Just to avoid any confusion - yes, that's me in both images

It’s that time of year – well, it’s been that time of year for me since about always – where most folks’ fear of sweating through full-blown pants overcomes their fear of revealing some kneeskin.  Yep, it’s almost shorts season.  And for the truly discriminating ‘Merican male, there are really only two choices in short pants: mesh or plaid.  (Thankfully, the Nadalian capri pants never really caught on – though the Nantucket Reds I bought just in case can easily be converted to plaid with a stencil and some scissors.)

For the last several decades at least, it’s been commonly accepted that plaid shorts and mesh shorts exist on the opposite ends of the shorts’ spectrum.  Casual expression of post-ironic personal style vs. extreme ease of use/elastic?  Looking like your name is probably Douche Magoo vs. causing nervous parents to distribute fliers when you accidentally walk by a playground at recess?  Should choosing comfortable casual attire be such a major fork in the road of life?  Not necessarily, if you possess the intestinal fortitude and balance to survive in completely different environments.

One foot in each world

Sure, I can walk the line – but it’s likely that few people have the ample free time and emotional reserve required to commit to both types of shorts.  So to help those who will have to choose a path, I offer the following comparison to help the cause.

Fashion Face-Off: Mesh Shorts vs. Plaid Shorts

Comfort

Mesh:  Essentially thicker, better ventilated boxer shorts meant for external wear; despite being speciously marketed as athletic apparel, vigorous activity not recommended without additional supporting garments

Plaid:  Only as comfortable as the fabric and fit combination allows; there is much more variance in these categories with plaid shorts than the omnicomfort afforded by mesh shorts

Advantage:  Mesh

Convenience

Mesh:  Maintain integrity and identity with only infrequent washing, no buttons or zippers to contend with, go well with almost any tee shirt, dark colors can absorb almost any type of spill or stain

Plaid:  Presence of multiple colors also allows for great versatility in tee shirt pairing, patterns can help hide resultant stainage from any errant hot sauce or burrito innards, presence of zippers, buttons and drawstrings (sometimes all in the same pair of shorts) can make for more complicated donning/doffing

Advantage:  Mesh

What You Think Your Shorts Say About You

Mesh:  ”I may, or may not, be headed to play some hoops – just need to run a couple of quick errands first, might as well be comfortable”

Plaid:  ”These shorts reflect my fondness for outdoor leisure activities, hanging with my bros and drinking a couple of brews…the fact that they look awesome with popped collars and sunglasses is pure bonus”

Advantage:  Plaid

Women's categories would likely be scored differently

What Your Shorts Actually Say About You

Mesh:  ”I may, or may not, have recently urinated on myself a little – but you’ll never know”

Plaid:  ”I am probably a f*ckhead, talk to me to confirm”

Advantage:  Plaid

Drawbacks

Mesh:  Have the potential to remove a lot of the mystery around what an outline of your genitalia looks like; people tend to jump to the conclusion you don’t have a lot going on when they see you sporting mesh shorts in public

Plaid:  In certain seated situations, rigid fabrics can cause the “pants tent” illusion (a la Curb Your Enthusiasm)

Advantage:  Plaid

Cost

Mesh:  Like $7

Plaid:  Not as much as you’d think, I got like ten sweet pairs at Old Navy for i think a total of $16 – but that might have been due to the standard “you get 30% off since it’s Monday, and another 43% off if you’ve ever used the internet, and…” discounting policy offered by ON.

Advantage:  Mesh

Suggested Occupation

Mesh:  Serial killer, laid-off video store employee, unsuccessful blogger

Plaid:  Cell phone kiosk employee at the mall, guy who works at the pro shop during the summers just for a little spending money and discount greens fees

 

Maybe not...

Conclusion:  Plaid wins by a nose.  Mesh shorts are strong on value, comfort and convenience – the pillars of the unemployed community – but those benefits are offset by an overwhelming air of failure – they are kind of the sweatpants of summer.  Plaid shorts, on the other hand, will immediately get you off on the wrong foot with strangers, but mostly because they evoke memories of unlikable, similarly-attired people from their past – but they are less frowned-upon in upscale locations such as Red Lobster.  For those that can straddle the two worlds, I suggest trying to limit the mesh experience to your house or trips to a drive-through.  For everywhere else, let it rain plaid.  If you have some white bucks, all the better.

Later,

Chilly17

It was like this, but different

(Editor’s Note: Man, I am apparently quite a chatty f*ck…this should’ve been a quickie, and yet I have once again turned it into something Tolkienesque…it has taken me some time to get in the right frame of mind to finish the saga, but I think I finally stumbled upon the right combination: >1 bottle of Apothic Red in my system, Hall & Oates all up in my Grooveshark queueueueueuue and the 49ers having selected someone I’ve never heard of in the first round, despite the (literally) hundreds of hours I’ve spent reading about the NFL draft.)

Alcohol affects everyone differently: some people get mad, some sad, some strangely racist.  My problem with alcohol has long been that it lifts the non-rose-colored veil from my eyes and allows me to realize what an incredible person I am.  Sure, I might become an angry drunk one out of eight hundred times, but mostly I like to get drunk and just soak in my own ambience.  This was true back in 1993 as well.  I was inebriated during the majority of this portion of the story, but I stand by its accuracy.  (Unless someone gives me a really hard time, then I’ll fold like a Brooks Brothers non-iron handkerchief.)

I still remember her name: Jill Banezkkdiaodhfadiuhadhgekeiwzcy.  I believe she went to Oswego State or some other SUNY institute of higher learning.  She was part of a contingent of lovely (or semi-lovely) ladies that ended up at the same half-empty bar as me and Pos on a fateful Monday night.  (Foreshadowing)  And (as I remember it), she was smoking hot – blond, tan and surprisingly nice for someone with the aforementioned qualities…quite an attractive combination.  We talked for a bit – maybe she was a little on the boring side, but let Chilly do some of his patented magic and who knows- then, wham, the whole group of them bailed.  They were going to Miami or Key West the next day and wanted to get an early start.  I blamed Pos, who clearly couldn’t entertain the other seven girls enough for me to get some quality time with Jill.  Just for the record: she was the hottest one, and if Pos ever claims otherwise, it’s just sour grapes for this story finally hitting the historical record.  The Fort wasn’t actually hopping that much, so we called it a night shortly after the ladies from Oswego left.

The next day we just decided to sleep in, chill with some Mcdonald’s (I have no recollection whatsoever of where we stayed in Ft. Lauderdale – nothing as visually striking as the Copa) and kind of ease into the day.  Rested and feeling like native warriors, we returned to the previous night’s sports bar, where we each came oh-so-close to have having at least a fivesome.  At this point I was enjoying life – we were out of the stifling Academy atmosphere, I was sporting some attire that in hindsight probably looked like I was joking, and we were sipping a couple of dollar beers, flush with at least $100 cash money between us left.

And then, like an apparition, she appeared.  Jill Banekskaldfjaduhfaduhaduhadksky – and friends – marched right up to us (we were sitting outside like cool-assed motherf*ckers.)  Playing it super-cool, I was like “I thought ya’ll was leaving?” and she was all “we decided to stay – there was something we liked about this place.”  And internally, I processed that as “they f*cking love really clean streets as much as I do, these girls are all right.”

As I further pondered the mysteries of street cleanliness, sh*t got really, really real.  She leaned in and said “I’ll buy you any shot and any beer you want.”  Wait just a f*cking second!  Hot chick, loves clean streets and she’s buying drinks?  If there were Little White Chapels all over the place in Fort Lauderdale, I would have tried to convince her to head to one, posthaste.   I could not believe my good fortune – the best-looking girl in the place (granted, the pickings were fairly slim on a Tuesday night but whatever) was going to pay me to drink with her.  Finally, the good karma from having a hot almost-girlfriend up in Maryland had wafted down to South Florida.  I really wish that Youtube existed back in those days, because my intimations to Pos about what was happening could potentially have forever-altered the scales for arrogance, smugness and talking-sh*t-to-your-buddy-who-wasn’t-with-the-hottest-chick-in-the-group.

Having made sure to give Pos a major amount of sh*t for my good fortune and his (relative) lack of same, I sauntered to the bar, my non-ironic plaid shorts shimmering in the faint light of dusk and Jill B. in-hand.  A romantic at heart, we exchanged the following playful banter on the way to order the drinks THAT, BY THE WAY, SHE WAS PAYING FOR (which was a good thing since bars rarely accepted Texaco cards back in 1993).

Me (smugly): “How does tequila sound?  With an Icehouse chaser?”

She (innocently): “Oh, I can’t do tequila.  That is the worst thing ever.  Anything but tequila.”

Me (idioticly): “No, that’s not true – there are a bunch of things stronger than tequila.  Just because you had one bad experience -”

She (coyly): “Tequila’s just not a good call for me right now.  I’m down with anything else.”

Me (in-hindsight-I-can’t-believe-itly): “Have you ever had a 252?  Some places call it a Gorilla Fart?*”

She (I-can’t-wait-to-do-bad-things-on-spring-breakly): “Sounds delicious.”

Me (scientifically): “Okay, but just so you know, it’s made of Wild Turkey 101 and Bacardi 151, it’s really strong.”

She (I-should’ve-picked-up-on-how-bad-of-an-idea-this-wasly): “As long as it’s not tequila.”

So, we did a 252 shot.  And started to enjoy our very-chilled Icehouses.  I probably should’ve heard some ominous internal music playing when one of her friends came up to me and said “Wow, Jill must really like you, she doesn’t usually drink.”  (Note: for some people this would have been foreshadowing, for Chilly it was f*ckimawesomeshadowing.)  We proceeded to head over to Pos and her other friends – they seemed to be getting along similar to a few old buffalos and a lioness begrudgingly sharing a field – where I went into full-on f*ckhead mode, because I had f*cking won.  The hot chick convinced her friends to stay in lame Fort Lauderdale – maybe I do look like Kurt Russel? – and I’m f*cking ruling this sh*tty bar.

Things only got better: “you want to go for a walk on the beach?”  Looking back (the theme of this post), this was the precise moment in my life where I started the movement from a youthful lack-of-self-awareness-I-have-all-the-answers-f*ck-you perspective to a more adult worldview.  I did, indeed, want to go for a walk on the beach.  And she even did the move from movies where she takes her shoes off – perhaps to enjoy the beach (although, sand sucks) or maybe to subtly suggest that there was more disrobing where that innocent first step came from.  There was a brilliant full moon – hell, I think Venus was maybe in view back then, too – it was a perfect night for a closer such as myself.

Except she needed to sit down for a second.  On a rock.  And then commenced projectile vomiting.  I held her hair.  The vomiting continued.  I felt like I was at a blackjack table where Sue Ng had just stepped in as dealer – no way to stem the tide.  I started to feel weird just sitting on a rock while she was barfing and I was making sure her hair was barf-free.  This was quickly descending into debacle territory.  I decided to carry her back to her room – first opting for that “Ryan carrying Marissa out of the car wreck on The OC” style while dealing with innumerable insults and slurs hurled from folks that suspected I was on the forefront of the Rohypnol craze.  I eventually just had to sling her over my shoulder for the last couple of blocks.

Innovation: having head inside the toilet bowl eliminates need for a hair holder

We ultimately made it to her room, where I monitored her vital signs for a few hours to make sure I didn’t have a death on my hands before even starting military service.  She survived.  Meanwhile, Pos was in the other room getting some hand love from one of her friends.  One of the earliest examples of FML.

Silver lining: spring of 1993 was the Storm of the Century, a major blizzard.  We realized it was coming and cut our trip short (also, we were out of money, at one point frustratingly trying to get $19 out of an ATM that only dispensed $20s.  (Really, back in the day ATMs dispensed $5s – hell, in Arkansas today there are some ATMs that dispense $1s – and you had the curse of looking for the Plus Network – not every ATM would do.))  We made it back to Maryland barely ahead of the storm.  The storm effectively extended spring break another week – during which I got to hang out with my not-girlfriend and accomplish some of the goals that spring break would not allow me.  All was not lost.

* One crazy thing about 252s/Gorilla Farts: they were popular at the Academy at that time because there was a former State Trooper who was almost killed by a drunk driver – he became a motivational speaker because he survived – who would buy anyone who talked to him (and he was at the bars constantly) a 252/GF.  Even though alcohol almost killed him – there was some meaning behind it, if you asked him to discuss it, but I was generally really f*cked up by that point and never fully understood why he did that.  True story. 

Later,

Chilly17

The place wasn't quite as popular in 1993, divide the number of people at the pool by 37 and you'll get a better idea of the situation we were dealing with

I believe I left off at the point where we had reached Daytona and made the adult contemporary decision to stay at the illustrious Copacabana in search of potential Lolas-of-the-moment.  The above image is apparently the Copa in its heyday, which was 1-2 generations removed from our visit – is that Don Draper in the background?  I can only remember a few noteworthy items about the Copacabana:

• Our room had a screen door
• We got MTV, and Beavis and Butt-Head had just hit the airwaves (I ironically found it sophomoric at the time, despite being recently removed from sophomore status myself)
• There was a Texaco nearby, so we could counter the $24/day motel rate with a couple cases of Icehouse from the Star, which presumably my parents would eventually pay for (but most likely they would just say “f*ck it” and not pay the bill anyway; their love of usurious interest rates and late/reconnect fees is legendary)
• There was indeed a pool, but it did not look much like the one above.  If memory serves, it was a bring your own chair setup.

We were f*cking pumped to be in Florida, ready to rock the sh*t out of the place.  Also, though, we were pretty sleepy.  That’s a long drive in a Ford Ranger.  So if my memory is correct – and almost certainly it’s tainted by inaccuracy and a bloated sense of self-esteem – we ended up sleeping til like 8:00 PM and then going to some f*cking ridiculous dance club with glow sticks and test tube shooters and stuff.  At the time, I certainly needed a little bit of verbal communication to have a shot with the ladies – I hadn’t perfected the “get up in their face and krump your ass off” technique that I have going today.  Pos was essentially in the same boat.  And we paid a f*cking cover to get in there – I think $10 each.  That was a decent chunk of our $400 straight cash homie.  We still bailed – it was a sh*tshow in there and not really our scene.

The next day we decided we were gonna let the party come to us – we loaded up the bathtub with a couple cases of sh*tty beer, did some preemptive pushups (gameday pushups always trump months of working out in advance of spring break) and hit the Copacabana pool.  Don’t let that postcard image above fool you – we were the only people there.  But it was all good, we could see the beach – and, seriously, f*ck sand.  Couple of cool guys like us, it was only a matter of time.

Our luck turned better after about the fifth Milwaukee’s Best.  Three chicks showed up and pulled up towels (or ottomans or whatever sh*t the Copa had to prevent your skin from coming into direct contact with the pavement) in our general vicinity.  I, seasoned from a year of “regular college” might as well have spotted a scarlet letter on their cover-ups – they were Delta Delta Deltas from Southeast Missouri State.  (From memory, I came up with SW Missouri State, but my quest for precision led me to do some fact-checking.)  As I explained to Pos, Tri-Delts were generally known for being hot of appearance and loose of morals, ie the perfect spring break combination.  And there were three of them!  We were running a fast break up in the Copa!  All we had to do was come up with some clever banter (being from Missouri, we had to make sure that the majority of said banter was monosyllabic, so as not to hurt any feelings or cause headaches) and we had a very great chance of hooking some sh*t up.

Now, I don’t want to brag, but somehow they ended up in our room.  It was either our doughy-even-though-at-a-military-academy physiques, our suave demeanors, or the fact that they were at the same sh*tty motel and pretty much nobody else was just hanging out at the sh*tty motel – most other spring breakers preferring loud, redundant thumping and girls in bikinis walking around selling trays of test tube shots.  The problem was, neither one of us was particularly suited to “culling the herd” if you will.  If memory serves, they were all pleasant enough, in an unenthusiastic way, but there were too many of them – suddenly the numbers were working against us.

At a critical juncture – I think we were trying to get them to go swimming in the ocean with us (not a bad approach to figuring out who was the most interested – unless they were are all tied for least) and I said “f*ck it” and went and called my not-girlfriend on the payphone, just to check into whether she was not-boning someone at the not-moment.  It apparently got kind of awkward when I was gone, the girls were like “is he calling his girlfriend?” and Pos – quick thinker that he was* – was like “no, he just had to call his mom”…like being a weird mama’s boy isn’t just as bad as being a not-philanderer.  Turns out they could not help ya.  Fail.

Not the actual coeds in question, but one of three kazillion results for "tri delt spring break" on google image search. So effectively like 3/5 of the above.

(*Anecdote within an anecdote (aneception?): Guys at military academies – despite the strict honor code that forbids it – are frequently forced to omit or stretch information when asked questions like “where do you go to school?” by girls who go to colleges that don’t require uniforms.  When I was a sophomore, my go-to white lie was that I was a student at Georgetown Law School.  This was not a stretch since at the time I was totally planning on going to law school in the future, so it wasn’t really a lie so much as just pro-forma truth.  One time in New Orleans, with Pos, we were well into a promising conversation with some Australian nursing students (actually, maybe they were nannies?), who were no doubt impressed by our Georgetown Law pedigree.  We were unfortunate to be overheard by an actual Georgetown student, a fine fellow who was also a c*ck-blocking enthusiast.  Sensing weakness, he lobbed a grenade toward Pos – who’d never gone to “real school” – by asking what fraternity were in.  He responded something like “Frito Pigmy Abacus” and the house of cards began to crumble in embarrassing fashion.  We’ll always have Outback Steakhouse, though.)

We woke up and decided that maybe Daytona sucked.  Maybe we were old school guys, who needed to rock it really old school, like Fort Lauderdale style.  Also, we were baseball fans, and it was spring training time.  What better way to conserve money and still have a good time than to catch my team – the successful-at-the-time-but-cursed-in-the-Series Atlanta Braves?  We decided to catch a game in West Palm and got to see my boy Tom Glavine warming up (just throwing on the side unfortunately), that was a solid time, cost like $3 and we had progressed very close to Ft. Lauderdale.

And it was only Monday.  Since we had been alternating between McDonald’s value meals (Pos preferred the Jordan Meal; I went Double Quarter Pounder), Taco Bell takedowns and loading up on gross food at Texaco when we needed beer or gas, we weren’t wasting too much precious cash on food.  This would come back to haunt me though, as Pos hucked the unspeakably disgusting remains of a microwave hamburger in the back of the Ranger.  This would lead to me eventually getting pulled over on suspicion of hauling dead bodies around.

We made it to Fort Lauderdale in the late evening, and the first thing that struck me was how clean the place was.  There was a street cleaner running like 24/7 and the place looked pristine.  And, the only really meaningful stuff that happened on the trip happened in Ft. Lauderdale, so I probably could’ve just started writing at that point, instead of writing a 2,500 word preamble.

Later and Happy Easter,

Chilly17

(Question: Is the font on here really hard to read?  Seems like this is user-unfriendly for dense text.  Maybe my computer is trying to tell me something?)

I'm fatter now, but have better taste in pastels

1993 was a good year for the Chillster.  It started off with a smart, solitary New Year’s resolution: listen to more Billy Idol.  I acquired a Vital Idol cassette and my quality of life immediately improved.  I guess I should probably set the stage for you a little bit – as a junior at a military academy, we were just starting to get a little taste of freedom.  Finally, all the (turns out, largely apocryphal) hot locals on the prowl for clean-cut squares midshipmen were at our disposal, since we could more frequently go drinking at the multitude of local bars less-encumbered by Draconian curfews.  Beyond just freedom, I had another weapon at my disposal, something that looked like….this…

Actual vehicle not pictured, but throw a faux-personalized license plate on the front and you get the picture. Not exactly what the kids today would call a "P*ssy Wagon" but it could almost always get you from Point A to Point B

It’s difficult to explain military academy dynamics to folks who didn’t struggle through a similar environment.  Having a sh*tty Ford Ranger to driver, pretty much just on Saturday and Sunday – and only then thanks to the largesse of my (former – I will explain when I get to the Why Chilly Is A Huge Piece of Sh*t category of the site) friend R’s dad who let me park in his Annapolis driveway since non-Seniors couldn’t have cares on campus – was probably the equivalent of having a brand new Corvette at a university that played in meaningful basketball games.  Now Baltimore’s Inner Harbor (before Chris and Snoop got there), DC – hell even University of Delaware were all in play for us.  

The first thing my group of friends decided to do in 1993 was have a competition to see who could bang the most chicks in January.  (Ladies in the audience, of which there are at least two, I apologize for my candor, but it is important for the narrative. Well, not really important, but I’ve already typed a bunch of sh*t, so it’s important to me.)  At the time, I was unencumbered.  (Full disclosure: due to my journalistic integrity and fervor for accuracy, I was forced to fact-check my own memory.  And my own internal timeline must be f*cking wrong, because I know for sure I broke up with a girl named *Tanya after watching the 1993 NFC Championship Game at her f*cking apartment caused the 49ers to lose.  That had to be January of 1993 (and you can still f*ck off, Alvin Harper!).  But this whole story is less tidy then, because Billy Idol almost certainly gets less credit.  Although maybe “White Wedding” somehow caused Steve Young to suck? Anyway, that Tanya chick had a snake and a bird, too.  That was f*cking weird.  I remember going to her apartment for the first time, hearing some rustling in the other room and thinking “A KID! SHE’S GOT A FUCKING KID!” – but it turns out that it was just a ten foot python eating a mouse – no worries.  Based on my hard-hitting research I apparently dumped pseudnymous *Tanya on the 17th and then met the chick I will later discuss in a couple of weeks, but I like my cleaner, unresearched timeline more.  Also, *Tanya bought me a watch – which for some reason my friends gave me endless amounts of sh*t for.)

The competition to see who could have relations with the most consenting females had the potential to be lopsided.  See, despite the fact that this is my forum, I’m not going to sit here and overstate my abilities in this area.  I was more like the scrappy white guy who makes it to the majors more with grit and intangibles than estimable tools; scratching out a giggle here, a chuckle there the way David Eckstein worked the count down a run in the late innings.  My roommate – to protect his identity, I will call him *Brad – was apparently quite the handsome fellow, so all the lady-meeting stuff came easy to him.  I found him to be somewhat disgusting, but maybe because I saw him in his indigenous state, which somehow included bloody underwear after running five miles (relax – it was (allegedly) from chafing, nothing more sinister).

Since this is supposed to be about Spring Break, not some stupid contest that wasn’t really a contest since only about two of that crew ever really hooked up in bars anyway, I will cut to the chase.  My roommate, as expected, won in a walkover – sure he could land some pretty hot women when the opportunity was there, but his huge advantage was an uncanny ability to completely disregard his standards in certain situations – he would f*ck a 57 year-old Day’s Inn maid given the right “anything else you need?” glance.  How did Chilly fare?  As “Serial Relationship Guy”, I did what I normally did, stumbled upon a girlfriend.  Well, a kind of girlfriend.  A sort-of girlfriend.  Through the magic of Billy Idol, most likely, I met a very nice girl in one of the previously discussed local bars (RIP, Griffins). As I believe Jerry Seinfeld once said, she had many attributes desirable to men, including tallness, blondeness, curviness and prettiness. And she was (unfortunately) well-aware of her impact on her surroundings.  She once caused an accident on campus (no joke) from wearing her ridiculously tight jean shorts around.  (I know, jean shorts don’t rule, but these leaned more toward Daisy Dukes than midwestern jorts.)  It was just a small fender bender, but still impressive.  (Last humblebag on this topic (well, it’s probably mostly a brag) – she somehow sent me the same risque Valentine’s card that my Don juan roommate sent to his lady of the moment, now THAT was funny.)

Despite the fact that we were essentially in a relationship, she – let’s call her *Kandi -could not commit to calling it that (if I recall correctly, due to having fairly recently ended a BIG RELATIONSHIP).  With Spring Break fast approaching, I had some decisions to make.  My buddy, *Position (I know that name makes no sense to you, the reader – let’s just go with Pos for the sake of this post – no, not short for HIV+ or Piece of Sh*t) had just quit the *tennis (name of sport changed to protect identity) team and was ready to f*cking blow it out spring-break style.  Or at least to drink some Colt Ice and try to pick up girls from other academic institutions.  (Editor’s Note: F*ck, this might have to be a two-parter, we aren’t really even to Spring Break yet and we are at a thousand words almost).  I considered the merits of going on spring break with Pos vs. just staying around Maryland and having a lot of “friendly time” with my really-hot girlfriend-in-everything-but-title:

CONS:

• No guaranteed nakedity with hot ladies
• 1,000 mile drive to warmth
• Only had $150 and Texaco card

Turns out since I didn’t have military stickers, we couldn’t crash at the Navy base in Georgia, so we powered on down to Daytona, stayed at the Copacabana (I kid you not) and wandered down to the MTV beach party thing, where the only thing I can remember is “Gangsta Bitch” being played at roughly the same volume as a Blue Angels flyby.  (RIP, Apache.  Also, RIP Patrice O’Neal – NSFW language but hilarious and highly recommended, while I’m thinking about it.)
 

* means names were changed because I wanted to.

Nice hair, wine guy

I had the misfortune of watching a bit of The Bachelor recently.  My initial thought – as per every time I’ve ever seen even ten seconds of the show, was, “Why the f*ck is this even on tv?”  My secondary thoughts were along the lines of “Why does Rafael Nadal’s retarded brother get a TV show?”  And I think among my tertiary thoughts was “Why are people so shocked that there was some banging going on in this show – isn’t that really what it’s for, for some dude to have sample sex with a bunch of chicks that want to be on tv under the guise of seeking true love?”

I really can’t fathom why anyone would want to subject themselves to this type sh*t except for the opportunity to be on television.  Thus, the genesis of this post appearing on here.  The proposed (no pun intended, I think) subject matter prompted some internal debate as to whether anyone would participate in this type thing if it were not televised.  I mean, couldn’t some rich dude in LA just offer up his house for 25 random hos to hang out in while he decides which one is The One over the course of a month?  I bet that’s basically how this show even came to be, just a couple of guys spitballing ways to get some ass easily, then they had the genius idea to have it televised so that a network could foot the bill for the mansion AND they could become famous enough to get appearance fees at nightclubs and casinos for the next five years.  Even more f*cking genius than Dorito Tacos (YUM: call me re: Fiery Habanero Doritos Tacos) – I have to hand it to whatever genius it was that came up with the pitch for The Bachelor, you are a credit to the male species.

Being the hard-hitting journalist that I am, I tried to decide whether other reality shows would exist without the cameras:

•  Survivor?  Sure, people pay for the privilege of participating in Tough Mudder runs, I’m sure if there was a contest where cash was pooled to see who could hang out in the woods deprived of luxuries the longest/best there would be no shortage of numbnut participants
• Jersey Shore?  Hell, that train wreck started as, and still is, a home game.  The money and fame was just a byproduct of the (unlikely) popularity of the show.  (Note: I have seen a bit of this season, and, as difficult it may be to imagine, the crew seems to have devolved even further from anything recognizable as a human being.  Now it’s almost entirely Neanderthal grunts of “me horny, me hungry” – and that’s just from the girls.  Although calling Snooki and Deena “girls” is kind of an insult to everybody else with a pair of X chromosomes.)
• American Idol/So You Think You Can Dance?  Absolutely, struggling artists will do anything so people can see hear/them.  My mom and dad saw Carrie Underwood singing at the opening of a furniture store in Oklahoma like eight years ago.
• All those other crappy shows that are just rich “ladies” going about their day that somehow half of the country watches are allegedly what they would be doing without cameras around.  And I think we can all agree that no reality show is scripted or even nudged in a narrative direction, it’s all just raw realness.

Since I was too lazy to do this myself: thanks rumorfix.com!

But with no cameras, does anyone play The Bachelor?  (Part of the struggle with writing this is that I couldn’t decide if dudes would go for a home version of The Bachelorette.  They might, because, the odds are usually pretty long trying to get some tail at the average bar (although if you drink enough those odds get much more promising, I’ve heard).  So for the prospect of a free place to crash and a 1:25 shot at presumably a hot chick, that might happen.  Also furrowing my brow is the fact that there is apparently a The Bachelor Wii game – who’s that for?  How many copies of that did they sell?  8-9?  I weep for future generations if there are legions of little girls creating avatars of themselves to be dissed by some polgyonal d-bag.)  For so subjective a topic as “love” why put yourself on tv to reveal your insecurities and other emotional baggage/personality shortcomings for the world to see?  I guess I just don’t understand how emotions are supposed to translate to a f*cking game show.  Maybe I’ll pitch an idea for a show called The Funeral, where we put twenty people in a mansion where they all have to plan and attend the funeral of one of their recently-deceased parents.  At the end of each day, the people that have shown enough poise and sadness will be given a carnation, while the eliminated will have to go back home and mourn in their sh*tty apartments. The winner gets a free mausoleum. Hmmm…this might have legs.

In summary, The Bachelor is stupid, I don’t understand why people either watch or participate in it, unless there is an underlying desire to be on television, or they are suffering from some kind of narcissistic mental illness (although that would likely tie back to the need to be on tv. F*ck, I don’t know).

CHILLY MULTIMEDIA EXPLOSION UPDATE:  Given that I’m in Arkansas and rarely speak to humans in my age/IQ range (both mid-40s), I’ve been inspired to write more stuff down on my computer.  ”Multimedia” is actually a poor choice of words, but since it’s already typed in bold, I can’t really erase it.  But what I was trying to convey is that I’ll be posting stuff to both the Wasted Potentialz Facebook Page (shorter stuff that I don’t want to proofread/agonize over and links and stuff) and random thoughts and sh*t on Twitter (@chilly_17).  I know most people read this site at work but don’t be shy about cruising over to the Facebook page or hollering at me on Twitter – it’s your big chance to get a response to a real live member of the 1% (according to Whoopi).

Later,

Chilly17

One place certainly has an edge in the "risk of homicide" category

Presumably everybody who’s read this site knows of my long-time love affair with Taco Bell.  In fact, lore (ie the historically inaccurate recollections of my mom) has it that I never ate any real food until I had my first taco.  (This probably means I was actually already enjoying hearty servings of osso buco and sweetbreads, but whatever.) Anyway, despite working at Taco Bell (including starting up a store from scratch, including picking styrofoam out of a ditch for about six straight hours – turns out there are a lot of packing peanuts in industrial kitchenware) for about three years, I still love the food, the atmosphere, the experience.  So what kind of unfair fight would it be for me to pit The Bell against a relative newcomer, the local chain El Super Taco?  Allow me to level the playing field by saying that El Super Taco is awesome, too.  Now it’s completely fair.  And, with the hype surrounding the launch of Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos tacos (the shell is made of nacho cheese Doritos – yes, it’s a f*cking great idea, wish I’d though of it) it seemed like writing a comparison would be a great way to justify eating a bunch of tacos in a short period of time.

Just to give you some contextual flavor, El Super Taco has been my happy place throughout a lot of my recent family medical drama (sounds like something you’d find on ABC Thursdays); it’s ostensibly a sit-down restaurant because they hook you up with chips and salsa, but it does more to-go business than anything.  No alcohol, thus no margaritas, thus to-go looks like a pretty good option.  I also just learned that the original El Super Taco is in the town where I currently reside, approximately one mile from where I sit with my dad almost every day.  That one is just a Southern California-esque take-out window.  I just tried it, and it sucks compared to the one (seedy-looking parking lot shown above) that I frequent.  So I will continue to burn extra time/gas to enjoy the iPad-friendly, semi-air conditioned ambience of the sit-down El Super Taco.

So how do the offerings of both joyous places match up?  Let’s consider a few categories:

Visual Appeal

Would you rather have three of these (four if you want to be completely comparable given the tip at EST):

That little sleeve can't really fend off the orange residue monster

 or

To give you a better sense of scale, these tacos are roughly the size of a jumbo pack of Magic: The Gathering cards

Verdict:  Despite the tastiness of the DL tacos that we will get to in a minute, the visual appeal of the grilled steak and pork at El Super Taco dominates the from-another-world orangeness of the Doritos Locos.  El Super Taco wins the swimsuit category with conviction.

Taste

Verdict: Okay, there should probably be some more pictures, but this isn’t a food blog and people look at you weird around here for taking photos of your food.  In fact, people look at you weird here whenever you aren’t eating at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  But this is a very tough call; I am a huge fan of just plain crunchy tacos at TB, I could probably knock back 22 or so before starting to feel kind of full.  And the Dorito Loco version is arguably an improvement on an already-strong product.  That artificial cheese powder/sodium bomb experience at the end of each bite is an unexpected taste sensation.  (Note: I avoided the word “salty” in the previous extremely descriptive sentence to avoid any “yeah, you like that salty stuff don’t you – so does your mom” commentary from TDiddy.  I see the chessboard three moves in advance.)  I will definitely eat them periodically.  But – if my sh*tty photography permits it – take a look at those tacos from EST – they are f*cking delicious.  And you get chips and two kinds of salsa (the red one of which changes consistency daily – sometimes watery, sometimes dense enough to stand a chip up in – but is excellent regardless) plus a quiet place to sit and read the NFL chats on ESPN.com (I read every division, not just the NFC West, perhaps I have a problem?)  El Super Taco wins again.

Fire Sauce

This is about how much I need for four tacos

Verdict: Okay, that was kind of unfair, because you can only get Fire Sauce at Taco Bell.  But I didn’t want you to think that you knew how this was gonna end up.  Taco Bell by a mile in this category.

Value

Handwritten signs and non-functional gas pump islands correlate highly to value

Verdict:  They cost the same.  So for $6 you can leave a 30% tip and get two phenomenal grilled meat tacos with guacamole and a basket of chips and salsa.  At Taco Bell, $6.06 gets you 4 Doritos Locos tacos, plus as much Fire Sauce as you can reasonably/responsibly grab.  I could probably eat about 19 Doritos Locos tacos without feeling too full, but after eating the aforepictured meal at EST, I’m mostly full.  Therefore, El Super Taco must be the better value.

Final Verdict:  In what at a glance appears to be a shocking upset, El Super Taco is the clear winner.  But the real winner here is me: I’ve finally found one cultural (food is in culture, right? or is that a bad word choice?) advantage to being in northwest Arkansas.  So to all you people reading this in your cool cities, with your ivory towers and your delicious Indian food – take a good long look at that adovado taco up there.  It’s pretty f*cking good.  (And, to be clear, this ain’t no dis of the DL tacos – they are legit.  Try them, you will enjoy them.  Warning: your fingers will be orange when finished, despite that cardboard sleeve thing – nobody uses that.  Also – if they ever launched a Doritos Locos Fiery Habanero taco, good god.  Now THAT would be redonk.)

Later,

Chill17

Even with today's technology, cleaning cropping stuff out of a photo to merge with another photo is difficult (especially for those who've come to shun attention to detail)

Many in attendance at the iPad 3 launch couldn’t help but ask: is that a baby bump on Tim Tebow, virgin?  And could Jeremy Lin (Knicks), newly minted global symbol of perseverance and acceptance, not to mention subject of approximately 20 billion stupid puns, possibly be the father?  While the prospects of a Lin Tebow gay romance seemed like a marketing dream, many observers felt such a pairing unlinkly and perhaps linpossible.  SI covergirl Kate Upton felt otherwise after her brief meeting with the (allegedly) virginal Tebow and noting that he did not immediately make an effort to become “special friends” with her.  Later, while discussing the Facebook IPO with Mitt Romney (Republican), Kate Upton – who is hot - realized that she was actually thinking of MTV’s Snooki, who actually did attempt to touch her in her bathing suit areas (which, judging from the cover of SI, required some precision).  When asked if Snooki pregnant, awesome DJ Skrillex declared himself ready for the Ruffneck bass.  It is unclear what that means. Weighing in on the Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin matter, Sofia Vergara – naked except for jeans, presumably undergarments and a borrowed Kim Kardashian Reggie Bush jersey – confirmed that it was indeed Snooki pregnant.

Later,

Chilly17

Given that this site is just over three years old now, it’s probably time to reflect upon my post-banking path.  (I almost typed in “genuflect” there, because I momentarily thought it meant to genuinely reflect.  I think I’m getting stupider.  I thought iPad Boggle was supposed to sharpen your intellect?)  I’ll be honest: I predicted nothing short of meteoric success for myself in whatever endeavor I decided to pursue after getting canned.  For those of you who have read about my many previous occupations, you might ask yourself “why the hell did he think he would be hugely successful when he’s only been average/below average, at best, in his previous jobs?”  The answer (that I tell myself) is that I never really tried all that hard before, because I never really felt all that invested in anything.  They were all just jobs.  Now – elusive freedom in hand – I would focus my energies like never before, creating either sardonic-yet-enlightening-in-a-non-meaningful-way masterpieces of internet writing or performing myriad backtesting analyses to confirm/tighten my trading strategy and generate mucho cashflow.  (This is all detailed more thoroughly in my thus-far-unpublished trogger manifesto.)

Instead of all that, I mostly just kind of f*cked around.  Results could kindly be described as tepid.  But the way I understand it, it takes about twenty years to become a successful internet writer, so I’m really only 15% down the path.  Just getting started on my journey.  If I don’t see some results in another 15-17 years, I’m totally dumping this site.  The upside is, I’ve learned a lot about SEO (that’s search engine optimization for you nEwBs out there.  That’s how we internet people really talk, all cool and stuff with random capitals and in-the-know slang.)  In fact, I’m going to be using my newfound SEO knowledge to kickstart this motherf*cker in the near future.  On the trading front, I’m thinking my “hope for the best” approach will really generate some serious alpha going forward.  So it is all good in the hood, but there is certainly room for improvement (to quote virtually any of my performance reviews.)

 
Later,

Chilly17

One of the things that the gurus highly recommend is increasing your site’s profile on social networking sites.  Apparently a key element to creating a real sense of community amongst your readers is to seamlessly integrate the various social platforms within the readers’ interactions with your site itself.  However, as with many things in life, there must be a balance to your efforts – generally, it seems, subtlety will be rewarded.  Readers don’t necessarily want to be bombarded with reminders of their other virtual “obligations” such as foursquaring that they are at PetSmart shopping for hamster sweaters or updating their secret AshleyMadison profile.  But in this contemporary age, a gentle reminder, or “call to action” can go a long way in increasing a sites value in today’s currency of “Likes,” “Recommends” and “Not Bads.”

Implementing these concepts in a visually compelling way does not come easily to me, given my limited knowledge of HTML and really anything other than googling endlessly for answers to questions like “Why the f*ck is the spacing so f*cked up on wordpress?  why doesn’t it just put a space where i put a space?? Why???”

Couple my coding ineptitiude with being a bit of a newcomer to the concept of social media – having long preferred nonsocial media such as watching bumfights and arguing with internet strangers over whether Drive made any fucking sense whatsoever – has made revamping the site a daunting task.  However, I think I’m finally starting to understand a little bit how this whole thing works.  For example, Twitter is much more powerful platform for receiving unwanted advertisements for unneeded services than email has ever been.  It is also phenomenal for receiving unsolicited Follows from fictional females – you can even see their fictional faces, a personal touch that email subject lines only wish they could offer.

So I’m hoping that some of my small changes will impart a kind of subliminal “call to action” – where you, the reader, are so ensconsced in the thought-provoking content relating to food, feet or ugly babies, that you barely notice the hint of request in the air.  Just because this site does not have a product to sell, really – other than inane thoughts from an uninformed person – doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be some marketing going on up in here.  A careful evaluation of my traffic quality indicates there is opportunity, verified by feedback from the internet marketing gurus.

Looking at my stats last month, my traffic broke down like this:

• Human visitors: 6
• Romanian spambots: 5,207
• Comment spambots: 1,312 (thanks, Akismet!)
• People who misspelled  bakedpotato.com

With traffic like that, it’s clearly time to focus on monetization.  Sure, one way would be to sell out to a major corporation or media conglomerate, but I really want to protect the integrity of the site, and my ability to not do anything for weeks at a  time if I so desire.  Similarly, a public stock offering would subject me to the whims of shareholders, and I cannot be sure that each of my six human readers would agree to serve on my Board of Directors.  I will have to figure out an approach that is neither cumbersome nor detracts from the aesthetics of the site, but encourages readers to do things that cause me to get money, traffic, or perhaps even additional Follow requests from imaginary females on the Twitter.  Maybe another iPad giveaway?  I’ll keep thinking about it, there must be some mutually beneficial way to get things done around here and keep this place looking sweet as always.

Hard-hitting new post hopefully by Friday.  Friday of which week TBD.

Later,

Chilly17

Sofia: this article does not apply to you. At all.

One of the most potentially psychologically-damaging questions that one faces in life is: am I ugly?  (Clearly, since my face has been shown like 532,017 times as the toxic physical embodiment of the 1%, I pass.  Nobody would get that pissed about an uggo.)  There’s probably a pretty strong correlation between one’s perceived unattractiveness and being a youthful age, but I think as most folks get older and mellow they realize they probably fall into that 60-80% groupage of people who are neitherly overly beautiful/handsome (4-5% per Seinfeld) or disgusting/sickening (15-16% in most locations, jumps to around 35% when strolling through Wal-Mart).  Just to be clear, I’m talking about old school ugliness, not genetic deformities or accident victims.  I’ll also exclude African-American (and African-Canadian, for that matter) albinos due to the fickleness of melanin.  We are all aware of the benefits of beauty – you get a leg up in just about everything – but what restraints might ugliness put on future career options?

Let’s consider the other end of the spectrum for a second – it used to be easy to identify that top 5% of women, at least.  Back in my days of burgeoning adolescence, you knew that that group was comprised almost entirely of ladies who were members of one of the following organizations:

• The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
• The Solid Gold Dancers
• Charlie’s Angels

 
That was pretty much all you needed to know.  These days, with the 24-hour news cycles, reality television, blogs, old ladies rapping and what-have-you, it’s harder to pinpoint exactly what kind of grouping would give you the same results.  But based on my keen observations of modern culture, I can hazard a guess that the hottest ladies around now are:

• Anyone who’s ever been on the cover of Shape magazine (with less than 48% airbrushing)
• Anyone who’s appeared in a Skechers Shape-up advertisement
• Anyone who’s served as an internet tee-shirt model

 
For the three ladies who read this, I must admit that I’m not sure what the modern day male equivalent is – based on feedback from the ladies I know and some extrapolation, I’ll assume the top 5% of males are:

Anyway, this piece was intended more to point the non-pretty in the right direction.  If you are ugly, you generally need to shy away from sales or relationship-type positions, it’s a proven fact that people are more likely to buy sh*t from/interact with people that are attractive.  That’s pretty much common sense, but the equation gets more complicated if you have other negative qualities beyond ugliness.  For instance, ugly and stupid is a pretty loathsome combination – one that lends itself more to a career in serial murdering moreso than say, chemical engineering management.

There is a lot of misleading propaganda out there about ugly people occupations – always tending toward easy targets such as carnival workers, DMV employees or toll booth operators.  But have you been to the DMV lately?  Some serious hotties working the Take A Number machine these days – hell on That 70s Show, Fez worked at the DMV at the same time Wilmer Valderrama was deflowering basically every starlet around in Hollywood.  Misleading.  And a recent study in Scientific American showed that carnies, on average, have better facial symmetry ratios than any profession other than the somewhat exclusive society of French newswomen.  Carnies likely suffer from the fact that their jobs often require unfortunate hairstyles/ dental work aimed to attract curiosity seekers by startling the visual senses.  I will attempt to steer the unfortunately-faced away from such stereotypes.

So if you routinely hear things like “hey, are you Heather Graham?” or “has anyone ever told you you look like Michael Cera?”, feel free to skip the (beautiful) flowchart below.

For every John C. Reilly, there's like 4,200 Matt Damons

Later,
Chilly17