Throwing cheese at baby rapers

R. Kelly first appeared on my radar in the early 2000s as the world was first finding out about his proclivity for videotaping himself having sex with--and peeing on--young girls. I belonged to Crunch Gym in the basement of my Chicago office building at Grand and State (coincidentally across the street from the back entrance to Nordstrom). The Crunch chain of gyms was relatively new and extremely trendy and often populated with celebrities, and R. Kelly and his posse worked out at my Crunch location every day at the same time I did: noon. And by "worked out" I mean "showed up, sat around doing nothing on all the benches in the locker room, sat around doing nothing on all the equipment in the gym, mumbled things to each other that constantly ended with 'You know what I'm sayin'?' and generally pissed (ahem) off everyone at the gym."

But there's more!

The gym was in the basement of the building, spread out below a tiny lobby facing the sidewalk. The neighborhood was the newly booming River North, just (as you might imagine) north of the river and just west of the Mag Mile, which is the high-end-retail section of North Michigan Avenue. Street parking was restricted and very rare. But R. Kelly was above the laws of street parking, and he parked his massive Hummer on the street right in front of the lobby door ... and he parked one poor schmuck from his posse in the lonely little lobby presumably to keep an eye on the Hummer and fend off anyone who might stop to ticket or tow it as R. and the rest of his posse "worked out" in the basement below.

So let's review all the reasons from this story alone that R. Kelly is an entitled piece of shit: Having sex with little girls. Peeing on little girls. Videotaping it. Spreading out all over the gym and preventing people from working out on their lunch hours. Parking his Hummer on a street with no parking. Owning a Hummer. Making one of his posse sit and watch the Hummer to potentially bribe any authorities who might ticket or tow it.

Oh yeah: And everyone who witnessed all of this universally agreed that his Hummer was literally the color of ... wait for it ... pee.

I really hope it’s one of the Illegal McFireworksons loudly displaying their stupidity in our neighborhood

50 Things About My Fourth Of July:

1. I ran my 8K this morning with 99.76% NO PAIN. 
2. See what I did there?
3. I said .76 because of 1776!
4. Because I am nothing if not mathematically patriotic.
5. I hadn’t realized how defeated I’d gotten over my stupid hip injury and the fact I hadn’t run a step in 10 days, and the fact that the pain is gone has filled me with near euphoria.
6. WOOT!
7. As the cool kids say.
8. Rule No. 1 for running is to NOT try something new on a race day.
9. No clothes that you’ve never worn before.
10. No foods that you’ve never eaten before.
11. Because that’s DUMBASS.
12. But I’m a total dumbass.
13. Because I bought new compression shorts yesterday to hold my brittle, aging hip parts in place at the advice of a Facebook friend.
14. While I was at it, I also got some new running socks that have padded collars in the backs to prevent my super-cute patriotic running shoes from sanding away my Achilles tendons like last time.
15. Plus I dug out my long-overlooked patriotic sunglasses that I don’t remember fitting very securely.
16. Because why not?
17. Oh! I also dumbassedly chugged a never-before-introduced-into-my-body Rocktane(R) Ultra Endurance Gu(R) Energy Gel before the run.
18. But everything worked out perfectly and didn’t give me any problems.
19. Except.
20. Ex. Cept.
21. EX! CEPT!
22. Compression shorts—which I’ve never worn until this morning’s race—not only don’t feel noticeably compressiony but they do nothing to keep the seatbelts fastened for the bumpy ride.
23. NOTHING.
24. So after bouncing around in their slippery, unsupportive pouch for 4.97 miles this morning, my Margos are what we will politely call Channinged.
25. Ouch.
26. Ouch ouch ouch.
27. Also: They’re made with the same Super Slippery Slipperiness(R) as gym shorts.
28. Super Slippery Slipperiness(R) + Super Slippery Slipperiness(R) = MY GYM SHORTS WOULDN’T STAY UP.
29. I’m sassy!
30. After the race, I foam-rolled my hip even though it didn’t hurt.
31. Because I’m responsible hip owner.
32. While I was on the floor rolling my hip, Bridget sat down next to me to keep me company.
33. Just look at this picture of us.
34. LOOK AT IT!

35. I. Love. That. Dog.
36. Then I fell asleep sitting up in a chair.
37. Because the Rocktane(R) Ultra Endurance Gu(R) Energy Gel had clearly worn off.
38. I was still wearing my finisher medal.
39. Yes. I’m THAT guy: The douchebag who SLEEPS IN HIS DAMN RACING MEDALS. 

40. I ran into so many—SO! MANY!—wonderful friends before and after the race this morning.

41. Including—but not limited to—my training buddies Rob and Scott and my saintly friend David, who patiently ran at my old-injured-man pace with me through all 4.97 miles.
42. Even when I had to stop and walk.
43. Which I’m thrilled to announce was because it was insanely hot and not because my hip hurt.
44. WOOT!
45. Again, as the cool kids say.
46. So—unless this morning was a fluke—my Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 is BACK ON!
47. With super-slippery compression shorts if Margo and I feel like I need them.
48. Plus real, ACTUAL support from Bridget.
49. And that’s #HowToTurn
50. #50!

Axe me why I smell so fine today

Somebody left this in the gym shower so now I smell like a feral man-beast and LADIES, PLEASE. THERE IS ENOUGH OF ME TO GO AROUND.

Douchebag gym selfie!

Because it’s been awhile. And I wanna keep my gym-douchebag cred up.

#TheCognitiveDissonance

Oh, Scott. Scott, Scott, Scott. Bless your heart. I'll try to keep this short so you can get back to showing off your import:

1. The fact that you feel obligated to state that you're not afraid is tacit acknowledgement that we're well past the tipping point where most of your swamp friends are afraid to admit they support Melania's Profound Regret and all thinking people are afraid for reasons that are apparently beyond your understanding.
2. Speaking of understanding, "tacit" means "understood or implied without being stated."
3. Really. One little sticker is more than enough to proclaim to the world your catastrophic lack of judgment. But five little stickers AND an entire bottle of rub-on shoe polish? That just exponentiates your bad judgment about your bad judgment.
4. "Exponentiates" means "raises one quantity to the power of another."
5. Don't worry. Betsy DeVos took that last one off the test. Math is apparently too Satany.
6. Your car photo doesn't show your license plate so I can't discern what state you live in -- gratuitous "of denial" and "of delusion" jokes notwithstanding -- but a perfunctory google search just showed me that obstructing your rear window outside of a varying allowance of a few square inches in each corner is considered dangerous and illegal in all of the state traffic codes I read.
7. STATES' RIGHTS! YEAH!
8. "Perfunctory" means "carried out with a minimum of effort."
9. I apologize. I know I promised to keep this short. But there are so many things profoundly wrong with you.
10. Mazda is a Japanese multinational automaker based in Fuchū, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. Four of the five little stickers on your Japan-is-not-America Mazda clearly -- CLEARLY! -- state "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" In all caps! With exclamation points! One has to wonder the level of cognitive dissonance required to put multiple pro-America stickers on an imported car and declare a "love" of "showing off" that car in presumably pro-American "support" of a by clear implication pro-American "president."
11. "Cognitive dissonance" means ... oh, never mind. Betsy won't allow it on the test either. Enjoy your metaphorical obstructed-view drive.
12. "Metaphor" means ... oy ... let's just say it's one fewer than metaphive so you won't have to count so high.

Some assembly required

Call the legitimate press that does legitimate reporting on your legitimate words and actions "fake news" long enough and fake thinkers will treat that dismissive characterization as fact.

Note the pro-Trump signs in the background of this photo. Note the almost daily screams of "fake news" on Trump's Twitter account alone regarding the legitimate media's reporting on Trump's words and actions. Note that the American population of racists, KKK members, and people who explicitly or tacitly endorse lynching and other forms of shut-up murder are measurably all in what's left of Trump's base.

Javier Valdez, a reporter covering government corruption and the illegal drug trade, two weeks ago became the fifth such journalist to be murdered execution-style in Mexico in two months.

There are lots of similar legitimate journalists in America infuriating the "fake news" population. There is lots of open enthusiasm from that population over Montana Republican House candidate Greg Gianforte body-slamming a reporter who asked him a question about the Republican healthcare bill just this week. There is overwhelmingly lots of influence -- legally, Constitutionally and culturally -- over this population by the disproportionately powerful American gun lobby.

And these people have access to lots of both literal and metaphorical rope.

Bro, do you even lift?

There is no fate worse than tossing a purple jelly bean in your mouth and discovering too late that it's actually a black jelly bean.

No, actually there's no fate worse than smugly and happily trying to force a hastily written bill through the Senate -- so fast that many party-line-voting Senators later admitted they hadn't even read it -- that takes away people's access to healthcare without providing a viable, bipartisan, medically reviewed replacement when this picture of your skinny-leg-Barbie-weights-stupid-backward-bro-hat-whatever-douchebag-gesture-you're-making-with-your-hand self is always and forever circulating on the Internet.

The Art of the Deal

How tall ya feeling NOW, Paul? How big are your ignoble accomplishments? How towering is your integrity? Where do you stand in the public's estimation? Why is your hat on backwards?

Do not make fun of Paul Ryan

The poor man had to make a huge PowerPoint presentation yesterday to prove he doesn't understand insurance. He can't remember if his marathon personal best was "two hour and fifty-something" or 4:01. And he has no idea how not to look like a gym douchebag in a backward bro hat. The man is truly a scholar and an athlete. Except he has really crappy form on his dumbbell curls. Plus there's no telling whether that cocky-head hand gesture he's making is a House gang sign or an indication of the height of his integrity. Either way, DO NOT MAKE FUN OF HIM. That would be as disrespectful as lying to the public about health insurance. Not that anyone would ever do that.

Insurance and incompetence in a bro hat

Take a Valium and then read the article here

So there's a vicious, defamatory, hopefully humiliating story circulating about how Paul Ryan (as in Speaker of the House Paul Ryan who not too long ago had glamour shots taken of himself curling Barbie weights with his skinny arms and saggy workout costume and backward bro hat as illustrated in the photo below) made a huge PowerPoint presentation today (where he'd done research and used his economics-major training to form his thesis and taken the time to make slides and charts and graphs and presumably practiced beforehand in the mirror before his child tied his tie for him) where he used a chart with infection red for sick people who leech the economy into catastrophic typhoid implosion and blue-blood blue for non-sick people who are forced against their will to not be sick but still bear the crippling financial burden of having their already-paid insurance money pay for all those infection-red leeches who selfishly choose to be sick to explain point-by-unwavering-point how he (presiding United States Speaker of the House Paul Davis Ryan Jr. who has bachelor's degrees in economics and political science from Miami University and who is proudly called the Republican party's "Great Wonk" presumably for his vast and detailed understanding of even the most obscure details of national policy and economics) quite literally and unquestionably does not -- does NOT -- understand the rudimentary financial elements of health insurance.

In non-Jakebabble: Paul Ryan today (admirably) explained exactly how insurance works ... as his argument for how insurance doesn't work.

No, really. In his desperate, not-partisan-at-all effort to discredit the entire Affordable Care Act, he twisted the space-time continuum, mathematically eliminated the entire collective history of global economic learning, and used the very existence of something as immutable proof that it didn't exist.

Either he's actually too stupid and lazy to know how insurance works or he's engaging in intentionally deceptive demagoguery -- elaborately premeditated lying, actually -- to manipulate other people who are too stupid and lazy to know how insurance works.

And just in case you've forgotten: Paul Ryan and his family get free healthcare. Which may be the reason he's not too caught up on the nuts and bolts of insurance the way we commonfolk are.

AND BEFORE I FORGET: Here's Paul Ryan in his saggy workout costume and backward bro hat. Please do not laugh at him derisively. The poor man doesn't understand insurance, much less how not to look like a gym douchebag.

A libtard! FINALLY!

This brain trust holds the distinction of being the first person ever to call me a #libtard. IT SURE TOOK YOU GUYS LONG ENOUGH.

Anyway, I sent him a friendly response telling him he was being awfully judgey for a man who hadn't mastered rudimentary capitalization and punctuation. I even helpfully defined "rudimentary" for him. Then I asked him if perhaps "Basket of Winners" was a pseudonym for "Betsy DeVos."

He promptly responded with this thoughtful -- albeit heterocentric, but in his defense, reading for comprehension doesn't appear to be his strong suit -- message:

Then he blocked me. Rude.

If you're looking for a fun little hobby with almost zero long-term commitment, visit his page and send him a cheery little note. Or maybe some other kind of note. Your choice.

Then sit back, wait for him to call you a libtard, get blocked, and return to conversing with adults who use real words. I'm sure he'll be glad to hear from you though.

#coward

Douchebag vanguard

After a long, brutal Iowa winter that once got so bad I had to find the shovel for my dad, it's finally 174 degrees today. Which of course means one thing: digging out the tank tops for the gym! Well, actually it means two things: digging out the mid-top sneakers, which by my alt-logic are only for warm weather even they provide the additional ankle coverage that is essential to winter warmth when you're handing your 77-year-old dad a shovel so he can clear the slippery driveway.

And did you know this? When you smoosh your arms on the preacher-curl bench for a not-staged-at-all douchebag gym selfie, they look way more jacked than they actually are. So I hear. But if science (yay, science!) proves this is true, it could revolutionize the douchebag-gym-selfie industry. We're at the dawn of a new era, people. So be sure to arm (ahem) yourself for the uprising. Or the smooshing. Whatever.

Getting up to speed

The state of the bathroom
The shower is finally grouted and double-caulked, the fancy waffle-knit spa-like shower curtain (with matching liner! just like in an adult bathroom!) is hung, a few pieces of decorative crap have been attached to the walls, and from the looks of things the bathroom renovation is done:
But! There’s still no water in the sink. Because I still can’t bring myself to admit defeat over some leaky water supply hoses that can’t be replaced without epic levels of runaround from random Home Depot employees and the faucet manufacturer. So I continue to sit and stew. And then I go wash my hands in the other bathroom.

But I’ve posted reviews of the products I bought on homedepot.com. And somewhere along the line I must have responded to a satisfaction survey from the site because this week I got an email from a homedepot.com representative offering me financial compensation for my frustration. Without me even asking! It’s only $75—and of course it’s in Home Depot gift cards, which are pretty worthless after I’m done spending $2,500 on the bathroom—but the fact remains that they asked and they listened and they responded. And, of course, there will always be another reason to go to Home Depot.

Speaking of gift cards …
The dramatic black-and-red-and-slightly-Southwest-inspired ceramic dishes that I’d brought into the marriage but the domestic partner had never truly loved the way he should as a stepfather had grown chipped and broken and it was about time to buy replacement pieces or scrap everything and start over.

And while I loved my dishes when I bought them for my old condo, they had a rustic heaviness that never really worked in our ultra-sleek, space-needle-like kitchen or our French-blue-exact-replica-of-Versailles-if-you-squint-and-you’ve-never-actually-been-to-Versailles dining room. Plus so many plates and bowls were cracked that we could only host dinner parties for five, assuming we could find five people who thought dramatic black-and-red-and-slightly-Southwest-inspired ceramic dishes actually looked good—chipped or not—in a French-blue-exact-replica-of-Versailles-if-you-squint-and-you’ve-never-actually-been-to-Versailles dining room.

Plus the plates were so big that they interfered with the little spinning water jet thingie mounted on the underside of our top dishwasher rack.

So we decided to pull the trigger and buy all new dishes that were small enough to fit in the dishwasher, durable enough not to get cracked by our clumsy kitchen help, and classically beautiful enough to look at home in our ultra-sleek, space-needle-like kitchen, the charming French bistro we’re opening in our living room and all the formal state dinners we host in our French-blue-exact-replica-of-Versailles-if-you-squint-and-you’ve-never-actually-been-to-Versailles dining room.

Plus! As I was digging around in our junk drawer last month for my trusty see-through ruler so I could more easily tape off the stripes I stenciled in our Art Nouveau/Art Deco old-timey apothecary-themed bathroom, I found four long-forgotten Crate&Barrel gift cards … and they were worth $160!

So I trolled through the dinnerware section of crateandbarrel.com and found these reasonably sized, reasonably priced classic beauties:
And after stopping by the store to discover that I loved them in person as much as I loved them online, I placed my order Sunday night. And by last night, I had my first ceremonial peanut butter and jelly sandwich on my first reasonably sized, reasonably priced classic beauty of a salad plate:

While we had our credit cards out …
Like many vintage Chicago courtyard-building condos, ours has an impossible-to-decorate length of hallway that just cries out for some kind of drama. But I have no interest in installing vaulted ceilings or a soothing water feature. So we planned to do the next best thing: install four-way dimmers on the lights. Of course, we talked about it for four years but never did anything about it. But a couple months ago our friend Rob heard us mention it and he recommended installing spotlight bulbs as well so we could cast dramatic pools of light down our runway. And last weekend, I finally did:
Of course, no project in our condo is without its dramatic setbacks, and last Saturday night found me on the 24-hour helpline with the dimmer manufacturer trying to figure out why I couldn’t get the lights to work. Turns out—and are you ready for this?—the developer of our condo labeled the wiring wrong. I know! Crazy! And they’ve been so spot-on with all their other efforts to burn down our building. But the dude on the phone—after repeated expressions of amazement at the clusterfuck of mislabeled wires I found spurting out of my junction boxes—managed to help me figure out what went where … and how to label it all correctly for the next person who goes digging around in our walls. And now we have a dramatic hallway runway fit for a couple dramatic queens. Ahem.

It Gets Better Project
While four of the 26 tapes we made in our epic taping marathon on October 3 got edited and posted online within a week, the company that volunteered to edit everything else overestimated the availability of its resources and nothing else has been edited or posted since then. But! They’ve found me someone else who says she can finish everything for me. (Those lesbians can fix anything.) And! The Chicago Tribune ran a pretty spectacular piece on us in its prominent Page 2 location on Monday. You can read it HERE.

Brian Cory
My first job out of college—aside from waiting tables at an Italian restaurant with fabulous breadsticks and even fabulouser gilded crown moldings—was crunching marketing numbers at Telecom*USA, a now-defunct Iowa phone book publisher that was a direct descendant of the epic 1984 Ma Bell divestiture. I worked there from 1991 until I found my first advertising job in 1992, and the only people I remember from the company are two fun young newlyweds who soon moved to Nebraska and disappeared off the grid and continue to elude my periodic Google and Facebook attempts to search for any sign of them.

And apparently there was also some dude there named Brian Cory. I have no recollection of ever working with someone named Brian Cory. And since it was my first job out of college and my first step up the ladder to international fame and fortune, I certainly have no recollection of developing any level of feel-free-to-joke-with-each-other-inappropriately relationship with any coworker from that company.

And yet this Brian Cory dude recently found me on LinkedIn and sent me THIS little gem of a note to mark our first communication in almost 20 years (assuming I had any memory of him):
His Palinesque command of English honestly makes it impossible for me to tell whether he’s a douchebag homophobe or just an epic loser with the judgment and sense of humor of a nine-year-old. Either way, I can't think of anyone I haven't seen for 20 years I would address this way as my first attempt at re-initiating communication. LinkedIn doesn’t offer an option for me to flag his note to me as offensive, so I’m doing the next best thing: posting it on my blog with his name repeated in the HTML text enough times that it might rise to the top of any Google search a future employer or potential boyfriend might do of his name. Brian Cory!

The wisdom of the bleachers

Last week, a bunch of people in my office had an after-work drinking binge get-together at a bar down the street. Apparently, they spent a lot of money on liquor, because the bar's owner offered to buy everyone there tickets to today's Cubs game.

Of course, they accepted. And of course, there were last-minute cancelations. And of course, I volunteered to snatch up one of the leftover tickets.

So I spent this afternoon in steerage the left field bleacher seats amid a sea of assholes raucous, drunken fans enjoying a Cubs game roasting in the oppressive heat in the warming glow of the autumn sun. I'd never sat in the bleachers before, and I have to say that the screaming, alcoholic morons fans who sit there are the most loud, obnoxious, juvenile and borderline retarded enthusiastic people I've ever watched a Cubs game with.

And two of them, sitting all shirtless and tattooed and festooned with peanuts dangling from their ears and nipples a row in front of us and about 10 people to our left, were kind of hot in a "the bar's closing in 15 minutes so I guess you'll do" kind of way.

These people -- even before they're drunk -- will yell anything that occurs to them at anyone who happens to be in their line of blurred vision. And whether they're clever or not, they'll often seek congratulations for their outbursts with self-aware guffaws accompanied by the international gesture for "Dude, I'm holding my hand in the air for you to slap it palm-to-palm in a gesture of pathologically unsocialized solidarity. So gimme five!"

Here is a small sampling of the things I learned from these people today:

These seats rock.
These seats suck.
That girl has a nice rack.
Dude, that's my beer.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn sucks.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn, you suck.
(Chicago Cubs Left Fielder Moises) Alou rocks.
(Chicago Cubs Left Fielder Moises) Alou! Over here! Wave at me!
Right field sucks.
(Unofficial Cubs Troubadour) Ronnie Woo Woo rocks.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn sucks.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn has herpes.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn has a big butt.
Dude, you're scaring me.
Jesus, this game is taking forever.
Eleven fucking innings. And the score is still just 2-2.
You suck.
No, YOU suck.
No, YOU suck.
Asshole.

Double standard

Jeremy threw a nice little Labor Day party last night. About 10 of us from the chorus sat around talking and drinking and singing along with CDs for a couple hours, and then we all headed out the door to walk to the new sports bar that just opened up about five blocks from his house.

We had barely all gotten out his door and onto the sidewalk when two black women standing at a window on the third floor across the street saw us and yelled "FAGGOTS!" down at us.

Now, whether or not they could tell we were gay -- hell, whether or not we actually were all gay -- is of no importance compared to the fact that these women knew it was perfectly OK to yell "FAGGOTS!" at a sizeable crowd of complete strangers in a population-dense neighborhood and that they would suffer no repercussions. No significant reaction from us. No threats of violence from other gay people in the vicinity. No horrified stares from their more civilized neighbors. Nothing.

And they were right. We just ignored them and kept on walking.

But had we yelled "NIGGERS!" back at them -- which none of us would do, of course, though we would be perfectly within our rights for doing so, and it would be the most logical retort in an insult war since all we knew about them was that they were black (and obviously combative assholes) -- we could very well have set off a scene that could realistically involve angry neighbors pouring out in the streets, threats and/or acts of violence, police involvement, and maybe even coverage on the next night's news.

Why?