pinstripes slim my thighs

i spent the afternoon watching another wonderful wgn broadcast of the chicago baseball cubs as they embarrassed the pirates. midway through the game, as i was keeping score at home, i wondered why nobody sells the mlb team pants. you see jerseys, t-shirts, jackets, hats, and the like all over the place, but the one thing you never see is a pair of chicago cubs home uniform pants. that's a shame, because i would like wearing them on game day to support the team. you wouldn't have to wear the jersey as well, then it would look like you're ready for halloween. think about all the things you could pair with some white and blue pinstriped cubs trousers. mlb.com, are you listening? also, on a separate, but related note, i decided i'm going to apply for the job of first base coach for the schaumburg flyers this season. that's got to be the easiest job, all you have to do is tell the hitter "nice hit kid" and give them a pat. occasionally, you may have to collect a foot or elbow protector, but that's about as stressful as the job gets. nothing is riding on the job either, when's the last time you heard matt sinatro being blamed for a tough cubbie loss? i know what you're all asking, patrick, why not just become a special assistant to the manager like ivan dejesus is to lou piniella? the answer is, because i have no idea what he does, but the job sounds intense. i probably shouldn't be counted on to keep the dugout full of big league chew and ensure the gatorade coolers are at appropriate throwing weights. i'm horrible with numbers, and i forget things very quickly. well, if first base coach doesn't work out, there's always bullpen catcher.

tiger woods is a pussy, flossing blows

tiger woods had surgery on his knee yesterday to repair cartilage damage. what the hell is this guy doing on the golf course that he's fucking up his ACL? let's not even get into the fact that golf is not a sport, it's a hobby, but all golfers do is walk a little and swing a metal club. 70 year old men golf all the time without problems. suddenly tiger woods is sustaining major damage to his knee by doing the same thing? this really doesn't make any sense to me. i can think of a thousand other professions that are more likely to sustain an injury. the only way a golfer should get injured is from crashing the cart while heavily intoxicated. while tiger may be a bitch, he's got a pretty hot wife, so he's the real winner here.

everybody has at least one small lie that they'll always be telling for the rest of their lives. some people lie about their age, their education, sexual experience, but for me it's flossing. i made a dentist appointment this morning and it got me to thinking. Every time i go to the dentist, they always ask me if i've been flossing. naturally i say yes, even though i floss less often than i read. dentists are no dummies, they know i'm lying, but they play the game and tell me maybe i should floss a little more often. way i see it, i've gone 22 years without a cavity and my teeth seem to look fine, all thanks to not flossing. the only way i think i'd ever floss is if tiger wood's wife were involved in some strip flossing, then my dentist would really be impressed.

you can't keep a good man down, so how'd i get back up?

so it's been a while. a lot has happened, and many a calender page has blown off. the other half of this dynamic double play duo has grown up. he's a big shot with a job now, one that requires a belt to be worn. don't worry though, i'm still the immature punk i always have been. i'm thirty delicious days from leaving the army and enjoying my first summer in four years. it's weird, i had to grow up quick out of high school being in the military. now that i'm starting school in august, i intend to wipe all that progress out with the help of alcohol and casual drug abuse. it's kind of like in jurassic park, they made all that amazing progress and had those dinos running around that island. then, newman dropped that can of dino jizz, the dilophosaurus spit in his face, and bam, dr grant and the kids are running from giant lizards for two hours. point is, i've seen jurassic park too many times. you give me a situation in life, and chances are i could relate it to a scene in jurassic park. you know a movie's got something going for it when you watch it despite jeff goldblum having a large role.



below is a list of a few of the many things i'm looking forward to this summer:
-going to some cubs games
-sitting in the pool all day long
-drinking a lot of beer out by the pool
-lots of skydiving
-eating no less than 13 chipotle burritos per week
-visiting dave
-looking for an apartment downtown
-wisconsin camping
-intense bags rivalships
-hanging out with bobby
-bbq's
-touring the leinenkugel brewery
-getting wasted at schaumburg flyers games
-concerts
-playing with my dog, wrigley
-getting a bartending gig
-playing the new grand theft auto
-scaring old people at jewel with my many tattoos
-losing track of time in binny's beverage depot
-hitting up los burritos tapatios at 4 a.m.
-a possible west coast field trip

in case you're living underneath a bean bag chair, the nhl playoffs are going on. i dare you to find a hotter picture of lord stanley's cup not involving barry melrose. hayden panettiere, your name upsets both mavis beacon and i, but your sultry smile almost makes me want to watch heroes. actually, not really at all. i'd rather just google you.

so... you wanna fukudome?

I remember reading a story on Ichiro Suzuki a while back that I found pretty interesting. Ichirio said he thinks the reason asians are taking so well to baseball is because their squinty eyes allow them to block out the visual distractions of the game, and focus only on the ball. If you're not already aware, the chicago cubs signed japanese outfielder kosuke fukudome late last night. I'll tell you why I'm excited the cubbies finally landed one of these japs. First off, we need a solid right fielder, especially one that'll quickly have a cult following with the bleacher bums. Second, he was one of the best hitters in the japanese league. And finally, dude's japanese. This little man from the east is going to open up so many new doors for the cubs, it's going to be crazy. In six months, hordes of japanese kids are going to be running around tokyo with their playstation 9's wearing chicago cubs jerseys and hats. The asians are whacky when it comes to their sports stars. They won't even know how the game is played, but if one of their stars is playing in the US, every asian and their state mandated one child tune in. They don't understand what's going on, but they can get rowdy via satellite feed with the best of them. That's just japan, stop and think for a minute how crazy the north side is going to be when fukudome fever strikes this summer? Japanese players are easy to market, and it seems like every big name team these days has one. I can't even imagine how many funny commercial's he's going to be involved in. Hopefully he doesn't need a translator, but speaks very broken english. The kind you get from your chinese food delivery guy, or a chicago public school student. I can just picture fukudome sitting in right field eating some gummy lichi candies in-between hitters. I hope he does some crazy stretching before games too. Whenever I think of an asian athlete (three times a year, give or take), I always imagine them doing insane stretches and warm-ups that 97% of the general american public couldn't do. Maybe he'll even treat us and wear one of those kooky jap headbands, like he might hit a double up the middle, or throw a fist in your clavicle. You just can't be sure with one of those on. By the way, I'm not racist. I was friends with eric huffman for six years, and he's one half japanese. So really, I was good friends with a full japanese man for three years.

a very patrick christmas

for the second year now, i've compiled a list of hand picked songs guaranteed to make your holiday thirteen times as fun. oddly enough, i'm not a fan of christmas songs myself, but pretty much everybody else in the world is. i can't argue with papa noel or saint nick. so in the spirit of giving, please enjoy both my christmas albums. you may need a RAR program to extract these files once they're downloaded. get one for free here for mac or for windows

download here
1) carol of the bells by: thrice
2) have yourself a merry little christmas by: andrew ripp
3) rockin' around the christmas tree by: cartel
4) little drummer boy by: playradioplay
5) christmas by: death cab for cutie
6) the christmas song by: new found glory
7) holly jolly christmas by: the format
8) a new york christmas by: rob thomas
9) winter wonderland by: hellogoodbye
10) the first noel by: my american heart
11) carol of the bells by: mae
12) baby, please come home by: anberlin
13) the only gift that i need by: dashboard confessional
14) the war is over by: thrice
15) unwritten christmas by: sum 41 w/ unwritten law
16) christmas time is here by: gatsby's american dream
17) i'll be home for christmas by: matchbook romance
18) christmas song by: flyleaf
19) the lights and buzz by: jack's mannequin
20) 12 days of christmas by: taking back sunday


download here
1) the war is over by: the fray
2) yule shoot your eye out by: fall out boy
3) we wish you a merry christmas by: relient k
4) silent night by: the click five
5) forget december by: something corporate
6) a great big sled by: the killers
7) oh holy night by: brand new
8) i won't be home for christmas by: blink 182
9) 12 days of christmas by: relient k
10) all i want for christmas is you by: my chemical romance
11) rudolph by: jack johnson
12) christmas celebration by: weezer
13) i celebrate the day by: relient k
14) the war is over by: street drum corps
15) what's this? by: fall out boy
16) merry christmas everybody by: rooney
17) i hate christmas parties by: relient k
18) christmas day in the sun by: hot hot heat
19) christmas with you is the best by: the long winters
20) blue christmas by: the bright eyes
21) rudolph by: sheryl crow
22) that was the worst christmas ever by: sufjan stevens
23) my december by: linkin park

Cost Effective Christmas Shopping

Patrick and I got to talking earlier about how you could easily replace certain Christmas gifts with a cheaper alternative and the person you give the gift to wouldn't even know the difference. With that in mind and since the Holiday season is upon us, I thought I'd put together a list of gifts that might be on your special someone's Christmas list and some cheaper alternatives to those gifts so that you can get the real thing for yourself.




Expensive gift: Apple iPhone ($400)
Cheaper Alternative: Walkie Talkie ($40) + Cassette Tape Player ($10) + Duct Tape ($5)

Say you have a sassy 8 year old who's been dropping hints that he'll stop loving you if you don't get him an iPhone for Christmas. Put his threats to the test by buying him a walkie talkie and a cassette tape player and duct taping the two together (making sure to leave the cassette tape bay on the exterior of the unit). This gift is particularly practical considering you now have an opportunity to get rid of all those old yanni and kenny g tapes you've had sitting around the basement. Send your little man off to school with his new "iPhone" duct taped to his belt loop and if in a couple of weeks all the kids at school are wearing them, it turns out your little guy is actually pretty cool. If he comes home with a smashed tape player and you heard intermittent screams on your end of the walkie talkie throughout the day, odds are he wasn't ever destined to be cool.



Expensive Gift: a library full of books ($60,000+)
Cheaper Alternative: the internet ($40/month)

In order to amass a collection of books that an english baron would be envious of, it's probably going to set you back about 60k, and that doesn't even include the cost of all the mahogany book shelves and cast bronze bookends in the shape of famous sculptures that you're going to need. The internet, on the other hand, contains more or less every single piece of knowledge ever known to man and it's accurate over 40% of the time. So, get your special someone an internet connection for a year and spent your extra $59,000 on something practical for yourself, like a chipotle burrito a day for the rest of your life.



Expensive Gift: Playstation 3 ($400)
Cheaper Alternative: A knife, a football, a battle axe, various rings, and a glob of black putty ($38?)

As far as I can tell, a playstation 3 is a shape-changing box o fun. All you have to do is set it down in a completely white room and it starts growing random shit from all of its various ports and drives. Why not save yourself in the vicinity of $362 and make your own with a glob of black putty and various sundries that you can find laying around the house?



Expensive Gift: Puppy ($500)
Cheaper Alternative: Hamster ($10)

Every lady wants to find a labradoodle puppy wrapped up under their christmas tree on christmas morning, but what guy wants to spend 500 dollars on a glorified hamster when you can spend 10 dollars on an actual hamster? When worse eventually comes to worst , go out and buy yourself an air mattress for 50 bucks, spend $50 on flowers for your girlfriend, and then put the left over 390 bucks in your Nintendo Wii fund.

black friday gold

from the makers of lemonade tycoon 2, zoo tycoon, and prison tycoon 3 comes this holiday's must have game. convenience store tycoon throws you right into the dirty shoes of your local 7-11 clerk and the high octane adventure they call their job. here's your chance to make the tough decisions, twinkies above or below the suzy q's? sell the marlboro reds and hustler to the 13 year old? wash your hands after that wicked trip to the bathroom or conserve water? put the wet floor sign down or let the customers find out for themselves? will your store thrive and become a staple of the community, or will you be the target of gang related robberies every night? only time will tell if you have what it takes to be a convenience store tycoon or just another jhambir patel with a teal geo metro to his name. available now at best buy and white hen.