Notes from the Coast: Part 1

When I was born in 1987, Cougars did not exist. The Baltimore Ravens didn’t, either.

Things change.

I started my evening telling myself I was going to stay in. My friend Phil convinced me not to with two text messages. The first asked if I wanted to drink a little bit, and the second said there would be Jungle Juice at his apartment. At 23, I guess by societal norms I should be opposed to the Juice. I should be going to wine bars where I talk to people about how their steady relationship is going while I eat cubes of cheese and talk about work and stuff.

But yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the day I graduated from high school, and that made me feel old. There’s a gray spot in my beard, and I can’t even grow a fucking respectable beard yet. So, in the interest of youth and pure enjoyment, I went to his place. Also, for the drinking.

We played some drinking games, which made me feel young even if it didn’t restore pigment to my stubble. It was fun, but I had to hold back. I had work in the morning, so I told Phil and his friends I had to head home. I’d taken my bike there, but was unable to pilot it home. Nobody wants a BUI (or a David Bowie, as I have just now decided to call it), so I caught a bus.

While I waited at a bus stop, a group of four women had an in-depth discussion with me about the merits of owning and using a vibrator, and also about how their respective boyfriends didn’t accept their desire to pleasure themselves with the aforementioned device, despite the fact most dudes have been rubbing out at least once daily since the day they discovered they were able to. (I told ‘em to keep making themselves happy. If I had a package of double-A’s, I would’ve given it to them.)

Scott gets a pedicure, sustains injury

One night just after I’d turned 18, my Mom, the nurse, was examining my foot while I sat on the floor in our living room. I don’t exactly remember what it was she was checking out, but I think it was either an ingrown toenail or some form of a blister.

Before she bothered to examine the injury, the thing that actually mattered, she decided to have a fit over how disgusting my feet were. They were very calloused from the abuse they were constantly taking from me lumbering around playing too much basketball and not sitting still reading enough. There was also a section on the arch of my left foot where an entire layer of skin had painfully ripped off, for reasons I’ve never figured out.

“You should get a pedicure,” she said, and I laughed, because, well, I thought she was joking. Dudes don’t get pedicures. She wasn’t joking, at all. And, when my Mom gets a notion, she immediately develops tunnel vision and can talk about nothing else. For the next few months, she would continuously mention in passing how nasty my feet were, and she’d then try to sell me on the merits of getting a pedicure.

“It feels awesome, really” she’d say. “And your feet are so smooth when they’re finished.”

So long, Michael Scott

[In reference to the title: That is a “That’s what she said” if you read it in broken English (see: Engrish)]

I’m not going to say I was ever a big Michael Scott fan, because if I did, anyone who I’ve ever talked with for more than five minutes about “The Office” would be able to instantly label me a liar. I’ve loved the show since it first came out, but his character always kind of irritated me. And yes, I know that’s kind of the point, but I just couldn’t get into it. Whenever he would do all of the stupid things he did, I’d get that feeling you get when you feel true embarrassment for someone else,and that’s my most-hated non-deep emotion. (Deep= when you feel legitimate sadness, depression, loneliness, etc.; Non-Deep=when you feel awkward, realize you forgot your lunch AGAIN, have a love interest halt all communication for no reason and without warning, etc.)

So, it might surprise you when I say I cried during Scott’s farewell episode last Thursday. Granted, if you look at me the wrong way, I’ll burst into tears (it’s just the way I am; Mom says I’m sensitive, but I don’t know, because sometimes I’m also a borderline sociopath), but man, I don’t even like the guy. I started crying during the part of the episode when Dwight Schrute reads a letter of recommendation Scott gave him as a parting gift. He started tearing up, so I started tearing up, and before I knew it I was biting my lip like how when any pretty girl does you instantly decide you would go bankrupt if you could make out with her for 10 seconds. I tried to hold back the tears but I was alone in my apartment, so I was like “fuck it, let’s make it rain in here.”

I wasn’t alone in this. Two of my friends -- who will remain unnamed, especially the male one -- told me they were crying at that point, via text message, and shortly after my Mom told me she began crying as well, even though she doesn’t really even watch the show that often. I’d texted her and told her it was a good thing I’d come home to watch it (my family was visiting, staying in a hotel down the street), because as much as I cry in comparison to normal guy standards, I for some reason hate doing it around other people. I'm also this way with singing and masturbating, though one of the two is negotiable. This is one of the reasons I love text messaging: you can connect with people over something without them seeing you do so, while also concentrating on something else entirely. It's a perfect medium of communication for someone who is both a talker and a coward, like I am.

I was able to hold myself together after my brief crying spell, until the scene where Scott and Jim Halpert have their final discussion. It was a beautiful television moment that they made seem very genuine, which I found to be amazing, because who knew Steve Carrell could actually act in a legitimately sappy scene? When Scott and Halpert talked about Scott’s departure that day, a full 24 hours before everyone else at Dunder Mifflin thought he was going to leave, I lost it. I think this was the first time in the entire series I could empathize with Michael Scott. This is something I would do. I hate goodbyes, so I’d at least consider leaving without having to have one big goodbye with all the people I’d grown so close to. I often thought of doing this at the end of college, when I cried while hugging males more often individually than most people worldwide did during the original “Rent” cast’s closing week on Broadway. I couldn’t ultimately do that, though, because my friends knew where I lived, and I was only moving 40 minutes away from our college town, so.

I knew initially I’d cry, just because of my sentimentality. (I’ve just now realized that next time I cry in front of a girl, it’ll seem much less significant if she’s read this. Also, I just wrote “next time” like this always happens. It’s been a while, okay?) I’ll probably cry during the last episode of “Robot Chicken,” just because I don’t like things that end after I’ve become used to having them in my life. I can find melodrama in anything. This is why I hate break-ups, and probably why I don’t date all that often. If you don’t start it, you can’t end it. But, I get attached to television shows, since I spend all those nights watching them instead of trying my damndest to go out and get laid. But, this wasn’t even a series finale (though it may as well be, this show will not go on much longer without Scott, just like X-Files when David Duchovny left), so I found myself wondering why I was so emotionally affected.

Then, it came to me. I don’t like Michael Scott, but I do like what he has contributed to society, and that is the most popular catchphrase to come from a sitcom since “Friends.” I think we can all agree that “That’s what she said” is much more hilarious than “How youuuuu doin’?” Joey Tribbiani can’t even grill Michael Scott’s bacon in the morning.

I’ve laughed at “That’s what she said” jokes more times than I can even accurately estimate, because I suck at math and because I’ve laughed at them lots. They’re great anytime anybody says them (my little brother has even begun to grasp them, and has produced some pretty solid ones despite having almost no understanding of sarcasm), but they’re best when Michael Scott says them. At the end of the show, I cried and laughed simultaneously. I craughed. Because during his last scene on the show forever as a regular cast member, as he took his mic out of his suit, he said, “I can’t wait to get this off my chest.” Then, you could barely make out a “That’s what she said.”

That’s a hell of a lot better than eating onion rings, or simply laying in some dense foliage and closing your eyes. Michael Scott made a hell of an exit.

So, tonight a new episode of “The Office” will be on, without Michael Scott, and I’m sure it’ll be pretty funny. So, I guess I’m already over the emotions I was feeling last Thursday. Like a girl shunning you, his leaving was a non-deep emotion.

I’m happy with the way he left “The Office.”

I don’t think it came too soon.

...That’s what she said.

President Obama's climactic Sunday Funday

President Barack Obama had one hell of a weekend. Not, like, one of those I-got-hammered-with-my-friends-and-went-to-a-stripclub weekend, either. It was a weekend, in fact, that probably blows pretty much everyone else’s out of the water. And when I write “everyone,” I include myself and Prince William, even though we both had pretty nice weekends. I haven’t talked to the British Slick Willy, but he got married (ehhh...) and is now sharing a bed with the former Kate Middleton (MY MAN!), so I’m estimating his weekend was cool. I got to hang out with most of my family, and spontaneously heard Nas’s seminal classic “Oochie Wally” on Saturday night at a bar, so mine was good. I bet those guys who got drafted by NFL franchises had good ones, too. They at least had me beat -- barely, though. It’s a catchy song (though very, very vulgar).

But then Obama decided to clandestinely give the go-ahead for a military operation that would, if it went as planned, result in the killing or capture of Osama Bin Laden, a guy who I think we can all agree is one of few in history whose death has actually warranted maniacal celebration. After that, he snagged his wife and daughters and jetted to Alabama, where he attempted to comfort some of the victims of the recent devastating tornados that ravaged the area. After that, he stopped in Florida, where he was initially going to watch a NASA launch that was delayed. He still decided to go, though, so he could hang out privately for a few minutes with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, of Arizona, who was recently shot by a guy who, much like Bin Laden, sucks.

After that, he gave a commencement speech at Miami Wade College (see what I did there?! Ha!) before heading back to Washington, where he dressed up like James Bond for the White House Correspondents’ Association annual black tie dinner. It was here that he busted on Donald Trump and countless others in a stand-up routine that was even supplemented by a clip from "The Lion King," if you can believe it. His time at the podium lasted 18 minutes. He spent the first 16 being hilarious, and then the last two were spent thanking the armed forces, some of whom were at that time gearing up to merck the world's biggest douchebag.

Trump balked at being cut up on so badly, and took to Fox News Sunday morning to lament that he was the butt of so many jokes. "It was almost like, is there anyone else they could talk about?" he asked, which is kind of a peculiar thing for someone to say who had spent the previous weeks talking about pretty much nothing except a piece of paper. (Also it should be noted here that Trump was recently roasted on Comedy Central. By that dude from "Jersey Shore." Voluntarily.)

So, Obama found someone else to talk about. Sunday night, Navy Seals raided the compound where Bin Laden was hiding, and one of them shot him in the head, twice -- leading me to believe he'd seen "Zombieland" and is an advocate of the "double-tap." The timing couldn't have been better for a few reasons. Of course, all of these are very, very insignificant when compared to Bin Laden actually being killed, and I acknowledge that, but still, the timing of it all was pretty cool. Since I’ve always been painfully awful with good timing, it really resonated. (Read: I always used to have to pee sometime in the two minutes before a basketball game I was playing in was to tip off. Also, my life’s romantic relationship experience is best described as something like a kid playing game after game of musical chairs and always losing because he was either in the wrong place at the wrong time or momentarily quit paying attention.)

-The announcement was made toward the end of "Celebrity Apprentice," shortly after every station went to a live news feed. I doubt this was intentional, but it's nice to think it was. I'm sure Trump, in his arrogance, thinks so, anyway. I'm still not sure who got fired that week, but I hope it wasn't Meatloaf.

-The NFL draft was finished.

-Bin Laden was killed at the end of a weekend that started with the aforementioned royal wedding. The U.S. really stole the thunder. I mean, think about it: England's taxpayers just shelled out $39 million to wed two people who have done just about as much as Paris Hilton to become famous. American taxpayers had the notion reinforced that the taxes they're spending to fund the military are at least partially being used to kill terrorists. This was done by killing the most sought after terrorist in the entire world.

I guess it's a good thing Obama hadn't been at the wedding that took place Friday -- he’d not been invited. He may not have been able to green light the military action if he was in England wearing a penguin suit. It seems like something you don’t do over Skype, like breaking up. (You break up through a text message, obviously.) Again, I'm sure the timing of all this wasn't planned for purposes of vanity, but how nice is it to picture Obama sitting in a hot tub early Monday morning, smoking a cigar, chuckling and saying "haters gonna hate" over and over again while he watches the news coverage of what has easily been one of the best moments of his presidency? I like to picture it with a little audio in the background. Some “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” by Young Gunz. You’d better tuck your girl, if she hot, fam; ‘Cause I’m pretty sure she’s a Barack fan. When he gets out, he dons a robe and starts to either crip walk or to do this dance.

I wonder what Aaron Sorkin and Oliver Stone are doing. This sequence of events might make a pretty good movie.

***

When I first started writing this, I was hesitant about making Obama the focal point. I realize what happened to Bin Laden is a huge victory, and one that was carried out physically and tactically by the military, who deserve mad props. But, I don't think it's too crazy to boo love on Obama right now a little bit, too. Because he's a symbolic entity. On Team America, the dude is equal parts coach and quarterback, the two who always get the majority of the love and hate. You don't hear much about the guys behind the scenes, unless they screw it up. You don't hear about the linemen all that much until the quarterback gets sacked a bunch of times. That's just the way it is, and it's the same thing on the other side of sanity. Bin Laden was once the Taliban big man on campus. He called the shots, and remained the face of the misguided franchise after they learned to operate without him, while he hid in the mountains. Kind of like how Joe Montana is still kind of the face of the 49ers (terrible analogy). It's vastly important to remember that terrorism is still out there, and may not have lost that much strength with Bin Laden's death, and it's just as important to try and recognize the people in the military and the tough work they're still going to have to do. It’s got to be scary and emotionally taxing, and I’m pretty confident I don’t have the fortitude to do some of the things some of them end up having to do.

But, anyway: What a Sunday Funday, am i right? Kids at Penn State took to the streets and partially destroyed the town, which is how they let America know they're really happy with something. Though I still don't understand the compulsion to destroy things in the place you live to celebrate a positive occurrence, I guess I'm glad they're doing it for something so significant that has not one thing to do with football.

Also: USA! USA! USA! USA!

College basketball is in bad shape

College basketball is in pretty bad shape.

I've thought so for a while, but watching last night’s national championship really convinced me. I would've been better off staying home and watching YouTube clips of Derek Rose breaking peoples' ankles.

Anyone who watched that game after watching many championships before will probably tell you it was the worst Natty-C they’ve ever seen in their lives. It was 40 minutes of basketball that would’ve been almost painful to watch without the aid of Natty Light. It’s just not what you look for at all from what is theoretically supposed to be the most anticipated and entertaining game of the entire season.

Before tipoff, it had the inherent makings of what could be a very good game, if both teams performed as expected. Butler was a noticeable underdog, despite having gone to the championship last year, and UConn seemed to be the athletic goliath you’d expect from a storied Big East team whose coach uses his reputation and myriad recruiting violations to stock up on raw young talent. (Which means virtually nobody was rooting for UConn except actual Huskies fans and those weird people who cheer against the team who beat their favorite team fair and square earlier in the tourney.) You knew going into it that Butler would have to rely on its teamwork, discipline and generally high-percentage field goal shooting, while the Huskies would basically beat the Bulldogs on the boards and in pretty much every athletic aspect of the game while Kemba Walker displayed his ridiculous talents. I thought that if Butler shot well and played their teamwork-based game, they’d have a shot of keeping it close going into the final three or four minutes, when things can go either way and probably favor the team that garnered national championship game experience the season before.

But then Butler shot 18 percent from the field, and with just less than 10 minutes left in the second half, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Since I was pulling for Butler, I was happy at halftime, when they were up three. Since the score was 22-19, however, I was happy in an unimpressed way, like when I wake up on a Saturday morning to find out my friend Ant has slept drunkenly on the couch through the entire evening without pissing himself. The Bulldogs had scored one two-point field goal in an entire half of basketball. As a team. If you'd like some context, Jimmer Fredette, BYU's NCAA player of the year, scored more than 30 points in one half by himself this season. His high for the year? A startling 52 points, which is one point less than UConn scored in their 53-41 victory, and three points less than the amount of wives Brigham Young had (fact).

Still, though, it was just one bad game, right? Every win isn't going to be pretty, championship or not. I accept that. I mean, I'm a Penn State grad, and the win they had over Wisconsin in the Big 10 tournament was potentially even uglier than last night's game. I guess I don't have as much a problem with that as I do the way the paradigm has shifted in the way college basketball seasons play out.

There is quality of play and team chemistry, still, and there are tremendous athletes -- the best their age in the world, in fact -- but in the past few years it has been rare to see the two combined. I lay the blame for this on the NBA as a direct result of its relatively new rule that players have to wait at least one year after graduating high school to declare for the draft. So, unless you're Brandon Jennings' crazy ass, you end up playing college ball for a year, whether you want to or not. I think this results in schools snagging guys who have it in their head that they'll jump for the league immediately after freshman season, which in turn has them focusing more heavily on individual performance than they would if they'd made the decision to go to school for themselves, to grow as players and win a championship. The dudes who decide they want to be at a school because they want to win and think they may stay for more than one year have more of a team-centric mindset, and that promotes chemistry with the other players who are going to be there for at least four years, with no goals in mind except winning a championship.

Think about Carmelo Anthony. James went straight to the NBA, and Anthony chose to go to Syracuse just before the league enacted the rule. The 'Cuse team played well together and won it all. Who knows? If they hadn't, Anthony would've possibly stayed another year. Florida, the last team to repeat, did so with all five starters returning. Four of those five are in the NBA right now. They came back because they were into winning championships; they were a team, not an individual doing everything he could to get through a year and get his draft stock as high as possible.

That, I think, is the reason John Calipari hasn't won any championships with Kentucky or Memphis. He specifically recruits players who are going to stay for one year, which means he essentially starts over every season, and the nation gets to watch some of its most talented players play a style that slightly resembles a pick-up game. They consistently win lots of games, but don't find much success in the tournament. Then, the emotionally unattached group leaves to make lots and lots of money.

On the other side of things, I think this is the reason teams like Butler, Virginia Commonwealth and George Mason have found themselves overachieving in recent years since the NBA one-year rule. There is no way you can tell me those teams are the best in the nation skill-wise. They are, however, a unit that works together, and that prepares them for success in a high-pressure setting like the tournament. Because of this, Cinderella teams have become much less impressive than they used to be, simply because there are fewer good "teams" in the NCAA for them to really upset.

At the end of the day, UConn won, and they did so by starting three freshman and bringing two off the bench (four of the five played more than 20 minutes). But, they only won by 12 when Butler shot so horribly and played awfully altogether. You're really not going to win many games on any level beyond fifth grade recreational playing like they did.

It's ironic, though, that Gordon Hayward led Butler to the Natty-C last season during his junior year, and then opted to leave for the NBA early -- something unprecedented among Butler's players. In the 2010 championship, Hayward scored 12 points, the Huskies' exact margin of victory. Had he played in the game this year, I've no doubt he would've scored more than that.

Charlie Sheen is (kind of) a genius, and he's (kind of) comparable to Lady Gaga.

There’s a pretty good chance you began reading this because of the title, which is usually a good thing and the object of a title in the first place, but that might not be the case in this particular instance. This time, you saw the title and probably got angry and decided you’d read it just so you could pick it apart and berate me for being an idiot.

I don’t blame you. In light of recent events, it’s a pretty inflammatory title that might seem like nonsense, especially since Lady Gaga is adored so vastly, for one reason or another.

But, if you’re incensed and that’s why you’re reading this, then you’re kind of proving the point I’m trying to make.

Up until a short while ago, you probably would’ve looked at that title, thought nothing of it and then continued looking around for something to read on a topic you cared about. If you were going to read it, it'd be because you were more enamored with Lady Gaga than Sheen. Back then, Charlie Sheen was just some dude who starred on that show your parents might still watch but you gave up on as soon as the half-man’s voice changed (or before, even). I can’t speak for anybody else’s reasoning for opting to just watch “How I Met Your Mother” and then call it a night, but for me it was the redundancy – though I must sadly admit that “HIMYM” is beginning to adopt some of that same redundancy. (Is it redundant to use the word redundancy twice in one sentence? If so, CBS must really be influencing me.) You can only watch a comedy about an aging drunk clad in bowling shirts and loafers who seduces a bunch of women for so many seasons if there’s very rarely any plot progression to speak of.

But then Sheen flew off the fucking handle. And now you care about him.

Charlie Sheen made you care.

The consumption of Sheen coverage is akin to rubber-necking at the scene of a car crash. You want to look away, but for some reason you aren't really able to describe, you can't. And, even though you really, really hope the event won't result in major injuries or death, you're aware either as the final outcome is far from out of the question. We all know it's maybe not the best thing to give Sheen a ton of attention, and for myriad reasons, but we're going to anyway, because his antics are endlessly entertaining.

The thought that he's a genius came to me involuntarily one night last week when I was watching Sheen's interview with Piers Morgan (which was a shame, because Larry King would've tore his shit apart). Sheen was talking all kinds of nonsense and punctuating every other sentence with either "winning," "duh" or something about "tigerblood" or "trolls." It was nothing short of awesome, albeit in an extremely stupid way, and it was television that was exponentially better than anything I'd ever seen on "Two and a half Men."

"This guy is a fucking genius," I thought to myself, much like the thoughts that probably run through his own head constantly, because he only has one setting, and that setting is "go." It was then that I made the decision to relentlessly follow every batshit crazy thing the dude would engage in.

This was also when I started to observe the parallels between Sheen and Lady Gaga.

I should clarify that I don't view Sheen or the lady who’s always talking about monsters as a genius in the traditional Albert Einstein, card-carrying-Mensa-member way, but in that throwaway way the term is now popularly used. Same with Lady Gaga -- though I don’t dispute that both of them are much more intelligent than myself, and may indeed have genius-level IQs. According to Mensa’s website, there are around 110,000 Mensans throughout the world, and judging by Sheen and Lady Gaga’s achievements at young ages, it’s quite possible they could both easily make the cut.

I don’t care about that, though, and you probably don’t, either. I just mean they’re geniuses because they’ve outsmarted us all into paying attention to every single little thing they do, for better or worse. I guess my mode of thinking now is that you have to be some kind of genius to captivate such a broad and vast audience, so fuck it: they’re both geniuses.

A few weeks before all this Sheen activity commenced, I got into an argument with a friend about whether or not Lady Gaga should be considered a genius. The criteria were that she played instruments, wrote her own songs and was unique. Many people attested to me that she was a genius based on these loose qualifications, which I supposed made my older brother, younger sister and Taylor Swift geniuses as well, along with that goofy music teacher whose young students performed at the Academy Awards this year.

The day this argument began was -- coincidentally -- the day of the Grammys, when this chick showed up in a fucking egg. As soon as I saw this, I found a link to a photo online and put it on my friend's Facebook wall, with some snarky comment about how I’d changed my mind, and she truly was a genius. At the time, I was angry that people held her in such high regard.

Then Sheen came along, though, and I realized that my complete adoration of his antics -- which would occasionally make me nearly giddy -- and my discomfort and dismay with Lady Gaga’s made me a complete hypocrite. I spend a lot of time talking about how she’s overrated (which she is, but hey, so were the Beatles -- anybody with that level of notoriety can’t be as good as people make them out to be) and extremely gimmicky. I couldn’t make peace with the fact that she got so much attention because of the ridiculous things she would wear and say.

“I don’t understand why she has to do all of that stuff,” I’d say to girls who would immediately rule out ever sleeping with me as soon as I made a disparaging remark about their Mother Monster. “I mean, if she’s that talented, why can’t she just let the music speak for itself?”

Well, because that’s not enough anymore, if your goal is to be a really, really famous pop star, and I’m going to assume is one of Lady Gaga’s, since both of the LPs she’s released have the word “Fame” in them. Unless you’re one of the most talented musicians to ever live, you have to have a little bit of that David Bowie gimmickery in your arsenal. Just tonight, I listened to Adele’s new album, and I was very, very impressed. But, she’ll never be as big as Lady Gaga. She’ll never have a bunch of little girls and young women freaking the fuck out at her concerts, because she won’t catch their attention. She’ll catch the attention of the girls and boys who just really want their art to come before everything else, which I guess can be good or bad. I guess Lady Gaga knew this, which is why she doesn’t play quiet piano music and go by the name Stefani Germanotta anymore. (This is true in pretty much any kind of media. Almost everyone my age I know can tell me who Tucker Max is, but probably only a handful can tell me who Junot Diaz is, despite Diaz being one of the best writers on the entire fucking globe. Max is definitely one of my favorites, but I think even he would say he’d have some really ridiculously tough competition if Diaz was getting wrecked, fucking girls and writing about it all the time.) With Adele, it seems to really be all about the music. No matter what Lady Gaga says, I’ll never believe that she feels the same way.

I guess it’s the same with acting as far as Sheen is concerned. If the acting process was his real passion and heightened status took a back seat, he may still have banged a bunch of porn stars and done a bunch of blow, but he would’ve stayed quiet about it. Sheen was famous before, and he’s richer than I can even fathom, but he wasn’t on my radar until he started doing obnoxious things, despite starring on what is allegedly the most-watched network comedy on television. Maybe he knew when he started spouting off some of the most absurd quotes and statements I’ve heard since, well, since I was born, that people would pay attention again. Maybe he didn’t. There’s really no way of knowing for sure.

But, it worked. Res ipsa loquitor ("the thing speaks for itself"), to take a favorite statement from the late Hunter S. Thompson -- a dude who was no stranger to the way a bold persona could drastically enhance fame and alter the way people view your work. Sheen has become without a doubt the most popular news story in the country, despite a pretty huge story in Libya centered around Muammar Gaddafi, a man who is probably just as insane as Sheen. The difference, though, is Gaddafi's lack of charisma. He's not entertaining, and Sheen is. Gaddafi is apparently a troll, with something other than tiger blood running through his veins, and I don’t really have any desire to follow him on Twitter.

Whatever condition Sheen’s motivations, mindset or mental stability are in doesn’t matter to me; I will continue to follow him on Twitter and on television and on UStream and wherever else he decides to take his newly-revealed personality. If he does some kind of stand-up comedy tour or show where he simply just talks nonsense, I’ll pay money to go and see it, just like so many people pay money to go see Lady Gaga. If he does another show – preferably a reality show – I’ll watch every single fucking episode.

I'm ashamed of myself, but the man will have my attention for the immediately foreseeable future.

I've heard somewhere that talent always rises. This may be true; I'm not sure yet, but you need more than talent now if you want to rise to the top of celebrity culture.

I suppose geniuses are born, not made, and it kind of sucks to think that if you want to win, and keep on winning, you have to be born that way.

Wake up in the morning feelin' like P. Diddy: A beginner's guide

The next 10 or so posts were from a blog I wrote for the Altoona Mirror. This is my final week at the paper, and I imagine they'll delete the blog when I leave. For some reason, I wanted to preserve some of the work.

*Originally published at Altoonamirror.com

I have always wanted to be a morning person. It's something that has appealed to me for years. It must be pretty rad to be able to wake up to an alarm clock on your cell phone and not want to hurl it across the room before you curl up into the fetal position and start sobbing uncontrollably. I want to be that dude from the Folgers commercials who smells coffee, sits up, stretches and smiles.

But, sadly, I am not of that ilk. I was not wired that way. The beeping sound of an alarm clock severely depresses me. Every time I hear it, I have the exact same reaction as I do when I hear "Soul Sister" by Train. It's like this: "Oh God, not this AGAIN. Why would you let such a sequence of sounds be INVENTED?" And then I shake my fists at the sky.

When I look at that sentence, I think about how I'm definitely looking at things the wrong way. I should be thanking God I get to wake up again, but when it's that early in the morning I'm not usually capable of forming such rational thoughts, especially positive ones. I'm not a morning person, and so by default I'm not a positive person in the morning. Come to me at 8 p.m. with a worry about your girlfriend who hasn't texted you back for a few hours, and I'll say that maybe she's lost her phone or the battery has gone dead; I'll tell you not to worry. Come to me 12 hours later, and I'll probably whip my mobile phone at you and then proceed to tell you she's probably hanging out somewhere with a guy who is much better looking than you, who was probably wearing a shirt with a popped collar...until a few minutes ago.

I'm not sure when I started hating getting up early, but I'd guess it was probably when I got to middle school in sixth grade, when the powers that be thought it'd be a great idea to have a school day for growing adolescents and teens start at 7:30 a.m. If I was going to get the sleep I needed back then, I was going to have to hit the sack before "Smallville" was over, and that was not going to happen. My family -- with the exclusion of my Dad, who often wakes up earlier than I even hit the sheets -- is not a clan of morning people. One of my most memorable mornings from the high school years was one day when I rolled out of bed and crawled into the bathroom to the shower, narrowly beating my older brother. I got naked and was checking the faucet for warmth when he came in and, in his bad early morning mood, decided he would not give up first shower without a fight. He literally choke-slammed me into the bathtub while I was in the buff. If it had been like three hours later, he probably would've just given me a high five and told me to go ahead and take the shower while he fired up the griddle and made some pecan pancakes.

This has gotten worse since college, when I would often arrange my schedule so I didn't have to wake up until at least 10 a.m. It has gotten worse still since I started work here. I don't come into the office until 1:30 each afternoon, which is awesome. But I've found that my pension for sleeping late extends until the moment I have to get up for an obligation, of which I typically have none before work beyond showering.

Many times in the past seven months, I've gone to bed early enough to get a solid eight hours before I'd wake up at the time I specified on my phone's alarm. I'd have plans, too. I was going to go to the gym, then I was going to start writing a novel that'd make Junot Diaz want to be my friend. At some point in there, I'd whip up some egg whites and read the paper.

Usually, though, I'd turn off the alarm. I'd just lay in bed until like noon, then I'd get up, shower and have enough time to really only read the paper while I watched Sportscenter and ate a banana while hating myself for being so lazy. I pushed the limit for the amount of time I could remain horizontal while the sun was up.

I decided recently it was time for a turn around. I want to wake up in the morning and feel like P. Diddy, to quote the great American poet, Ke$ha. I mean, who wouldn't? P. Diddy has clout, and his life is pretty sweet (well, after he beat those murder charges anyway). This is the dude who was able to make a group of hip-hop-hopefuls walk miles to get him cheesecake, because he just wanted some cheesecake. He actually had a reality show that centered around him training for a marathon. That's right, people tuned into MTV to watch a man jog a lot. If I were to start training for a marathon, my Mom might care a little bit, but that's about it.

Also, I bet his linens have a really high thread count, so that probably doesn't hurt.

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but I figured it was as good an opportunity as any to start waking up and being a little bit more productive than I'd been in recent memory.

I had to start at the very beginning. There is nothing in the world that will ever make me enjoy the sound of an alarm clock. Okay, that's not true. If it becomes a daily Pavlovian signal that Blake Lively has just shown up at my door with a large order of house special lo mein, I'll probably start to enjoy it. But the odds of that are slim, so I took that stupid noise out of the equation.

"Scott, what sounds make you happy?" I thought to myself. Almost immediately, I came up with two ideas. The first is the song "Circle of Life," from the very first scene of "Lion King." It starts with the sun coming up -- which was fitting -- and some tribal dude screaming, "Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba. Sithi uhm ingonyama." According to LionKing.org (yes this really does exist) it translates to, "Here comes a lion, Father. Oh yes, it's a lion."

Honestly, I don't care what it means. It just sounds nice, so I like it (kind of like a Radiohead song). So I downloaded that as a ringtone on my phone, and set it up as an alarm.

Next, I obtained a compilation of music from the television show "Glee." I threw that in my CD player alarm clock, and set that up. (If you are too cool and don't dig "Glee," I suggest substituting it with the song "You Get What You Give" by The New Radicals. It's probably barely edges out "Mmmbop" as my favorite pop song from the 90's. It's very happy. I don't know how I feel about everything I just wrote in this parenthetical sequence; not very manly, is it?)

I staggered these alarms within 15 minutes of each other. This way, if the music from "Lion King" didn't do the job of waking me up immediately, the kids from "Glee" would chime in a few moments later telling me that any way I wanted it was indeed the way I needed it, and that I was just a small town girl who was livin' in a lonely world. (They were heavy on the Journey throughout their journey to the regionals. Count it.) If I was already awake and reading the paper before I left for the gym, I would get a pick-me-up from that gang of adoreable misfits.

Right before I walked out the door for the gym, I'd fill my new Gatorade bottle with some water or green tea. It was one of those squirtable ones professional athletes use. I figured that somehow I could trick myself into thinking my running on the treadmill was part of some important team activity.

Whilst on the treadmill, I listened to a lot of music by Explosions in the Sky, an instrumental band that plays probably some of the most powerful music I've ever listened to in my 23 years on this earth. (They did all the music for the "Friday Night Lights" film and television show.) I can't explain why, but their songs make everything you're doing seem like it is vastly more important than it justifiably should be. I like to listen to them while I fold my laundry. It makes me feel like the most domesticated man since Michael Keaton in "Mr. Mom." And that came out in 1983.

Next, I'd jump in the pool and try to swim some laps, something I haven't done much since my Mom made me join the swim team in fourth grade. (It ended like piano lessons : I complained until she didn't make me go anymore. Now I regret doing that in both instances.) That'll wake you up for sure.

So then I'd come home and shower and try to write something for a little bit. That novel hasn't really gotten off the ground yet, so Diaz is going to have to wait if he's looking for new up-and-coming literary pals, but I don't think he minds. I do get a lot more reading done, though, and that's good for the mind. Especially those Junot Diaz books. Dude can write. (Yes, I'm hoping he Googles his own name a lot and decides he wants to e-mail me. So what?)

So far, it has worked for me. At least on two-thirds of the weekdays in 2011. We'll call it a start.