It's a Limbo Party!

Yesterday was a great day. John (roommate) and I hosted a successful grill session with a bunch of chicks. After running out of beer, the drink of choice switched to vodka. As such, the pace of the shindig picked up immensely. Naturally, a limbo session erupted. Those unfamiliar with my love of the limbo should know that although I suck at the maneuver, I have 6 variations of "Limbo Rock" on iTunes and own an original version Chubby Checker's 1962 tour-de-force LP, "Limbo Party." So last night, when the time was right John and I summoned the crowd indoors after having recently transformed our living room into a limbo parlor; the table moved out, the record cued, and broom handle brought in.

After the ladies had a few practice limbos we decided to have a ladies-only limbo contest. The winner would get a date with John, the loser a date with me. As the official judge, I positioned myself in a chair at the end of the limbo runway. One girl had a strange objection my location, and she asked me to move. Since her request was bizarre and unreasonable, I remained put. It soon became striking clear why she asked.

Our subject was dominating the competition. Her flexibility was outstanding, and she cleared the limbo stick with ease as it was progressively lowered. In the last round, when it was very low, the remaining contestants had to bend back very far to clear the stick. Our subject was wearing a jean skirt. Our subject was not wearing underwear.

Watching her clear the stick and win the competition, it was impossible for me to ignore the shaved beave in front of my face. The thing was practically screaming at me. My emotions were mixed: happy / giddy to experience a shaved-beave sighting, but mostly confused. After having some time to fully absorb the experience, I can now sum up my thoughts on the incident-

I know girls don't wear panties sometimes (nice!), but to pull this move off with a jean skirt is very rare (slutty). It's possible that she was out of clean panties or that she forgot to put some on, but most likely the move was a conscious decision. Which brings up the question - what was the motivation behind her wardrobe? Is she allergic to cotton? Was she anticipating getting nailed in a bar bathroom stall later that night? But I will not pass moral judgement, because there is a more important point to be made. This girl petitioned quite passionately to move my judge's post, and I refused. She then went on, knowing that I would get a clear view of her snatch, and limboed her ass off. She won the competition by a landslide. She is obviously quite committed to the limbo movement, and I think that that's fucking awesome.

Self-Deprecation, Vol. I

In the years of my youth, outstanding skinny genes helped me stay delicately fit, tight and ripe despite drinking heavily, eating fast food and leading an overall sedentary lifestyle. I maintained a weight of 150 pounds from high school through junior year of college. People often commented, "Get some meat on your bones," "Eat up son" and "Stop staring at my tits!" Further, I earned nicknames such as "Slim" (high school lacrosse team), "Beeker" (Pumptown) and "Stinkynuts" (Wesleyan female student body). It's debatable whether my six-pack was muscle or ribcage, but I flaunted it nonetheless. Most importantly, however, was that I felt confident with my body image. Ladies, if reading at work, please take a minute, grab a towel and put it on your chair, because you are about to get wet...

I recall one day working out at the gym, staring at my golden brown body glistening with sweat as my biceps flexed (are you wet yet?). I was courting a particular hipster girl at the time, and thought to myself, "Tonight I plant seed," "Plow field" and numerous other farming metaphors that describe sex. I was super-confident; nothing short of an army of cockblocking (cockblaking?!) lesbians would stop me. Chicks can sense natural confidence, and they eat that shit up. Needless to say, later that night I gently whispered in her ear, "Should I get a condom?" That move carefully executed is nearly flawless. It worked.

That night was one among many nights which I hope to soon chronicle in a collection of short stories, The Sexual Liberation of Blake. To get to the point - I was kinda hunky. Last week I showed some girl friends pictures of me in college and I immediately needed to mop my floor and let them borrow mesh shorts (because they were...WET...get it?!). Looking back at Blake circa 2004, I think to myself, "How on earth could any woman refuse me?"

But then it all came to a tragic and rapid halt. Senior year I began writing an extensive thesis. I studied for about five hours a day in a small carrel consuming brain food - gummy bears, bagel chips, red bulls, popcorn, etc. I quickly gained weight. The interesting thing is that I had no idea it was happening. I only came to the realization thanks to LL Bean. Let me explain. In October 2004 I was in full thesis mode and ordered a pair of LL Bean flannel-lined khakis for the winter. They shortly arrived just as I ordered, size 32 waist, but did not fit. "LL Bean pants must run a size small," I reasoned. I sent them back for a size 33, which I received about a month later. Unbeknownst to me, at this time my unprecedented weight gain was in full force. The new pants arrived and much to my surprise, they also ran small. I sent them back for a size 34, which I received in early December. Finally, they fit.

Being the nice friend I am, I cautioned my roommate Dan to order LL Bean pants two sizes larger than normally. He was amazed at my ignorance. He simply stated, "Blake, you've gained a ton of weight. Look at you, your gut is sticking out." I looked down and was shocked at what I saw, but more shocked at what I didn't see - my penis. I stepped on a scale in his room and weighed in at 180 pounds; 30 heavier than my standard weight of 150. To summarize, 30 pounds in three months. 30 fucking pounds! How I managed to overlook this remains a mystery.

The evolution of this weight gain is exhibited via Facebook pictures. My friend Tim sums up this phenomenom best - "Facebook: An exhaustive chronicle of the varying fatness of my face."

This all being said, at least I'm not a fat chick.

The Inevitable Sex and the City Post

This show bothers me. Many women I know are obsessed with it. I can understand the appeal- women with indispensable incomes buy cool clothes, are seemingly “in control,” and fuck a lot of dudes. This is supposed to be liberating, because our Puritanical society historically stressed that women repress their urges to, as a shitty songwriter once put it, “get drunk and screw.”

I had seen only bits of the show here or there and was never impressed. Upon hearing about the anticipated movie, I decided to watch an episode On Demand to get a better understanding of the phenomenon. For the sake of simplicity, I will assume the writing style and overall theme of the episode to be representative of the entire series.

The episode chosen was "To Market, To Market."

Carrie opens the episode with a voice-over narration, "When you live in the city that never sleeps, it comes as a bit of a shock when somehow, you manage to, oversleep." I have a problem with this for three (3) reasons:

1. The delivery of the line, is punctuated like this, as to indicate some insightful and clever, statement.
2. As the opening line, it should be insightful, clever and funny. While insightful and funny, it is not clever.
3. It logically makes no sense. New York is not “the city that never oversleeps.” If we play the game “Fun with Logic” and take her sentence to a logical conclusion, wouldn’t she be surprised if she ever slept in the city that never sleeps. Dear SATC writer, let’s try this one again..."It would be a bit of a shock if you set three alarm clocks and overslept." While not clever or insightful, this sentence makes sense.

Then the girls go to lunch, where Samantha discusses a $20 hamburger and inflation: “Pathetic. When I moved to this neighborhood the only thing that cost $20 was a hand job from a tranny.” Hilarious.

Next Charlotte and her dude discuss converting to Judaism. The following scene opens with Miranda changing a diaper. Carrie narrates this transition: "And from Jewish to pooish." Again, hilarious.

Eventually we are treated to a sex scene. Nice, let’s see how they realistically portray this. After all, "It’s not TV...it’s HBO." Charlotte, my favorite character, is fucking her dude. Now we’re getting somewhere. This is provocative and progressive...wait...she's wearing a bra.

We soon get another sex scene, this time with the philandering Samantha and her new stockbroker neighbor. Samantha is supposed to be the really slutty one, right? So she’s giving him a blowjob, her head pops up and she says, "Now that’s what I call eating in!" Hil-ar-i-ous. Wait, what’s that, she’s also wearing a bra. Since it’s only a blowjob I’ll let this slide. But the scene serves no purpose to the narrative of the episode; it’s just gratuitous. So why not at least make it sexy? And did I mention that Kim Katrall is like 55 and gross.

The third and final sex scene of the episode is with Samantha and the stockbroker. He is handcuffed to the bed, and she’s riding him...with a bra on. Groundbreaking.

Carrie then makes her profound thesis statement:
“Later that day, I got to thinking about the stock market and dating. Are they really that different? If you have a bad stock, you can lose your shirt. If you have a bad date, you can lose your will to live. And if the date is good, the stakes get even higher. After weathering all the ups and downs...you could one day find yourself with nothing. When it comes to finance and dating...I couldn’t help but wonder- 'Why do we keep investing?'"

Let’s run this one through the Logictron 3000. Lots of churning. Ok done. Here’s what the machine tells me:

1. “And if the date is good, the stakes get even higher.” So then if the stock is good the stakes must get higher? False. If a stock you own rises, you do not assume any more liability or risk.
2. “After weathering all the ups and downs...you could one day find yourself with nothing.” Assuming the gains (ups) and losses (downs) are equal, they would cancel each other out and you are left with the original investment. Logictron 3000 has a built-in mathematical calculator function which tells me that a $10,000 investment with equal gains and losses would leave me with $10,000. $10,000 is not nothing.
3. "Why do we keep investing?" Because you will probably make money. In the last ten years, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up an aggregate of about 40%. A $10,000 investment would be worth $14,000.

At this point I lost interest and stopped watching. Final thoughts, Carrie-style:

If a show presents women as shallow and materialistic, why do women look up to these characters? And if the writing is neither funny nor logical, why do they keep watching?