writing

Auto Renew

I hate auto renew just as much as the next guy, and in November word press automatically renews my blog, I keep waiting for the card they have on file to expire but it never does. That being said, I feel obligated to write something every now and again to justify the price I am paying for this blog. There were a number of other titles that were possibilities for this blog based upon what has transpired in my life over the last couple of weeks and the first possibility was Deuce. Last Monday I was multitasking by taking a shit and talking to my brother in law on the phone. My dump ended before the conversation and I chose not to flush. Not sure how my brother in law would have felt knowing I was pooping while talking to him, or if he would have even heard the toilet flush in the background, but not flushing was huge mistake. A number of times I told myself I needed to go up to the master bath and flush but never ended up getting around to it. That night I had dinner at the Chop House with co-workers and when I returned home and had comfortably positioned myself on the couch Shirley yelled down at me to come up and take care of what I had left in the toilet. She went on to tell me she knew it wasn’t the kids because she had asked them. How she knew I was going to blame the kids is likely due to the time I threw our Verizon hotspot at the ground and it hopped up and broke our TV causing the kids to wonder why the cartoons they were watching looked strange. Shirley immediately thought that it had something to do with the kids but I eventually fessed up. Upon my arrival into the master bath the first thing I noticed is that it smelled like the nursery at church, but a little worse, my turd had been marinating all day in the toilet bowl and the first flush did absolutely nothing to it, along with the second flush, the third flush was equally as ineffective as the first two flushes so I grabbed a hanger out of my closet and started poking at it like it was a possum playing dead, eventually dislodging it and flushing it down the toilet.

There is little hope of me having sex on a Monday night, but there was no way that was happening on this particular Monday night, the incident was so traumatic it even killed my insatiable sex drive. I’ve know my wife since 2006, there is little I can say or do that I am embarrassed by in front of her, but it’s somewhat refreshing to know there is still something out there that makes me embarrassed. On that note, her and Aiden share a birthday and it was this past Thursday. Not sure if other husbands go through this, but I imagine a lot of them do, my wife buys whatever she wants as evidenced by the 7 to 13 packages that are delivered to us on a weekly basis. Granted, one or two of the packages are dog food and kitty litter (that arrive monthly) but the other packages are things for her. So, I ended up getting something for me that was also something for her. She has had the same robe for quite some time, it’s about as sexy as the turd I left in the toilet so I ended up upgrading her robe and purchasing a perfume sampler from Alta. The robe isn’t sexy but it is nice and attractive unlike her current robe which screams I am an octogenarian. I knew when purchasing the robe for her that her fist inclination would be to return the robe because she already had a “perfectly” good robe and the one I purchased her was much too expensive (it was an Uggs robe and everything they sell is over priced). However, she didn’t immediately pull the trigger on the return and that made me glad I didn’t do what I did years ago when she was clinging on to some rather unflattering granny panties, just throw it away to get rid of it. She has worn the robe multiple times so I may be able to relocate the other robe to the trash.

The third possible title I toyed with was Party Foul. I invited some of Shirley’s friends and their husbands over for dinner to celebrate her birthday. I made lasagna and a couple of pies for the occasion but also made sure to return the empties in our garage that had been accumulating for at least a month. On my way I picked up Aiden and one of his buddies and Aiden said to his buddy “Russell, you’re about to find out how much my parents drink.” It was a lot of cans, some of which were Dr. Pepper and Coca Cola, but the vast majority were alcohol related beverages. When we arrived at the bottle return there was a line. My kids wanted to just leave the three carts full of cans and hit the road but that seemed like a way to have my worst nightmare come true, being black listed from Meijer. I’m not sure why Michigan still has the archaic bottle return policy, but I’d vote for Whitmer again if it met getting rid of the bottle deposit. While I had set up a party for Shirley for her birthday, I also had to take Aiden and Russel to Craig’s Cruiser’s for his birthday and on my way back home one of the I invitees to the party basically told me, instead of asking, that he was bringing a special guest, because had he asked I would have said no. He brought Tommy and Tommy doesn’t have an off switch, he was coming from the golf course where I knew he had already been over served. Sure enough, he spilled a glass of beer all over my kitchen floor, a thoughtful warning to all of us that he was about to go into full on annoying drunk person mode. I had a campfire going and people began to gravitate back into the house to get away from Tommy, he poured a wine glass to the brim, a move I have never seen, a move that tells everyone I’m here to get fucked up. Had I invited someone similar to Tommy to someone else’s party and showed up with him Shirley would have blow a gasket, but Chuck’s wife didn’t seemed to be bothered by Chuck’s party foul as much as she was bothered by Tommy himself. Eventually Tommy left and my wife, and all the other women at the party, realized it could have been way worse, they could have married Tommy. So in the end, Tommy showing up was actually sort of a good thing.

Feeling Lucky

A couple weeks ago we were tasked with dog sitting Shirley’s sister’s dog Lucky. Shirley’s sister and husband are vegetarians. We made BLT’s for dinner one night and gave Lucky some bacon, it was the closest thing to watching someone smoke crack for the first time you could experience without watching someone smoke crack for the first time. (their daughter accidentally had a corn dog at school once and she can’t stop talking about corn dogs) We probably ruined Lucky by giving him a taste of the forbidden. Unlike other people’s kids, I actually like most dogs, but Lucky is incredibly annoying, he’s some kind of doodle and I’m not sure who decided to combine every possible dog breed with poodles but it was a terrible idea. On top of barking at all hours of the night for no reason and waking me up, Lucky also has a perpetual red rocket, his scheeth isn’t long enough to contain his penis, it’s pretty gross, and likely a product of breeding another breed with a poodle. Along the lines of my wife’s side of the family, my mother in law is really good at sabotaging weekends or vacations with really dumb ideas. Earlier this summer she decided to rent her child hood home that is now a VRBO. It’s in Fremont which is enough to indicate it was a terrible idea, but on top of that, it’s also on a glorified swamp and there is very little to do there. Of course, everyone claims it was a great time, but I know better.

Labor Day weekend is usually the last real weekend to enjoy Green Lake but Shirley’s mom decided to book hotel rooms in Whitehall. Instead of making a real big deal about going up there (I wasn’t even consulted about it) I put up a minor fuss and ended up taking our boat up there to bring out to Lake Michigan. It ended up being an ok day but the Thursday night before Labor Day weekend my mother in law texted wondering what we were doing Friday night. ESPN has prognostications as games go on as to the percentage likelihood that a particular team will win the game as it is being played. I wish there was an app that did the same thing for sex. In the morning when I wake up the percentage around 3% and stays there until Shirley gets home from work and then likely dips to around 1%. Taking away my hope by having it go to 0 would actually be a good thing because hope is a dangerous thing. That being said, when I lost my shit about Shirley’s mom not only hijacking Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend, but also Friday night, the app would have dipped below zero. I keep trying to tell my wife that spending that much time with your family isn’t normal, but because she spends so much time with her family she doesn’t really have an unbiased third party to give her some perspective.

As far as sex goes, on Sunday morning I came back from Starbucks somewhat ready for business time but began talking to Shirley about how depressing it is that summer just flew by once again. I went into discussing when we should take the boat, boat lift, and walk out docks out of the water. All of the talk caused a mild case of ED, which had never happened to me before. It was quite emasculating but not as nearly as emasculating as someone who lets their wife drive. I see men in the passenger seat with their wife at the wheel and can’t help but think “that guy is a giant pussy” (My vegetarian brother in law lets his wife drive all the time). I don’t consider myself a misogynist unless the topic of discussion is the WNBA, but the old fashioned part of me believes that men should be driving their families around unless they are either drunk or dead.

Speaking of driving, Aiden is now in the process of obtaining his learner’s permit. He only has one more class to take and has done all of his driving. I’m confident that after about ten hours behind the wheel he will be a more competent driver than Shirley. I have noticed that there are now bumper stickers that can be placed on a vehicle warning other driver’s that you have a student driver at the wheel. I am tempted to get one of these after Aiden is done acquiring his driving hours so I can drive like an idiot and not have people get mad at me. It’s similar to when you see someone with a handicap license plate and they drive as if they have no business being on the road, you see the handicap emblem on their license plate and instead of anger you question the decision of the Secretary of State to allow handicap people to operate a motor vehicle, their fucking handicap, shouldn’t that preclude them from driving a car? (I do realize there are a portion of fat fucks who aren’t really handicap but get handicap plates to they park their fat asses closer to the entrance of McDonalds, and they shouldn’t be driving either, these are the same people who use a mart cart to grocery shopping)

Get to the Point

In late April or early May my kids began to hound me about going to Cedar Point. I have fond memories of Cedar Point and after having gone there again, have no idea why. After over a month of harassment I finally caved and committed to a date to go and it morphed into an overnight trip where they each took a friend. This worked out because Shirley and I were able to justify our own room, now that my kids are older it’s super weird sleeping in the same room with everyone, which led to some sexy time before our second day in the park. Our plan was to leave around 1 on Tuesday and spend an evening in the park as well as the following day. Prior to leaving I stopped by the river to ski. I stated we would be leaving around 1 because I knew I would want to ski before we left. Aiden texted me around 11:30 informing me he was ready to go. I did not respond. Shirley texted me while I was skiing and I texted her when I was done that I would be home in 5 minutes. Initially, my gut told me to put my suit back on so that they would think I had been working. I didn’t and as I drove down the road right by our house I decided to pull over and put it on because I had to do a Zoom court hearing from the car on the way to Cedar Point. When I arrived home Shirley asked why I put my suit back on since I had just been at the river. I forgot that she can track where I am through the find my friends app, fortunately she rarely does this because she is typically too busy to keep tabs on me, and for the most part she doesn’t really care what I am up to.

The ride to cedar point was fairly uneventful and I was grateful that the Zoom sentencing I had kept me from noticing how Shirley was driving. I typically don’t ride with her so it is terrifying when I do. After my zoom was done I took over and we made it unscathed. That evening Shirley and I rode the gatekeeper, Ragnorok (sp?), and Millennium Force. I felt like I was going to have a stroke on all of them. Shirley and I ate in the park and also had a couple beers, each round for the two of us was roughly $40, seems like they would make a larger profit by lowering the price and having people buy more, with the added benefit of having more drunk people riding roller coasters, what could go wrong? However, the kids were too enveloped in riding as many coasters as possible so they did not eat. On the way out I was reminded that one of the kids (obviously not mine) was Vegan and that we needed to go to Burger King for an impossible burger. I should have made the kid eat some gravel in the parking lot so that we didn’t have to make multiple stops. My kids were insisting on Raising Canes because they think it’s amazing even though it’s just as over rated in my book, as Chick-Fil-A. We managed to talk all the kids into Burger King and then headed back to the hotel. Vegans are like no one else in America, everyone I know devotes most of their consciousness to thinking about food. But when the food you eat sucks, you don’t look forward to it, and you don’t think about it all that often. Probably similar with most women as to why they don’t seem to really be all that in to sex. My wife’s family typically will discuss lunch plans about 3 minutes after breakfast is concluded and after lunch they are typically on to dinner ideas before I can even start my afternoon nap.

Day 2 we were going to go out for pancakes but pancakes apparently aren’t vegan friendly either. Shirley wanted to create this magical memory of going out for pancakes before we went into the park and she also thought that this was going to be some magical family trip. I told her if she had planned on hanging out with the kids for more than five minutes on this trip she shouldn’t have allowed them to invite friends. We opted for McDonalds and the Vegan kid had a hash brown and may have licked some dust off the floor for additional sustenance. All of the kids were given fast passes and they were off. Shirley and I headed to the back of the park to ride steel vengeance only to discover it was temporarily out of commission. We decided to just wait for it to start back up and after an hour and a half our decision paid off. We jumped back in line to ride it again and after that we noticed that the skies looked ominous. The kids were not answering their phones, turns out their phones were in lockers as they waited to ride top thrill dragster 2. Shirley ended up going into the top thrill line to retrieve them just before the flood gates opened so we left the park to get lunch. Jersey Mikes was thought to be a suitable vegan option since they have a sub that is called a vegan sub but it was a no go. So, realizing there was a chipotle across the street after Shirley and I had put our orders in, Shirley did a mobile order for the vegan kid. Our kids ended up getting Raising Kanes right before we headed back to the park. The kids lucked out and rode Top Thrill 2 twice along with a few other rides. Shirley was on the fence about TT2 but I talked her into it and we went to get in line only to discover that the ride, and all other rides, were closed due to weather. Apparently, if there is a lightning strike within five miles they shut everything down and keep it closed for a half hour and if there is another strike the clock starts all over.

As we were leaving the park there was a set up similar to the 3 point contest in the all star game. It was $12 to try and get in the record books (high score according to the guy was 18 out of a possible 20). I envisioned myself getting at least 19 but didn’t account for the jankity rim, shitty balls, and pressure of the 6 spectators watching me (my wife, two kids, their friends, and the guy running the game). I hit a couple corner 3’s to start only to score 5 points. A crew of guys rolled up after I got done with my first round and they easily could have had some type of affiliation with OPEC, one of them, wearing an Aaron Donald jersey, managed to hit the back board on corner 3’s not once, but twice, I wanted to say to the guy, it’s not as easy as I make it look, but I kept my mouth shut and was going to let my next round speak for itself, but my next round was equally as abysmal as my first, and I notched another 5 points. I was tempted to go for round 3, but the Hollander in me didn’t want to blow another $12 so instead, I used that and more to hit the Dairy Queen outside of the park on our way back to Michigan.

Saturday Night Special

Brendon and George put their house up for sale early this winter. They live in our neighborhood, and although we are not particularly close with them, or any of our other neighbors, we were tasked with hosting their going away party once their house sold after months of sitting on the market. Shirley volunteered for the job and informed me while we were in Puerto Rico on spring break while I had my guard down. I didn’t put up a fight, even though I should have, and the party was on.

Brendon and George were married sometime ago and live adjacent to a lesbian couple. Brendon use to water his flowers in the nude. This was problematic for a number of reasons and led to a confrontation between him and one of our elderly neighbors named Jack who ended up calling Brendon a cock sucker. I’m still trying to figure out why this upset Brendon and George so much. Regardless, Jack was not on the invite list and the attendees were comprised of the lesbian couple, Carrie, who broke up with her long time boyfriend Bill and was forced to move out of our neighborhood as a result, along with Maggie and her daughter. To say I was dreading the party was an understatement, small talk, sign me up for that! People I don’t know at my house, sign me up for that! Max was excited, but mainly because he loves Maggie, who to her credit is attractive. How do I know our dog Max likes Maggie, because the red rocket comes out when Maggie is around, Max has a hump pillow and it doesn’t come out when he’s humping his pillow, but it does when Maggie appears.

To start the night I grabbed a high octane beer and then volunteered to bring Parker to his friend’s house so I could minimize my time at the party. After dropping Parker off I stopped at a party store and grabbed a tall boy of Jack Daniel’s punch and drove around for a while so I could consume it prior to returning to the party. Aiden was still at home, a casualty of not being as popular as Parker. He primarily stayed in his room to masturbate, but did come down for some food. When Aiden isn’t jerking off or staring at his phone, he has been working out at the Y in Caledonia. Even though he eats ice cream every night, tons of candy, and lots of chips, he doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him and is getting pretty toned. When he came down he attracted Brednon’s attention. Brendon began flirting with him which was quite off putting. (Shirley noticed it as well, it wasn’t my imagination) Brendon has a number of boyfriends and his older by 15 years husband George acknowledged at the party that he has to accept Brendon bringing another man into their relationship. As I was grabbing some food I heard George discussing the Jack incident with someone but had not had enough to drink at that point to come to Jack’s defense. Based on what George had revealed and the way that Brendon was eyeballing my son, I think some of Jack’s distrust in Brendon and George was warranted.

Jen and Peg are the lesbians who live adjacent to George and Brendon (I’m not making this up) or should I say use to live next to them. George and Brendon sold their house to a poly family, I had no idea what that meant, but now I do. It’s even more fucked up than being married to a dude and bringing another dude into the relationship. The reason I think it took Brendon and George so long to sell their house is that they were looking for a buyer that would really tell the neighborhood “FUCK YOU” and they found one. While I overheard a lot of stuff at the party, the fact that Jen and Pegg didn’t talk to Brendon and George for the first four years they lived next door was probably the most remarkable. I wanted to ask them, “how were you able to do that? That’s what I want to do, never talk to anyone I live near”. I have a general look of fuck off most of the time, but the fact that my wife thinks she is Miss Congeniality counters all the work I put in at being an asshole. But when you have two people who are together and they both give the fuck off vibe, it is how you don’t talk to your neighbors for 4 years. (wearing a lot of flannel and denim also must help). I’m still not sure which one is Jen and which is Peg, but one of them is so meticulous that they bought a separate mower to mow the property line because Brendon and George don’t give a shit about their lawn and don’t have it treated for weeds. They feared that if they used their zero turn on the property line it would infect their lawn. (Not sure if they did anything to prevent the spread of AIDS across the property line)

As the party was going on I put my drinking into high gear. This happens less frequently now that I am old, but I was on a mission. Brendon and George invited a couple to the party that we had never met and so I steered clear of them and talked to Jen/Peg quite a bit. I also talked to Carrie a decent amount but stayed away from Maggie for the most part so my red rocket wouldn’t come out. Eventually Brendon and George left along with the couple they had invited and Maggie had called it a night long before that, deeply saddening Max. I was in full black out mode at this point of the night and remember just bits and pieces, one of the things I remember was going upstairs. Veteran move by Shirley to stay downstairs and hope I would pass out. Unfortunately, I didn’t and according to her, I came down and demanded that she come upstairs so we could have sex. In my compromised state I was expecting that she would comply with such a reasonable request and make our guests leave, what wife wouldn’t want to have sex with their over served husband? I think there is something in the old testament about wives having to do that no matter how many guests you have to kick out of your house. The next day I felt what I always feel when Steve appears, anxiety and regret. Steve is my alter ego, when I begin dancing, get ready for Steve. The crazy thing about Steve is he is a fun loving guy who likes everyone. However, once Steve crosses a certain line everyone roots for Steve to go unconscious, which frequently happens. Should there be an apology to Carrie, Peg, and Jen? Probably, but Dutch people, especially this Dutch person, like to bury things deep, real deep, and not discuss them. By apologizing I would be acknowledging that there was something wrong. The good news is that Peg and Jen seemed to be fine with no apology, because since that Saturday they act like it’s business as usual, a cursory wave and that’s about it. I love my neighborhood.

We’re in the Club

When I was growing up I was an avid NBA fan. I remembering watching the All Star game and also recording a tribute that CBS did to the 1986 finals between the Celtics and Lakers even though I hated both of those teams, that’s how much I enjoyed the NBA. My parents realized this and we ended up going to a game when the Pistons played the Atlanta Hawks. I thought it was super cool even though we sat at the very top of the Palace in Auburn Hills. I can’t imagine those tickets were much more than $20 a piece, stretching my parent’s monthly entertainment budget to its max. No money was spent on frivolous things at the game such as food or a beverage, and I wasn’t getting any merchandise in the fan shop. Saturday night was an opportunity to allow my kids to get the full NBA experience, we had gone last year to watch the Pistons play the Warriors, but it was a last minute deal. This trip had been discussed at least two days prior to it actually happening. When it was determined that the trip was a go, sometime on Friday, my kids told Shirley they didn’t want her to come along. Did I want her to come along? I was indifferent, I knew that her presence would result in quite a few questions, mostly related to her complete lack of knowledge about basketball, but after fifteen plus years of marriage, I’m accustom to dumb questions from her about sports.

Shirley tried to act like this didn’t bother her, and it is possible it didn’t, my kids managed to land my asshole gene, and it is exacerbated by the fact that one of them is a teenager and the other one is close to being one. She somewhat understood that it really wasn’t about her, and even if she was a cool mom (that doesn’t really exist, there is such a thing as a cool wife, that’s the type fo wife that likes to bang at least twice a month, but that doesn’t have any thing to do with being a cool mom), the kids probably would still prefer that she sit this trip out. There is a dynamic between sons and moms that does not exist between sons and dads. Earlier this winter Parker had done something on Snap chat that garnered the attention of the principle of his school when other parents saw it. He posted a photo of a girl with Down Syndrome and it appeared that he was jerking off to the photo. He wasn’t, that wasn’t what he was going for, but just the fact that he was posting the photo was enough to cause a stir. We determined his punishment was to have his phone taken away for a week. Well, not his phone, but his access to social media and the internet, he could still have his phone to listen to music on the bus, after all he didn’t kill someone, didn’t need to throw him in the kid’s equivalent of the Gulag by taking his phone physically away from him. The reason I am not involved in taking away access to social media and the internet is because I don’t know how to set their time limits or even how most of social media even works. Turns out Parker had a 180 day snap streak going, he was the Lou Gehrig of Snap and wanted to keep his streak alive but it was now in jeopardy due to the draconian nature of his punishment. Shirley ended up relenting and allowed him to continue to post on snap ensuring that he will be a first ballot hall of fame entrant when he is eligible to enter the Social Media Holy of Holies.

So, there you have it, that is insight into why my kids walk all over my wife. I don’t give a shit about much, but they aren’t pulling that kind of stuff on me because they know I will go scorched earth on them if they try. Which leads me to this, and my kids tire of this, but it has to be brought up now more than ever. When I was a kid if I treated my mom like they treat Shirley, my mom would have slapped me, she did slap me for much less, and my did would have beaten the shit out of me, which he did do for much less. On top of all that, well you know my childhood pistons experience, well we didn’t sit at the top row of LCA Saturday night. We were at half court 21 rows up and had access to the club that allowed for all you can eat food and drink. Looking back, I should have bought a club seat for myself and put them at the top of the arena. I purchased the actual tickets off of a ticket app the morning of the game and was quite satisfied with the price considering the prime location and the all you can eat food option. The Pistons game attracts all shapes and sizes, but mainly the overweight/obese size, if you are in to BBW’s, especially the black kind, LCA is the place to be. Regardless, there are quite a few people who attend the games who are energetic Pistons fans and LCA is a place to be seen and to see the people who are looking to be seen. The attire black men and women can pull off is truly remarkable. However, there was one troubling fashion trend taking place at LCA, and probably across every other NBA venue, white men wearing basketball jersey’s, one white guy had was wearing his Cade jersey bareback, the only ting that could have made him more awkwardly white is if he had tried to dance.

The game itself featured SGA at his best, he is the top candidate for MVP and was pretty much unstoppable. On top of it the refs routinely allowed him to take an extra step after stopping and to push off on just about every shot he took. Even more infuriating was the fact that the Thunder were roughing up the Pistons on the perimeter the entire game while the Pistons were called for a number of ticky tack fouls. By the third quarter, after the dipshit refs called for a replay to determine if there was a hostile act by Beef Stew (who in their defense is just a second away from fighting even his own mom if it would help the Pistons win), when what actually happened was that the thunder player tripped over his own guy and landed awkwardly. After the replay revealed there was no hostile act, the refs went to give the Thunder player who was fouled originally on a loose ball foul, two shots. It was loose ball foul, it should have been side out so Cade told the refs they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing, which they didn’t, and was T’d up not once, but twice. I’m confident the ref who did this was just trying to overshadow the crews token lesbian ref and take some heat off of her for the terrible calls she had made and was about to make. For some reason the NBA thinks that women should ref men’s basketball, isn’t that what the WNBA is for? well, that and feeding the insatiable thirst for terrible basketball that is almost unwatchable. Funny thing, the WNBA lost 40 million dollars last year and it is coming back for another season. How have we been so into women’s empowerment that no one is willing to state how ridiculous this is? I think women are doing pretty good and don’t need a sports league that loses money to keep trending forward.

Back to my kids and how good they have it. Me telling them how good they have it and how shitty my childhood was isn’t really getting the message across, causing them to be thankful for what they have. My kids go to camp every summer, it’s an awesome experience that they love. Instead of sending them away to an enjoyable camp, wouldn’t it be great if you could send your kids to spend a week living your childhood? I’d pay four times what the price of what fun camp costs, and how awesome would it be if they thought they were going to fun camp but instead wound up at shitty camp that emulated your childhood?

  • For those of you worried about Shirley, she had an amazing night at home by herself and was up when we rolled in at 12:30, doing a puzzle or crafting, I wasn’t sure which one because I was too exhausted to tell, but whichever it was it had her so preoccupied she hadn’t put clean sheets on the bed in response to me stripping it and throwing the sheets in the wash earlier that day. Maybe my kids do have some valid reasons for the way they treat their mother.

Road Trip

Back when the Pistons were tailing off from their Championship in 2004 the former President of the Orlando Magic use to play pick up basketball at MVP. He handed out a bunch of tickets for us to a Pistons playoff game against the Magic. The crew that played at MVP at the time was fairly new to me but I somehow managed to get the invite and it probably had something to do with me arranging for a party bus (it actually had a stripper pole but the downside is the side door on the bus didn’t really work and was probably a major safety hazard) to take us to the Palace of Auburn Hills. Right out of the gate our bus driver rear ended another vehicle on the way to the liquor store to get roadies for the 2 and a half hour ride. No sooner than the driver could get out of his seat did the vehicle in front of us speed off. Either the guy was drunk, didn’t have a license, or both. We headed over to the Palace fully stocked with booze and managed to drink most of it in route to the Palace. A majority of us were loaded as we entered the Palace and to everyone’s surprise a former NFL lineman who was with us was the first one to end up puking, unfortunately it was after he entered the venue. Our ticket provider gave us four good seats near the Orlando bench and the rest were upper level seats, they weren’t terrible but they weren’t awesome. The plan was to rotate everyone out of those seats but due to my over consumption of alcohol I didn’t exactly stick with the plan and had to be escorted out of my seat by one of the other people in our group. On the ride home one of the guys wanted to stop for more beer but the bus driver was resolute and wouldn’t cave to his request.

While I look back on that trip with a degree of fondness, the actual experience was probably akin to fighting in a war, it wasn’t all bad, but most of it was. (one of the 7 readers of this blog was on the trip with me and he is still working with his therapist through the experience) Fast forward to late summer of this year, there is a guy in our golf league who arranges various trips and a trip he had arranged was to the Lion’s Bills game that was this past Sunday. It was the classic case of something that sounds really good at the time but when the time rolls around to actually participate in the event there aren’t many things you would less rather do. I actually tried to get out of the trip by texting the organizer that it was my father in law’s birthday party on Sunday and I should probably bow out if he could find someone to take my ticket. I told Shirley that I was trying to replace myself on the trip (after just having told he I was going on the trip) and she said it sounded like fun and that I should go. I knew bette but let her talk me into thinking it was still a good idea.

We met at the Gravity Park and Ride at noon and I still had questioned my decision not to drive myself, I wanted to save on parking, but in hindsight would have paid at least $500 for parking if it got me out of the horrors of that bus trip. The crew was definitely a mixed bag and not to be a snob, but I am going to sound like one, mostly blue collar guys who probably get fucked up every weekend and some weekdays and that’s what they liver for. There was discussion about a group of them meeting for drinks at Gravity before the bus so I had an inkling already what to mentally prepare for, but nothing could really prepare me for what I was going to experience that day. First of all, the most annoying person in my golf league, possibly most annoying person I have ever encountered, was going to be on the trip. When we boarded the bus he immediately hooked his phone up to the bluetooth on the bus and began playing his music as loud as it would go. He skipped through songs like a flat stone across a lake, with his fist periodically pumping in the air like we were at a rave. Of course he had his hat on backwards, he was the prototypical hat on backwards guy, 99% of hat on backwards guys are intolerable. He also enjoyed randomly doing knuckles for no reason, I don’t like doing knuckles when there is a reason, why the fuck do you keep sticking your fist out, leave me alone.

As we were getting close to Lowell the captain of our trip instructed the driver that we were to stop at every rest stop on the way to Ford Field. Not because we need a bathroom break, there was a bathroom on the bus, but because we needed to get out and smoke periodically. I didn’t realize people still smoked, again I sound like a snob here, but I don’t hang out with people who smoke, it’s a disgusting habit, ok, one of my good friends smokes, and when we were golfing this past spring we were riding together and someone hit a ball under our cart while we were sitting in it and he was holding his pack of smokes, it caused his smokes to go flying everywhere when he was startled by the oncoming golf ball. It was pretty funny, but he’s one of the few people I’d be willing to overlook the smoking thing and still hang out with. Midway between the first and second rest stop two guys snorted some cocaine. Witnessing that may be an every day occurrence for some people, but it caught me off guard and I’m a criminal defense attorney. One of the guys who was doing it has a the torso of someone who is 6’6 and midget arms and legs and he’s missing part of his ear. Why is he so fucked up? Because his mother did drugs while he was in utero, and I guess he’s been addicted ever since. The other guy was the only black guy on the trip and he was wearing a fuzzy Honolulu blue lion’s hat that looked like a top hat but it was fuzzy, it looked awesome on him, but would have looked ridiculous on any of the rest of us.

There was a guy sitting across from me (it was limo style seating) who was wearing big headphones and reminded me of Warren from There’s Something about Mary. He was eating marijuana gummies like they were skittles. He also had a number of the mannerisms Warren possessed and was likely on the spectrum. No one seemed to know the guy so I have no idea how he wound up on the trip. As we were nearing Ford Field the super fucking annoying guy from my golf league, we can call him knuckles, started talking about a tailgate he was invited to at Greyson. Greyson is a high end golf apparel store where you pay $300 for the same golf pants you can get at Costco for $30. He invited the guy next to me who hates him but is more tolerable of annoying people than I am, and he came up with some BS excuse why he couldn’t go with him to the tailgate. Once in the stadium we walked around a bit and our party continued to drink like it was the last day of their lives, or just another day for them I guess, and I continued not to drink. I didn’t see paying $15 for Miller Lite, it’s not good, and getting a buzz on would just exacerbate my problematic circumstances. Once we sat down I didn’t leave my seat, it was a fun game to watch even though the Lions lost and had three more key players go down with major injuries. However, Josh Allen in person is amazing. I don’t think you can fully appreciate the throws he makes unless you are in person.

With the Lions losing, I thought it would be a fairly benign ride home. I figured the loss would take the wind out of everyone’s sails and we could have some peace and quiet on our way back to GR. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Knuckles quickly realized no one else was going to be the Dj so he fired up the tunes, some dip shit took 20 extra minutes to get back to the bus, and a few of the high ons who were thinking ahead chowed down on their soggy Jimmy John’s sandwiches that most of us ate on our way there. Knuckles took it upon himself to try and talk to me even though I had my air pods in, I wanted to ask him “what part of this isn’t telling you to fuck off?” but instead I kept my answers to his stupid questions really short, I got a parting fist bump from him, which I think was an admission of defeat, and I never spoke to him again. Two good friends of mine were on the trip, one of them, thinks of me as a good friend, Kevin Clark, my only friend who smokes, and another guy by the name of Geoff, I am not sure where I stand on his friend list, but we do a lot of stuff together, he may be just tolerating me in the hopes that I quit my golf league (or get kicked out of it again) and he can take my place and become a permanent member of the league instead of just a sub. Why do I mention them? Because they are both laid back and super chill. That’s what it takes to go on a bus trip like I just described. On top of it, Geoff, and Kevin to a degree are incredibly positive. Geoff is the type of guy who will compliment your shot in golf even if it lands in the middle of the pond, my response to a similar shot would be “that was terrible”.

Do I want to be like Geoff and Kevin? Maybe. Am I 50 years old and is there any hope for me changing? Probably not. Two things occurred recently that make me realize I am probably an asshole for life. The first was at a Christmas party where the guy who organized the bus trip and is in my golf league was telling Shirley I’m an asshole, but I’m their asshole (meaning the guys in the league I am friends with) I took this as a good thing, but I’m starting to wonder. The second thing happened while meeting with a client this week. The client asked me how frank he could be with me, I told him not to hold back. He went on to say that he had been researching me and discovered that I am an asshole. So, when you Google my name I guess “he’s an asshole” is the first thing that comes up. I may want to see about that reputation service you can hire to fix negative things about you on the internet. That being said, I have lived here long enough, met enough people, and know that West Michigan is a tight enough knit community, that I am probably always going to be known as the asshole to some degree, my only hope would be either entering the witness protection program and starting fresh or hitting my head and having amnesia like Harrison Ford in that one movie, and actually becoming a nice person. I don’t really have a reason to enter the witness protection plan, but at my advanced age you never know when I may take a tumble and hit my head so there is hope.