Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- I quietly skipped last week without tell you all, sorry about that. Sometimes work gets in the way. Sometimes, however, Alex gets hammered on a Thursday night and is so hungover that she locks her office door all day and cranks out this 4,500 word pile of genius. Every week is different, really… So, fresh off an opening week Fantasy Football Victory, Alex is back this week to tackle your problems for you. Daryl has more questions because Daryl has SO. MANY. QUESTIONS!!! FastFreeFall is feeling sensitive about his turn-ons, and I feel the need to put him at ease, Jimmy may or may not be sexually harrassing me and Rex needs some help ranking NFL running backs. After that, we tackle the second half of Sicariothax’s stripper question from last week, talk progressivism with JH Walz and close it out by helping Dan choose some fashionable accessories. Submitted by: Daryl Do patent lawyers wear patent leather shoes? Funny you should ask… Patent leather is is leather that has been treated and finished with a shiny, glossy coat. The process was introduced to the United States by Seth Boyden, a Newark, NJ-based inventor who further improved the process into a commercially-viable manufacturing process. His process used a linseed-oil based lacquer coating and created a much dressier kind of leather that very quickly became a standard part of formal dress. Boyden, in a bit of historical irony that even Alanis Morissette would appreciate, never patented the process;-) But, since most patent attorneys that I know are hella-rich, lake house-owning, private jet-flying bigwigs, I am guessing that, yes, they do in fact wear patent leather shoes. No one is rolling into court in her $2,000 Escada suit wearing workboots... Who was born in Boston and would have gone by the Twitter handle "Silence Dogood" if he were alive today? This is super easy. Obviously, it’s Uma Thurman. Oh, wait, you said “he”... Well, I guess I need to change my answer then. Like all of the best founding ideas, Ben Franklin was from Boston. He was born on Milk Street (in what is now a Sir Speedy that I might sometimes walk past going from home to office) and attended the Boston Latin School. Which leads me to this week’s “Lessons on Boston”...the Boston Latin School. Harvard University was founded in 1636, which makes it pretty old...so old, in fact, that it had already churned out a full sixty graduating classes by the time the second-oldest college in America, William & Mary, was founded. Harvard is, however, not even the oldest continually operating school in Boston (yea, I know it's not in Boston, just go with it), as it remains one year younger than Boston Latin. There is, in fact, a joke among Latin School alum that Harvard was founded only so that Latin School grads had someplace to go after they graduated. That’s probably not true...but it's not definitely not true. BLS is also a pioneering “Public Exam Admissions” school, like Stuyvesant or the other specialized high schools in New York City, or Chicago’s selective enrollment schools, and somewhat of an oasis in the decrepit morass of the Boston Public Schools. It is something of a tragedy that Boston, which is so often considered to be the education capital of the World, operates a public school system that is barely even accredited. That, however, is a VERY long story for another day. Do you ever beam with pride while walking down a cobblestone street in Boston? No...usually while walking down a cobblestone street I am cursing the bastards who paved the roads with this shit and at no time in the last 300 years thought to make the road, you know, passable!!! Yea, I get it, they are quaint and they have great history and they look great in pictures...have you ever tried to walk on them in anything other than sneakers? There are Olympic gymnasts who couldn’t traverse Acorn Street in heels without falling on their absurdly toned asses. Anyone who tells you that they “beam with pride” when walking down a cobblestone street is completely full of shit. Walking down a cobblestone street actually requires some pretty intense concentration...there is no casual strolling with a toothy smile. Walking on real cobblestones requires a head-down focus that leaves little room for thoughts other than “richest neighborhood in New England and they can’t pave the fucking road.” Here’s the thing...there are very, very few actual cobblestone streets left. Acorn Street (which I gave you a picture of a couple of weeks ago!) is really the only one that I know of, plus some random spots nearby where pavement laid over the cobbles has broken away. Real cobblestones were rounded stones pull straight from the ground and then fixed into a street as a driving surface. They had the advantage of being much sturdier and more rain resistant than a dirt road, with the obvious drawback of being horribly debilitating to any wheeled vehicle. Today, that discouragement of traffic is most of the attraction for the people who live on or near those streets. Much of what is referred to as “cobblestone” through the North End and Faneuil Hall is actually “sett”, a construction of hewn granite blocks made to provide for a smoother surface to drive on. They are still, it should be noted, brutal to navigate with heels, but they much more wagon-friendly than cobbles, and a whole lot more walkable in better walking shoes. Do you think Hillary will wear a red pantsuit when she visits Boston for her book tour in November? Hillary doesn't pick out her clothes until the morning of, and she doesn't own a red pantsuit. Oh, wait, you mean Hillary CLINTON!!! My mistake, I was thinking of someone else entirely... But, you know, Daryl, we are taking new residents...you could move here. I mean, other than a desire to live here, how else could I explain the never-ending questions about Boston? Unless...wait...do you have a crush on me? That might explain it, too. Which is totally cool, I am quite flattered! I am married and all, so that part is going to be a touch awkward, but I’m super adorable, so it’s understandable. No one is going to blame you! This question caused me to actually look into Hillary’s Boston book signing, and now I am staring at my computer with my jaw dropped and my stomach muscles aching from laughter. Because this isn’t a book signing, it’s a fucking concert tour! And you can get into the Opera House to see Hill for the low, low price of only $146. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX DOLLARS!!! To see a washed up, multiple time Presidential loser who is pimping her universally-panned, self-absolving, everyone-else-blaming revisionist history on a miserably executed 2016 Presidential Campaign. And who is, by the way, absolutely operating right now as if she is running for President in 2020. I have a feeling that big donors will squash that idea, but for now, she is 100% thinking that she will run again. Some men, as the Captain notes in Cool Hand Luke, you just can’t reach. Also worth noting? The Opera House seats 2,677, which puts the total gate for this naked cash grab at somewhere on the order of $450,000. I could probably sit and figure out an estimate of how much money Hill is taking in for writing and promoting this book, but that seems to be kind of a redundant exercise. It’s a lot, and while I would never blame her for taking it, I wonder very sincerely about why anyone would choose to pay her. She has nothing interesting left to say, and nothing at all to say that she isn’t willing to say for free. She’s living like Linda Evangelista, only she isn’t hot and her price to get out of bed is a lot higher than $10,000/day. Hillary has become the Metallica of politicians: she was good at one point a long time ago, and now she is just gleefully sucking in huge amounts of money from her idiot acolytes who feel like she still has something to offer. At least Metallica can still play shit off of Ride the Lightning to give people their money’s worth. Hillary is charming $150 a pop to blame Jim Comey and talk about a tax credit she voted to reauthorize in 2003.
Submitted by: FastFreeFall
Dear Alex, For years, I've suffered from a raging case of foot fetish. The sight of a woman's shapely foot short circuits my brain. Lately, I've been catching hell from friends and associates for this sore affliction. Does a cure exist and if it does, should i seek the treatment? All the best, FFF Feet are, honestly, kinda gross. They get blisters and callouses and they get weirdly deformed and dirty. Also, they are generally the worst smelling part of any person that doesn’t usually get touched only with products made by Charmin. But to each his own, I guess...foot fetishes certainly aren’t super weird, and it’s not real hard to figure out how feet might be incorporated into your totally not weird sexual activities. In answering this, I Googled "sexiest feet in Hollywood". And don't even pretend I don't make real sacrifices to write this column for you, because I will never, ever be the same after that. The only good news is that the first results that came up were for Salma Hayek, and any one who has ever met me knows that Salma Hayek is my oldest, and most intense girl crush (ok...she and Kate Beckinsale are tied). Further, I would posit that Desperado Salma Hayek is very possibly the single most attractive woman who has ever lived. So, duh, there is no way that I am passing up the chance to post a picture of Salma Hayek for my foot-loving readers. This is clearly sort of subjective but I (don’t) get paid to render my opinions here, so my opinions are more or less fact: I don’t think foot fetishes fall into the category of bizarre sexual deviances, and I see no need for you to "cure" yourself of this fetish. No one is making an episode of My Strange Addiction about someone with a foot fetish. {I just realized that my favorite episode of that show was, in fact, not really an episode of that show but was an episode of Intervention about a chick who sniffed aerosol all day long. Good news, though, Allison seems to be handling her recovery quite well.} It’s not like you are in love with your car, or you eat couch cushions...there are some legitimately bizarre people out there, so I am not going to get too hung up on your love of feet. Also, it is a pretty easy fetish to work into a healthy relationship. Honestly, if you start with “I am going to want to give you a lot of foot massages and do a lot of shoe shopping”, you are in a pretty decent place with most women. She’s gonna think it’s weird if all you ever want to do is make out with her feet, but so long as you take care of your other responsibilities, I really can’t see how spending a relatively larger portion of your attention on her feet during sexy time is going to be much of a drag on the overall relationship. Special Friday bonus, I will let you know that at least two of the #BeckySquad have foot tattoos, but I will let you try and wrap your mind around which ones. So, I say...own your fetish! Also, stay tuned, because...
Submitted by: Jimmy Chemtrails
Can you post pics of hot Misfits and fans in Stilletos, including legs? For the people in Texas. Or just me. So...this is probably not the creepiest question I’ve gotten yet, but...actually, no, wait. I think it is the creepiest question I’ve gotten so far. But, we are here to please, so @molratty, @jholmsted, @vixenrougue, @BlazerMc88, @_cchayes and I took a day off for a girl's trip to the spa, got our gams all waxed up and took some pictures for you. We put the camera away before the pillow fight, but we hope you enjoy... Since I am kind of a wiseass, I first went looking for pictures of Glenn Danzig in heels, only to find that there actually are things that you can’t find on the Internet. (Also on this list...bakeries in Olympia, WA that will deliver cupcakes to the divine Kayla on her birthday!!! Everyone wish Kayla a two-day-late birthday!) That did, however, send me down a bit of a Wikipedia rabbit hole and taught me all sorts of stuff about Glenn Danzig. First of all, he was not in the Misfits that were rivals to Jem and the Holograms. Turns out that is a totally different band. This is a good time to note that, at the next Misfits Annual Meeting, I am submitting a proposal to make this the official theme song of this website. Also, I have lined up enough shareholder support to submit my own slate of directors, give myself control of the board and oust J.R. in a potentially messy proxy fight. But keep that a secret...I don’t want her to know. Glenn Danzig did, however, write some classical music (Black Aria, Black Aria II), and also wrote songs like this somewhat pedestrian Johnny Cash ditty and this interesting, subtly creepy throwback for Roy Orbison. Also, he is now 62 years old, which really seems super fucking old, and makes me think it is a good decision that he is no longer wearing ridiculous makeup and acting all goth-weird while playing metal. Did you see this story about the woman with the World’s Longest Legs? She is 6’9” and has 52 inch legs. As a reminder, I am just over 60 inches tall. I think that Kim Ann is a good inch shorter than I am...which means the two of us barely reach past that woman’s waist!!! And if she is wearing the heels she has on in that picture...well, let’s just hope that she’s not wearing a miniskirt. Or, maybe that she is, depends on your perspective, I guess.
Submitted by: Rex
I'd like to know who the best running back who ever played pro ball is / was. Good question, Rex, and you’ve definitely come to the right place. There is literally nobody on the Internet who has a deeper well of sports knowledge than Alex F. Baldwin. The F, in fact, stands for football!!! {cuts and pastes answer from her friend} Running back is a unique position in all of sports, in ways that make it hard to judge the greats just by their accrued statistics. The production of the guy playing the running back position on any team is more dependent on the rest of his teammates that any other position in sports. The talents of the offensive line, the scheme employed by the coaches and the level of danger posed by the passing offense all contribute to the environment in which the running back accumulates statistics. Also of note: due to the extremely punishing nature of the profession, they have incredibly short shelf-lives. As a mathematical demonstration of this, compare rushing yards to home runs for reference. In the 100 year or so history of “modern” Major League Baseball, there have been 44 seasons of at least 50 home runs, including Giancarlo Stanton this year. The modern NFL has about half as much history, so drawing a line for a similarly outstanding season for a running back gives us about 1,750 yards (there have been 27 such seasons.) In other words, a 50 home run season is more or less as impressive as a 1,750 yard season...and each is an outstanding season. The career home run record, depending on your feelings about Barry Bonds, is either 762 or 755...that equates to 15 outstanding seasons by a hitter. Emmitt Smith’s career rushing record of 18,355 represents only about 10 ½ outstanding seasons for a running back. What’s more, Smith is much more of an outlier than Bonds or Hank Aaron are - he is nearly 10% ahead of second place. It would take 13 ½ seasons outstanding seasons for a hitter to crack the top 5 on the all time home run list, but only 8 seasons of outstanding performance for a runner to crack the top five. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the career rushing list isn’t a great way to measure the greatness of running backs. It is overwhelmingly dominated by the longevity of the players in a way that other popular statistical metrics are not. And it is why Emmitt Smith’s hugely impressive rushing total doesn’t make him the greatest of all time (other reasons: he played behind historically great offensive lines and averaged a good-but-not-legendary 4.2 yards per carry.) Here then, beyond reproach, is your list of the greatest running backs in NFL history: 10) Tony Dorsett 9) Emmitt Smith 8) Eric Dickerson 7) Earl Campbell 6) LaDanian Tomlinson 5) Barry Sanders 4) O.J. Simpson 3) Jim Brown 2) Gale Sayers 1) Walter Payton Dude, I’m from Chicago...what were you expecting? Submitted by: Sicariothrax What's your opinion of bachelor parties? This question came in right after “Why do strippers exist?” and I assume is related. And the answers are sort of related, too. I have been a full attendee at two bachelor parties, one of which involved a weekend in Miami with one other girlfriend and like 8 guys. Part of the irony of that was that his fiance, a good friend of mine, strongly encouraged the idea of me going because she thought I would keep them out of trouble. It’s like she doesn’t even know me!!! My guess, based on limited information, is that they usually turn out to be less debaucherous than threatened. There is a lot more drinking than is good for anybody involved, and probably too much gambling whenever that is around, but I really don’t think that most normal guys at most bachelor parties end up snorting cocaine out of a hooker’s asscrack. Bachelor parties, like many other things involving a lot of alcohol, dramatically amplify a person’s natural characteristics. Bachelor parties often (usually?) make a mandatory trip to at least one strip club, which for most of the guys is a pretty harmless, if kinda dirty, experience. Honestly, I feel like a large portion of normal guys aren’t totally comfortable in strip clubs...there is the initial sensory overload and the sheer joy of seeing a bunch of boobs bouncing around and feeling like you are somewhere that is somewhat forbidden...but pretty quickly it just turns into an odd sense of shame combined with a feeling that this experience is much more expensive than it is fun. Every group of guys has one or two friends who really, really love it, though. Chances are you know who it is long before you walk in, and every woman knows which of her husband’s friends is the dirty one. Important note, ladies...if you are not sure who it is, then it is very likely your husband!!! That guy settles himself right up against the stage and starts throwing down $1 bills like he is Puff Daddy. This may also be the guy who is pretty sure that he is going to get a blow job from one of the strippers in the back room for like $60. This guy is, I am almost certain, a complete douche. So, you get a lot of talk about “What happens there stays there…” and whatnot, but for the most part, bachelor parties are just an excuse for guys to hang out together, drink too much and act like they are at a fraternity party. Sure, the married dirtball is going to use it as an excuse to try and pick up girls, but that is basically because he is an asshole, not because he is at a bachelor party. He’d be trying to do the same thing somewhere else, it’s just that here he tries to pretend that it is only because nothing counts during a bachelor party. So...true story! Three or four years ago, my husband and I went to like seven weddings in a single summer, and most of them were his friends, so he went to a whole bunch of bachelor parties. One of them, for a high school friend, was on the third consecutive weekend of bachelor parties and the plan was to play golf on Saturday, then have a cookout at the groom’s brother’s house and then head to Providence for the night (there is nothing at all useful in Providence, but there are a bunch of strippies.) Early in the week, he told me that he was probably just going to golf and eat but skip the overnight...he was, in his own words, kinda strip-clubbed out. I’m sure that a part of this was a general feeling that his adorable wife was probably going to get tired of being alone with the kids every weekend while he was hanging out in seedy bars with naked chicks;-), but mostly I think there is a limit to how often you can rage for three consecutive days and recover in time for work. Skip ahead to Saturday afternoon, and he called me from the car on the way home and told me that he lost his wedding ring on the golf course. My first thought was “Man, that sucks.” His first thought was “Holy shit, did I ever pick a good weekend to skip going to a strip club, because this is MUCH hard to explain on Sunday morning.” Submitted by: JH Walz (somewhere around Newark) Why are Progressives angry and hateful? I’ll start by saying that I know a lot of progressives who are not angry and hateful, and a lot of conservatives who are. No political ideology has the market cornered on anger and hate. But, to the implied point of the question, there is a certain form of condescending hatred that really insufferable liberals (looking at you, tentacle-porn guy) love to spew while preaching diversity, equality, inclusion, tolerance, etc. It starts with a core belief of progressivism: we can play lip service to equality, but some of us are just WAY smarter than others, and we should be the ones making most of the decisions that impact your lives. We definitely value the unique life experiences enjoyed in our diverse communities across regional, social, racial, ethnic and religious strata (and, of course, by our xixters in each of the 217 genders) and feel like we all have important lessons of tolerance and understanding to be learned from all cultures. But holy shit, plebes, you don’t really think we should let people govern who went to public schools, do you? Why do you think we invented Harvard in the first place!!! It’s so the unwashed rubes like you don’t make the mistakes that tiny intellects are bound to make if they aren’t guided by a benevolent ruling class of educated elites. Anyone, therefore, who dares to disagree with the accepted dogma of those elites is literally committing a crime against humanity. They know what is best, and if you disagree with them it can only be because you hate poor people, or brown people, or less fortunate people. So, really, you started it, not them. They’re not angry and hateful, they are simply reacting to you being a morally grotesque bigot who deserves to be publicly shamed, humiliated and ruined. RUINED! Submitted by: Dan Are fanny packs back in style? FANNY PACKS NEVER WERE IN STYLE!!! It is one of the great accidents of American history that fanny packs ever became a thing. I mean, I guess they are practical, but how much can you possible have given up on life that you are willing to be seen in public with a fanny pack rather than just putting stuff in your pockets? Or, maybe think about leaving it in the car!!! There are, of course, some exceptions. Search and rescue folks or EMT’s sometimes carry fanny packs, because it is the easiest way to carry life-saving supplies without occupying their hands. The key, here, is “life-saving”. Fanny packs are acceptable only where there is a reasonable chance that it could literally save a person’s life. Not because you need to carry your lip gloss and you don’t want to put it in your camera bag. Google tells me that there are some hunting and fishing fanny packs, too. I still feel like you should carry a backpack instead, but maybe that gets in the way of wielding your gun...and I don’t really want to complicate the process of firing your gun, so feel free to tote your man purse right out into the river with you. I do have to stop here to note that @sirensoIiIoquy is a defender of fanny packs, and I hold her opinions on all fashion-related issues in extremely high regard. So, I am willing to accept that there may be some wiggle room on this, but mostly I just feel like you need to acknowledge that, just because something looks good on her doesn’t mean it will look good on you!!! Fanny Packs are, somewhat counter-intuitively, not quite the fashion tragedy that cargo shorts are (don't @ me on this...@ Anabel, and good luck with that). Fanny Packs are a greater fashion atrocity, but at least they have the decency to be patently ridiculous. Very few people think fanny packs are stylish, but there are huge numbers of otherwise reasonable adult males who still wear cargo shorts as if they are the subject of an Avril Lavigne song. Wait...can I stop for a second? Of course I can. But I have a confession to make, and I want you all to sit down and listen. I adore Avril Lavigne. Yea, manufactured, candy-coated, shallow pop...yada yada yada… I don’t care. She is utterly adorable, and she barely looks older than she did in 2003 (she’s only 32, so she is still like 20 years from Diane Lane/Jennifer Aniston “How does she never age?” territory, but I am calling it right now...she will still be gorgeous at 50). And while you are mocking my love of vapid pop music, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SIGNING ONE OF HER SONGS IN YOUR HEAD. Don’t even try to lie about that. I am somewhat saddened that her Canadian SuperMarriage to Chad Kroeger of Nickelback dissolved, but maybe that is for the best. He's not the least bit adorable or charming, and he dramatically reduces her level of adorable charmingness. If she is going to form a Canadian Marital Super Group (like The Traveling Wilbury's, only Canadian, and married to each other), I'd suggest we find a strapping, super hot and politely understated hockey player. Carried Underwood has already proven that the business model can work, and Avril's Canadianness is going to up the intensity a couple of notches. Now I just need someone to point me to a super cute, single Canadian hockey player that we can set Ms. Lavigne up with. Get to work on that, people. Before I wrap up for this week, I can’t, or course, talk about Avril Lavigne without mentioning the second greatest rumor that has ever surfaced, anywhere, about anything. (“Damnit, I don’t wanna be first anymore!” - Richard Gere’s hamster) Enjoy your weekend, everyone;-)
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We took a little hiatus for the summer, but now we're back with the #MisfitMemo, a rewind of some of our best (or worst?) tweets and posts on a variety of topics from the past week.
Let's dive in!
Trump undid Obama's unconstitutional pen stroke with DACA, people panicked over immediate deportation (not happening), and Dems screamed about heartless Republicans, and Rs started worrying about campaign implications.
Make Religious Tests Great Again!
Michael Ian Black had a fantastic 20-something tweet meltdown about Republicans, Christians, and science. We kinda hope he is the go to for Democrat slogans in 2018 and 2020.
Texas is an independence boasting, low tax, red state that often criticizes the scope of the federal government they pay the 2nd highest amount of money to of any state in the nation. Naturally that makes them hypocrites for accepting federal aid. Also immoral...or something.
#StopBetsy because due process is like sooooo antiquated and stuff. Throw it out with the Electoral College already!
Some more Misfit musings...
We just wanted to congratulate Mo for successfully completing the probation period and passing all of the tests required for an official Misfit follow!
(But really, Twitter is WEIRD.)
Don't forget to check out all our latest posts:
Plus a few older posts that were relevant this week:
If you're not following all of us, what is wrong with you? Go to Meet The Misfits and fix that, pronto. Also follow us @MisfitsPolitics to join the #MisfitGifChallenge on Wednesday nights & #MisfitMischief fun every Friday night! As always, keep checking back here for our latest writing endeavors!
Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- This is kind of a super-sized column because you people have a LOT of questions this week. Plus, I held about half of them out for next week because I can’t write 12,000 words at once. So, hold your horses, I will get to it next Friday! This week, Daryl wants to make fun of the way Bostonians talk and Jimmy thinks that a new TV duo bears some resemblance to a great New England sports partnership. Rex needs me to fix baseball, Mike wants to know why we call it “Fall” and Sicaiothrax is having trouble figuring out strippers. Dee is a little down on humanity these days, but I am hoping that a story from Smatt will maybe change that a little bit. And finally, Alex teaches you how to date your cousin!!! Submitted by: Daryl Do people from Boston pronounce "femur" as "FEMA"? It is more of a “femah”, but yea, pretty much. Funny thing about accents, though, they are never quite what they are portrayed by outsiders, and Boston is no exception. In some cases, the accents are spot on (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, for obvious reasons...Ben’s needs work) but more often than not it is too New York-inflected and an obvious fake to the locals. Like, you ever watch Ray Donovan? Nails on a chalkboard...it’s close, but they just don’t quite get it. {Technical analysis...it isn’t just dropping the “r”, you have to kind of add a half syllable, too. So “sure” doesn’t become “shah”, it becomes “sho-ah”} In writing this, I came across this story, and I am sad to report (if you didn’t already know), that Jay Thomas lost his battle with cancer. Oh...sorry Bostonians, you need some translation… Eddie LeBac died. I also can’t really figure out why some places (like Boston) are so accent-famous, and others aren’t. A lot of shows based in New York feature exaggerated voices from Brooklyn and Queens, but they are never really central to the show like it seems to be for anything based in Boston. And let’s not even start on the Upper Midwest...once the Coen brothers made Fargo, it became mandatory that every person on any show from the upper midwest eat cheese curds and bratwurst at all times and talk like they are recapping their favorite hotdish recipe. You know, kinda like @molratty! Side note: I could go for a paczki right about now… Conversely, though, the makers of ER, or Chicago PD or any of the many other Chicago-based shows never made a point to have the show covered in Chicago accents, and I can attest to those accents being just as absurd as Boston’s. Also, special note: I still have a wee bit of my native accent;-). The same goes for Philadelphia (Cold Case, Philly...um, Boy Meets World): if you meet someone from Philly, you know it the second they ask you for a glass of “wooter”, but TV makers don’t seem to make that a key part of their writing. I don’t really have a theory as to why this is, so instead I am going to talk about the difference between accents in Greater Boston. In truth, the people in the real heart of the city (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, the South End and even much of not-Boston but close Cambridge) don’t really have accents. They come from all over the world, so there is very little by way of Pahking the Cah in Hahvahd Yahd. Even notoriously afflicted places like Charlestown, South Boston, Allston and Brighton are losing their accents as the neighborhoods get younger, richer and more influenced by outsiders. The western suburbs, which have always been wealthy and regionally diverse, were never really hotbeds of dropped r’s and use of “pissah” as both a noun and an adjective, and are likely becoming even less afflicted. The real accents are to be found to the north and south of the city, extending a very long way. The average person in Nashua, NH (45 miles from Boston) or Providence, RI (60 miles) probably sound more like TV Bostonians than do the residents of Brookline (2), Newton (6), Wellesley (12) and Needham (10). The really fun part, though, is that the North Shore and South Shore accents are actually quite different. This is really indicative of a quirk of metro Boston: the two shores are just on opposite ends of a very small city (Lynn and Quincy are definitely North and South, respectively, and are maybe 15 miles from each other in a straight line?) but they may as well be separated by a flaming ocean. Unless she is driving to the Cape, Jenny would have very little reason to ever go to the South Shore, and by the same token, Justin would rarely, if ever, find an excuse to go to the North Shore unless it was to pass through on the way to New Hampshire or Maine. And, obviously, someone has done very serious study on this subject...so just read (and listen to) this. This reminds me of a joke!!! Good Ol’ Boy from Alabama is visiting Harvard and stops to ask a local “Hey, can y’all tell me where the library’s at?”. The be-tweeded elitist Harvard man responds “At Harvard, we never end a sentence in a preposition.” To which the visitor replies “Oh, I’m sorry...can y’all tell me where the library’s at, asshole?”.
Submitted by: Jimmy Chemtrails
Is "Hannity to Lahren" the "Brady to Moss" equivalent in the field of idiocy? Simply unstoppable. Is there another duo - Brady/Moss, Montana/Rice, Cousy/Russell that comes close to the superlatives that Hannity/Lahren bring to dumbassery? This sort of remains to be seen, but it is not a bad analogy. Hannity would be Brady in this example - the legend of idiocy, the GOAT, the long-time consistent perpetrator of remarkably consistent, world-class idiocy - and I think that sort of fits. It’s not perfect, since there are a lot of idiots on television (and radio) and I am not sure that Hannity has separated himself from people like Keith Olberman in the way Brady has lapped every other Quarterback of his time, but it is close enough to work (Olberman is a problematic analogy...great quarterbacks don’t get run out of town as often as he has, so I don’t have a good parallel. Kurt Warner, maybe?) I’m not quite sure that Tomi Lahren is to crazy what Randy Moss is to catching footballs just yet. She clearly has that kind of talent, and her early-career work has shown a fantastic ability to be delusional, insufferable and incredibly arrogant, but she’s never put together a full season. Part of Hannity’s greatness is that he is crazy in a way that his bosses love...he appeals to other crazy people in a way that advertisers are willing to pay for. Tomi hasn’t balanced that, yet, and she got herself fired by Glenn Beck (he’s like Trent Dilfer crazy - good enough to win with the right crazy supporting cast, but he can’t drive the crazy train). It is worth noting, though, that Randy Moss had kind of flamed out before he met up with Tommy Touchdown. He had six great seasons in Minnesota (about 1400 yards and 13 TD’s per season), then he had a mediocre season with some off-the-field issues and got shipped off to Oakland, where he turned in two really poor and disinterested seasons. After that, the Patriots traded for him, and he (surprisingly) came alive under the focus and discipline of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady’s Patriots, catching an NFL-record 23 Touchdown passes in 2007. He never quite recaptured that magic, although his 2009 season (1,264 yards, 13 TD’s) was very good, and he was pretty much a non-factor by 2010. And here is where the analogy gets tough...I’m not sure Randy Moss was even Tom Brady’s best wingman. Certainly his 2007 season is beyond anything we’ve seen from anyone else, but there are a bunch of other guys with longer-term partnerships with Brady. Troy Brown had 200 catches in Brady’s first two seasons as an NFL QB, Julian Edelman has been his most trusted target for the past four seasons, and before that (even during Moss’s time), Brady looked regularly for Wes Welker when he needed a key third down conversion. Rob Gronkowski does things that no Tight End in football history has ever done, and Brady finds him for nearly a touchdown per game when they play together. In fact, Gronkowski’s 69 TD catches from Brady are nearly twice as many as the next player (Moss’s 39). Weird fact time!!! Tom Brady has thrown 456 regular season Touchdowns (fourth all time), but has used a wider variety of receivers than anyone else in doing so. Peyton Manning used 49 receivers for his 539 TD’s, and Brett Favre and Drew Brees used 61 and 58 for their 508 and 465, respectively. With the additions Brandin Cooks, Rex Burkhead, Dwayne Allen and Mike Gillislee, combined with Edelman’s injury and a desire to not overuse Gronkowski, that number is almost certain to rise even further early this season. Don’t put it past Belichick and Josh McDaniels to sneak Malcom Brown or Dontae Hightower into the offense to steal one at some point, as well. Back to the question. I’m excited about this pairing. Hannity is a legend in the field of idiocy, and Tomi Lahren has LeBron James-level talent. Is Hannity the kind of teammate to bring out her best? I think he can do it, but the proof will be in the on-screen product. All of your analagous pairs turned in years of brilliance, usually with multiple championships...I think Hannity is an idiot on that level, but Tomi has a lot of work to do to be considered a true great of idiocy. {Skip to October 31, when Tomi defends her “slutty slave” costume on the air by proclaiming “I can’t be racist, Sean, I’m hot.”} As native Houstonian, I’m surprised how bigly people misunderstand the fourth largest city (and most libertarian city in US, possible world). What cities in the US are similarly misunderstood? Further, do people really recognize the importance of Houston (refining/petrochem). I’m not totally sure that Houston is really that misunderstood, to be honest. Most Americans with even a modicum of general knowledge know that Houston is a) huge, and b) the center of the US Energy industry. And I think that most Americans have an inherent understanding of its importance, especially as it relates to everything oil and gas related. Slightly underestimated? Possibly, but I don’t think it is that dramatic. I think it is a stretch to call it the most libertarian city in the US, although that is an inherently hard-to-define term, so it is hard to argue definitively. Certainly with no income tax and lax zoning rules, Houston is far from the Nanny-State, but it’s still not socially hands-off enough to really be called a truly Libertarian place. Take New Orleans, for example, with its notoriously lax social behavior laws...or Las Vegas, where the only building code is that whatever you build has to be bigger and more absurd than the last thing someone built. Both of those places also enjoy a greater “freedom of lifestyle” (I made that term up) than Houston does. It is maybe a little misleading to call it the fourth largest city in America, since metro areas are a better measure of that than just the city-limits population. When we think about the influence and importance of a city, it is more useful to think of people who identify as being somehow attached to the city rather than people who technically live within the city limits. Jacksonville, Florida is about 35% bigger than Boston, Seattle or Washington, DC, and almost twice as big as Atlanta, but there is no way you could visit those places and think that Jacksonville is the “biggest” city. All four of those other cities have metro areas that are 2-4 times bigger than Jacksonville, and that is what gives you the sense of the size and scope of the city when you are there. Even by that measure, Houston is clearly one of America’s major metropolises, and its place in the public conscience may not quite reflect that, but I don’t think it is too far off. The US has, basically, three mega-cities: New York (20 million people), Los Angeles (14) and Chicago (10). After that there are a bunch of very large, very important cities with between 4 and 6.5 million people (in order): Dallas, Philly, Houston, Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, Riverside, Phoenix and Seattle. Houston seems like it is pretty adequately placed in that group. Obviously, the one that really jumps off of that list is Riverside, which is really a combination of Riverside, San Bernardino, Ontario and surrounding areas, more commonly referred to as “The Inland Empire”. The problem, in this analysis, is that there is really no central place here...there is just a massive sprawl of congestion stretching east from Los Angeles. It is too far from LA to call it part of the city, and it is too big to call it a distant exurb. So it exists as a massive, non-descript and thoroughly unexciting swath of humanity nestled between desert and mountains. With, oh, you know, four and a half million people (that is more than about half of states). Roughly half of those people are terrorized by Landlord Brownskin. If you want me to name cities that are misunderstood, I might start with those cities. Not one of them individually, but as a collective, it is just much bigger than you probably realize. I may also include New Orleans, which is substantially smaller than most Americans would likely guess and culturally punches way above its weight. Or Hunstville, AL, which is not remotely what most non-Alabamians think of when they think Alabama (NASA’s rocket propulsion research center and the Marshall Space Flight center drive that). To be really honest, I think Chicago is probably bigger than most non-midwesterners think. San Jose is probably underestimated in its influence, which is too often attributed to San Francisco. But to the point about Houston and the public conscience...I can’t think of a significant TV Show or Movie that was set in Houston, unless you count astronauts announcing that they have problems. It is clearly, as pop culture goes, less relevant than Texas’ other giant metro area, Dallas. So, it does seem to be somewhat under-counted in pop culture, and I am not totally sure why that is. Maybe y’all are just boring!!!
Submitted by: Rex
{Alex suggested that there should be ties in baseball} How does the math work on that? Never mind tradition (I do, though). How does it work? Look, I get it: baseball loves its traditions and never wants to change anything. Throwing a hard object at 100 mph at someone’s head, or barreling through a stationary catcher at full speed to try and dislodge the ball, or scratching your nuts and spitting tobacco in public are all somehow super important to the game and can never be changed. But some of those traditions are really fucking stupid. Like...why does the manager wear a uniform? Coaches in every other sport dress like regular people...in basketball and hockey they wear suits, and in football they wear pleated khakis from 2002 or whatever sweaty practice clothes they had in the laundry basket at the office. Soccer coaches? My god...they all look like they walked right off of Joseph Abboud’s runway. But baseball managers, for some reason, feel the need to dress as if they could be called upon to go into the game at any moment. Stop it, guys...you are old and fat, you aren’t fooling anybody. You don’t need to have a number, Skip. Also, I just learned that the second of those coach links, current Shanghai PISG coach (formerly of Zenit St. Petersburg, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Porto) Andres Villas-Boas, who is maybe the most stylish man in all of professional sports, is not at all related to Brazilian model Simone Villas Boas. And since you are now saying “Who is Simone Villas Boas?”, I will go ahead and take the liberty, in the spirit of Alison Brie, or posting a totally gratuitous picture of her looking suspiciously like Jessica Rabbit. Back to the point, though, if anyone in baseball would get their head out of 1953 and look around, they’d realize that extra innings in a regular season game is a stupid idea. The Red Sox and Yankees played a game last month that went 16 innings and lasted nearly seven hours. THAT IS NOT FUN!!! All it does is leave fans bored, ruin everyone’s TV schedule for the rest of the day and wear out an entire pitching staff for like three days. And for what? So you can have a winner in one of 162 regular season games? Repeat...ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO GAMES!!! I know that baseball people like to treat the sanctity of the game as if it is the single most important resource managed by humanity, but you’ve already ordered up juiced baseballs, you can change this, too. The math would be simple. You could do it like hockey used to do it, where a winning team gets two points, a losing team gets none and teams that tie get one each. In that sense, a tie is half of a win, and if everyone ends up playing the same number of games, then ties are essentially disregarded and your normal “Games Behind” calculation that baseball fans are used to still applies. Or you can do it like they do in soccer, where they devalue ties (because there are more of them) and winning teams get three points while ties award one point to each team. That makes a tie worth only one third of a win and theoretically encourages more aggressive play at the end of close games, but it requires a new standings system based on points (like hockey) rather than the more normal standings. The choice of record-keeping is entirely discretionary based on the goals of the league, but either would work fine. And, if you wanted to maintain extra innings, you could just limit it to one or two extra innings and then call it a tie. That preserves some of your historical strategy and understanding of the game, but eliminates the incredibly tedious, mind-numbingly useless idea of playing 17 inning games in late April.
Submitted by: Mike Out Yonder
1) Why is Autumn also called Fall, and why it has the useless 'n' in it? 2) Is pumpkin spice everything an insidious plot to kill us all? I always assumed that it was because leaves fall off of trees, temperatures fall and the sun falls lower and lower in the sky every day, and most etymology sources say that it is shortened from “the fall of the leaves”. The phrasing seems to have originated in England in the 12th or 13th century but fell out of favor in the UK within the last couple hundred years, even while it has remained popular in the United States. As for the silent ‘n’...it is a remnant of its root, the latin “autumnus”, and the survival of the ‘n’ is probably just because it allied early with column and the two of them were well-supplied and armed sufficiently to live through the great N purge of 1728. Forum and decorum weren’t nearly as lucky... Fall is also my least favorite season. I really don’t have anything against Fall on its own, what with its spectacular colors, consistently nice weather and Halloween-related spike in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup consumption. The beer is good, too. I just hate the end of Summer so much that Fall bothers me because of everything that it promises: short days, cold weather, snow and massive spikes in the budgets for heating oil and skin lotion. I used to get really bad seasonal depression, which stopped when I moved to Arizona and mostly never really came back, but it is not wholly gone. Fall also means, to your second question, the annual explosion of pumpkin spice everything. The intrusion of pumpkin spice (which really is just some combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and allspice) into every corner of the food, beverage and fragrance universe is a somewhat recent phenomenon, and frankly, it has gotten totally out of hand. This has got to stop, America. They make Pumpkin Spice Cheerios now!!! I’m not a coffee drinker, so I will pass on the lattes, which seem to be Ground Zero of the Pumpkin Spice infiltration. You can absolutely sign me up for the baked goods, whether it be cakes, muffins or cupcakes. That is more driven by my unhealthy love of cream cheese frosting than anything else, but I am all in on the Pumpkin Muffins at Stop & Shop for the next two months. Side note: I know I have said this before, but it bears repeating. Once we developed the technology to put cream cheese frosting on red velvet or spice cakes, there is absolutely no reason for carrot cake to still exist. It’s the rotary phone of food. I also like a good, subtle, non-sweetened Pumpkin beer, although more than one is usually too much. I don’t want it to taste like pie and I don’t want the glass covered in sugar...I just want a nice fall flavor. Boston Beer Works does it really well if you are near Fenway or the TD Garden in October. Most pumpkin beers are too sweet, though...the first three sips are nice and then it is overkill. Beyond that, though, we need to try and erase this scourge as quickly as possible. We don’t need candles and (non-frosted) donuts and cereal and cookies and candy and whatever other monstrosities the ad wizards will dream up this year. It’s like Americans don’t have the patience to go all the way from Back-to-School until Halloween without a seasonal event in between, so we have dreamed up a generic “fall” flavor and try to count the introduction of Starbuck’s Lattes as an unofficial holiday. Given the problematic-ness of Columbus Day, we are probably like three years out from replacing it with “Pumpkin Day”... So...plan to kill us all? Probably note. Plan to turn us all into the grown-up cast of Pretty LIttle Liars? Possible... Submitted by: Sicariothrax Why do strippers exist? Demand. I’m not going to give you too many details, but I have been in quite a few strip clubs in a lot of places. I’ve been in really expensive ones, I have been in really seedy ones, and pretty much everything in between. I’ve had friends who danced both occasionally and as a regular job, some of which consider it a great (and lucrative experience) and some of which have...less fond memories. I’ve been in a seemingly-normal bar in St. Petersburg Russia when two impossibly attractive women came out of the back, jumped up on each end of the bar and started stripping. Most interesting part of that, other than there being nothing in the atmosphere of the bar that said “strip club”, was that St. Petersburg apparently allows only topless stripping. That may be the only actual law in the entire city. Strip clubs are pretty interesting places, really, and they all have some things in common, other than $14 Bud Lights and the smell of scented glitter lotion. Being a girl in a strip club is a thoroughly unique experience that is simultaneously awesome, awkward, liberating and kinda depressing. I could write about that at great length, and I do have some good stories that I may tell you if someone asks a question that I think they’d be appropriate for, but that’s not really the point of this question. I tell you all of this so that you don’t think I am coming at it from a place of judginess or ignorance. This is based on substantial observation. Strippers exist because enough men are pigs of such weak constitution as to be willing to pay money to simply look at a woman naked and to pay even more money for that woman to transparently pretend that she gives even the slightest shit about him. They don’t even care that she very obviously and unapologetically leaves at the very moment the money runs out. It is a pretty remarkable phenomenon when you think about it...there are roughly 400,000 women in America who are gainfully employed based on simply being a woman, pretending to like men and allowing them to look at parts of her body that literally half of the adult population possesses. No, I am not calling every guy who has ever walked into a strip club a pig. I get that they bring a certain amount of “forbidden” appeal that makes things like bachelor parties fun (side note: Sicariothrax has a question about bachelor parties, too, which I will cover next week). But strip clubs do not remain in business because of normal-ish guys who go once a year, spend a couple hundred bucks and pay to have their bachelor friend paddled on stage by a large-breasted “law student” whose real name is absolutely Destiny and who totally thinks you guys are the coolest customers she has met all year. But if you are a regular at a strip club? This doesn’t reflect well on your character... Funny, as I was writing this answer on Thursday afternoon, the following tweet scrolled across my TL:
Never-minding that you should all follow Ms. because she is both smarter than (most of) you and has ridiculously great hair, I feel like this sort of sums up the dynamic that creates strippers. It is an admittedly extreme example, but still, guys...try to be better…
{Before you get too mad at me, remember that this is only have of my unifying theory to explain 94% of humanity.
Also...THAT IS A JOKE, PEOPLE!!! Submitted by: Smatt Hey, Alex! I'm suddenly dating my childhood sweetheart again, who's also a widow. This is a total minefield, right? So...honestly? This is actually kind of adorable:-) I mean...minefield? Sure. I don’t know all of the details (were you ever married? are there kids involved?), but there could be myriad issues around unresolved feelings, resentment over lost time and other interim relationships, children adjusting to new parental relationships and confusion over what their other parents (who were, of course, those interim relationships) really meant to Mom of Dad. You know what, though? You can figure all of that out...relationships are always complicated, and later-in-life relationships after each party has accrued more life history are even more complicated. Children dealing with the loss of a parent, and the addition of a new adult in their lives and a drain on their living parent’s attention add an additional layer of complication. Mostly, I just feel like basically people should be happy. Losing a spouse is a terribly traumatic event on a whole bunch of levels, and I don’t think someone is ever the same after that. Getting divorced isn’t as tragic, but the effects can be similarly debilitating. In the simplest terms, I just think it is nice if people can find each other and make each other happy after bad things happen. Does that guarantee a happy ending? Of course not, and there is obviously a chance that whatever broke you up in your teens is still an issue, or that there are other relationship-killing issues. And if that happens, it will be sad and you’ll be upset at the ending of a relationship...but I hope you would still be able to consider it valuable time spent with a worthwhile person and that you both bring happiness to each other for as long as you remain together, be it a month or happily ever after. Submitted by: Dee Overall - response to Harvey has been positive, people coming together to help neighbors, etc. However, some publications have taken opportunities to attack victims of the Hurricane, or to say that the only reason people are helping others is because of "momentary suspension of cruel capitalistic world view". Is it just me, or have we become more cynical or nihilistic in our overall worldview, because I don't remember these types of takes or attacks during previous disasters. That politico cartoon today, women's march saying they're only going to donate to poc or lgbt communities I don't remember this during Katrina or Sandy or after 9/11. I don’t remember seeing those kinds of reactions, either, although I was a freshman in college for 9/11 and I was about two weeks into parenting a 10 year old when Katrina hit, so I wasn’t super tuned into the pundit class for either. And we probably didn’t get it for Sandy because ¾ of those talking heads live in New York, so they were all too busy being flooded to complain. It is kind of sad, though...they are just coming from a place where everything has to be critiqued and criticized. I said the other day that these are the sorts of people who will look at firefighters after they put out a fire in their house and announce “Well, that’s great, but did you have to get everything so wet?” It’s a form of Gen-X and Millennial hipster-cool where you can just never admit that anything is good (unless, inexplicably, it is the truly awful Red Hot Chili Peppers). That’s not a new phenomenon, really. Just about the first thing you learn in business school is that there is no business plan into which any first year can’t poke at least 25 holes. It takes almost no real intelligence to think of reasons that it will fail...the real value is in the person who can identify the 25 reasons that it might fail and figure out how to overcome those things, and find the reasons (which are usually people) that the business will succeed. Probably worth revisiting Teddy Roosevelt’s absolutely exquisite Man in the Arena (formally Citizenship in a Republic) here. I’ll pause for a second while you ruminate on “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” OK...back. Total non-sequitur...one of the real treats of having children is feeding them at 3:00 in the morning. In these half-sleep memories, your mind goes to some pretty strange places, and I have one very vivid memory of the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (so, August 23, 2010). I was feeding the girls in the middle of the morning and thinking about how weird it was that we were already up to the letter K by August 23rd of that year Digression: for the uninitiated, tropical storms are named in alphabetical order, alternating male and female names. There are always six sets of names used in a rotating basis, and each year the ‘A’ name switches between male and female. Also, the names are re-used for years until there is a storm of significant impact as to make the name unusable going forward. So, this year there was a Tropical Storm Don, and there will be another in 2023...but Harvey, due to its severity, will be replaced with some other male H name. Anyway, on August 23, 2010, Hurricane Danielle was in process and Hurricane Earl was forming, which made Katrina seem pretty weird for the same dates. And that got me thinking...what happens when you get past Hurricane Zelda? Do they start using double letters? Because I have a good list for that…
(Actual answer: there is no Zelda, they stop at W and then start using Greek letters.) I had another thought in the middle of the night once, when I was putting a Big Bird diaper on one of the girls. Sometime in mid-1969, there were a bunch of writers sitting around a table at the Children’s Television Workshop, presumably smoking HUGE quantities of drugs, and one of them looked at the rest of them and said: “Guys, I have the best idea. You’re gonna love it. It’s like this huge bird...I mean like a seven, eight foot tall bird. And he’s bright yellow...BRIGHT yellow. And you know what we’re gonna call him? We’re gonna call him ‘Big. Bird.’ Cuz he’s like this really big bird. Like a HUGE fucking bird.” Man, no wonder baby boomers are so fucked up. You people had some really fun drugs. Submitted by: Goo Gwaba (somewhere in Greater Tacoma) So...what do you think about dating a coworker you've known for a year? You seem to get along well, have similar personalities, beliefs, etc. Not a supervisor-subordinate situation. Any advice? I guess the real question is what you mean by “co-worker”. Do you work together closely on a regular basis, or do you just happen to work in the same place? And really, how much do you care about this job in case things go bad? I would normally plan for this by assuming the worst - in this case, a messy breakup - and thinking about how you’d handle it. If you could live with a bad breakup, either because you can simply avoid each other or because you’d happily just find another job, then I don’t see the harm in pursuing it. But always assume the worst...that it ends badly and the other person is completely insane about it. If you are OK with the consequences, then feel free to go ahead. Or, if they are just so insanely hot that you are willing to roll the dice! Also make sure to check your employee handbook: there may be a (constitutionally dubious) requirement that you disclose a relationship to HR. That is not terribly uncommon, although it may not apply until you are married or at least live together. I actually know several people who work in the same place as their spouse and do so happily. None of them work together really closely, but at least one woman works in a company of only about 75 people, so they can’t be THAT far apart on a normal day. We actually have a former Misfit who once worked in the same place as his spouse, and...actually...you know what? That is a terrible example...he got fired, likely for being a lazy ass, she is the household breadwinner and there is great resentment and unhappiness and...other stuff...and I need to move on… Not related to your question, exactly, but one of my college roommates worked at a hedge fund outside of Los Angeles after college. Maybe four years in, she got involved with one of the partners who was almost 15 years older than her, married with two children and, obviously, in a position of authority. She kinda knew it was a bad idea, and I think that looking back she was probably a little bored and appreciated both the scandal of it and the lack of expectations on his part. She was kind of getting ready to end it (which may or may not have been messy) but someone else in the firm found out, which kind of forced the issue. The Managing Partner determined that she couldn’t stay at the firm (he was a partner, and kind of a superstar). He also figured out very quickly that, if that was his position, she absolutely had their balls in a vice. So, the firm had to pay for an attorney to take them to the cleaners on her behalf. In the end, she got a severance payment of nearly five years salary (which she is pretty sure the other partners made him pay). She also got glowing recommendations from several other co-workers because, and here is the real kicker, she was going to quit in six months anyway to take the summer off before business school. So, she cashed her check, went to the Virgin Islands to tend bar for six months, earned the good graces of the other partners for not making it worse and started business school at UCLA in the fall. One final story and I will let you go, since this is WAY too long already. Maybe two years ago, a co-workers of mine came into my office on Monday morning and announced “Alex, I have a question for you. How closely related is too close to date someone?” He was at a family wedding and had met a second cousin that he had either never met before or met only once or twice when they were really, really little.. She was 30-ish, he was maybe 34 or 35. Their mothers are cousins, but obviously not close enough that they spend that much time together (he lives up here, she is from New Jersey). They hit it off superbly, he thought she was super cute and she clearly felt the same attraction...enough that they actually discussed the question of… “Wait...could we, like, date..?” I told him that I didn’t really find it at all that creepy, but that the family dynamic could be really tough to deal with. If, for example, they dated seriously but then broke up, that could be super, super awkward. And in the end, that, combined with the challenges of living a couple hundred miles apart, made them both decide to pass...but he saw her at another wedding this summer and they are both still single (although she moved to California). So...I’m just saying...the ship hasn’t totally sailed yet. |
MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
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