Bombs Away: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Self Promotion

The Beer Garden Sunday fun day has decidedly changed the flow of the Del Drunk week. Productive Monday Del has gone into the witness protection program. Not even his family knows his whereabouts. Seriously, you'd be surprised the impact a few "Dingers" in the sun, coupled with the ubiquitous "Shampoo Effect", will have on your body.

No one is posing here...we can't keep our heads up. Dinger Damage.

This past Sunday's hangover was non existent however because I was a late arriver to Saturday's Beer Garden (creatures of habit). Work was kind enough to help with my fight for sobriety by calling me on Saturday afternoon to do some site testing. Luckily, it mostly required me to sit on my couch and wait for them to call me back. At least this finally gave me the opportunity to watch Snakes on a Plane (awesomely bad btw). Thanks to this I was EASILY the soberest person of our mixed crew for the night. I have to say it was a refreshing change. Even still I managed to somehow let my camera get stashed in a friend's purse. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal I know..but trust me it was. The following day was to be a prolific day in the hallowed halls of 621 Strand. Hmm...scratch the halls part out since it all occurred outside. While everyone else battled nausea and headaches, I was ready to get back on the saddle. We planned one more Beer Garden but the weather sucked so we re-grouped at my house after late breakfast. Someone suggested wiffleball and my eyes lit up.

Let me say a a few things about wiffle ball:

• It's awesome
• Anyone can play
• There's little to no running involved
• You can drink while playing

Sounds great right. On top of that I also happen to be fairly decent at it. I know i know, that's like saying I'm fairly decent at "staying inside the lines in coloring books" or "not biting my fork when I eat" but there is real skill involved. Needless to say we I take it way too seriously. My intensity level is comparable to the white trash kid in middle school who would slide into home plate in gym glass...sans the husky Lee Jeans.

Fact: California is not a big wiffle state. I actually had to fly home to get a suitable wiffle bat and a box of balls...oh and I saw my family too while i was there. Since moving to LA the wiffle games have been few and far between so when the opportunity presents itself I pounce on it like "Jillie" on 4 week old pasta. Sadly, my camera was still in the clutches of a drunk girl so I didn't get to visually document what i like to call:

"The Greatest Display of Power that Santa Monica has Ever Seen"

Yes I own this shirt. Before Sunday it was all mostly exaggerated hubris .

About my exaggerated hubris: I can bring the noise with the wiffle. However a few years of "bringing the noise" and I thought I needed Tommy John surgery. Nothing could be more embarrassing than going to the doctor and explaining to him that you think you have a torn rotator cuff due to wiffle ball. Thanks to the nonexistent wiffle scene in LA, my arm was recharged and I was able to avoid the doctor's inevitable shame face. Wiffle is best as a 3 vs 3 battle but we were down a man early on so we, like the soliders of Sparta, took on overwhelming odds and destroyed the competition. I suppose the 300/Sparta reference is a poor one as they all died but you get the gist assholes: we were down a man. I mixed up the gas face (fastball) along with a biting slide piece (slider) with amazing results (no runs, tons of Ks). I have to chalk the dominance up to my healthy living but then my next sentence will just prove that to be wrong. Beers arrived and we pounded them simply because it was so damn hot. Soon after I CRUSHED a homerun out of the park, into the dog park and over a PALM TREE.

"It's gotta be the beers"

The official measurement was 580 feet. I'm guessing that if it weren't for the top pieces of the Palm tree it the ball would have traveled to Marina Del Rey. I was man among boys. Quite literally because after many an inning a pack of 12-14 year olds asked to challenge us to a game. Feeling punch drunk from the excitement of the bomb, the heat, and the beers we gladly accepted. Now if I were them I wouldn't want someone pitching to me like I was a baby, so I did what seemed natural and gave them the gas face. Poor kids. They didn't stand a chance. The only contact they made was a foul tip fastball... that went screaming back into another kid's face. I think he cried. Soon after that two of the punks gave up and laid on the grass and began texting (each other presumably) while foul in the face boy began to feel the early effects of a a wiffle concussion. The only kid who was actually trying was the kid who appeared to have never thrown a ball before.

He had heart....but not much else.

I was pretty disappointed with these kids. Us "old fuckers", as I'm sure I heard one of them mutter under their breath, had been playing for hours with varying degrees of hangovers ( and were attempting to earn new hangovers as we played) and we had no quit in us. I shit you not, these "young fuckers" gave up in two innings. It was a sad look into the future of our country..and I'm not having it!. I've decided to buy an SUV and use as much Styrofoam as possible. I will fly to New Jersey and find a special lady to be the future Mrs Upton** LeFevre and I'll make sure she uses 3-4 cans of Aqua-net aerosol hairspray a day.

Meet the future Mrs Upton LeFevre: Tiffani from Trenton. She's pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me


Those lazy fucker punk kids aren't gonna Inherit the Earth. Not on my watch! I'm headed to the Hummer dealership right now to trade in my Prius.

Game on!

Side note: After racking up countless Ks and clubbing the majestic bomb, one of the opponents said "You clearly played baseball beyond a high school level". Easily the most awesomely outlandish things said to me in a long long time and I ate it up like it was...wait for it, wait for it.... four week old pasta.


**Recently while reading Entertainment Weekly I decided that if I ever had to change my name I would change it to Upton.
(sticking w/ LeFevre or going w/ Sinclair hasn't been decided yet by future Del/Upton)



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Now playing: M83 - Teen Angst

Food Fight: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Agnosticism

Let me start this blog off with some Del background work. I went to a catholic elementary school. Luckily my parents wised up to the Catholic school scam and I became a nice normal non god fearing public school kid in 6th grade.

You mean paying extra money to get substandard facilities and piss poor educations from people who don't believe in anything but Eternal Damnation isn't a bargain?



Catholic Schools, wait let me rephrase that, THIS catholic school was for suckers. Allow me to give you some of the finer points of this place

• You had art class once every two weeks
  
  
• There was one computer for the entire school
  
  
• Gym class was housed in one of two places: "The Dungeon" or "The Courtyard". Both equally dangerous places. "The Dungeon" was an ice cold basement with a dilapidated balcony and wait for it, wait for it....carpeting. Mind you this carpeting was more like high grade sandpaper. Absolute torture. Of course, if the weather was nice then you were fortunate enough to have gym out on "The Courtyard". This was the blacktop church parking lot. Try and find a kid from that school that can slide into a base or lay out for a football and I'll give you a $1000. (The irony was that the school was equipped with a decently sized room w/ a gym floor...but it was used for Bingo and students weren't allowed in it...for fear that they'd "muck it up")
  
  
• Lice. That's right you're reading that correctly . This school in the heart of Peekskill, NY, that you PAID to attend had a lice problem. One gross kid would spread their personal flea circus through out the tiny school. How that wasn't enough of a tipping point to switch faster I'll never know.
  
  
• Hmmm, what else was there...oh yeah, THEY DIDN'T BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION. Why spend time on things like science when we can learn, for the 5Th time, all the stations of the cross. (there are 14 btw)
  

That said the school for me had three key pros that public school could not match:

1. McDonald's Wednesdays: Since the school was so small there was no real cafeteria so they had to Macgyver the lunch days. Monday was sandwiches from a deli, Tuesday was a pizzeria, and so on and so forth. Anyone who knew young Del (and sadly present day Del) would know that this was kind of a big deal. The Perfect Attendance record for Wednesdays was a lock for me...if such an award existed.
   
   
2. Church: I know it sounds like a con...but hear me out. If you were an altar boy you'd sometimes get called out of class (no not to play Tarzan with the Priest) to work a funeral. This meant you'd get a) to skip some class time b) potentially get paid for it c) all the hosts you could eat (Mmm, the body of Christ). Looking back at it I'm sure my friends and I rubbed many a family member of the deceased the wrong way with our shit eating grins. Or maybe instead they saw us as a beaming celebration of Life during a dark hour. I'm guessing it was the former.
   
   
3. The Yearbook: This thing was a glorified pamphlet. That said it was a hot ticket. Lets concentrate on the yearbook as it is what initially inspired this nonsensical blog
   

Trust me where this is going you have no idea

The yearbook's big selling point was that you could submit a piece of art or writing to get published in your grade's 2 page spread. Everyone would write little puff pieces sucking off J.C. or his mom and be a lock for a slot...but I refused. I made my stand. I planned on writing anything but religious propaganda. Sadly my Atari obsession had drained the creative juices out of my impressionable young mind. Second Grade writer's block is a sad thing. I went to the Library for inspiration. Hello what did we have here: Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends". I read it for inspiration and inspiration I got...in spades. Here is what I came across:

Spaghetti

Spaghetti, spaghetti, all over the place,
Up to my elbows—up to my face,
Over the carpet and under the chairs,
Into the hammock and wound round the stairs,
Filling the bathtub and covering the desk,
Making the sofa a mad mushy mess.
The party is ruined, I’m terribly worried,
The guests have all left (unless they’re all buried).
I told them, “Bring presents.” I said, “Throw confetti.”
I guess they heard wrong
‘Cause they all threw spaghetti!

Genius work Shel.

I loved Spaghetti (it being my second favorite meal next to McDonald's, of course) and the imagery of the poem. I tried to ape the structure and style with sub-par results. Nothing rhymed with burger (mind you Shel only rhymed off of spaghetti once in his poem but I was a little jackass). I decided that no nun would have ever read this poem and I'd submit it as my own. Now this shit goes to the publisher super early so I had months to revel in my false pride. Revel did I ever. Imagine my chagrin, no... my horror, when my genius poem about spaghetti was listed as "Founded by Del LeFevre". Founded? WTF! The jig was up. I'd been exposed as the spaghetti sham I knew I was all along. After I got a nice sit down chat about the evils of plagiarism with Principle Sister Ann Michael I realized something. I didn't get a lesson in the evils of plagiarism. I got a lesson in malice. What kind of sick twisted bastards would sit on their evidence for months just so they could shame me in print form....publicly. I did mention I was in second grade right? Pure Evil.

Fuckers.

So I guess the real question is why is this event from my childhood so fresh on my mind? Why has Shel Silverstein's poem about spaghetti resurfaced in the halls of my consciousness? Let me explain.

This past Saturday I went to the Beer Garden w/ some people to send off my friends Katie and Eric as they prepared to drive cross country to NYC. We had some laughs and a bunch of drinks. I was by all accounts well behaved and wanting to see "Superbad". So we broke off into groups and headed over to the Promenade and got some movie tix. We had some time to kill so we hit Barney's Beanery for dinner and drinks. For the record since I was committing to a movie so I switched over to soda. The movie going experience is a sacred one to me and I refuse to get up out of my seat for the duration of the movie. Furthermore being drunk for a movie is just stupid. Sadly my guest, lets call her "Jillie", is stupid. Jillie was not on her best behavior. Right from the get go I knew this was a huge mistake but I was a man on a mission. I wanted to see the movie. This girl made it quite the challenge. She was yapping incessantly about nothing throughout the movie, dropping popcorn on people like her name was Alabama Worley, and just being an all around jackass. Highlights of the movie:

• Her getting us yelled at by strangers in front of us and behind us.
  
  
• Her response to said yells: Threatening violence on the "rude assholes".
  
• Her freaking out when i moved my seat to have two buffer seats.
  
  
• Her "storming out". What that really means is she stumbled out and fell down in the handicapped section and sat there until one of the other friends went and checked on her. I'm not that sap. Not me, No thanks.
  

After EASILY the worst movie going experience of my life people came back to my house w/ bottles of patron and kettle. Some drinking went on and then "Jillie" hit my fridge without my knowledge. While I wasn't paying attention (for obvious reasons) Jillie decided to dig into some of my, wait for it..wait for it, leftover spaghetti. (see this is going somewhere) Sadly this spaghetti was easily four weeks old. She'd attacked a healthy portion before I became aware of it. I however assumed all was somewhat ok because she was able to eat it. Hours later it was time for us to go to bed. I had no intentions of monkey business just because the drunk level was off the charts...and I was more annoyed than attracted. We went to bed and I thought my annoyance was at critical mass. I was wrong. Ninety minutes later I woke up to an eery silence. I'm not sure what stirred me but i sat up and looked around. All was peaceful. 5-7 seconds later all I heard was "Jillie" garble something that sounded like "wver-da-baf-vrrrom". Fuck! I jumped out of the bed and yelled no as her head fell over to me and a tidal wave of vomit came spewing out all over.

Spaghetti spaghetti, all over the place.
Spaghetti spaghetti, up to my elbows up to my face.
(Full circle you doubting Thomases!)

I screamed no again as I grabbed my trash can and stuck it under her mouth. After the initial wave was over i grabbed her and sent her into the bathroom to make love to the toilet bowl as I made a mad dash to get the sheets off my bed. As you may or may not know I have a heightened sense of smell. It's more of a curse than a gift. In this case it was a friggin nightmare. Fuck I began to dry heave and wretch as I ran my soiled sheets out to the balcony. I put new sheets on the bed, got a glass of water for "Jillie" and placed her on the couch as she had officially screwed herself out of bed privileges. I went into the bathroom and saw water pouring out of the toilet. Damn it, she had clogged the toilet. There was no mention of this by her...and I was not happy. I had to take a towel and soak up the puke water (while again dry heaving).

What a fucking night.

Any other normal Beer Garden day I would have been well beyond trashed for this event. Not this night. I suppose it may have been a blessing as if I were trashed I would have been on an even playing field w/ jillie and we could have been handsy in bed when she puked. I would have been sexually scarred for life if a girl puked on me while doing any kind of bedroom activities. Start working your brain and picturing what type of god awful positions and scenarios you can come up with. All aren't pretty. All end badly.

Spaghetti spaghetti, all over the clock
Spaghetti spaghetti, all over my _______.
(insert your Dice Clay version here. Mad Lib style)

In the morning as a penance (follow the running theme) i sent her home with my sheets and towel and demanded that they be washed asap. I'm going to throw them out anyway but punishment was needed. I should mention Jillie is a devout fervent practicing Catholic and asked me if i wanted to go to church that morning. I obviously declined.

What have we learned? Spaghetti and Religion just don't mix.

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Now playing: Explosions In The Sky - It's Natural to Be Afraid

Fantasyland: or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ruining Someone's Career

2007-2008 AGS Draft Lottery

Since the old Hatgame site has gone the way of the dinosaurs I decided the easiest way to announce this year's draft slots would be to blog it. Shameless self promotion I know. This Lottery was produced by The Commish, Jimmy, and myself. Good luck to all.

14: Fighting Irish: One word, Genius

13: 56: Hard to watch

12: Chungking Express: Chung swears by this movie...so please add to your netflix queue

11: Snoops: So many clips to choose from..lets go with him shitting on Papa Bear.

10: Hand Release: I'm glad i searched for a "hand release" clip at home and not at work)

9: Skins: Worst name ever. You deserve no video. Don't Pass Go, Don't Collect $200

8: Dances w/ Hookers: Conversely, this is the Best Team Name Ever (the video clearly corroborates this statement)

7: East Lincoln Boys: The 80's trend continues. Sandimas Rules!

6: J.E.T.S (jets jets jets): The "I wanna kiss you" clip would have been too easy...

5: Mt Boo: We've missed you buddy!

4: 20 Sided Die: Fruchtman's alter ego was inspired by this band. True story: I talked to the band and asked them to play "The Die's" wedding. They were game...his fiancee was not. Sad story I know.

3: Units: who knew Randy Johnson had a sense of humor...

2: Milk: easily the weirdest clip of the bunch...must have scared kids off of milk for life. Generation X i.e. The Brittle Bone Generation

1: The Jerkstore: I realize that having the #1 pick and also being 1/3 of the lottery committee (and announcer) might appear to be shady. I promise you its was 100% on the up and up. Sidenote: This all but gaurantees a huge devastating (possibly even career ending) injury for LT(2.0).

Baby You're a Lost Cause: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Alzheimer's

Here's a bit of life lesson for anyone who might not know a thing or two: Drinking a Red Bull and Vodka to start your Hungover Saturday might not be the best of ideas. If you happen to be drinking it at 9am...well that should just about remove all doubt of it being anything but a poor decision.

Lake Arrowhead became my own personal Mosquito Coast.

Now I've had my rough times. You know the type of days and or nights I'm talking about. The next day your first move is to go to your wallet and make sure your ID and Debit card are safe in their designated slots All that's left are a few crumpled dollar bills and some completely foreign credit card receipts ("The Champagne Room!? Again? Really? Damn It").

This was one of those times. Well it happened..and it didn't happen. Let me re-trace the events.

Friday Night: Booze and more booze.
Sat Morning 9am: wake up.
Sat Morning 9:35am: Prepare a heavy on the vodka red bull and vodka
Sat Morning 9:36am: Drunk. A new land speed record for the Shampoo effect
Sat Morning 10am: Mcdonalds breakfast
Sat 10:30am-6pm: Lots of beer and sun. Flipcup and a Monkees tribute band....starring one of the Monkees. (even when I was drunk I realized how stupid that sounded). Somehow near the tail end of our booze cruise I managed to topple head first into the water losing my sunglasses in the process. If that didn't paint you a drunk picture of my state on Saturday we'll try plan b...an actual picture.
R.I.P wristband...and sunglasses

Now lets flash forward to the center of this story. Back at the house I went into my wallet to get my debit card to pay for some pizza. No debit card. Damn it. I had drunkenly lost my debit card. (I've done this twice before in my life. Not a terrible track record). At this point my sole goal was to deactivate the card and find out what the last charge was because clearly some dastardly villain had to have stolen it from me.

The mustache twirling was a dead giveaway.

I had a friend assist me in calling CitiBank to crack the case. Poor Citibank customer service lady. Here is a written transcript (as it was told to me)

Del: "I lost my id"
Citbank: Sir what do you mean your ID?
Del: Card
Citibank: Do you mean your debit card?
Del: yeah my id.
Citbank: um ok. Can you please tell me the last four digits of your social security number
Del: 917-892-6819 (note that is my phone #)
Citibank: Sir, are you sure that's your #...you have too many numbers.
Del: I lost my ID..what was the last charge?
Citibank: Sir I cannot look up the transaction till you tell me information that will help me access your account.

Seeing my struggles my friend coached me through the call and I hung up and said "7-10 days" and felt rather responsible. False Pride. I proceeded to stay up with others till 7am drinking whatever was left and having the kind of drunk conversations that seem life altering.

They're not. Good times though.
"Sure you don't want to talk about politics?"


On Sunday I had a soberish flash of memory as i was dying from my first ever bout of alcohol poisoning (self diagnosed). Compounding the sickness was the fact that I was fighting it while on a boat...with people pounding drinks around me. Trapped on the boat I realized that I changed after Mcdonalds. There was a good chance my card was in the pockets and I was just being a drunk jackass. True to form that was exactly the case. Damn It. Why was I such an idiot. There's nothing worse than having to go through all the autopay websites (ESPN Insider, Netflix, countless porn sites, etc) and updating the card info. Seemed like a longshot but I tried calling Citbank back to see if i could "reactivate" my card. One would think this would be a terrible practice for the bank but i had to ask.

Transcript #2 starts NOW:
Del: Hello, I inadvertently reported my card as being lost. Turns out I was just really really drunk. I know its a longshot but is it possible to "reactivate" it.
Citibank: Sir we cannot reactivate cards. Once the card has been flagged as lost...wait sir, it says here the card is still active...
Del: really? that's impossible. I called on Saturday Night and I was told I'd be getting a replacement in 7-10 days.
Citbank: Sir, I have a note here saying you did in fact call on saturday
Del: you see...
Citibank: ...but you weren't speaking english and the request couldn't be processed at that time.
Del: HA...well I guess lucky for me I drank all that jager eh.
Citbank: (chuckles) I suppose so sir. Have a Good day.

Bottom line: I never report losing a debit card I never lost.

Final Lesson: If you're going to drink, make sure you drink to the point where you're unable to do harm to yourself. Liver not Included



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Now playing: Muse - Knights Of Cydonia
via FoxyTunes