MMFU: This Weekend Was Awesome

Since this weekend was pretty much fucking awesome for me we're doing something a little different for the Monday Morning Fuck You. Fuck Yous versus Fuck Yeahs! Let's jump right in!

1. Fuck Yeah: Hanging out and boozing with friends from college all weekend
Earlier in the week one of my best friends had his 30th birthday. He's the first in my group of friends to hit the dreaded milestone and his wife organized a surprise weekend for him at a condo up on Lake Winnipesaukee. I arrived first, early in the afternoon and as the day went on, 3 more of our friends, all of whom were in my wedding party, showed up with their wives as well. A 5:45am wakeup call to golf on Saturday didn't stop us from boozing until almost 3am shooting the shit, busting each other's balls and just generally having a great time. Like I said in Friday's post, that type of shit hardly ever happens anymore so we all wanted to take advantage.

Golfing on 3 hours of sleep? Fucking awesome. Cigars at 8am? Fucking awesome. Hanging out without the wives around? Earmuffs, ladies...fucking awesome. The only thing that would have made it better is if I had shaved 2 measly strokes off of my round to break 100. Fucking 101. Probably shouldn't have 4-putted that one hole. Balls.

After golf it was back to the condo for lunch and then beach time. It was cloudy and windy but so fucking what? It was still awesome. Watching the soccer game? Not so awesome, but we'll get to that later. The big birthday BBQ/Luau? You guessed it! Fucking awesome. All in all, just a kickass weekend that needs to happen way more often than it actually does. Getting old fucking blows.

2. Fuck You: The Soccer Game
Are you fucking kidding me with that shit? A goal in the 6th minute to start the game and then a goal in the 3rd minute of overtime? What the fuck? And can we get someone on the damn team who can actually finish? Jesus christ, put it in the back of the damn net, jerks!

I never felt comfortable about this US team's chances for one reason: Bob Bradley looks WAY too much like Dick Jauron. It depressed me every time they showed him because thoughts of Jauron's incompetence leaped into my brain instantly. You can't win with the stink of Jauron in the mix.

I know the diving and flopping and stalling and all that bullshit is part of soccer and it's probably not going to change anytime soon but the end of that game was a god damn disgrace. Hey ref, how about carding those fuckers to get them to stop with the bullshit for a little bit, huh? Everyone in the fucking world knew exactly what they were doing and I'm sure you did too. For god's sake that one piece of shit dropped dead after doing a bicycle kick with no one within 10 feet of him, laid there like a corpse, got taken off on a stretcher, and then immediately hopped up and walked around on the sidelines. That is fucking ridiculous. And the dude who scored the winning goal? He stopped play at the end of regulation because he got "kicked" in the chest and "couldn't" get up. And when he finally did get up after play was stopped he clutched his chest like Jack Bauer had just taken an axe to it. Poor thing. So what does he do after he scored a goal 5 minutes later? The motherfucker starts pounding his chest with his fist, a la Kevin Garnett. So I guess the "injury" wasn't that bad, huh?

The entire tournament is being marred by shitty officiating and the pathetic flopping. That kind of stuff was fine back in the day but now we've reached the point where tv coverage is so good that we get to see every replay multiple times and can see that a lot of the calls being made are complete bullshit. And we can see just how badly these assholes are diving to get calls from the officials. Unfortunately, FIFA seems content to just keep their eyes closed and their ears plugged and ignore the massive amount of criticism that is headed in their direction. Fucking assholes.

3. Fuck Yeah: Scotch!
I've discussed before how I'm effectively banned from having scotch, deservedly so. But this weekend? I had some! And it was fucking good! Next scotch appointment? August 9th. MY 30th birthday. I can already taste it. Mmmmmm.

4. Fuck You: Mosquitoes
God damn piece of shit bloodsuckers. I'm all kinds of itchy today because of you little fucks. And the most annoying part is that yesterday I wasn't itchy at all so I thought I had somehow escaped the weekend without being bitten. Yeah, not quite. Bur.

5. Fuck Yeah AND Fuck You: Cornhole, Ladder Golf, Washer Toss
Fuck Yeah because I fucking LOVE playing games like these. Especially cornhole. It's the type of stupid, random activity that I generally kick ass at. So after talking shit about the last time we were all together and Wifey and I went undefeated in cornhole you can probably guess what happened. Got fucking destroyed. It didn't help that my partner (not Wifey) was god damn worthless and didn't score a single point but still, not a good showing. Then it was time for ladder golf with Wifey as my partner and not only did we blow an early lead and lose, but she scored more points than me. Annoying. Yet still fun as shit.

6. Fuck Yeah: Baby Mark Show
5 total hours of driving with no stops because Baby Mark Show was perfectly behaved on both rides. Clutch sleeping at night in a house full of people with no crying to wake anyone up. Well behaved the entire weekend. Flirting his ass off with the girl baby who was there. Pretty much a no-hitter for Baby Mark Show. And he didn't even need 149 pitches like Edwin Jackson. Bravo, little buddy.

And to wrap things up, I know I said it before, but I'm saying it again...this weekend was fucking awesome.

This Weekend Is Going to Be Rad

Now that my friends and I are approaching our 30s, it's a major fucking pain in the ass trying to get together. Add Baby Mark Show to the mix and things get even harder. And that's why I'm excited about my friends and myself heading into the next couple of years with 30th birthdays coming up here and there. It's a perfect excuse to drag the wives and any kids that may be popping out in the next few years to a common location and hang out with all the old college buddies.

The last few years it was the wedding circuit, and as fun as everyone's weddings were, thank the fucking lord that shit is over. Yes, it's awesome seeing everybody but it can't beat a weekend of just relaxing and shooting the shit. And that's exactly what's going to happen this weekend and I can't fucking wait. Golf, BBQ, boating, cornhole, general shenanigans...it's going to be awesome.

And smack dab in the middle of everything is USA-Ghana at 2:30 on Saturday. Sporting events are always more fun to watch with a group of friends. I mean, shit, there's only so much texting I can do during a game, and I can do a fuckload of texting.

I expect the US to win on Saturday. I've heard people say that the US is always an underdog in the World Cup but that's just not true. I've read articles about how no one should be that excited about their chances because they could barely beat Algeria. And that, my friends, is a fucking load of complete bullshit. Have these shitheads been paying attention to this World Cup? Other than Germany's 4-0 win over Australia and Portugal's 7-0 assraping of North Korea (suck it, Kim Jong Il!) every game has been insanely close and competitive. For christ's sake, the 2 finalists from 2006 have already been bounced and there's a possibility that Spain could be ousted today, too. Not to mention the fact that Algeria, for some cowardly reason, packed it in on the defensive end and seemed content to play to a 0-0 tie instead of actually trying to win and advance. Fucking pussies.

The US can beat Ghana. The US SHOULD beat Ghana. And I'm pumped that I'll be watching it with some of my best friends.

USA! USA! USA!

Aaaaaaand We're Back!

Well hey hey! Anybody still checking this god damn site for updates? No? Jesus you people are demanding. You want updates more frequently than once every two months? Fine. I'd love to say that I've been super busy with no time to write but that's just simply not true. It's laziness. Pure and simple. So let's delve into some of the shit that's happened since the last time I wrote. At least some of the stuff I can remember, anyway. Getting old and senile fucking blows. Let's see, where shall we start? Oh! I know! I have a fucking kid now!

1. Baby Mark Show has arrived!

I plan on writing more about the joy/frustration/hilarity of having a baby around, but to avoid jamming 7 weeks of baby stuff into one post, let's just go with labor, delivery, and the first few days of parenthood for this one. On May 4th I went into work just like any other day and started my routine of checking email and catching up on all the shit piled up in my Google Reader cache.

Wifey called on her way to a meeting...or at least I thought she was on her way to a meeting. Nope! Turns out she thought her water might have broken so she was on the way to the hospital to get checked out.

HOLY SHIT! Well what the fuck do I do now? Just sit here and wait for you to call me back?? Do you realize how impossible that is???

So I sat. And waited. And fidgeted. And walked around. After like 4 days I finally got the call that her water had indeed broken and that she was being checked in to the hospital so that they could induce labor at some point.

This all happened at like 9am. I raced home. Grabbed Wifey's pre-packed hospital bag, packed my own bag, and hustled to the hospital. Well, turns out that there was no rushing necessary. Just because the water breaks, it doesn't mean that labor has started. So we waited. And waited. And fucking waited. We played games, we watched a movie, we had lunch AND dinner. FINALLY, at 7pm the contractions started coming.

At first they were ok, just seemed like some mild discomfort. At least to me, anyway. Hell, at 9pm I even asked if she wanted to watch LOST (um, no). And then all of a sudden, holy shit here comes the pain!

If you know me at all, you know that I kinda sorta like being in control of situations. There's a reason it's called The Mark Show, after all. Well, watching my wife go through labor was probably the most helpless I've ever felt in my entire life. There was absolutely NOTHING I could do to help her while the contractions were happening and seeing someone you love in that kind of pain is fucking brutal.

At 9:30pm, the doctor came in to check her cervix and announced that it was still only 1cm dilated. Are you fucking kidding me, lady? I think Wifey was ready to punch her in the face when she said that. So labor continued and at about 10:30 Wifey had had enough and asked for an epidural. The nurse said ok, but wanted to check her cervix one more time. Hey, no more cervix! No epidural needed! And now it's time to push...

Now this was the part that blew my mind...pushing was the "easy" part of the whole process. After all the screams during the contractions, Wifey barely made a sound during the pushing phase. I'll forever be amazed by that. Completely calm, just working to get the baby out. Fucking incredible.

Pushing took us past midnight and into May 5, 2010. Fuck yeah, Cinco de Mayo party baby! At 12:21am, the baby came roaring out. The umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck. Twice. Jesus, cut that thing! I was trying my damnedest to determine if it was a boy or a girl but I couldn't see and finally the doctor announced, "It's a boy!" WOOOOOOOOOO!

The nurse cleaned him off, swaddled him and handed him to me. And holy shit that is an incredible feeling. Indescribable, really. He was wide awake, looking at me, looking around the room, just checking everything out. No crying or fussing, just completely content, staring up at me with these huge beautiful eyes. So. Fucking. Awesome.

And now, let's get back to some sports.

2. One Quarter Away
It shouldn't have been that close going into the 4th quarter, which is what really fucking kills me. The Lakers won Game 7 because the Celtics couldn't get a fucking rebound and kept allowing second chance points. I would love to bitch about the refs, but other than a few calls, they were fine. I would love to revel in Kobe's complete and utter stinkbomb. I would love to make fun of Pau Gasol for looking a stupid llama (actually, I can still do that. Fuck you, Llama!) I would have LOVED for Sasha fucking Vujacic to have choked at the free throw line. God damn it.

I actually started cheering when Ron Artest launched that 3 with under a minute to go. I still can't believe that went in. In fact, I can't believe Ron Artest was the MVP of that game. Fucking unbelievable.

All they had to do was hang on for one more quarter and they couldn't do it. Bur.

3. The Cleveland Indians

Actually, no, let's not talk about them. Jesus christ what a disaster.

That's it for now, people. Just gotta the blog wheels rolling again. More posts coming soon. I swear!