briantology

Which professional athlete in any sport has the most star power?

Once again, clearly The Noid.

Who is your favorite video game character? 
Submitted by Korgoth.  

Clearly The Noid. Although after reading that Wikipedia entry, I kind of wish there were a video game based on Kenneth Lamar Noid, where you go around taking hostages and demanding food and literature.

What are you going to do with your tax return?
Submitted by KB.

Ha ha ha ha ha FUCK YOU. I don't have a fucking tax return. We owed $515 to the feds, and fucking $340 to fucking piece of shit Oklahoma, which is great because WE TOTALLY HAVEN'T LIVED THERE FOR FUCKING MONTHS YOU ASSHOLES. ALSO WE ARE NOT PLANNING ON EVER LIVING THERE AGAIN, SO A.) SUCK IT, AND B.) GIVE ME MY FUCKING 340 DOLLARS BACK YOU FUCKS.

(cough.)

Book:  Show us a great non-fiction book.

"Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach is seriously the best book I've read in a long time. Not only is it meticulously researched and completely fascinating, it's really, really funny, which just propels you through the thing at breakneck speed. Read, read. Read it. Bitches.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Mary Roach

If you could eat anything you wanted, and not have to worry about gaining weight/being unhealthy/inhumane, what would you totally pig out on? 
Submitted by Jay.

Fucking everything.

Who was your best (or worst) elementary school teacher?
Submitted by Minnow. 

It's rare I have such a clear-cut answer to value-judgment questions, which makes me that much more pleased to tell you about Mrs. Munkirs. (I honestly have no idea what kind of name Munkirs is, for the record.) She was my second-grade teacher, and in addition to forcing "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" on us, and generally being a sour person, there was this one day that stands out.

It was the day we got those little catalogs that you can order books from, right? Which was awesome because it was a catalog my parents would get stuff for me from without questioning it too much, since hey! it's for school! So we were looking through those, and for some reason our desks were in a circle with Mrs. Munkirs sitting on a stool in the middle, and for some reason she'd distributed hard candies to all of us, which I was also stoked about. I had one of those butterscotch nuggets, which I love to this day, and apparently I got a little too into it, which I also do with food to this day, and I got the thing lodged in my throat.

And suddenly I was choking to death. And I had no idea how to communicate this, having apparently missed thus far any discussion of the international symbol for "I'm choking to death, please help." So I kind of turn red and my eyes tear up, and I wave my hand desperately in the air, and Mrs. Munkirs is in midsentence reading aloud to the class, and when she finishes her sentence she gives me this sour look and says something like "What is it?", and did you know that it's difficult to speak when your airway is blocked? This is true. I silently sat there, beet red and weeping, and she paused a moment, and then went back to reading whatever the fuck it was she was reading. Stupid kids.

So now I'd come to the realization that if there was help to be had, it did not lie in Mrs. Munkirs' classroom. And so I overcame the chain-gang-member tendency I had as a boy to not so much as fart without permission, and bolted out into the hall, figuring I don't know what. And there's one of those long trough water fountains right outside the room, and I guess I was trying to remedy the situation with water, and thank heavens two of my teachers from the previous year, whose hearts presumably were not shriveled up like little prunes, were walking along the hallway at that moment, and slapped me on the back. I can still see that butterscotch sitting there in the water fountain. I regretted not being able to finish it.

What was the worst advice you ever received? Did you follow it?

"Rollercoasters aren't that bad! You should go on one!"

Yes. Yes, I did. And yes they were.

Soda? Cola? Pop? What do you say? Any other regional words that set you apart?
Question submitted by Gladys.

Seems like where I'm from people say "Go fuck yourself" a lot.

That's just me, actually.

What's your favorite drink or cocktail? What's in it?
Question submitted by charm.vox.com

Okay, Vox, you've won this round, with your catchy questions (my other blog never asks me questions! Honey, why don't you ever ask me questions anymore?).

Except I can't quite decide. I'm a huge fan of the whiskey sour, though, if I had to pick one. I think I like it more because it's apparently the hardest drink in the universe not to fuck up, judging by the vast quality gamut I've enountered in my drinking life. I mean, look, people: It's whiskey and sour. Enough of both, not too much of either.

Though too much whiskey can still make a fine WS, too much sour is just like, the worst drink you can fathom. And god dammit, some bartenders get SOOOOOO defensive when you ask for more whiskey — man bartenders in particular, since A) I'm pretty sure they take the phrase "There's not enough whiskey in this" to mean, literally translated, "There's not enough snake in your trousers there, Tinky-Winky," and B) I'm pretty sure the kind of man bartender who doesn't put enough whiskey in your whiskey sour is the kind who's quick to offend when questioned about his bartending skills. Call it a hunch.

The best whiskey sour I ever had was probably one of the ones I had at Camerelli's in Tulsa, though the chain restaurant Charleston's made a suspiciously consistently good whiskey sour too, I noticed. The worst I've ever had were at the relocated Arnie's in Tulsa, a delightful place that unfortunately uses those fucking bar governors, the things that only let you dispense exactly one shot at a time, also known as "The Death Of Bartending As An Art," and at Empire Bar, also in Tulsa, where the exchange in the former paragraph basically happened word-for-word, minus the parts about me challenging his manhood. I asked for more whiskey and the greasy motherfucker offered to SELL ME A FUCKING SHOT OF WHISKEY FOR FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS to supplement his own shitty bartending, which is tantamount to building a house for hire, then charging extra to put a roof on it, and I would have fucking spit in the bastard's face if I didn't want the goddamn drink so bad, and also if I were the type of guy who knows how to fight, and trust me, I'm not.

My secret is I've already got a blog. And I don't know why I'm here. Except to read about Melissa's in-laws, who are even more horrifying than I ever could have imagined.