Attention passengers boarding flight……..

Pajamas and sweats are not appropriate flight attire!!! The more time I spend in airports and on planes the more I realize that people forget that you are still in public when you are on an airplane. I see people in their PJs and sweatpants all the time, young girls are the worst offenders. Also just because your flight is early in the morning isn’t an excuse, I have flown on early flights (I am writing this in the airport before I flight that I got up for at 4:30am), I have flown still drunk or at least somewhere between drunk and hung over and I still managed to get my ass up and make myself look presentable. Also you should not be taking your shoes off on the plane, again you are in public not in your bedroom.

Flying used to be an event, people would get dressed up for a flight, but now it has become so affordable and common that once again sloppy ass Americans are ruining it.

Take your "butts" outside

In California smoking indoors has been banned for a long time. Unfortunately in Milwaukee that is not the case. I was having dinner in a restaurant the other night in downtown Milwaukee and there were a few gentleman at the table next to us smoking. Surprisingly the smoking indoors didn't bother me too much, what did bother me was when I got back to my hotel room and I realized that my clothes stunk like stale cigarette smoke. Even when I smoked I hated that smell, I would wake up in the morning and smell my clothes from the previous night and it would make me sick. That smell is one of the main reasons that I quit smoking. What made it even worse was that the sweatshirt I was wearing that night was the only one I had on this trip, so for the rest of the trip I have to wear a sweatshirt with a faint stale cigarette smoke smell, old spice body spray can only cover up so much of that smell. Again this goes back to being considerate of those around you, just because you don't mind smelling like a bowling alley from the 70's doesn't mean I don't.

"Consideration for others is the basis of a good life, a good society." -Confucius

All I want in life.....

I want more than anything in my life right now to be better at golf. I think about it all the time. The problem is that the more I try to get better, the worse I seem to play, I try to fix one problem and it causes two more. When I watch the Haney Project with Ray Romano and I see him getting frustrated and disappointed in his lack of progress, I know that feeling, yet it’s not enough to make you want to stop playing. If anything, when you are struggling, you want to play more, you want to fix the problems, if you have more problems, you have to play more to fix them all. Most of the time in life when you struggle with something, you tend to want to quit or do it less, but with golf when you are struggling you want to play all the time, you want to fix whatever it is that is causing your problem. It’s strange how hitting that white little ball can take over your life.

Golf truly is a heartbreaking passion.

Please be considerate of those around you.

Ladies and gentleman I would like to take this opportunity to remind you to please be aware of the people around you and how your actions affect those people. The following story will help illustrate my point of being considerate of those around you.

I was at lunch today and stopped at Ralph’s to pick up a few things, I thought I was going to quickly get in and out but oh was I wrong. I was only buying 2 items but out of principle I refused to use the self-checkout (those machines are taking people’s jobs while making ME do that job!), so I jumped in the express lane, 15 items or less. After a moment in line I realized that there was a woman in line that had a cart full of items, I myself have made the mistake of getting in the express lane with a full cart before so I didn’t say anything, it's an honest mistake. When she reached the cashier he told her that she was in the express lane, however he would let it go this time but to be more careful next time. She said that she didn’t realize she was in the express lane and again, I was OK with it. At this point she turned and looked at the woman in front of me, who only had a loaf of bread, and myself, I only had two items, and made no gesture to let us go first since she had a full cart in the express lane. She was now aware of how her one mistake was going to inconvenience the rest of the people waiting in her line (who all had the required 15 items or less) and yet still pulled out a stack of coupons, one for almost every item. Then when it was time to pay she reached into her bag, pulled out her checkbook, and just then started to fill out the check. If you are going to pay with a check at least start filling it out while waiting in line. Now here was the tipping point for me, while she was filling in her check, the bagger was bagging up her items and was almost done when she noticed that he hadn’t use her bags that she brought from home. She asked him to please re-bag ALL of her items, this time using the bags she brought from home. So lets recap, full cart in express lane, two people behind here with a total of three items (no attempt to let us go first), paying with a check that she doesn’t start to fill out until her groceries have all been scanned, and having her items re-bagged in her own bags, all without a single apology or acknowledgment of consideration for the people around her.

She is flawed enough to be with him.

Have you ever looked at a couple and thought “she is way out of his league, how is she with him?”, but when you take a closer look at them you start to realize that she isn’t really out of his league, she is flawed enough to be with him. I saw a couple on a show and my initial reaction was this woman is very attractive and he isn’t on that level, but as I watched a bit longer I started to notice that her skin wasn’t that great, she had a few extra pounds on her, etc. There were all these little things that when noticed leveled their playing field.

Water seeks its own level and humans are 60% water.

I don't plan on having kids so I quit recycling

The number one reason I always hear people give for recycling and trying to save the earth is so that there will be a planet for their kids and grandkids to enjoy. Since I don’t want to have kids I decided that I don’t have to care about the environment anymore. I can pour motor oil right down the drain straight to the ocean, I can drive cars that billow black smoke, I can throw all my plastic bottles right in the garbage. It is very freeing not having to worry about future generations, so all of you that plan on reproducing you better take care of the environment three times as hard because you are recycling for three now, you, your kids, and me.

“You could literally drive your own tank. You could drive a tank, you could throw toxic waste out the top, you could shoot a bald eagle right in the head. Dude they're shitting all over my tank.” - Bill Burr

Soundtrack to my life

I was listening to Kid Cudi's Soundtrack 2 My Life yesterday, and that combined with watching the Biography of Vanilla Ice last week really got me thinking about the soundtrack to my own life. When you think about it there are songs, artists, and albums, that play a part in telling the story of your life. I felt as if I was channeling John Cusack in High Fidelity when I ventured down my musical memory lane. For me it is everything from Vanilla Ice, Another Bad Creation, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince in my elementary school days, to Boys II Men and Ice Cube's Players Club in junior high, to my first explicit lyric album I bought the summer before high school, Warren G Regulators. Then in high school I was introduced to Weezer and Green Day and I ventured down a new path. After high school came country, then jazz, some classical. To this day certain songs will take me right back to that place I was as clear as it was yesterday.

Sometimes you just need to "stop, collaborate, and listen" to the soundtrack of your life.

That's so NOT how that happened

I was watching a show the other night and a woman was telling the story about how she found out she had a heart murmur and this was what she said “the doctor walked into the room and said ‘how long have you had a heart murmur?’ and I said ‘excuse me, what do you mean heart murmur?’” The first thing that came into my head was that is 97 percent NOT how that conversation went. That conversation might have gone like that if it was a scene in a sitcom. We are a society so influenced by television that we now tell our own stories as if they were part of a TV show. I am guilty of this as well, I have on occasion finished telling a story and thought “wow that is actually a modified, more entertaining, version of what really happened.”