We Haven't Talked About Dorks Enough Lately

If you're a middle-aged man who loves trikes, you'll love the Uno!

If you believe every famous actress/actor/musician/model--and I do, unequivocally--they each used to be "such a big dork in high school."

So, clearly, all the dorks grow up to be sexy, cool, and rich...okay...but what becomes of the meatheads who major in football/cheerleading and minor in autoshop/blowjobs-under-the-bleachers, you ask?

Well, they all grow up to be dorks who buy an Uno to get around town. Probably.

Is that the perfect revenge? Some 19 year-old dork designs the Uno and gets rich--and cool--as all the cool kids from his high school lose their hair/wives/looks and buy Unos to impress the fat Leather Mommas smoking outside the biker bar?

Hmmm...assuming we all have to be a dork at some point in our lives, I'm glad I got that out of the way in high school and can have been able to spend the rest of my life basking in an unrelenting torrent of coolness, soaking in my oceanside saltwater hot tub, telling jokes to eager supermodels and making fun of Emeril as he grills my dinner.

Oh, and I definitely need to look into getting Biff to detail my entire collection of classic automobiles on a daily basis, while I'm at it, since I just never know which one I want to drive ahead of time...

Thanks, Biff--now go home and suck an egg!

_

An Open Letter to Teenagers Everywhere

Kids today really need to get tougher skins or they'll all be dead in five years and the world as we know it will slowly draw to a close, Children of Men-style.

A 14 year-old girl hangs herself because the friends of her alleged rapist were tormenting her?
Numerous high-school kids killing themselves because kids make fun of their sexuality?
Kids so afraid to go to school because they are getting bullied that they drop out, go into highly-medicated therapy, get even more depressed, and kill themselves later?

I love to break it to you, kids, but this shit has been going on since the dawn of human society. Deal with it, just like everybody has done for millennia. You are not special, this is not a new and more potent form of torture that the human psyche is unable to withstand.

You think it's awful that people make fun of you in the school cafeteria? That you get text messages that say "Suck my dick, faggot!" or "U R a lesbo LOL!"? That mean people write mean things on your Facebook page that you can immediately delete? Oh, no! Your life is so unimaginably difficult--nobody else could possibly understand because cell phones and Facebook and fags weren't around when they were kids!

Vintage Prom Photo

Isn't that just adorable? A poor man's Steve Jobs got to take Alice in Wonderland to his senior prom. When you think about what they probably look like now, it seems criminal. Thank you, Father Time!

"You're welcome!"

These two freshly-scrubbed kids seem a bit young to be wearing these kinds of clothes, but when you look at their faces for long enough (no less than fourteen hours), they seem totally comfortable in them, as if they were born to be adults. It's impressive.

This couple looks right out of Saturday Night Fever and I love it--despite the fact that it's tinged with sadness, as her corsage is an embarrassment and that always ruins a night on the town.

These next two nightowls have got to be from the South and, with that in mind, this photo is not only inadvertently hilarious but also could have been taken anywhere from 1950-2010.

But this is by far the most surprising thing I saw on my recent tour of the internet:

Fourteen results? That just doesn't seem right.

Hopefully, I've been able to change things with this missive, get things back on the right track--to right what once went wrong, you might say. I'll have to try it again and see what happens.


DEVELOPING...

Update:

More. In less time. It worked; I don't know how, but it worked...

_

Vegas, Baby

Remember all those whacked out Dungeons and Dragons dudes who used to beat you up in high school?

Well, those harmless little cuties went on to college, where they graduated to fighting each other with cardboard swords covered in tinfoil on the Quad. After college, the mighty diehards among them carried the torch all the way to Ye Olde Renaissance Faire.

Those few, fortunate rogues chosen by the very Gods above, who eventually found these hilarious affairs tortuously tame, advanced further still, to the penultimate step--killing people with "a medieval-style battle ax."

Viz:

LAS VEGAS — Sonia Lisset Castro said she pleaded for her life and that of her baby but the stranger attacking them with a medieval-style battle ax on a residential street only mocked her and kept hacking.

"I was saying in English, 'Please, please leave me alone!' But he wouldn't listen to me," Castro testified through tears and a Spanish translator Monday about the Feb. 11 attack that left her 4-month-old son, Damien, dead.

"Every time he would hit me, he would laugh out loud," she said. "I was begging him to let me go, and he was mocking me."

Castro peeled back a gauzy white scarf to show a Las Vegas judge the scars on the right side of her head where surgeons reattached her face and jaw. She said her right eye was irreparably damaged.

Montague is facing one charge of murder with a deadly weapon and three charges of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.

He is accused of stabbing his profoundly disabled sister-in-law at least 20 times in their home, then bursting outside and randomly attacking Castro as she walked past on the street with her son in a stroller. His sister-in-law, 36-year-old Monica O'Dazier, was treated at a hospital and released.

Montague told police he had no memory of the attacks, and defense lawyer Norm Reed has characterized his client as delusional and paranoid. But neither Reed nor defense lawyer Andrea Luem has sought to have Montague declared mentally unfit for trial.

A neighbor who dialed 911 as she witnessed the attack from her home also identified Montague as the assailant. Teresa Garner testified Monday that after Montague ran back inside his home, she went to Castro's aid near the curb and the overturned stroller.

"I saw the baby lying in the street, dead," sobbed Garner, a 52-year-old disabled former hotel worker. "I saw the mother, her face was completely gone ... bleeding profusely."

Garner said she later suffered an emotional breakdown and spent seven days in psychiatric care. She said she continues to take several prescription anti-anxiety medications daily. After appearing to fall asleep for a few moments during questioning by Luem, she said the medications make her drowsy.

On the 911 call, which was played for the judge, Garner is heard shrieking, "Oh my God! Her face is split open where he hit her with the hatchet!"

Police have said the ax had been hanging on a wall in Montague's home before he used it in the attack.

Montague's wife, Erricca Montague, testified that Harold Montague spent several sleepless nights pacing the floor, wasn't eating well, and appeared dehydrated the day of the attack.

Harold Montague had served since 2004 as the primary caregiver for O'Dazier, who Erricca Montague said has cerebral palsy and mental retardation, suffers seizures and can walk only a few steps with assistance.

Under questioning by Luem, Erricca Montague said her husband has smoked pot but never took other drugs or drank alcohol. She testified she didn't feel her husband was a danger to her, their three children or her disabled sister.

(courtesy Huffington Post)

One would hope that had fair young Harold realized the final step was 'execution by obese former high-school football players poured into correctional-facility uniforms' he would have humbly duct-taped his weapon back onto the otherwise-blank wall above his Playstation/masturbation chair and played with something for a while instead.

Even if it could have been colored as cowardice, it would have been a much more fruitful way to take his mind off how dreadfully boring his life is these days (ie, every day since he was born).

But we all know those guys were never actually very smart, so, you know, here we are...sitting in a chair somewhere, wishing his mother would have had an abortion all those years ago...

_

From the Vault: High School Presidency

My freshman year of high school I decided to run for class president.

I'm not sure why I had this desire--I came from a small primary/junior high combo school and was unfamiliar with the vast majority of my classmates, I had maybe three friends (only one of whom would probably vote for me), I hated public speaking, and I was a great big dork--but I did and so I threw myself face-first into the shit.

I collected the necessary signatures to get on the ballot from people in my honors classes who couldn't care less. I filed the paperwork. I made ugly little posters in anticipation of the day we were allowed to plaster the hallways, in the home stretch of the campaign.

That day finally arrived and my mom dropped me off at school early. I started hanging posters at one end of the large, three-floor school, planning to zig-zag my way through, weaving up and down the multiple staircases, strategically choosing my placements along some vaguely scientific lines.

Not long after I started taping up posters that probably said things like "Charlie is the best!!!" and "Vote for Charlie!" surrounded by shiny colored stars, my doting guidance counselor spotted me in the hallway and insisted on helping out--"Together we can do it in half the time!"


As we chit-chatted awkwardly--I hate chit-chat; she was my guidance counselor--the halls began to fill with students arriving for the school day. We made our way up the main hallway, doubling back over some covered ground to hit one section of the second floor we missed earlier.

As if pulled from an afterschool special, two big, loud football players grunted, shouted something about how my rival ruled, and tore down all my posters we hung ten minutes ago, oblivious to who I was, what I looked like, or the fact that I was standing right behind them.

It was pretty humiliating.

It would have been bad enough had I witnessed the offense alone, but the presence of my no-doubt-stricken guidance counselor only made matters worse. What was she thinking about me now? What was she thinking I was thinking about me? What was she thinking were her options as far as what to say to me, immediately, in an 'awesome guidance counselor' way? What should I have said to her?

I don't recall what was said; my hunch is that neither of us said anything.

From there, things only got worse.


On Election Day, I was required to participate in four or five debates, held during the four or five different lunch periods at our school during the middle of the day.

The good thing was I was excused from most of my classes for the day. The bad thing was I had to debate a really popular girl from a huge feeder school whose confidence and constituency dwarfed mine as a giant would a fly.

I had prepared myself for all matters of policy, chosen my stance on all potential issues, prioritized the bullet points of my platform...and faced a barrage of questions like so:

"If you were a candy...what kind of candy would you be?"
Her answer: "M&Ms--I melt in your mouth, not in your hand."

By the third round, I didn't give a shit about anything anymore. It didn't matter whether I went first or second--her answer was always better. I'd already been embarrassed in front of my older brother, my teachers, most of my classmates, my friends, my enemies...for what more had I to live?


Cue Senor Palacio, my Honors Spanish teacher and the head of the Freshman Cabinet, who stepped in to watch this round. The pressure should have been on, bigtime, but it wasn't. I had already surrendered, was already defeated before I even stepped on the platform two hours ago, before I hung my first poster.

This girl was from a huge junior high, she was popular, she wanted it badly, and once the debate started, it seemed as though she had practiced for this exact situation. It would be one thing to be beaten in a pure game of numbers--this girl had me flat-out out-played, as well.

By the time the moderator offered up "What is your favorite part of your body?" I had nothing left. The two guys who made fun of me relentlessly for four years, for fifteen minutes every morning, were sitting in the front row and made a suggestion: "Your dick! Your dick!"

"My dick."

The microphone and speakers performed excellently--I thought the word would bring the walls down. The audience was aghast--even my tormentors were speechless, didn't think I would actually say it--and Senor Palacio turned his head, disappointed.

Did I have any regrets? No. I could never have won that election and, thus, it didn't matter what I said out there.

Did I wish I would have devised a more successful campaign? No. Once I realized what the actual duties of the President were, I was relieved they were not of my concern.

I was right where I wanted to be, it turned out--I was the nerdy guy who said 'Dick' into a microphone in front of 250 people at school and got away with it.

_