While at the Oasis on the Hill water park, Clancy and I were talking about the bathroom habits of men versus women. She supposed that women are more paranoid about being unclothed around one another because they’re so much more self-conscious about bodies. {insert quasi-sexist joke about male fantasies of females running around in one another’s company without clothes being squashed here.} She’s right about that second part, though not so much about the first.

Or she may be right about the first, but I’m not willing to posit a guess. What that did get me thinking about is now whether men or women are more private about their bodies in the company of their own gender, but rather that the motives are slightly different. Women sometimes worry that if they undress in front of other women they will be found lacking. Men, on the other hand, are worried about excessive approval or alternately being accused of excessively approving of other unclothed men.

So while women worry that someone will say or think “Look at the fatty hips and stomach on that girl” men are worried that some dude is going to say “Dude, quit oogling at my love handles and pot belly you fag.”

There is a movie theater in Santomas that plays episodes of Lost and 24 live when they’re on the air. They legally can’t charge for entry for TV shows, but you get in with a $5 food voucher. This is one of those theaters where you can order food (popcorn, pizza, nachos, etc) and drinks (soft drinks and bottled or draft beer) from your seat. If you’ve never been to one, I recommend it. I never want to go to a regular theater again.

The problem is that the theater is in a very confusing part of town. It was a good thing that I left straight from work, because it took me about 90 minutes or so to get there. Some of that is because I was trying to use backroads during rush hour and I was driving a car where changing lanes to the left was really difficult because my turn signal was out. I should have known better. I got there at 6:30 and wouldn’t you know it, they were “sold” out. I thought about catching a movie while I was there, but wouldn’t you know it all four screens were sold out for the next two showings. On a weeknight, no less. If I could invest in these theaters, I would.

I got a burger at a nearby restaurant and headed home. I don’t know about you, but one thing I hate, hate, hate when driving is turning around and going the way I came. My drive home started with my being in the wrong lane. Any sane and rational person would have turned their butt around because I knew that by missing that turn I was going to head into a weird intersection where I was forced to take a right and would have to double back around to get back to the Interstate, which I knew that I would never do because I am somehow incapable of just taking a U-turn because I always think that I can navigate my way home.

So I went straight. Then I took the forced right. Then I took a left at a street that I knew lead to the interstate. Then I took a right at a road that I thought was going to lead straight to the Interstate. Somehow this right-left-right combination ended me up right back at the theater I had left forty minutes earlier.

This time I took the left that I needed to take, took a right on Interstate A and then another right on the interchange to Interstate A to Interstate B, and got home.

Without doubling back even once.

I rock.

The New York Giants are the NFL’s “champions”.

The New York Giants had a 10-6 regular season record. Four other teams had 10-6 records, one of which wasn’t even invited into the post-season.

A whopping 6 teams had a better regular season than the Giants, putting the Giants only barely in the top quartile of NFL teams from September 6th to December 29th.

The New York Giants did not win their division. Divisions only contain four teams. They failed to achieve a winning record within their division.

The New York Giants beat the New England Patriots, who went 16-0 in the regular season including a victory over the “champions” and whose only loss came at the end of the playoffs with a quarterback that may have been something below 100% due to injury. They won their first playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys, against whom they went 0-2 in the season making their overall record against the team a losing one for the year.

But… because they managed to eek out a slightly-better-than-mediocre regular season record and then pulled out wins in their last four games, the last three of which they won by a single field goal, they get to be the champions.

Fair enough. I don’t think that the Giants should have been in the playoffs because I don’t think that we should have wildcards, but those are the rules of the game and everyone knew going into the season that those were the rules of the game.

Yet many of the same people that will be talking about Eli Manning and the Giants and what champions they are do not believe that LSU were truly the NCAA football champions because they didn’t deserve a shot at the title because they lose twice, in triple-overtime, to Arkansas and Kentucky. Nevermind the BCS rules wherein every team knew that they might have to win every single game for a shot at the championship and that there’s no team that anyone can definitely point to as the team that “should be” the national championships (in contrast to 2002, when USC was the renegade champion).

So, in tribute to anti-BCS folks everywhere, I will put quotes or air quotes around the words “champion” and “championship” in reference to the New York Giants (until I get tired of doing so) because I don’t like the system that produced their so-called “championship”.

Pro wrestling (the entertaining kind, not the real kind) is coming to Santomas, Estacado, at some point soon. While I’m living in the big city (or what passes for it) going to a live pro wrestling demonstration is something I’d definitely like to do.

Suffice it to say, this sort of thing is not high on Clancy’s list of things that she would like to do. The thing is that I have an old college friend that lives in a nearby town who was one of the two people that introduced me to what was then WWF and WCW wrestling. I haven’t been following wrestling in years and I wouldn’t be surprised if it fell off his radar, too. That being said, he is surely more on top of things than I am and it would be great to go with someone more knowledgeable.

The problem is that I suspect that said friend is not in a comfortable position financially and I would be surprised if he’s got the money for that sort of thing, though if he’s still a big fan I’m sure he could make the money for it (he did back in college when he was particularly hard up). I wouldn’t want to place a financial burden on him and if he can’t afford it, I might be willing to front the cost of his ticket just for his company.

These things are always awkward, though. He’s a proud guy and if he can afford it he might take offense at my offering to cover for it and if I didn’t make the offer outright he’d probably find some reason not to be able to go (it’s on a weeknight, which could be reason enough). So how does one approach this situation? Typically when I’ve been in this situation, the hard-up friend hasn’t had a problem sharing in my generosity… but this is a different case.

To make matters potentially even more difficult, he’s had friendships end for the flimsiest of reasons loosely related to his pride and this sort of thing could blow up in my face entirely. He’s loosened up a great deal since he’s gotten married, but how much?

There ought to be a way I can ask the question without asking it, but that also has the tendency to make people mad. I in particular hate it when people do that, but mostly because I don’t get offended by questions easily. People who get offended easily by questions also get offended by people dancing around questions. That’s kind of annoying.

Then again, maybe he’s mellowed out enough since getting married that I’m working myself all up for nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve walked on eggshells around a deaf person.

One of the unofficial rules of football (and maybe other sports as well) is that it is classless to run up the score. Once you’re winning to the point that it’s all but impossible to lose, you are supposed to take a step back and start running out the clock. You keep the ball on the ground (which makes the clock run faster because it’s not stopping as frequently), start substituting players (to keep them healthy), and if all else fails start kneeling down.

My alma mater’s football team, the Southern Tech Wolf Pack, has a reputation of “classlessness” because of our historic tendency not to stay aggressive right down to the wire. Back in the team’s heyday, they would rack up upwards of 80+ points a game sometimes. Some members of the conference still have a chip on their shoulder about that and when the team starts falling behind these days, not a single one of them calls off the dogs under any circumstances.

I can’t say that I blame them.

To be honest, though, I don’t think that running up the score should have the stigma that it does. There are some aspects of it that make sense from a tactical standpoint. You keep the ball on the ground to run out the clock faster. The put in your reserves to keep your starters healthy and give the future starters (at the college level) some playing time. When it gets to the point that you’re taking a knee or intentionally running out of bounds at the one yard-line, that’s actually more disrespectful than continuing to score.

I get annoyed when the teams go to their backup quarterback and then use him only to kneel the ball or keep running up the center just to punt. These are guys that don’t often get to play and it bugs me that the one chance they get out on the field, they aren’t given the opportunity to actually do anything.

I think that the best way to handle a blow-out is to take out your starters to give the other kids a chance to play, but then play as aggressively as you always do. There’s really nothing more boring than a game where only one team is playing, regardless of the score.

Billy Brand was one home run away from beating the record, though he’d come into a bit of a slump. It was not expected that he would break the record in Colosse facing off against our hometown Colosse Hurricanes, though it was of course always possible. I didn’t go to the game for the possibility.

My friend and former roommate Hubert had Canes season tickets, but he had a prior engagement that he couldn’t get out of that night. He’d asked several of his baseball friends if they wanted to go, but none of them were free, either. He was dumbfounded that he wasn’t able to find anyone to go to what could be a historic event, but it was looking that way. Then he found out that local musician Rick Gardland was going to be doing a set after the show. When we lived together, I’d played quite a bit of Garland’s music (to his dismay) and he gave me a call.

Evangeline and I had just broken up. Again. The truth is that I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. That, of course, made it all the more important that I did go out. The less I socialized in situations like that, the worse the situations tended to get. I invited Dad and we headed on out to Mello Yello Field that night. I figured, if nothing else, seeing history-in-action would give Eva and I something to talk wherein I could indicate that I was getting on with my life.

I wasn’t a very good companion for Dad. I was obviously distracted and I took regular cigarette breaks. Since he rigorously disapproved of my smoking, that only made things a bit more awkward whenever I’d make an excuse to get out. Unfortunately, the nearest smoking area was on a separate floor and it was a bit walk back and forth, so we both knew I wasn’t taking a trip to the nearest restroom. I timed by breaks in between innings and around Billy Brand’s trips to the plate. By the sixth inning, I’d only been working my way around Brand striking out and hitting two infield outs. Brand’s last out was in the sixth inning, so I decided that during the 7th Inning Stretch I’d make my way to the smoker’s circle.

Unfortunately, at some point before I got out there the cigarette lighter had fallen out of my pocket, so when I got out there I didn’t have a lighter. I asked around to see if I could borrow a light, but the weirdest thing happened: no one would bum a light. Smokers are generally generous with bumming cigarettes and failure to bump a light was a breach of the Smoker’s Code. After the first five rejections I was considering just heading back in, but I gave it one more shot. She lit me up and I smoked and pondered my ongoing problems with Eva.

Meanwhile, on the field, Brand’s team started batting again and they were on a roll. Double, single, single, single, first pitch hits all. The next thing I knew the crowd was erupting in applause. Billy Brand had just broken the home run record with a whopping three-run shot. Despite all of my attempts to time my trip, in a freak inning they’d made their way through the entire line-up in just a few minutes. I’d never seen anything like it (and since I didn’t see it, I still haven’t). History was in the making while I was standing there thinking about Evangeline.

When I got back to my seat, Dad asked if I’d seen it. I lied and told him that I had and that was why it took so long. He held up the lighter I’d dropped and said he’d figured it was because I’d had trouble lighting my cigarette banging together a couple of rocks.

The Garland show was a bust. After a couple of songs the PA system gave out. We waited for about twenty minutes while they tried to fix it, but we gave up and a while later they did, too.

When talking to sports fans, I mention that I was at the game where Brand broke the record. I tend to leave out the part where I missed it because I was out on the smoker’s ledge, feeling sorry for myself.

The blog Kissing Susie Kolber has a great, foul-mouthed post listing the obnoxious nature of Boston fans. This one is the big one:

11. Adopt the attitude that you, yes you, DESERVE this success. “Hey, we Pats fans know how it used to be back in the day. We earned these titles.” Don’t treat your team’s good fortune as the stroke of good fortune it happens to be. No, no, no. Your championship has to be deeper then someone else’s championship. It has to mean something more. Why? Because you fancy yourself as being introspective. {censored}. Treat it like some sort of karmic reward for Len Bias dying, or some other twisted, idiotic explanation.

Back when both the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs were in their respective league championships, I was one of the relatively few rooting against both teams because I got so sick and tired of all of the stories about how these poor teams have had it so rough. It was hard to deny the Chicago Cubs their pain, but the Boston Red Sox had so much less to complain about. They made the World Series in 1986 and almost won it. They put up more winning records than losing records and aren’t a case like the Buffalo Bills were for a stretch wherein they make it to the championship but just can’t win it. They are a team, like the 30-some-odd other teams.

The year after the Red Sox won it all, the Chicago White Sox did. There was no grand theory about how accursed this team was even though they had gone two years longer than the Red Sox without winning a World Series. The Milwaukee Brewers have posted exactly one winning record in the last fifteen years, the Pittsburgh Pirates last posted a winning record in 1992, and a handful of teams have never won a World Series in the history of their franchise (granted, it’s mostly teams from 1960 and after, but even so that’s coming on 40 years). Yet it’s the poor, poor Boston fans we’re supposed to feel good for because that scrappy young team of 100+ years and one of the better records in MLB history finally got their championship.

I actually have nothing against the Patriots or the Celtics except for the contaminated fan-pool.

I stopped by the coffee shop after work to work on the November Novel (remember that, from almost a year ago?). I was distracted by the loud voice of a fellow with some rather ill-informed political views and the guy in front of me who was in the process of getting his heart broken.

The coffee shop was unusually busy, so I had to take a table facing the window. Just outside the window was a conversation between a man and a woman. Almost immediately I could tell something was wrong. His mannerisms while talking to her were almost exaggerated. His look was abrasive and hurt.

The guy was severely overweight. He was probably the most overweight person I’ve seen in my fifteen months in Estacado. He probably would have had difficulty fitting into two airline seats, much less one. She wasn’t thin, but her weight (far less considerable than his) appeared to me to be more firm. She looked like the sort of person that had a stocky Germanic build that she couldn’t turn into a trim figure so she figured to do some anaerobic exercising to make the most of what she was stuck with.

I am hard-of-hearing. One of the ways I compensate for that is lip-reading. I am half as likely to understand what someone is saying if I’m not looking at them. But I pretty much only read lips when I’m getting some sound. In this case I could only see and couldn’t hear a thing, so I could only catch part of what was being said.

I partially wish that there hadn’t been a window between us. If they could see me then I would have had to not watch and work on my book. On the other hand, maybe I would have just kept my eyes glued anyway.

He said that he loved her several times and he also appeared to be saying that she loved him, though I don’t know if he was saying that he knew she really loved him or perhaps that she had said so. He made a big presentation out of getting up from the table and walking to his car. She didn’t budge. He stole a couple glances backwards as he walked away, trying to see if she was going to try to stop him. She called his bluff and he returned to the table saying something about finishing this now.

Throughout the whole conversation she was pretty rock-faced. She didn’t look indifferent, but she looked decidedly unaffected. The further the conversation wore on, the bigger the ball of emotional goo the man became.

I’m not sure what the backstory was. I actually got the impression that it was something different than a standard breakup. My guess is that they didn’t actually date but that he really, really wanted to. I’d further guess that he saw her extra weight and thought that was something that they had in common even though the volume and type of weight was completely different. She looked like the kind of person that would befriend anyone and that was paying a price for it. Frankly, I have difficulty imagining the two of them actually dating. I have difficulty seeing anyone date the guy, but then again I saw him at a time when he wasn’t as his best (I wouldn’t want to be judged while my heart was getting broken).

It’s possible that they did date, but they almost certainly split up before this conversation. It came across more as Part Four In A Seven Part Series than the spontaneous combustion of a heart. This looked more like an attempt at closure. A failed one.

Perhaps one of the reasons I couldn’t take my eyes off her was that Eva and I broke up the second and biggest time in a coffee shop much like the one I was in. It was a Part Six in a Seven Part Series. We didn’t make the scene of it that this couple did. In fact, we chose a public place precisely for that reason. It wasn’t until she took a trip to the restroom that things fell apart. I remember something about Tom Ridge in the newspaper that I was looking at while she was gone. When she came out she was crying, so we decided to go shopping and spent the next hour or two shopping, avoiding while we were there, picking up some scented candles.

For the most part we were able to accomplish it with some dignity. The indignity came before and after. By the time we got to that parking lot, she and I were already over and we both knew it. The scene yesterday with the Big Fella was about a guy that hadn’t finished fighting yet. Even when they both went their separate ways, there was a look of “not over” in his eyes.

I remembered the same look from Julie when I split with her. She actually screamed at me once during the discussions “No! It’s not over!” I came really, really close to buckling. I wanted to tell her that whether I actually said it was over or not, the parts that mattered were definitely over and there wasn’t anything either of us could do about that. Though he remained defiant at their departure, I do hope that the Big Fella realizes to the extent that they had anything, the parts of it that mattered are over.

“How pathetic am I?” I saw him ask himself. Were I an actual part of that conversation, I would have told him that was a choice as much as a question.

Near Julie’s house on the outskirts of Colosse there was a chiropractor that put up clever little jokes or insights on his sign to grab attention. It was successful as far as that goes. Had I needed a chiropractor, I knew where to go.

There is a hotel near where I work that puts up a different sort of sign. I remember the first one that I saw said “Made in the USA!” I thought it was a clever little joke because who the heck thinks that they’re mass-producing hotels in China to bring over here? The next one said something like “American-owned, American-operated!” I read that and figured that they were either simply playing up their American roots, though the thought was occurring to me that perhaps they were gently trying to say that you don’t have to worry about the hotel being one of those Indian-owned and operated outfits.

After that, the signs started to become more pointed. It went from “Serving Americans since 1957” to “Serving Real Americans since 1957”. They’d also periodically have one about not needing to dial one to speak to someone in English in their hotel and another that was up for a while that said “America is for Americans”.

I am all about free speech and all that. I do not begrudge them the right to air their views with varying degrees of subtlety on their signs. It’s not particularly likely that I’m going to let the political views of an establishment’s owner (however indelicately expressed) affect my choice with only rare exception.

That being said, I do have to question the wisdom of expressing such views at a hotel. A hotel only a few hours from the Mexican border, at that. Patriotism is great for selling cars, but it is really such a good idea for the hospitality industry? The town where I work has Mexican police conventions, Mexican business conventions, Mexicans visiting relatives, and conventions that bring in people from throughout the world. Is taking jabs at people that are not Americans really a smart thing to do? I can’t imagine if I were in France that I would be drawn to a hotel that said “France is for the French” or some variation of “Speak French or go home!”

It’s really quite bizarre.

In addition to the issue of tattoos and piercings, a subject of much conversation was the decisions in bathing suits made by the various women there.

I came to the conclusion that bikinis are like master-planned community homes. Let me explain:

Ideally, a house is built to fit into its landscape. Windows are placed where the view is best. Architecture fits the motif of the area, if there is one. A house is built to blend in with its surroundings, such as a log cabin in a wooded area, stone in a rocky area, and maybe stucco in a dusty area.

One of the aesthetic problems with master-planned communities is that they are not built with their surroundings in mind. They are all designed in by some New York City architect or some guy in Toledo and then are exported to wherever it is that the developer sees a commercial opportunity. So a house in dusty Arizona looks like a house in swampy Louisiana looks like a house in rocky Colorado. I can understand and appreciate the amenities these houses have to offer, but I am spiritually an elite coastal snob when it comes to passing these places on the freeway because the terrain was redesigned to work with the house rather than the house fitting in to make the most of the terrain.

Some young ladies look outstanding in bikinis. Some look spectacular in 1-piece. Believe it or not some look awesome in those bathing suits with the little tutus. Some look cool wearing pants over a 1-piece. The list goes on and on. My basic point is that for every individual there is a bathing suit that brings out their best or shifts attention away from their worst.

But like the mass-production model homes, everyone seems to have shifted to a pretty standard model: the bikini. I would say less than 1 in 10 young women under the age of 30 wore a 1-piece and 7 of the ten wore a bikini. Some looked fantastic, others would have looked better in just about anything else. But by and large they went in the same direction.

There were three particularly disturbing groups wearing the more revealing outfits. The first is kids. It is apparent that there is no longer a minimum age in which a bikini is appropriate. For some of them I would have considered it less odd if they’d just worn male swim trunks they were so young. But in a way I actually find this the most understandable. Obviously they are not meant to compliment their completely non-sexual, prepubescent bodies, but they may have less control over their bladders as adults and I’d imagine that it’s a lot easier to get out of a pickle when all you have to do is pull bottoms down rather than wiggle out of a bathing suit altogether.

The second group are stick-figured girls. I honestly thought that the women carrying a bit extra weight looked better in the bikinis than did the girls without much breast and without much behind. Meanwhile, a tall, slender, and/or lanky figure can look great in a one-piece.

The third group is probably who you thought I was referring to prior to my delineation: chubby girls. I’m not talking about girls that aren’t a size 2 and I’m not even talking about young ladies that are overweight on the BMI scale. I’m talking about the women that have bona fide pot bellies or register in the “obese” category on the BMI. I really don’t like to just say “cover that up” but I’m not entirely sure what else to say.

Part of me feels a bit like a hypocrite for saying anything. My first day at the park I did not wear a shirt even though I’m not exactly thin and I have a 4-inch scar on my stomach that may be unsightly to some. I’m sure there are people there that would have preferred that I wear a shirt, but I hate the feel of wet shirt and was hoping to smooth out some unevenness of my tan.

The big thing, though, is that I didn’t particularly care what people thought of my body. To the extent that the aforementioned young ladies did not care about what other people thought, I can respect the utilitarianism of a two-piece. But by and large I did not get that impression. The fat girls in bikinis almost always had ornaments hanging from their navels and were more frequently tattooed than the average attendee in their demographic.

Even so, there is a notable double standard as far as this goes. As with most other venues of dress, men have it easy: we’re pretty much told what to wear. When it comes to bathing suits, we’re not particularly expected to wear a top. Even if a guy is overweight, I don’t hear nearly as much complaint as when a fat woman is wearing a bikini even though technically the latter has more covered up. About the worst a guy can do is inappropriately wear a speedo. That definitely would have gotten our attention, had we seen that.

So in my mind it’s sort of a stalemate. If I could honestly believe that the scantily clad heavy women weren’t trying to entice or show off, I’d probably cut more slack. But it’s a threshold that men have to go much further out of their way to fail to meet.

But to bring it back to the original point, to the extent that people are trying to look their best at such a gathering, it would seem to me that an evaluation of how the different swimsuits look would be in order. But it doesn’t seem that that’s happening. Either that or the self-evaluation women have about how they look in a bikini is exaggerated or the benefit they could have with a 1-piece, tanktoppy, or alternative style is unseen.