I’d Rather Wear A Fila Mets Hat Signed By Marlon Byrd [Friday Thoughts W/ TeeCoZee]

Good Moleman. Would you like something to read? It’s Friday, January 25, Two Thousand and Nineteen. The weather in Brooklyn is 35˚ & Pantone 18-4538 and somewhere, somebody is doing something. What they’re doing, I have no real clue, but I’m sure it’s not nothing. It pains me to not know what they’re doing, but I’m out of clues. For all I know, they could be playing Madden 98 while eating the World’s Saltiest Twizzler®. They could be wearing oversized pants with an undersized shirt. Somebody could be falling in love with their own reflection in a commemorative plate of George Washington Carver doing sit-ups. There are simply too many goddamned options. That’s the beauty of life. Somebody could be doing anything and you would have no choice but to believe it because I’m telling you that it’s happening. And me? You know exactly what I’m doing. I’m clacking loudly on a dusty laptop, terrified of not knowing what to clack next. Being a traffic cop isn’t an inside job. I don’t know what else. I guess I also have some things on my mind…

– Believe it or not, this is the 11th consecutive week of the Friday Thoughts. Although it doesn’t seem like much and the variety is stale, this is technically the most consistently active that I’ve ever been on BFD. I’m going to try my damndest to keep this streak going. Not because I care about my non-existent audience or improving my craft. No. I’m just going to keep writing because I said that I’m going to and I’m too stubborn not to. Because at this point, all I have left is my word. And my other word. And the thousands of other words that are to follow.

– This week’s edition of Ad Nauseous is brought to you by The Manhattan Institute: Making People Stand Next To Skeletons For Over 40 Years!™

If you’ve ever had the privilege to sit in an MTA subway car, chances are you have seen this ad. Not because it’s catching in any way, but because you just cant bear to establish eye contact with the person staring at you from across the train. But surprise, this blonde girl with her skeleton has been staring at you with her vacant smile for well over 10 years now. Not much has changed with her. She used to have a buddy accompany her in the ad, an iron-pumping beefaroni that was probably named Chad or something to that tune. Chad represented the personal fitness trainer that you [yes YOU] could become in a matter of weeks. You’ll also get totally jacked like Chad, just from sitting in a classroom. Who cares if it doesn’t make sense? That’s the perks of education, baby!

The lack of Chad makes the ad even more ambiguous. It raises the question as to why the girl is hugging a skeleton in the first place. Did she help the skeleton get into shape? Or is she the skeleton’s medical assistant? What does a medical assistant even do? I consulted Alta Vista and found that “attackers might be trying to steal [my] information from http://www.altavista.com”, which is alarming. I then asked Jeeves and he gave me a bunch of ads and paragraphs that I couldn’t skim to get the jist of. Google finally broke it down and told me that a medical assistant:

* Verifies patient information
* Records medical history
* Confirms purpose of visit
* Takes patient’s vitals [temperature, weight, etc]

Nowhere in this list does it say that medical assistants pose with skeletons. Nor does it have anything to do with skeletons. I’m willing to bet that the Manhattan Institute has no skeletons in any of their classrooms, if they even have classrooms. It’s a total sham school. I am completely willing to get an “education” at this so-called “ghoul school” and then sue their asses off when I ultimately meet no skeletons. I’ve been planning this scheme for years and now you’re all in on it. However, after all the time I spent stewing, staring at this ad, there’s one detail that I never noticed:

That’s right, folks. The skeleton, who I remind you is a rotted corpse, has pearly white teeth. So white that they are in fact shining! They are shining so brightly that it makes the picture distorted. This leads me to believe that The Manhattan Institute teaches skeletal dentistry [or just regular-ass dentistry]. Looking at the list, nope, they still only offer medical assistance and personal training. Was this originally an ad for Orbit gum? And more importantly, were his teeth shining in the ad all of these years? Email me your thoughts and Social Security Number to THPSkater420@altavista.com!

– I’m not normally the type of guy to catch a thief. In fact, [This is the part where I make a punny reference to the syndicated ’90s show, John Woo’s To Catch A Thief that allegedly [according to the TV Guide, Cable Guide and TV Guide Channel] aired on NBC every Saturday night at 1 AM. I never watched the show but I’m now finding out that it was probably called “John Woo’s Once A Thief”, which totally devalues the joke I was going to make in the first place. What’s perplexing me is that there was only 23 episodes of it. But I swear it was syndicated for years. Was it ever actually on or were they recycling the same episodes over and over, convinced that the viewer would be too drunk and tired to tell the difference? End parenthetical and subsequent sentence finishing.] Whenever I see somebody shoplifting, I pretend to not see and then hope that somebody else did. That was, until last week. when I spotted a twentysomething as she took a $1.29 can of Perrier and slammed it like she was Stone Cold Steve Austin at MTV’s Spring Break Beach House Palooza ’99 and then nonchalantly threw it in the trash. What nerve some people have to steal one of the cheapest things in the store! There’s no chance I was going to let her get away with it.

I proudly and nervously followed her to the register and when the time was right, I slammed the slimy can on the counter and said something that I thought was totally badass like, “Forget something?” but probably ended up stammering and sweating until she confessed to stealing the water. I don’t really remember what happened due to the adrenaline of the whole situation. In the end, her face turned beet red, she expressed embarrassment and paid for the water. And then the chip broke off her card and got stuck in the machine. Like popped clean off. I’d never seen anything like it. At first I thought it was hilarious karma. Because she shoplifted, she was doomed to pay for everyone’s groceries until the end of time. At second I realized that, shit, this chip needs to get out of the reader and there are no pliers in sight. The tables swiftly turned. Was a buck fifty really worth all of the inconvenience that we faced? Did either of us actually learn a lesson? Was there a point to any of this? TL;DR I caught someone shoplifting and instead of getting satisfaction, I got an awkward 15 minute episode where I ended up doing the apologizing.

– I saw the stupidest hat the other day. It was a Yankees hat.

That’s not the end of the joke. It wasn’t just any Yankees hat. It was a Ralph Lauren Yankees hat.

Let’s ignore the fact that it’s going for $200 on eBay. The real issue is…why?!? It’s just a plain ass New Era 49 Forty Dad Hat with some extra stitching. There’s really nothing “Ralph Lauren” about it. It’s a New Era hat through and through. This is somehow even more ridiculous than the Yankees hat that’s commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art [because it is not modern, nor is it really art. It’s just kind of bland, yet iconic. Like the city of Philadelphia]. This is some kind of weird cash grab that targets a demographic that is seemingly non-existent. It’s some classist statement to promote a classist team. If you’re rooting for the most expensive franchise in baseball history in a cheap $30 hat, are you even a fan at all, bro? In that regard, this idea is actually perfect. Hats off to you, Ralph. You just blew my mind.

The hat I saw in real life, however, was a fake. In all of the images, the Ralph Lauren “autograph” in on the right side of the bill. The one that the guy was wearing had it on the left side. And on the right side of the bill, it was signed by Greg Bird, the current Yankee’s first baseman. The guy must’ve found out that he had bought a counterfeit hat and redeemed himself by getting it signed by the most “just happy to be here” guy on the team. Well played. I would still rather have a Fila Hat signed by Marlon Byrd. That’d be fuckin’ sick.

– Sometimes, it’s really hard to take a step back and realize what we have. Technology has evolved so rapidly that we are left with no choice but to take it for granted. People that are smarter than us are working their faces off to make our lives better. These people are saving lives and making the world a happier place to live. I had this realization the other day when my power drill battery died. I took it into the living room and plugged it into the Playstation to charge. I repeat: I charged a drill by plugging it into a video game console. This is a brave new world we are living in, folks, and the possibilities are endless. It’s so beautiful that it brings me to tears daily. Soon, I’ll be able to use my Playstation to sew buttons on shirts and take out the trash. Can’t wait.

– Not too long ago, I woke up to find a severed horse head bag of Vaporwave albums at the foot of my bed. After the horror diminished, I decided to write about them regularly. The Vaporwave Album Of The Week is the genre-defining classic, “World Class” by Luxury Elite.

I’ve always wanted to buy a speedboat. My whole life, I’ve fantasized about the day. I see myself walking into the immaculately curated show room, displaying 5 of the finest models. The Bayliner Element with leopard trimming and jade green seats. The Princecraft Ventura with optional chaise lounge. The dual-engined 310 Bowrider. And as I go to peruse the other two, I’m approached by the saleswoman. But she isn’t just any saleswoman. This one happens to be dressed in a gown of the finest silk that I could just hover my hand over and still feel every thread of without touching. Her perfume smells of a distant memory and her eyes gaze at me as if she knew me in a past life. She offers me a glass of 1966 Dom Perignon and I cooly accept. I sip slowly as I gaze into and through her. She’s determined that I’m a man of high class and she’s correct. After all, I am sporting a suit of the rarest linens and a Gucci Chicago Cubs hat to show that I’m both a man of high fashion and one who didn’t forget where he came from. I can feel her spirit trembling. Her purpose in life is to be there in that moment with me. She must surely sell me a boat or be the woman of my dreams, a choice that is mine and mine alone. But why not both? I can see us speedboating through the Caspian Sea, arms and bodies intertwined with one another. Exchanging light kisses and halibut recipes. The setting sun making our dewy skin glisten. I can see it all. A world of romance and intrigue is mine for the taking. Places to be, people to see and yet, here we are, ready for it all to happen as she discusses the specs of a Jeanneau New Concept. I could take it for a ride down the Hudson every night after work. I see myself eating the most lavish Oesetra on petit toasts while taking in the Manhattan skyline. I see myself getting splashed gently by the polluted water. I see myself trying to figure out where to park it. I see myself running out of gas. I see myself finding it gone or vandalized the next morning. As dread fills my soul, I realize that I can’t swim. I have no place her. So I give the saleswoman a kiss on the cheek, say “Au Revoire” and walk out into the blazing summer sun. She’s stunned. She doesn’t know what just happened. She knows that she’ll remember it for a lifetime. That’s just what I do, my raison d’etre. I never said that I wanted to own a speedboat. But I would love to buy one.

– Try this trick over the weekend: watch a guy park a speedboat in the Hudson and figure out how he gets from the boat’s location to the actual dock, as it always appears to be dicey. Report the findings back to me.

Have a speedy weekend, everyone!

-TeeCoZee