Unemployed Ben

There is an expression that I really dig and its not something that I come across as much as I used to. The phrase is ‘They just get it”. Its not something that is easily explained, it can show up in a simple nod or perhaps even a joke told in the back of a bar but when it happens there is this unmistakable sense of recognition that tells you the person in front of you is cut from the same cloth. Its usually followed by a hey or whoa and that is all is needed.

This can also go for people you haven’t met, take Judd Apatow for instance, he just seems to get it. His writing is dead on with the way a lot of people talk and act, even if it offends. This couldn’t be any more apparent than in his newest movie Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and in particular the following scene.

How obvious is that scene and yet it appears for the first time in 2007. Something so natural and yet so dang funny, as if you were just talking to a friend. Looking forward to this one as all the Ray’s, Doors, and Walk the Line needed a little mocking.

The words of a guy that just gets it:

I’m a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That’s what kind of man I am. You’re just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It’s science.

Well if you were a man, I’d punch you. Punch you right in the mouth.

I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.

I’m gonna punch you in the ovary, that’s what I’m gonna do. A straight shot. Right to the babymaker.

We are laughing and we are very good friends. Good buddies sharing a special moment…laughing and enjoying our friendship, and someday we’ll look back on this with much fondness.

Sorry about the previous days of blogging, I told you the rust needed to be shaken off or more like sandblasted off with a million throwing stars.

In watching some recent sports highlights I am amazed at how much influence the referee still has on games, they make about 100k a year and can change the direction of the entire multi-billion dollar league. Seems to me even more mistakes still occur, sure the 10 camera angles help us see the miscues a whole lot easier but shouldn’t the goal of any league be to just get the call right. This is part of the reason I paled back my interest in sports and thats brings up an interesting question, where does interest become fanaticism?

More than a few times I questioned why I needed to know who the backup tight-end of the Jets was and why I felt the need to ponder if he had to play, how that might effect the teams weak side pass protection. Now consider that I don’t like the Jets and that this knowledge is only useful if I am a scout for the NFL or a obsessed fantasy football geek.

Very few of the people I hang around with would see this as a problem, actually it would be considered as an asset. However, there is a line you cross when it goes from wants to needs and obsession begins to creep into the picture, then that line is awful fuzzy. Its the highs and lows that make it so damn interesting, a roller coaster of emotions and if you come out on the winning side it can make you feel invincible. I won, so in the end if felt good at the end of the day or year but that doesn’t exclude some door slamming, desk kicking and even a few shattered CD’s. It became less fun and more like a chore, I essentially treated it like a job and the actually games were irrelevant even with my hometown Seahawks, sure I rooted for them but not if it could cost me a fantasy game.

So took a step back and it feels good, I don’t watch a game unless I want to. I don’t have to read the sports page or even worry about things like injury reports, which coach is on the hotseat or why Terrell Owens is such a gigantic tool. I let others take up where I left off and to them it might be a more enjoyable experience, I was holding on too tight and for something as silly as rooting for some millionaires to beat other millionaires in a half a billion dollar stadium I helped build and maintain with my taxes and $7 beers. Not a real complaint it just seems I am more distant from the modern athlete than at anytime in my life.