Who determines what you can say on TV

WARNING: This post will be more vulgar than most.

When I was in High School, I was a BIG wrestling fan. I used to have Monday Night Raw taped, and DooHow and I would watch it first hour the next day. And we'd get together for the pay-per-view each month. It was entertaining as hell. One thing I always thought was curious, was why didn't they swear on wrestling.

I remember once a dude called a girl a bitch, and it became a big issue. Vince McMahon got blasted in an interview about it.

Well, who determines what you can say on TV?

I was watching some crappy sitcom on the CW Baltimore the other night, and some girl called her little brother a bitch. In what is supposed to be family-friendly vanilla programming. You here damn and hell on TV (but not in wrestling).

And I know South Park did an episode where they said "shit" a couple hundred times. I've heard "fuck" bleeped out on TV, and I recently heard "fuck" bleeped out followed by "pinche-something". Pinche is Spanish for "Fuck."

So you can swear in Spanish on American television, but not in English? It's alright to swear if a decent percent of the population doesn't speak the language you curse in?

Something's messed up, and I think the FDA should look it.

Leaving Minnesota.

So I wake up Saturday, January 12 around 9:30 am. I'm hung over as hell. I had parked in a snowbank and knew I would have to dig/push my car out.

We had partied until 5 a.m., and then I passed out on a sofa with a friends wife.

I'm not a very couch-sharing sized person. And I woke up needing to be sick a few times.

It wasn't the best nights rest.

Digging my car out was a pain in the ass. It took 45 minutes, and I was so hung-over standing was a struggle. Eventually I got it out, and went in to say good-byes. After driving back into the cities I took about a 2 hour nap, and then had to pack the rest of my stuff into my car.

And I was supposed to be at a board game night in North Branch at 3.

Loading my car took longer than I anticipated, so I didn't leave the cities until 3. And when I did leave, it was sad as hell. I slid my apartment key under the door, and that was it. I was gone. I didn't live with Kris any more, Shouts were done, I was essentially out of Minnesota.

I made it to Board Game Night, with a splitting headache, a super-sore throat and an upset stomache. Everyone was pretty amused to hear about the night before (when the keg ran out we made a wop, when the wop ran out we made another one), and they were shocked when I told them I could only stay for a couple of hours....apparently I hadn't made it clear that I was leaving Minnesota that night. I cowboyed up, kicked some ass in Pictionary and delayed leaving as long as possible.

I was planning on rolling into LaCrosse around 9 or 10 p.m. I actually rolled in at 11:30.

For those of you who haven't read the old posts: LaCrosse and I have a history on weekends.

Rolling in at 11:30, we wouldn't make it downtown before midnight, giving us 2 good hours to get our drink on. I was still epicly hung over, and exhausted.

But I walked into Ty's place, took the jagbomb they handed me, and we were out the door. We went downtown, stopped in a dive bar, did a couple shots and had a couple beers, sang a song (karaoke) and went to my favorite drunkbar in LaCross, Broncos.

Broncos is loud, they play country music, it's usually packed, and they let girls dance on both the bar and the pool table. It's GREAT for people watching. We had a few more drinks there while one of our buddies danced with every girl in the place (he had started earlier than I had, and did not seem to notice the girl's facial reactions, which we enjoyed immensely), and then the buddy convinced us to go to his favorite bar, the Helm.

Now, the Helm is modeled to look like a ship, and has a very cool feature where there is a 1 way(2 way?) mirror in the mens restroom that lets you look out from the urinal, without letting the crowd look in. It's a pretty cool place. But it was dead. After a beer and a short discussion, Ty and I went back to Broncos and our buddy stayed at the helm.

Back at Broncos, while wondering how long and wonderful 2 hours could be, Ty and I chased girls back and forth across the bar. It was proabably the worst night in terms of number of hot girls around that I had ever witnessed in LaCrosse, but it was still a blast.

When the bars finally closed, we went back to the Helm, but our buddy was MIA. He didn't answer when we called or texted. Not knowing what else to do, we had a bartender call us a cab.

LaCrosse does something truly beautiful, and I'm not exactly sure how it works...the bartender filled out a little form for us, we gave it to the cab driver, and then we didn't have to pay.

Beautiful.

When we got back to the apartment, I emptied my pockets, we ate some pizza, and I passed out.

I woke up, thought damn that's a lot of one's, and started counting my money...and I had more then I had gone to the bar with the night before. There was a 20 mixed in with the ones, so one of the bartenders must have given me my 20 back with my change.

I love LaCrosse.

Sunday we watched the football games. During the first one we ate leftover pizza. As soon as it ended, we went out and bought some brats and a bunch of beer. (Liquor stores are better in Wisonsin, they're open Sundays)

Now Ty and our LaCrosse buddies have this stupid thing called the Buffalo Club. I am a member. If you break the rules of the club, any member can call "Buffalo" and you either have to finish your drink, or buy every club member in the vicinity a drink.

I had just cracked open a 40 when it was called on me.

So less than 10 minutes into the second game, I was a 40 in.

I drank another one over the course of the game. Then we played some Earl. Then we kept drinking and watched the first disk of 2 & 1/2 Men.

And we passed out around 9 p.m.

I woke up around noon the next day.....it was soooooooo nice to catch up on sleep. I showered and felt just terrific. I debated leaving then, but decided to stay that night, and leave early the next morning. I wasn't going to drink, I was just going to hang out that night.

Apparently I forgot where I was.

Monday night is Trailer Park Night. Ty insisted that we go. At Trailer Park Night (I forget which bar it's at, I hadn't been there before) you get a card with 20 beers on it. It's 2 each of 10 shitty beers. When you order when of the beers on the card, the bartender will mark that one off your card, and when you get all 20 marked off, you get a free shirt. So I drank a couple Old Milwaukees, a PBR, a Keystone Light, a Schlitz and a couple other terrible ones I can't remember. In all, I put down 10 on a night when I wasn't going to drink.

It was pretty cool, Ty finished his card that night, gave me the shirt and then took my card when we left. Everyone's a winner in LaCrosse.

I had hoped to get up at 6 the next morning and take off. The alarm went off, I cursed, turned it off and got up a little after 11.

I love LaCrosse.

The Last Week of Tom

To mourne my leaving Minnesota, I scheduled a weeklong festival (bender) to commemorate the occasion.

It kicked off on Friday, January 4th after I finished my last day with Loffler. The Loffler guys took me out for Happy Hour. Got loaded, wandered off to find a bus, went home, drunk-packed for a while and passed out. On a related note, if you're ever moving across the country, you should pack when you're loaded. It's a trick I lurned when I threw out two huge garbage bags of useless crap before I moved to Massachusetts the first time. It works. You can't argue with results.

Saturday Kris and I threw a "garage sale" party. The joke was that everything had to go and was for sale. I had moved all my crap into my bedroom the night before and took great pleasure in selling Kris's stuff. It was a very common party for our apartment....15 dudes and a wife showed up. Pretty good party if you're not into members of the opposite sex.

Sigh.

Sunday was more or less a day of rest. I woke up, watched football, took a nap, and then i drank and played video games.

On Monday we had "Terrible Movie Day." We were going to start at noon, got waylayed and wound up at Hollywood Video around 5. We watched the first 3: Alien Invasion: Arizona, Supercroc, and Boa v. Python. During Supercroc, Mattie made me a drink. I was buzzed after one of them....and we were drinking beers all the while.....after the first three movies, Kris poured us in the car (he came late and hadn't been drinking) and the three of us wound up back at Hollywood, and we picked up 3 more movies that just missed the cut the first time. Gamebox 1.0, Leeches and Gwendoline. We watched them, lauged a lot, and got loaded. It might have been my favorite Tomweek event, and it was just me, Mattie, Mindy and Kris.

Tuesday I just hung out around the apartment, played video games, and then Kris and I met some people for 1/2 price appatizers at Applebees. It was also discount drinks....just a boring, run of the mill, cheap apatizers then more beer at home while watching movies and drinking until the speeling wert bad.

Wednesday night we went to the ShoutHouse....my last Shout for at least 9 months (sigh). It was fun...$1 beers, 80's music, girls everywhere....excellent night. And then Kris arranged a ride home (I had planned on us taking a cab) and I got mad at him and we left. He passed out like a rock when we got back, I made some rice-a-roni and passed out on the sofa watching Earl.

Thursday, I went home and hung out with the parents. I wish I could have spent more time in Mora. But I only spent 1 night.

Friday was my brobro's birthday...so I drove from Mora to the south side of the cities, we went out for dinner, and had a couple of beers, played some poker, bowled, and just hung out with a couple of his neighbors. It was great, but I had somewhere else to be, and once again I didn't spend enough time with my family.

The culmination of TomWeek was my night. Mindy B made me brownies, and AJ threw a co-going away party (he was going to Brazil for a month, I was leaving maybe forever). He and his roommates got a keg. We drank it. When the keg ran out, we made a WOP. When the WOP ran dry, we made another.

I think there were a lot of sick people that night.

I avoided the WOP....when the keg ran dry, AJ gave me free reign of a Michelob sampler pack. It was pretty bad stuff, but it wasn't hard liquor and it kept me rolling.

At some point, I picked a fight with a girl I barely knew....we had met years ago and hadn't talked since. Somehow, she won the fight....sigh.

I pestered her until we went another round a little while later, and I took that one. 1-1 in the fight with the girl.

After a while I started bugging her to go for round three. She said she would after everyone did a shot of Jack Danials. This was at about 3:30 in the morning and a number of people had already gotten sick and/or passed out. We all took the shot, and I ran into the bathroom and puked.

Mindy B came in to check on me, and I asked her not to reveal that I had spewed. I came out, ready for round three, but Robin wouldn't fight me me on the grounds that she would never fight someone who had just thrown up. So I did the only logical thing I could think of. I lied.

No one believed me, so I rolled the dice. I insisted that I hadn't thrown up, and asked Mindy B, who had seen me puke, to verify that I hadn't. Mindy B, being a gem, said that I hadn't.

It was on.

I let Robin pick the venue, and she chose the sun-porch, which had a bed with a really hard wooden frame with someone passed out in it. I won the fight, because I got on top of her (yeeeeeeeeah!) with my weight advantage and it was over.

She was tough as hell though, and fast and strong. I'm not gonna lie, I think it's hot when a girl will fight/wrestle with me. It takes an outstanding personality and self-confidence.

Anywho, we parted until 5:30. I passed out on a sofa, spooning with a friends wife, and I woke up at 6:30, needing to be sick. Immediately.

Awkward!

I made it to the bathroom that time.....and the three other times I got sick that night/morning.

Good times.

And then I moved away.

A Brand New Tom

Hello, beloved readers. Is it arrogant of me to assume that people still check the blog?

I know, it's been over 2 months since the last post....but come on, I had a lot of stuff going on...

I live in Baltimore now.

I am a 26-year-old intern for the Bowie Baysox, making $900 a month. I started this week, and so far I'm loooooooooooving it. I'm staying with my sister, in a townhouse, where I essentially have a two-room cave all to myself.

I call it the TomCave.

So far, Baltimore is great.

It's a big, old city. I'm lucky, I go against traffic on the way to and from work. Traffic is worst around the stadium.

The internship runs into September, and then hopefully the team will offer me a big boy job, and I'll live out here for years. If they don't, hopefully another team in the ownership group will offer me a position. If that doesn't happen, it's back to Minnesota for a couple of months, and then back to baseball's winter meetings to hope for a job next year.

It's good to be a Tom.