matthearn.com

I hate bacteria. You hear me? Bacteria SUCK. Or perhaps viruses. Or both. I don’t really know. I hab a code, and I hate it.

Woke up Monday morning with the tell-tale agonizing throatache, and now I’m all drugged up and stuffy headed and bad times, damnit, which explains why my grasp of the English language is tentative, and also horfwit mccombs allegory.

Also, I’m working on a project that has me awake at bizarre hours; I was up all last night until about 6am, at which time I was permitted to nap until 9, and then went home and slept for 6 hours, only to return to work at 4pm. Between the minimal sleep and the Dayquil and the fact that I haven’t been able to draw a natural breath through my nose in 36 hours, well, let’s just say I’m going to pee on somebody soon, I think.

And it might be you.

You never know. I could find you.

Anyway, I don’t really have any useful information today, other than to note that the Flyers suck big hairy donkey, uh, tail, and that I purchased two new pairs of jeans yesterday that look flat-out PHENOMENAL on me. News at 11. Bitches.

Wait, what? What the heck is this? Rain? Cold? Wind? Oh, nay nay, ye Gods of The Weathere, back thy jaunpiece OFF.

Although I do need the rain, because watering my new flowerbeds and my dead grass has become Tedious. (The capital T is how you know I am not playin’.)

Luckily, last night had no such nastiness, it was warm and sunny and windless, so my parents and I went to the Phils game, with great seats about 18 rows back from Ryan Howard’s enormous butt. (Sarah, who doesn’t fit in any normal human seat at this point because of the enormous wiggling creature that takes up most of her frame, took a pass.) It would have been a really great experience, but Ryan Madsen gave up roughly 8,000 runs in one inning of work (he actually pitched to four guys in the 2nd inning, but got no one out, so his effort technically consisted of 1.0 inning). That put us in a surly mood for most of the rest of the game, such that I realized why I avoid going to sporting events most of the time.

When it comes down to it, I just don’t care for people very much. I like to be around my friends, but when it comes to the “unwashed masses,” I come away with one realization: the average person, or at least the average American, has absolutely no concept of the idea of unselfish behavior. It’s not that we, as individuals, go out of our way to make other people’s lives harder, but that we never even consider that perhaps, standing up in the middle of the section with your cell phone, waving to some other idiot in another section to convey the vastly important message that “Yes, I can see you, can you see me? I’m right down here! In section 114! Standing directly between Matt Hearn and the activities occurring on the baseball diamond!” might be really, really annoying to others.

I realize that merely making this generalization makes me a selfish snob, but it’s worth noting that I really can’t stand being in another person’s way. When I make a mistake while driving, and realize I’ve blocked an intersection of some kind that a person needs to turn into, I pull forward, even around other cars in an effort to get out of the way. Meanwhile, some jerk at the ballpark yesterday blocked an entire staircase to the seats while arguing with the usher about why he couldn’t take his lit cigarette down there with him.

This is to say nothing of the general behavior of people my age when you get 2 or 3 of them together in public. There was once a time when using foul language in a public place like a baseball game would get you removed from the premises. The stadium rules say that you can still ask to get people kicked out for cursing, but where do you start, when everyone around you is dropping f-bombs like they got paid for it? (In the interests of full disclosure: I curse. A lot. In the privacy of my home, the general conversation would cause sailors to weep. But I turn on the filters in the presence of the general public and my wife’s relatives.)

I would no sooner take a child to a baseball game these days than I would take him to a strip club. The discourse is about the same, anyway.

We did have fun, though. My parents hadn’t been to CB Park before, so they got to enjoy the new stadium, as well as get Bull’s BBQ (I had a smoked turkey leg, totally righteous), and we all got free Jimmy Rollins knit hats. Mine, of course, fits on my head like a beanie.

Tonight: Baby Birthin’ Breathin’ and Belchin’ Class!

So, <pause to spit chaw-juice into an old Genesee can> went fishin’ yesterday. Threw out the old line, ya know. Catch anythin’? Why, we’ll get to that part of the story directly.

I went with my buddy Mike, who is a fishin’ aficionado (the tintinabulation! I’m like Poe all up in this piece), to fish for trout in White Clay Creek. He had rods, reels, tackle, and bait; all I needed was an actual fishing license, since if the Warden appeared he’d throw me in the hole. Er, fine me. (Wrong Warden.) I went to Kmart the other day and picked one up to the tune of $15. A fine deal, I thought, considering I’m bound to catch 2 or 3 large trout, and that much fish would cost me $20 at the store, right?

We arrived at the creekbank and prepared our rods for casting. I hadn’t been fishing in probably 10 years, and I hadn’t EVER done freshwater fishing, so I was surprised at the level of bait technology. Worms? Corn? Small hunks of fish entrails? Nay nay, my friends. Now you fish for trout with “powerbait,” which amounts to glittery playdough smelling strongly of rotten shrimp. Apparently trout like shiny colors in their food, which strikes me as bizarre since it’s not something they would encounter in a natural environment. I didn’t know, however, that most of the trout that you find in Delaware streams and lakes are actually stocked from fisheries, so perhaps they breed them to look for strange colors and get kickbacks from the powerbait companies.

There are many colors of powerbait, and some that are mixes of a variety of hues. The fellow on the opposite creekbank caught a small fish just as we were casting with what he described as “rainbow powerbait.” (Maybe trout are gay. I dunno. I’m just along for the ride here, same as you.)

Mike and I tried 4 or 5 different colors of bait and got nary a bite. The closest we came was when I was reeling my line in to check and see if the bait had fallen off again and two MASSIVE fish swam by, studied my line for a moment, and scurried downstream. Bastards.

So we caught no fish, which should hardly have surprised me; I’ve probably been fishing 10-12 times in my life and only caught any fish on two of those trips. However it did remind me how much fun fishing can be, so I might just have to invest in a rod and some tackle of my own. And some rainbow powerbait.

Tonight: Phillies game with my parents! And we got good seats, too, which means of course I forgot my camera at home. Hm; stop by the house and get it, and have to worry about a $500 camera during the entire game, or say “screw it I can download pictures of Ryan Howard from the Phillies website if I wish to gaze upon him?” These are the questions that occupy the mind of the idiot.

I haven’t run with this in a while, so I figured it was time to drag out Ye Olde Advice Columne Gimmicke, as usual despite the fact that nobody actually writes me asking for help. This time, instead of making up my own questions, I’m going to search online advice boards to swipe questions from there, and answer them myself, because I’m a 1st degree freakazoid. Let us begin, with a question borrowed from Teen Advice Online:

i seem to hate having my picture taken, yet I know that photos are Important for memories, especially baby pictures. I don’t seem to be bothered by having my passport photo taken. It is the family holiday photos that get to me. When my parents ask me to stand for a photo in front of a view or monument, I feel uncomfortable and I frown in the photo. My parents then warn me that I will have no good memories to take back.

I don’t know why I hate having my picture taken. Perhaps I am afraid of having a silly grin on my face. Maybe it’s because I hate standing under the hot sun or I am annoyed by the photographer’s enthusiasm. Is there any way to think better of family vacation photography?

If I had to fashion a guess, I’d say it’s because you know, deep in your subconscious, that you’re ugly. Ha ha! Just kidding! I’m sure that weird mole isn’t visible in the pictures.

Seriously, I know what you mean. I’m actually all about photography, in general; what I hate is posed pictures. I’m not particularly interested in seeing pictures of a group all facing the camera with big smiles, standing in front of, say, the Korean War Memorial. I can photoshop faces in front of landmarks with the best of them, so what’s the point? What I like are realistic photos, photos of people just doing their thing. One of my favorite pictures is actually one my father took of the back of my head as I was taking a picture of a sunset. It’s a totally phenomenal shot.

On the other hand, you need to get over yourself. When your parents say you’ll “have no good memories to take back,” what they are really saying is “WE’LL have no good memories, etc.” If it makes them happy, why disappoint them? Is it really that much trouble? Plus, in 25 years when you all go back and look through the photo albums and show the grandkids and stuff, everyone will ask, “Man, why did you always look like such a jerk?”

Just grin and bear it. Ugly-man.

Oops, probably should have read this one, from Dear Mrs. Web, last week:

I have been invited to my friend’s family for Easter. Should I bring a gift when I go? Any ideas of what would be appreciated?

Gifts are always appreciated, but no one bothers to bring them anymore. Good ideas are: a pint bottle of cheap vodka; a gift certificate to your favorite tattoo and piercing parlor; a feathered Robin Hood-style cap; warming personal lubricant; and lightly-used toilet paper.

From The Answer Man:

My problem has to do with a certain someone I work with. Let me preface this question with the fact that I am in a long term relationship with a wonderful man that I am very much in love with. I cant stop thinking about a certain coworker, however, who happens to be of the opposite sex, married and 18 years older than myself. I think about him all the time and I think about ways I can arrange my work day to spend more time with him. Sometimes I even think, if we were both single would he go out with me? I am puzzled where these feelings are coming from. Could I be searching for a father figure? (My dad passed away when I was 19) As long as I do not act on any feelings, is this normal to have a crush like this? Any suggustion on how to handle these feelings? I feel like I cant talk to anyone about this. Thank you for your help.

My advice to you is to picture the older gentleman naked, focusing especially on his genitals. That’s right: his old man balls. Picture them. Is that something you want to have anything to do with? Really? That’s gross. Wow.

Everybody gets little crushes from time to time. It’s been well-documented in this space that a menage a trois with Chase Utley and Matthew McConaughey would not be out of the question for this columnist. In my case, however, the odds of that are rather low, and also I don’t think Sarah would mind watching. In your case, however, seeing as you are a woman, the entire responsibility rests on your shoulders, because it’s well documented that men have absolutely no self-control, particularly when it comes to young, lithe women.

I guess what I’m saying is, take a lot of cold showers or hope you don’t get caught. Good luck!

From the depths of the internet:

I think my husband is cheating on me. We haven’t had sex in over 3 months! What can I do to look more attractive and win him back?

In my many years of experience with women, I have come to realize a simple fact: most women have no grasp of what is attractive to men. Women actually dress so that their girlfriends and their gay hairdresser will compliment them, which is fine. But if a straight man doesn’t find what they are wearing to be particularly interesting, they say he has no taste. This isn’t true. Straight men do have taste, it’s just completely different from women and gay men. This is no different than the way some people don’t like onions, and some people do. So let me explain, once and for all, men’s taste in women’s clothing:

We want you to dress like sluts.

Is this really surprising? I guarantee, if your husband is banging his secretary, it’s not because she’s is a really sweet girl who wears culottes and fun floral sweater sets. He’s doing so because she’s kinda dumb and wears mini skirts and semi-transparent blouses.

Let me be a bit more clear: this is not something that we like as a sexual game in the bedroom. In the bedroom women should be naked at all times. Out in public, guys want to see tight white t-shirts with dark red brassieres underneath. We want ridiculously short shorts and thigh-high boots.

Let me continue with my clarity: we don’t want you to actually BE slutty. If you do so, however, it’s not our right to complain. For some guys, it might even be a turn-on. But there’s nothing on this earth that’s sexier than a confident, smart woman, who just happens to be wearing a tube top.

You could also try giving him a broomskie (see also: motorboat).

In which there ain’t no wedding like a Pakistani wedding ’cause Pakistani weddings got CURRY:

I’m seriously serious, if you want to party like it’s 2099, you need to go to a wedding like that which I attended on Saturday night, with HW in tow. (Yes, before you asked, of course we looked hot.) It started at about 6pm with the Introduction of The Groom, my old Ychrome buddy Ian, followed by the Presentation of the Bride, and a rather short ceremony in which an officiant read some passages of the Koran and people milled around aimlessly.

Then the party began in earnest, with some dancing that was straight out of the Asian Variety Show. There was much twisting of wrists and stamping of feet. I think I lost 10 pounds busting my moves on the dance floor to the chagrin of the folks that I may have injured.

The food, as expected, was out of this world, with all kinds of Tandoori Chicken and Naan breads and stuff. I ate until I thought I would explode, and then danced some more. After a while, things started to get blurry, from a chemical combination of endorphins, curry powder, and Tanqueray, so Sarah gathered me up and drove me home.

Sunday we had Easter services at church, which as usual ran for a good hour and forty minutes. Then we went to my aunt’s farm near Lancaster, where we communed with family and with sheep:

A busy weekend, which included the unmentionable WORK THAT WOULD NOT BE DENIED, and as usual I didn’t get to sleep much. Which is okay, because I make it up during the week. My employers LOVE me.

Okay, I promise, I’m not going to turn this into a sports blog, or something. But this year, for no discernible reason, I’m really stoked about baseball (despite the Phillies’ 1-5 start to the season), so I think about it a fair amount, which means that time normally spent thinking on column topics like “Natasha Bedingfield Makes Me Happy To Be Male” and “How Prince Continues to Be Ridiculous Well Into His Forties” is spent on wondering “Why Barry Bonds Doesn’t Seem To Actually Be In My New Baseball Video Game.”

Today’s topics: last week’s fantasy baseball results (don’t worry, I’ll keep it short), and a review of MLB 2K6, the new baseball game from 2KSports.

You may recall my column of like 3 years ago (actually just last month), in which I said about Craig’s team:

Other than batting average and a certain amount of speed, the team is pretty abysmal in the other aspects of batting, with no better than 9th in the league in Runs, HR, and RBI.

And also:

Craig’s pitching situation is just weird; he’s above average, although not anywhere close to league-leading, in ERA and WHIP, but ranked no better than 7th in Wins, Saves, or Strikeouts.

Yeah, about that: Craig is now the league leader at 9-2-1. (We play 12 “games” per week, one “game” consisting of a head-to-head matchup in a given category. Craig was better than his opponent in 9 out of 12 categories, worse in 2, and tied in one.) Lesson learned: I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.

I posted a 9-3 record for the week, so I’m a half game out of first place, and looking to play the Late Term As, who went 8-3-1.

League leaders:

On to my game review. A few weeks ago I grabbed MLB 2K6 at Best Buy, and I’ve been playing a few games a day since then. If I could condense the entire review down to one word, it would be: “glitchful.”

It just doesn’t seem like a finished product; it’s like I’m playing a beta. At least once or twice a game, it’ll freeze for a split second. This is invariably when I’m trying to time a swing, or I’m trying to throw a close pitch inside, and it sucks. Also, there’s always weird things happening, although they don’t interfere with gameplay: after a guy gets thrown out at first, occasionally he’ll spend 10-15 seconds running in a circle around the base before the game continues. Very odd.

The gameplay is overall pretty good; the most recent baseball game I’d played until MLB 2K6 was Electronic Arts’ MVP 2003, which was pretty good, but frighteningly easy. I kept it set on All-star mode and still managed to hit 92 home runs in a season with one player. The new game is much more realistic; I had it on rookie for a while until I got the hang of things, and now have it on Pro. There’s at least 2 levels above this.

One upgrade from MVP 2003 is that fielding makes sense; with MVP you either turned on fielding help, which meant you didn’t have to do anything, or turned it off, which means you had to do EVERYTHING, including figure out how to have the reaction time to snare hot grounders to the holes. With MLB 2K6, the fielders take the reaction time out of the equation by at least STARTING towards the ball, although after a half second or so you have to take over and get them the rest of the way, and then throw. This is as difficult as it sounds, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty cool.

Stealing is improved; with MVP 2003 steals were thrown out roughly 80% of the time. Now you’re MUCH more likely to actually get your base, particularly with a fast runner. I think Jimmy Rollins and Bobby Abreu are 6/6 between them. Baserunning in general is REALLY hard to control, though. I miss the dealy from MVP in which you would select a runner and then tell him what base to go to. Now you have to select a runner and hit L1 a bunch of times, or R1 to backtrack, and look at him to see where you’ve told him to go, which means you aren’t watching the fielders gather up and throw the ball. Plus nobody seems to be fast enough to score from 2nd on a single; even the aforementioned Jimmy Rollins gets thrown out most of the time. Also, the runners have a tendency to round first on a single and take their time getting back when the outfielders get the ball in, and I’ve been thrown out at first at least twice because they didn’t get back quickly enough. Just ridiculous; this kind of poor baserunning NEVER. EVER. EEEVVVEEERRRR. Happens in real life. Even my fat lazy ass wouldn’t get thrown out at first in that situation.

The graphics are pretty standard, not much improved from previous years. I think they spent the bulk of their graphics budget on making the Xbox 360 version look really good, which makes a certain amount of sense. The player faces are very well drawn, though, and they do a really nice job of actually having the bat hit the ball on swings, and having fielders pick up the ball instead of just getting near it and having it disappear and magically reappear in their hands.

The sounds are really, really good. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan sound great, although they do repeat themselves occasionally, but the sound guys did a good job of making sure they could fit player and team names into their sentences without obvious changes in inflection. Very impressive.

One major downside: there’s no practice modes. At all. They’ve come up with this new model of swings, which sounds like it’d be a lot of fun to try, but I’m not interested in trying to learn it while playing a game. I want a batting practice mode in which a guy lobs slow fastballs right over the center of the plate while I work out the timing. So the new hitting model, which involves pulling back on the right joystick and then letting go of it at just the right time, goes largely unused (you can still go to the standard “hit X at the right instant” mode). I would also have enjoyed learning the new pitching setup before facing the Cardinals lineup, although at least that game pretty much mirrored Jon Lieber’s actual opening day start. I think I gave up 7 runs in the first inning.

Overall grade: C+. Fix the glitches and put in some practice (or even better, some instruction modes with Harold Reynolds) and I’ll upgrade to a A-. (Seriously, not having any practice modes is just redickerous.)

To be blunt: James Blunt sucks.

(Ha HA! See what I did there? With the making fun of his name? I am freakin’ SLICK, people, and you need to RECOGNIZE.)

His new song “You’re Beautiful” has been floating around in the top 20 for several weeks now, and I have to admit, at first, I thought it was a pretty decent song. Ol’ Jimmy has an interesting voice, not really like anything else I’ve heard, and the song has a melodic quality that appealed to me. Only recently have I come to the realization that his voice is not so much “interesting” as “flat-out sucky” (or in the parlance of this electronic age, Teh Suxx0r), and when I listened a little closer to the lyrics, I realized that whoever penned them (young Mr. Blunt, I’m assuming) 1) couldn’t write a good lyric with Jackson Browne whispering them in his ear, and 2) has some serious issues with stalking that he should probably work out with a psychological specialist.

And, oddliest of all, he starts out the song by randomly singing the first line of the first verse in the middle of the introduction. This is a classic move that Sarah and I call the “Emily V,” after a good friend of ours. Whenever a song comes on of which Emily is fond, she has the amusing habit of immediately beginning to sing the lyrics of the song during the introduction, long before the singer actually starts a verse. It’s only annoying the first 307 times. James “The Chr0n1c” Blunt does the same thing; about halfway through the chorus he inexplicably sings “My life is brilliant” and then just stops and lets the introduction continue for 8 more bars before the drums come in and the verse starts in earnest.

Let’s examine the first verse:

My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I’m sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won’t lose no sleep on that,
‘Cause I’ve got a plan.

Now, I would think here would be a good place to actually outline his “plan,” but James launches straight into the chorus. The second verse (which we will get to shortly, worry not) makes no mention of it either. I’m led to assume that he’s intending to spend the rest of his days riding the same train at the same time over and over again until he spots her without her man. I’m envisioning bizarre fan-fiction in which she only rode that train once, while going to visit an art museum with her brother, because she’s actually from Reading, PA and was just in town for a college trip, but James doesn’t know that, so of course after 10 years of riding the same train he decides to expand his search and starts riding random trains 24 hours a day, never the leaving the subway, subsisting off of the discarded falafel and bagel remnants of others, until one day at the age of 57 he gets accosted by another bum who doesn’t want to share his train and stabs him with a polished piece of broken stemware he keeps for such purposes.

Clearly I’ve given this a terrifying amount of thought. Definitely more than James “Philly” Blunt gave it. Verse the second (we’ll get to the chorus momentarily), and let’s break it down a bit:

Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.

What sort of retarded subway is this in which people are wandering aimlessly through the cars?

She could see from my face that I was,
Flying high!

I think this is the stupidest lyric in the song. Either he means that he had literally just smoked a blunt (ha HA!) in the subway station bathroom (the non-radio lyrics seem to reinforce this idea, since apparently on the CD he says “f-ing high”), or he thinks that she can tell from the look on his face that he fell in love instantly and has achieved euphoria as a result. If I saw somebody on a subway with that look on their face, I’d assume they had a stroke.

He clearly just needed something to rhyme with “by.” Let me suggest a few alternates: “But with a dude by her side, why would I even try?” or “As we squeezed in the car, my hand brushed her thigh” or “and my wang pointed up, straight up to the sky.” All of these would be better options.

And I don’t think that I’ll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

The end of what? The train ride? The day? The song? The world? JAMES BLUNT, YOU ARE PISSING ME OFF.

Finally, let’s examine the chorus a wee bit:

You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.
I saw you face in a crowded place,
And I don’t know what to do,
‘Cause I’ll never be with you.

Perhaps: go home, have a drink, maybe engage in a little light onanism, go to sleep? Personally, from the tone of the song, I get the feeling that this guy falls in love with random chicks he sees at least twice a day. It’s almost pathological.

The final chorus repeats:

You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.

Okay, I get the picture. Frickin’ Helen of Troy, in the subway, probably riding around with a guy that looks like Matthew McConaughey’s better looking younger brother.

There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.

Wait, what? I had assumed, from the first verse, that the girl he saw WAS the angel. Now I’m really confused. Were there two angels? Is one of them cherubim and one seraphim? This song needs a frickin’ third verse, of great length, to explain this, and maybe also a fourth to detail the “track down the hot chick I saw on the subway and get her digits” plan he mentioned a while back.

But it’s time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.

This is the smartest thing he says in the song. Even more frustrating, after the final verse, the song just sort of stops, like he couldn’t come up with a good ending.

Which happens sometimes.

Aaaaaaaand we’re back. Sorry for falling off the face of the earth for the last three weeks, but the time that I usually spend on this every other day was sadly required for sleeping. In order:

• High school show (Footloose): went extremely well. In fact, I dare say it was the best of the ones we’ve done, particularly from a dancing perspective. I may have some pictures up in a few days. Maybe not. Who knows. I AM OUT OF CONTROL.
• Sarah is so freakin’ pregnant. Seriously, she no longer really has a belly button. We had a shower for the baby on Sunday and got all kinds of cute stuff, including my old Red Wagon that had been lent to my cousin and duly returned. It’ll come in handy; I can strap it to the cats and make them pull me around the neighborhood.
• Work is about the same. Busy.
• I’ve lost a bunch of weight again, and I’m trying to keep it off by eating truly mammoth amounts of red meat. (I love this diet.) Also, I bought a really awesome new bicycle, seen here, which unfortunately I haven’t had a lot of time to get out on, but plan to spend as much time this summer on as possible. Obviously this will be restricted by baby. Oh well. The bike has 27 freakin’ speeds, and it weighs about as much as a frisbee. On Saturday I biked all the way from New Castle to Delaware City and back, a distance of about 15 miles.

That is all I have for you on this fine day. More later in the week, I promise.