every season except the last, but the way I look at it, hey! He’s had it operated on, what, 7 times in the past decade? It’ll be bionic at this point! It’s gotta be stronger than ever!

  In a related story, the thought of having a doctor poking a sharp implement at anything within 15 miles of my own groin has caused me to throw up into my sinuses.

• Another thing that you have to try and balance with your team is how many crackheads you want. From one perspective, a crackhead is good to have on your team, if only because if he’s freshly smoked up he’ll be 3 times faster than anyone else on the field. (Michael Irvin, despite his advanced years, was recently clocked at under 3 seconds in the 40 because of residual cocaine in his system that he snorted off Troy Aikman’s wife’s butt in 1992. And by “40,” I mean he drank a 40-ounce bottle of Olde Englishe in under 3 seconds.)

  On the other hand, if your crackhead player forgets to inject another man’s urine into his bladder before each drug test, or screws up and injects urine containing steroid byproducts, he may be suspended for as many as two quarters of the following game and fined something like .05% of his monthly income for the rest of the season. And that could lose you some points on game day.

• You may have heard things about Peyton and Eli Manning, but if they get snatched up by greedy leaguemates in the early rounds, don’t be afraid to pick their equally-talented older brother Archie Manning. His lifetime stats are simply beyond compare, and despite a few decades of not performing, he’s still a solid pick.
• While we’re on the subject of brothers, if you miss out on Todd Heap, his younger brother Uriah is another great pick, even as a rookie. He may be playing backup now, but he’ll be a starter by midseason.
• Michael Vick will be on the sidelines in a full body cast by week 4, have no fear.

Well, that’s about all the advice I have for you this week. I don’t want to give too much away, or I’ll find everybody beating me! And that would make me cry. So don’t do it.

What the hell is up with USA basketball? I watched most of the game yesterday against Puerto Rico and it was like Carlos Arroyo just squatted down in the middle of the floor and made the American squad roll around in his eliminations. Truly horrific. From what I remember, our heroes were something like 3/26 from beyond the three point line. A three point line that, you may recall, is something like three feet shorter than then the NBA one. We should’ve sent a WNBA team over, with Vince Carter or something so people would buy tshirts.

While I’m on this subject, I noticed a few interesting things (oh yeah. Another unordered list. Love it):

• What was up with all the hispanic cleavage? The Puerto Rican jerseys have scooped necks cut lower than a sorority sister’s bar crawl top. All they needed were long necklaces and some glitter. Eye-catching, and very disturbing.
• Did somebody dip Tim Duncan in something? I always assumed he was mostly a white guy, but now he’s as dark as Iverson’s tattoos. He caught an inbounds pass and made a great little skyhook, and I got very confused when the announcer mentioned him by name.
• I’ve never watched a lot of international-rules basketball, so I gotta ask: what the hell is with the trapezoidal key? For 2 quarters I thought my TV was broken. Is it a new rule? I should think I would have noticed in the last Olympics, although my ability to remember things from 4 years ago is negligible. I can barely remember 2 minutes ago.
• Did LeBron play? Was he in the game at all? I must’ve been blacked out when he was, because I never saw him on the floor, even after half the team had fouled out. I don’t quite get Larry Brown’s reasoning, not having Duncan (a very dominant big man) and LeBron (the most athletic player and talented passer on the floor) out there for 48 solid minutes. I mean, I’m no expert by any means, but if you didn’t bother to bring anybody who can hit a three point shot, you need to start finding any means of getting the ball to your bruising big guy that you can. If your inlet passer can also create his own shot and can play any of three positions, well that’s a nice bonus, isn’t it?

  (No, I didn’t just lift that entire graf from Bill Simmons, but the fact that you think I did warms my heart.)

Speaking of Bill Simmons, you should head on over to this column he wrote a few weeks back about USA basketball and why we won’t even medal. He’s both smarter and funnier than I, and obviously knows more about hoops.

Those of you who don’t see me very often probably haven’t been aware that I’ve lost a rather significant amount of weight; I’m down to about 220 lbs, from nearly 260 at the beginning of the year. I was a big mammajamma.

(For those who are curious how I did it, I attribute the loss to three core lifestyle changes:

1. I switched to diet soda, which cut probably 500 calories a day from my intake.
2. I stopped eating most carbs in general.
3. I moved into a house where there is not a Burger King within 5 minutes walking distance.)

Anyway, in an effort to get a good grasp on my general health and well-being, I went over to this handy Body Mass Index calculator to see if I’m considered by the medical establishment to be as svelte as I feel I have now become. So I enter my weight (220, in case your short-term memory is as reliable as mine), and my height (6 foot 3 inches) and get back “27.5.”

Wait a minute. 27.5? That’s still considered “overweight!” Anything between 25 and 30 is overweight. (Above 30 is apparently called “morbidly obese.” Anything above 40 is usually named “bovine.”) In fact, to get to under 25 and be non-overweight, I’d have to either grow 4 inches, or get down to less than 200 pounds.

Folks, if I ever tell you I weight less than 200 pounds, you need to get me to a doctor immediately.

So I propose a new way to calculate fitness. It’s called Matt Hearn’s “Am I Fat?” Index. Here’s how it works:

1. First, take your weight, in pounds, and divide by 2.2 to get your mass in kilograms. (Working in metric is easier. Trust me. Several million drunken Europeans can’t be wrong.)
2. Next, calculate your height in inches: multiply the number of whole feet by 12, and add that to the number of inches. Example: I am 6’3″, so I am 6*12+3=75 inches tall. Then migrate this to approximate decimeters by dividing by 4.
3. Next, go get some beer. You’ll need the muscle relaxants for the next step. If you have something low carb, that’s fine, but just about any decent swill will do. (For this I tend to use a double-deuce of Colt 45.) Drink the beer as rapidly as possible. Record the number of gulps it took.
4. Now we have to measure your flexibility. If possible, set a video camera up to get this on tape and send it to me. Stand with your feet spread as far apart as you can, holding the empty beer can/bottle over your head, and attempt to reach the stars. The stars, I say! Not just the ceiling! REACH FOR THOSE ANGELIC DOTS IN THE HEAVENS, MY SON! TOUCH THEM LIKE YOU’VE TOUCHED MY HEART!

   Um . . . sorry, got a little over the top there. I’m okay now, thanks.

5. Take your calculated flexibility value (you don’t have it? Sheesh. Go back a step and PAY BETTER ATTENTION) and multiply it by your calculated mass in kilograms. Subtract from that the number of gulps it took to drink the beer, divide the total by the number of ounces in said beer, square the result, divide by the Golden Ratio, and then go get some frickin’ Häagen-Dazs and relax. You deserve it.

Was anyone else aware that Bondo, when mixed, turns bright pink? I opened up the tub of filler, noted the expected grey color of the material inside, and then wondered what the other tube of stuff was for. Well, it’s the “hardener,” since apparently Bondo doesn’t just harden on its own. The hardener itself is flame red, so when mixed it all becomes pink.

As usual, I didn’t have the good sense to get any “before and after” pictures, but I’ll be sure to get a picture of my pink accents when I return home this afternoon. Right now it looks completely absurd; a black truck with a pink area of unsanded goop around the right rear wheelwell. (As my father-in-law put it, “I’m sure that makes a statement.” I’m not sure what statement that would be, and I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t really want me making it, but let’s move on.)

Anyway, the stuff seems to work quite well, if you’re willing to deal with it getting all over the place. (My fingers were Bondo’d together at one point, and I had to have Sarah chisel them apart.) I need more sandpaper, since I used all of my 80-grit removing the paint from the dent, and I need to slather on a bit more filler to get it out to the proper thickness. Bondo dries in less than half an hour, so I can sand it almost right away. With any luck, the rain will hold off this afternoon, and I’ll be able to apply the rest of the stuff, sand it to the proper shape, and prime it.

I imagine the sanding will take a very long time, so hopefully I won’t be interrupted by rain. I also need to drive to my grandmother’s and pick up a treadmill of which she wants to rid herself, so I’ve got a full evening, and if it rains I’m basically screwed. I really want to get primer on the truck before Saturday, since if it rains constantly over the next week like it’s supposed to, I have bare sheet metal that will probably corrode. Which probably means I have to completely start over. Which probably means I will start sanding off my own skin.

Anyway, if this ends up working, I might try to fix the gas tank on the motorcycle, which has a large, unsightly dent in it, from when I, um, dropped it on the driveway. Of course, I don’t have any more of the cool two-color paint to put on it, which will irk my wife. Not that the bike runs anyway.

I really need to get it working, though, since it’s due to be re-registered at the end of September, and one of the things they seem to always check at inspection is whether or not the vehicle in question actually starts. Of course, since both the bike shop and the DMV are within 2 miles of my house, I probably could make it one and/or the other without getting pulled over by the fuzz. And I think the DMV will issue a temporary tag so that currently unregistered vehicles can drive over to get inspected.

Oh, and in the interests of sharing too much information:

Has anyone else ever burped up stomach acids and accidentally inhaled them into your windpipe? No? It’s not a great way to wake up. At 5:25 this morning, I’m in the bathroom drinking water, coughing uncontrollably, trying not to throw up, and crying like my father during “A Few Good Men.” Bad times all around.

Every time I took a deep breath, I had to cough. Every time I coughed, the pain got worse. So I finally got back into bed, taking shallow breaths to avoid hacking my larynx out of my neck, and sobbed silently into my pillow for roughly an hour, during which the cats were kind enough to purr louder than a threshing machine. (Which I wished was handy so I could fling myself into it.)

Not a fun morning. Tomorrow: why the Body Mass Index is the biggest pile of crap since “Save The Last Dance.”

Okay, sorry, I have to thank a few folks. It’s like I won an Oscar! Well, maybe not. More like a Daytime Emmy. Also, since I own the website, there’s no way the orchestra is going to play me off! I’ll try to actually make it a worthwhile read for those of you who aren’t actually being thanked.

Matt’s Massive List of People To Thank For Their Help and Support Re: Brigadoon

• Friends and family: Everybody that came to see the show, I thank you very much. Your compliments and support inflated my ego to the point at which my massive head naturally floats and isn’t straining my neck muscles, which was kind of you.
• The cast: Easily the most talented group of people I’ve worked with. Dancing, singing, acting; you guys do it all!
• The crew: It was like I didn’t have to do anything but show up, get painted, get dressed, and go onstage. The microphone was installed for me, the costumes were set for me, the props were handed to me while I was standing around “getting into character.” I’ve never seen such brilliant organization, and it made my “job” a lark.
• Evelyn Swensson, Katie Falcone, and the rest of the musicians (particularly the rehearsal accompanists!!!): Singing musical theatre with a full orchestra may be the crowning achievement of my ever-lengthening life, and the folks I mentioned above made it happen. As a reasonably competent musician myself, I know how hard the job is, and I appreciate it more than I can say.
• Bill Peuchen: Sure, he did all the staging, but that stuff’s easy. Bill was most valuable when it came to a kind word, and a constructive critique of my “acting ability,” such as it is. (Per Jennifer’s advice, I’ve got “On The Street Where You Live” mostly memorized; I hope that comes in handy later.)
• Henry Porreca: Speaking of constructive critique. Any growth I may have experienced as an actor (and there’s a lot of room for growth) is mostly Henry’s doing. By the end of the show, I almost WAS Tommy, and Henry is the one to thank. Thusly, um, I thank him.
• Cindy Goldstein: It was absolutely a pleasure getting to know Cindy over the last few months, and her little tidbits of advice (some of which actually came from her husband Lee, who also seems to know what he’s talking about) were MORE than helpful. I credit Cindy with helping me make my mother cry.
• Ariann Langsam: It’s so much easier trying to come off as sensitive and kind when the girl I have to break up with is played so unlikeably well. Ariann, the audience hated Jane almost as much as I like the girl that played her. (Let’s go to the beach and drink martinis until we pass out in a sand dune.)
• Dave Munch: Playing straight man to you was almost unnecessary, since you don’t need anybody else on stage with you to be funny. In fact, you and Cindy onstage together was about the most uproarious scene I’ve watched since that episode of Cops where the guy caught his . . . uh, nevermind. You’re hilarious, is what I’m getting at. Anyway, thanks for putting up with my inability to remember lines, blocking, or the name of my character.
• Jennifer Kennard: Jennifer (aka My Illustrious Costar^TM) is, simultaneously, the most talented actress and singer I’ve ever seen, and the most modest and self-deprecating person with whom I’ve ever had the pleasure of conversing. Add to that a dry wit that sometimes went over MY head, and she’s just about the coolest person of all times and whatnot. She gets a big Thank You from the deepest hackles of my heart. She’s like a good point guard: she’s so good she makes everybody around her better, even my stumbling-bumbling-rumbling self.

  (Her husband Tim also gets my thanks, for letting me kiss his wife without snapping me in half like a twig.)

• Most importantly, my wife: For her love and support, even while watching me smooch another woman (on our anniversary, no less). Sarah is amazing, and has excellent hair, even though I don’t much care for her bangs. 😉 Thank you, DeeDee! I love you muchas! Thanks for getting through a tough couple of months without having your father snap me in half like a twig.

Okay, enough of that. Time to alert you all to a new project I’m starting: fixing the massive dents and scratches on my pickup truck that resulted from a run-in with a large concrete pillar. (The pillar won handily, very handily indeed.) I bought a large number of autobody repair products at Pep Boys yesterday; Bondo, mixing boards, sandpaper, primer, paint, clearcoat, all kinds of stuff. I’ll try to take pictures of each step as it happens; I’m hoping to get the Bondo slathered on and drying this afternoon.

Of course, it will almost certainly rain.

I’ve finally updated the Favorite Searches page, with some stuff from July, including comments.

Sorry I haven’t had an actual column in like 5 days. I promise to have SOMETHING tomorrow, even if it might kinda suck.