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So it looks like the Catholics have gotten themselves a new pope! Good times for all! I’m hoping he takes a totally righteous name when he signs up, ’cause Lord knows there are some bitchin’ Saints out there who need to have a pope named after them:

• Saint Birrstan – Pope Birrstan I just has a ring to it, doesn’t it?
• Saint Alexander Nevsky – Patron Saint of Going Buck Wild On Teutons With A Big Axe Or Sword
• Saint Winebald – I dunno what he’s a patron saint of, but I can only assume it involves Homer Simpson.
• Saint Sean John – Patron Saint of Da Bling aka Da Blizing

Not to mention all the righteous GIRL saints who probably won’t get no papal luv:

• Saint Isadore of Seville – Proposed Patron Saint of Internet Users (seriously)
• Saint Isadora of Duncan – Patron Saint of people who get their scarves caught in the spokes of a sportscar and snap their necks (somewhat less seriously)

No word on who the new pope actually is, but I’m hoping he’s Irish. I can’t imagine anything more awesome than having the pope roll up in Boston in a few years and getting hammered on Harp and then getting in a soccer hooligan brawl. Can you imagine? His little papal toque floating above the fray, him all casting death electric jaunpiece out of his fingertips like Emperor Palpatine, and then when his posse tries to escort him out, he pulls the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch from under his robes and tosses it among the fisticuffs, sending bleeding bodies flying through the air like it was Belfast 1983 or something.

Just awesome.

Sadly, it’ll probably be some Italian guy, and he’ll probably be Pope Clement XVI or some such crap, so my hopes of a Throwdown of Infallibility would come to naught. A man can dream, however.

Except that my dreams usually involve Eliza Dushku and a fraternity paddle. I think I need serious medical attention.

So the blogging idea for Thursday panned out pretty poorly, and my plan to get pictures posted on Friday worked out about as well. I’m sure you were all disappointed, which kinda sucks for you, but luckily I’m used to it, having disappointed my wife in every conceivable way for nearly 5 years now. So hurl your taunts and spray your wrath like me when I eat rare beef; I shall survive. My skin is thick. (It’s caused by a weird virus that requires me exfoliate with a blowtorch and a rasp every weekend.)

Anyway, the goings on this weekend were extreme. Kyle’s bachelor party was a great success, starting with the Phils beating the Braves 2-1 while we watched, and finishing when one by one the party-goers started passing out in pools of their own fluids on my floor. I won’t go into very specific details about some of the things that happened, to spare the childish naivete of my readership, but here are a few highlights:

• Several hours of poker ended with me in the lead, but Kyle and Jeff continually biting into my massive stash of chips via beating me in close hands. At least 3 hands in a row, I called somebody’s all-in with something like “two pair aces and sixes” only to be beaten by triple-sixes or something. It was very frustrating. But then we gave up on the game to eat, and also because someone may have discovered some adult video entertainment on a computer owned by some unknown personage. I certainly have no idea what it was doing in MY home. I blame Jared.
• Somehow, 12 guys managed to go through 2 cases of beer. This doesn’t seem that impressive, until you realize that
  1. Only 10 of them were drinking
  2. They also managed to down something like 40 jello shots
  3. Nobody died
• I made a birthday cake for Brian that featured dirty words on it that would be immoral of me to post, however it is worth noting that many of them were correctly spelt.
• Someone managed to break the toilet downstairs, so we announced to the party that the downstairs bathroom was closed to all traffic. Craig was unaware of this, somehow, and decided to drop a Diesel Double Deuce in there, so I had to go in, take the top off the john, and manually lift the valve to permit Craig’s stankass nastiness to go the way of all turds. Wait . . . that’s not a highlight. That’s a horrible, horrible lowlight. I can still smell it . . . and I just threw up in my mouth.

Thanks for the shindig go out to:

• Rece, who came over to help set up and clean and keep us fat and happy and full of tasty, tasty beers.
• Craig, for arranging for the Phillies tickets.
• The Phillies, for not losing.
• Everybody that came, for not throwing up in my guest bed.
• She-ra (HW), for setting everything up. She hath done hell of grood jorb. GROOD JORBBBBBB!

Also, I had Brandywiners auditions yesterday, and they went reasonably well, considering to be honest, the part I want has some high notes that I cannot technically hit. Also, in case you needed the reminder, I am not what one would term a strong actor. I’m about on par with Keanu Reeves, but without all the consistency. Also the part in question requires me to be in spectularly fit condition, and while I’m in better shape than I’ve been since high school, I do not exactly have a set of admirable abs. So we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you updated.

So it’s been four hours, and nothing has leapt into my miniature little brain. Seriously, I’m looking around my cubicle for things to write about, and if I don’t come up with anything better by 5pm, there’s a good chance you’ll see a post on any of the following topics:

Inspirational, ain’t it?

• Why I Still Have A Santa Claus Hat Atop My Computer Monitor, It Being Nearly 4 Months After Christmas (Or 8 Months Before, Depending On How You Look At It)
• A Comparison Of The Takeout Menus Of C.R. Wings And The Cleveland Avenue Sub Shop
• I Have A CD On My Desk From A Band Named “Snacks.” I Feel That Snacks Is A Particularly Boring Name For A Band. Discuss. Also Suggest Alternate Crappy Names, Such As “Pretzel” Or Perhaps “The Donut Projekt”
• Why Am I Not Any More Productive Despite Having Two Functional And Two Broken Computers In My Cubicle?
• Why Do People I Don’t Know Keep Walking By My Cubicle With Clipboards? Are They Noting Who’s Actually Working And Who’s Pretending To Work While Updating His Website? Do I Really Care?

So I was hoping to have pictures of Old New Castle from the weekend, but I just haven’t had time to take care of that. Tomorrow I’m taking the day off from work to prepare for Kyrone’s bachelor party, so hopefully I’ll be able to sneak in an hour to upload and edit some photoz for all-a-y’all.

Basically what this means is, I got nothing. So I’m thinking it may be time to go Tru-Blogggg-Stizyle, meaning I plan to post some random things throughout the day, as they come to me. Keep an eye on this space, yo. Great things are coming your way.

Just not at the moment, ’cause honestly I can’t think of anything all that entertaining. Your best bet is to head over to Jimmy the Profound’s Place, and tell him I sent ya. (He doesn’t know me or anything, but it never hurts to be nice. And don’t actually call him Jimmy or they’ll never find your body. He’s weird like that.)

Oh, oh, baby, here comes my random jams, pay attention or you’ll miss it, I like ham:

• I recently bought a suit from this man:
  
  Calvin Klein, maker of fine underwear
  Is it normal that I am now terrified of what I am becoming?
• So on Tuesday I went to Hollywood Tan and got one of them thar “spray-on” tans that doesn’t involve scorching the skin. So far, so good, I seem to be extra pretty as a result. But it occurred to me; is there anything more silly than actually getting into a true tanning bed, with the harsh lights and whatnot? I shouldn’t really bring it up, because I’ve been guilty of it myself, but it seems to me you’re paying $5-15 a session for something you could get from the sun for free. It also strikes me as truly bizarre that every morning, I put on a face moisturizer that includes a sunscreen of SPF 45, and yet I have laid under tanning lights for as long as 15 minutes and burned myself red.

  The only thing I can think of that’s similar is the concept of an “oxygen bar.” Paying for air isn’t much better than paying for sun.

  (BTW: If you’re considering a spray-on tan, I should warn you off. I can’t recommend it; I’m hell of blotchy. After you get sprayed, you’re supposed to rub the stuff in all over your skin. Unfortunately, I apparently missed a spot or 12, so there are random patches of darkness interspersed with disturbing paleness. I look like a burn victim that got some of my skin grafts from Dikembe Mutumbo, and the rest from Powder. Worst of all, I couldn’t reach my back to rub it in, so now it’s covered in bizarre, massive freckles. Bad times. I think I’ll go back to just accidentally scorching my skin while riding my bike.)

• After work on Monday I went for a bike ride with my comrade Shady in White Clay Creek State Park. It was, how you say, FRICKIN’ AWESOME. Ripping down trails, grudgingly climbing back up them, almost crushing my cojones on big rocks, nearly wiping out two or three times but saving it at the last minute through sheer badassocity; I enjoyed it greatly. It was a way better workout than just riding on flat ground around my neighborhood. This afternoon after work I plan to find a few more trails in a different area of the park and see what kind of harm I can come to there.

  Of course, I’ve also had to invest in all kinds of righteous equipment for the bike. Helmet, pump, water bottle, mirror, gloves, small storage bag for under the seat, everything. Yesterday I picked up a little speedometer that I want to install soon; yesterday we were flying down a hill on Paper Mill Road and I became curious to know exactly how fast I was going. Plus I think I’d rather enjoy knowing how far I ride when I go out.

  In other words, I’m a super, super-ultra-dork. But you knew that anyway.

It turns out I’m not as think as I smart I am.

On Saturday, HW was out of town, so I had some free time that I used on lawncare and some cleaning and laundry and things. Around 11:30 I decided I should take a bike ride, and more importantly, I should throw my bike in the truck and cruise over to Old New Castle and have me a look around. So I did so, packing along a camera, my water, all kinds of tasty jaunpiece. I rode south through some kind of park on the bayfront, which smelled strongly of ass, and then back up a little bit, and found a little cut-through over to Route 9, which appeared to have nice wide shoulders that I could ride on without fear of having The Story Of Me concluded via high-speed impact with a jackknifing semi.

So I headed south on Rt. 9, noting some pretty homes, some rather nasty looking junkyards and warehouses, and then came upon a massive park of soccer fields. So I stopped for a bit and watched irate parents yelling at referees, and continued south another 1/4 mile or so, when I came upon the Ommelanden Shooting Range and Hunter Education Center. I’ve wanted to find out more about the place, so I stopped in, took a look around, watched some very poor shotgunners attempting to knock orange clays out of the air. Then I continued back north, and rode the few miles back up into New Castle.

I rode around on the side streets for a little while, and then locked the bike into the bed of my pickup, and took a bunch of pictures (appearing in this space later in the week, depending on my spare time to edit and post them) of the neat old buildings and some of the colonially-dressed peeps wandering around. I also poked my head into Immanuel-on-the-Green Episcopal, but didn’t linger long since I was wearing my bike shorts, and I didn’t think the Lord would approve having my pasty-white thighs so egregiously displayed within His House.

Then I threw the bike back in the pickup, grabbed some McDonald’s, and headed home to finish up my day of doing random homeowner jaunt. Sarah got home around 5pm, and immediately said, “Look at your nose! It’s bright red. What did YOU do today?”

That’s right, I head spent the hours of noon-2pm outside, including approximately an hour of riding my bike without any cloud or tree cover whatsoever, and it had not occurred to me that perhaps I ought to apply some sunscreen. My nose is burnt, my forearms are quite toasted, and most annoyingly, the tops of my thighs are beet red.

The lesson as always: I am an idiot.

Visual evidence of last Thursday’s attic-ladder installation extravaganza!

Here we see me holding the attic ladder in place with my head. Milo is in the attic getting his nail on, um, on. There are two things worth noting about me here:

1. I’m clearly wearing a shirt that is too tight by any reasonable standard. This is to show off my rippitude. Sadly, I am not yet ripped.
2. My ass is normally quite extraordinary, but for some reason my jeans are all clenched up such that I look like a fat woman in stretch pants wandering aimlessly through Walmart in search of the Swiss Roll That Got Away.

The amusing front side, featuring me smiling like an idiot. I did not actually get that shirt in Colorado. I got it at Old Navy. I am a poseur.

So I’m on a 90-minute “town meeting” conference call, right now at about the 30 minute mark. As you might guess, the first 1/3 of the meeting has been less than thrilling. So I figured I’d take the opportunity to update you on a couple things, since I’m sure you can’t sleep at night without wondering about my health and prosperity:

• The left foot is largely healed. It aches a bit if I try to run on it, so I don’t do that, but it doesn’t give me any trouble when I’m biking. I have to be careful when I lift weights, but hopefully it’s healing it up stronger than before. Thanks for all your prayers. Unless you haven’t been praying. In which case you obviously don’t care about me. I hate you.
• Speaking of bike riding, I’ve been really getting into it. I need to find more places to ride, though, that don’t involve 50mph traffic. I’ve done all the exploring in my neighborhood that I can, so now I have to venture out on the major roads near us. Yesterday I was cruising down the shoulder of route 40 at about 15mph, while traffic flew by at about 50mph. Not the best of times.

  I think in future I’m going to start taking the bike to work so I can go out in Newark, where there are more bike-friendly paths and roads, not to mention White Clay Creek State Park. I’m looking forward to flying madly down a hill in that place and erasing portions of my motor control via heavy foliage impact. Let the fun begin!

• I have to stop listening to my friends’ movie recommendations, particularly when they say “Dude, you have to see this, the movie is so YOU.” You may remember a few months ago when I watched “The Big Lebowski” and was greatly disappointed with it, considering the number of people who had told me I would love it. I had the same problem with “Anchorman,” which I watched with HW on Saturday night.

  You know a movie is lame when, about an hour in, I actually pick up an old newspaper sitting near me and scan it absentmindedly. “Anchorman” started out relatively fun, and it definitely had a few good lines (“Hi, I’m Matt Hearn. Drink it up . . . it always goes down smooth.” is now my standard greeting), but it was so over-the-top that it came full circle and started taking itself too seriously, if you can follow me. It was truly disturbing to see. Perhaps that was the point, to show how television news shows are so over-the-top with drama, but it made it pretty painful to watch. I think I’m just getting too old. Now I enjoy films with much more subtle humor, like “Napoleon Dynamite” and anything where somebody gets kicked in the nuts.

  I also like nudity.

So I bought a new suit of clothes yesterday. I’d wanted a new one for a while, since the only other wearable one I have I bought in 2000, and it just felt like it was time to add some variety to my wardrobe. Plus, I’ve lost a little weight, so the old suit is just a size too big. PLUS again, I have a bunch of weddings coming up that I need to be super-fly for so I can hit on hot chicks at the reception Sarah isn’t afraid to be seen with me.

2 Legit 2 Quit

I did some major league shopping before I made my purchase; I went to the mall TWICE this week to try things on, in 5 different stores, and finally settled on a dark Calvin Klein getup with pinstripes. I actually tried the same suit on in a bunch of different stores, trying to find one that carried a flat-front pant, because pleats look absurd on me. (My massive derriere tends to fill out the back, and pull on the front, causing the pleats to separate wildly and just look silly.) Sadly, once I found a flat-front version, I realized that for some reason it looked even WORSE on me than the pleated version, because Calvin had inexplicably designed them to be crazily high-waisted. So either I hiked the pants up to the “no more than 2 inches below the armpits” style pioneered by my father, or I wore them where my waist is, which left the crotch so low it looked like I was wearing Hammer pants. Luckily, the jacket and pants are sold as separates, so I was able to have options. I ended up purchasing the jacket and the pleat-front pants, and hope to have some alterations done on the pants to relieve the pressure in the pooper region.

Some of you are probably saying to yourselves, “Wait. Calvin Klein? That doesn’t seem right. Matt Hearn and designer labels go together like fat kids and chinups.” A few years ago, you’d be right. I probably have ranted and raved in this very space about how I’ll never wear Tommy Hilfiger or Vera Wang or whatever, but here’s the thing: designer clothes are really nice. They fit better, they use better fabrics, they look totally hot. I do draw the line at Ambercrombie and Fitch, though, mainly because going into the store is like going into a rave. The music is loud and thumping, and it’s rather dark, so you can’t actually see the clothes you want to buy. I last about 30 seconds in there before I get angry, drop the jeans or shirt or whatever on the floor, and stomp out. But all in all, I have to say that I now like designer clothing.

Even if it does cost me $320 for a suit.

Also: in case anybody happens to know the owner or manager or something of the Subway in the food court at Christiana Mall, it might be worth alerting them that it might be time to have a chat with whatever employees were working there at about 8:45pm on Tuesday. It does not set a customer’s stomach at ease to watch sketchy people who don’t appear to be employed there wandering in and out of the back room. It’s also not great when a customer hears somebody in the storage room pretending to vomit. Also, when a customer waits for 2 minutes in front of the establishment and no employee ever appears to take his order, that’s kinda off-putting.

Also also: You may notice that the quote that appears atop the page, under the purdy flowers, have random “\” marks throughout. That is because we have gone PHP, baby (woohoo!) and the folks at omnis appear to have screwed up when they set up the admin tools for the website. I have code up there that automatically generates random quotes that I have stored in a mysql database, which is nifty. Unfortunately, to make it look right, there are some PHP variables I have to change, and they have a form in the admin tools to change them, but it doesn’t appear to have any effect. I’ve sent them an email asking them either to fix the tool, or just fix my particular settings manually. Haven’t heard back yet. If there are NOT funny “\” marks in the quote, they’ve fixed it yay.

Are you all right? Your eyes are completely glazed over. That’s weird.

I really have to start writing things down as I think of them. Because I’m pretty sure I had two really quality ideas for posts over the past 24 hours, but I can’t remember any of them. So obviously in this case I’m going to talk about silly crap I may have noticed while walking around, because of course all of that lameness is permanently burned into my brain and needs to be shared.

I went to the gym again yesterday; I’m really starting to enjoy doing so, or at least, I enjoy the thought of having gone, once the deed is done. I certainly don’t enjoy driving out of my way to get there, having to park 1/4 mile away, and walking over. I most DEFINITELY don’t enjoy the actual lifting of heavy objects, because it hurts. A lot. And I don’t enjoy the part where about 24 hours later, I lose the ability to move around. The euphoria of going home and crashing on the couch after a hard workout, however, > *. Not that I’m really seeing any major results. I certainly can move a lot of weight on the ab-abber machine, but there’s still a good 3/4″ of fat over the muscles, so any rippitude developed there remains unseen. Also, my biceps muscles look good for about an hour after the workout, but by the evening they’ve returned to their usual flabby selves.

My ass, as usual, looks outstanding.

I even have a whole workout process, and I document what I do thoroughly. I have a specific order of exercises that maximizes the amount of rest I give a group of muscles before they are exercised again. For example: I don’t do the bench press right after the shoulder press, since both require the triceps muscles. I write down the reps I do per set, and the amount of weight with which I exercise, and all that excellent stuff.

Unfortunately, since I have a specific order to my exercises, I am subject to the exercising whims of the other people in the gym. I work in the faculty/staff gym of the Carpenter Sports Building at UD (I am technically neither faculty nor staff, but my wife is the latter, and nobody’s kicked me out yet because I’m relatively well-behaved, compared to the students), so most of the other exercisers are older, averaging I’d say about 50 years of age, but going as high as 65 or 70, I’d say. The apparent style of workout for these folks (and, to be honest, anybody in any gym) is to sit on one machine and do set after set with lengthy rest periods in between. This of course means that that crazy old man is going to be sitting on the bench press machine, frantically lifting weights approaching 17 pounds as fast as humanly possible for about 30 seconds, followed by a good 7 minutes of rest while his stroke symptoms subside. Repeat. 7 times.

I, meanwhile, have to rearrange my weight-lifting regimen, and usually find myself well into my second set of exercises on all the other machines while I wait for some old fart to finish using the seated row, or the lat pull, or the abdominal machines. (I’m always amused to see some 57 year old guy, about 60 pounds overweight, working his abs at level 0 like he fully expects to step off the thing looking like Eric Nies. GIVE IT UP OLD MAN. GO GET ON A TREADMILL.)

(Those of you who are 57 years of age or more and are insulted that I called you old: stop aging.)

Here are a few of the people I see at the gym at various times when I go:

• The slender, moustachio’d gentleman of about 55 or 60 who is clearly in FAAAR better shape than I am or ever will be. Every time I go to the gym, he is there. He lifts weights for tone and strength, I believe, ’cause I can lift more than he can, but mofo appears to be able to run a mile in about 6.5 minutes, which is roughly twice my current top speed.
• The two little secretaries, both around 60 or so, who come in, sit at a machine EXACTLY as I’m beginning to walk towards it, talk and giggle for a while, do exactly three repetitions of a bench press or bicep curl with almost no weight on the machine, and then leave, their workout complete. Note that I’m not saying they do three repititions on each machine: they do 3 repititions on one machine, selected semi-randomly, and then they leave. And the machine they use is always the machine I need at that particular moment.
• Any number of random middle-aged professors, desperately trying to hold back the grim reaper by damaging their shoulders by sitting at the bench press machine, doing set after set with the worst exercise form I’ve ever seen. I’m no expert, but I think if you’re doing a bench press by shrugging your shoulders up to your ears, holding your breath and letting your eyes roll back into your skull, you’re just asking for serious trauma.
• A bunch of younger UD employees in various shapes and sizes. Some of them are very fit, and some of them are not so much. I’m about average by the standards of others in my age group, which makes me feel nice. Of course, if I go down to the student gym (on weekends the employee gym is closed), I’m a fat slob with horrible hair. Still, a little ego-boosting never hurt. It’s why I watch TV.
• The piece de resistance, a funny little man I like to call Luigi. He’s like a pocket Albert Einstein; same hair, same moustachio, same European looks. This guy, however, is much more entertaining. He always wears green sretch pants, which are tucked into his socks, which are worn under a pair of running shoes that he may have purchased in 1967. He has some kind of purple stretchy device with a small ball, about golf-ball-sized, sown into it, and carries it around like some kind of security blanket. Equally entertainingly, he sits down at a machine, takes a deep breath, and does about 300 repetitions at very low weight, moving the weights only about 2 inches (doing a full range of motion on a given machine moves the weight bars about a foot). It’s not as entertaining to read about as it is to see, trust me. Every time I see him I smile.

I think I go more for the entertainment than the exercise. Which I’m sure you would deduce were you to see me at the moment, gut blubbering over my belt like jello.