Reservations are...

dumb.

I am of course referring to reservations at restaurants and not the place where the government stuck Native Americans in order to put them out of sight and therefore feel less guilty about stealing all their land and polluting the environment.

Kathryn and I tried to go to her favorite restaurant for a nice romantic dinner only to find out that they didn't have anything available because people had reserved all their tables. Well, that's just stupid. Wouldn't you rather have 2 people who are already in the restaurant rather than the potential of 2 people coming later? What if those people cancel? Then you'll probably feel pretty stupid that you didn't serve us instead of telling us that you're just super busy right now and we can't eat there.

We ended up going to a different restaurant that had a table available but still had several tables empty with "Reserved" signs sitting on them. Guess what? At least one of those parties canceled their reservation. I guess they should have given that table to someone who actually showed up instead of saving it for people who might come. But because they cling to the stupid idea of letting people reserve seats that they may not take, they may have lost out on customers. How foolish.

Now, I understand taking reservations for big parties. But if you've got a restaurant with very limited seating, and you do enough business that you feel like taking reservations is necessary, then you probably are popular to the point that you'll fill the restaurant without actually needing the reservations. Whatever happened to the good old days of first come, first served? This country is getting soft.

Stupid Facebook Story of the Week

Someone in my news feed posted (grammar and spelling has been corrected to protect my sanity): I don't get the big deal about Angry Birds. I just beat the whole game in 30 minutes.

Oh really? In 30 minutes, or 1800 seconds, you beat all 243 levels? Ignoring the fact that to actually beat the game, you have to get a 3-star score on every level, that would mean that this person spent an average of only 7.4 seconds on each level. Yeah, I call bullshit on this one.

And, in a segment I'm stealing from Slick, my jam of the week is Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserves. Try some on a fresh croissant. You won't be disappointed.

-Jon

Big Slick Rises from the Ashes

Your favorite blogger, Big Slick, has been on hiatus recently as the terms of my contract were being negotiated. Then I realized I never made any demands so for the past 2 weeks Big Slick's been at training camp getting back into championship shape. And just like every one of my comebacks this will probably last about 2-5 posts before I get bored again and stop writing. Will they be good posts? Probably not. Will they feature lots of swearing and unnecessary capitals? All signs point to yes. Will any of my posts feature a semblance of coherent thought? ASK AGAIN LATER! Tomorrow I'm going to write a new lyric post so you have that to look forward to, if you have nothing better going on. And since you're reading this blog, obviously that's the case. But for now, here's some random thoughts/things that make me mad. And you know how hard it is to make me mad.

Bobby Valentine sucks at analyzing baseball games. I would rather listen to that asshole Joe Morgan because at least he was intentionally being an asshole. Joe Morgan once said that he didn't think Felix Hernandez would have more wins if he played for a different team. This was a pitcher who had an era of like 2.50 but had 16 losses because the Mariners fucking suck. (Note: stats may be completely made up, but I don't have time to check that shit. I'm a busy, busy man.) Then he said that wins and losses were the best way to measure how good a pitcher was because that's how you measure how good a team was. See? He was just blatantly saying shit that didn't make any sense just because he wanted to be an asshole. Bobby Valentine just sucks. I wish he would stop talking so much. Also, I've never seen a man make himself laugh so much. Nothing you said was that funny, stop fucking laughing. "Oh boy, Joe Girardi took Sabathia out before he faced Kinsler, when Kinsler was probably going to be the last batter he faced either way. Then Joba Chamberlain let Kinsler get on anyway, HARHARHARHARHAR. HOW FUNNY WAS THAT!"

People who write facebook statuses like "Out with the boy" make me want to murder them. I have a couple friends who write things like, "At Fenway Park with the boy" or "Great day with the girl" and if you're friends with them too you know who I'm talking about. Jesus fucking Christ. What are you? Twelve fucking years old? Son of a bitch that makes me irrationally angry. Instead of writing that stupid bullshit nonsense, why don't you just write, "Out with Jeremiah" or "Fantastic dinner with Bobbie Sue" and not look like you're a fucking prepubescent little shithead. And no, those names don't mean anything. They're just stupid fucking names like the stupid fucking people who write those stupid fucking statuses. Fuck.

I don't capitalize the fucking when I write Jesus fucking Christ because it's not technically his middle name. Although I'm not sure his last name would have been Christ either. I don't know, maybe it was. I'm not well versed in theology. In any case, if I was Joseph and Mary showed up and was like, "I know we've never had sex but guess what, I'm pregnant," I would have been like, "So long bitch." And yeah, I just called Saint Mary a bitch. She deserved it.

The Masspike needs to be wider. Yeah, it's adorable that you want to drive 67, but the rest of us have places to be, so get the fuck out of the way. That's really all I have to say about that.

The Celtics just won game 1. That's pretty cool.

The way the NBA is officiated right now, I don't know why LeBron James doesn't just take the ball, just slam his way towards the hoop and take free throws every single possession. Jump shots are for pussies. And besides, if you go anywhere near LeBron when he has the ball on offense it has to be a foul. That's in the rule book.

Another gem from Bobby Valentine, "How did they decide to make it 90 feet from home plate to first. If it was 89 1/2 feet we would see so many more runners beating out that throw to first." If they made it 89 1/2 feet people would be like, "That's fucking stupid." Although this is the same sport that decided 60 1/2 feet was a good distance for the pitcher's mound so there's really no logic to anything.

Why doesn't every baseball stadium have to have the same dimensions? That's the stupidest fucking thing ever. That would be like if the Green Bay Packers decided that their field would be 250 yards long and nobody having a problem with it. Or if the Celtics decided that they would shorten their court to 70 feet so that all their old players didn't have to run as much. But getting back to the baseball thing, why does the infield have to be the same at every stadium. That's where you're going to draw the line? I think you should be able to move it around. Playing a really fast team, move first base to 115 feet. Now try beating out all those infield singles Ichiro. And why not make a real home field advantage? When your team is batting, move the outfield walls in about 20 yards. Players will start hitting 120 home runs a season. You don't think the Pirates would get more fans if they hit 15 home runs a game? And yeah, I know I just turned baseball into Rock Jock, but I want to know when baseball decided it was cool to have everybody design their own outfield. And don't give me some bullshit about it adds to the special feeling of going to a ball game. "Oooooohhhh. Look at the ivy on the walls at Wrigley Field. No where else in the world does ivy grow up bricks. HOW ELSE COULD THEY DO IT IF THIS WASN'T MAGICAL GROUND" Nobody enjoys smelling their own asshole as much as baseball. Fenway Park is not a magical location, it's a dirty old tiny piece of shit that's very uncomfortable to watch a 3 hour game in. And that's coming from someone who likes Fenway Park.

My jam of the week this week is "Waiting for the End" by Linkin Park. Good song, important song.

Whenever I see people with ear gauges I think, "Wow, they are going to be really unhappy they did that when they're 35." But then I think, if they're stupid enough to get ear gauges maybe they won't live that long. And we're probably all better off that way. If I wasn't going to hell for that Saint Mary comment, I pretty much booked a first class ticket with this one.

Originally instead of first class ticket, I put one way ticket. But no matter how you fly to hell, you're pretty much staying forever. I'm not sure you're allowed to leave. But again, I'm not a strong theologian. In any case, I'd rather fly there first class. More leg room.

That's probably enough hatred for now. Good to be back again.

-Slick

You Thought This Was Dead?

That's just silly. Now, I can't speak for the other yokels that generate posts here, but I have just had a fairly uneventful few weeks and didn't want to bore you with the mundane nature of my life. There was plenty of new stuff happening at Mmmm, beers!, and I believe I ate 6 burgers last month, so it's not like you were starved for content. Or "Jon-tent," as I have often called it.*

Fortunately for you, I have a few new things to discuss. This will be the Quick Hits version, and, depending on how I feel, each of these topics may get its own longer post later on.

Endgame by Rise Against is...

fantastic. Great album, and definitely worth every penny I paid for it. All 12 songs (13 if you got the iTunes bonus track) are in the running for best of the album, so that's saying something. If this is not your kind of music, you might suck, so just go back to listening to your crappy country garbage and don't ever talk to me about music again. For everyone else, you should acquire this somehow (legally of course) and let it rock your face off.**

Extreme Couponing is...

ridiculous. Really, you need 66 bottles of mustard? I'm pretty sure my family hasn't used that much mustard in my entire lifetime. I'll grant that the concept is pretty cool, because I would absolutely like to save 90%+ on the cost of my groceries. But the sheer absurdity of some of the purchases combined with the almost laughable forced drama (oh no, the cash register can only handle 500 scans in one transaction, and they have more than that!!!) makes me feel like I have to mock every single person on the show. Including the people in the background.

The government is...

shutting down? Or maybe already shut down? I don't really know, because I don't really care. I may have discussed how dumb the government is in the past (check the "government" tag for more on this), so my opinion of this shutdown is that it's probably for the best. I'm like 85% sure that Chloe and Odin could run things more efficiently than Congress. More nums for everyone!!

The Red Sox are...

sort of terrible so far. At least they've finally won a game, and it was at the Yankees expense, so that's always nice. One of the big things Remy and Orsillo were talking about during one of the games was whether or not it was too early to panic. In my opinion, it's never too early to panic. Panicking is awesome! Except for when I had that actual panic attack at the bar with Alex, Lindsey the Runner, and a couple other people whose names I forgot. That sucked. But panicking in other situations is great, especially when you yell random stuff, run around crazily and maybe throw a folding chair. Plus, being able to panic about sports means the rest of your life is probably not going too badly.

I will leave you with 2 things, which will hopefully A) make you laugh, and B) make you sad about people.

1. A person asked what NASCAR stood for on Yahoo! Answers, and the first response was "Not A Sport, Centered Around Rednecks." Haha, take that NASCAR.
2. Someone in my News Feed had the following as their status: "watching a movie and eating eminems". First off, I'm pretty sure there's only one Eminem. Secondly, and more importantly, you should not advertise your cannibalism on Facebook. Now everyone's going to know!!

People huh? I'll never understand them.

-Jon

* I've actually never used this word. But I like it.

**Actual face rocking may vary. My face is still intact after a couple dozen listenings, so you'll probably be fine.