balding angrily

If you run, bike, swim, you know that there is a point at which all that extra adrenaline gives you a great feeling. If you’re outside, the light looks more beautiful, the colors more vibrant, all the smells – even the fertilizer – smell better. If you’re inside, your fellow gym rats look better; you want to bone more of them than when you started.

I had been on the elliptical for twenty minutes, working at my peak heart rate for about fifteen minutes, and I glanced at a distant TV. Vanna White was doing a jig on Wheel of Fortune, and I looked away. Then, I thought, “Wait, what?” and I looked back.

She wasn’t doing a jig; she was stuttering mid-step.  See, there was a glitch in the satellite feed or whatever; the image was jogging back-and-forth over the same millisecond. For all you analog folks, it was like a record-skip, but twenty times faster. Vanna’s leg only moved about six inches through her stride. And it was a wide shot, so she was doing it backed by that giant glittering, sequined set. It was like watching a line dance as imagined by William Gibson.

I couldn’t look away; I just stared at Vanna endlessly repeating that instant of her life.

There’s another thing that happens when you’re heart rate soars. Time seems to go soooooo sloooooow. Because your mind is being told that your body is moving fast, it thinks that the rest of the world should move fast. So Vanna’s stutter-step seemed like it lasted for ten minutes. And I watched and watched, probably with drool running down my chin.

It would be nice to think that I had a cosmological/metaphysical breakthrough. Like, “Omigod. Aren’t we ALL repeating the same instant of our lives in alternate universes?” Or, “What if I’ve transcended and I’m now watching the world as The Observer?” Or, “Isn’t that just a metaphor for Vanna’s whole career: arrested letter-turn?”

Nope. I thought, “Whoa. Cool.”

And THAT’S why it’s called a runner’s high; sometimes, if you’re lucky, working out is like dropping a hit of acid.

What’s missing here?

Slobber-worthy, blonde stud. Check.

Queen anthem. Check.

Mongo. Check.

Ming. Che- Waitaminute. There it is. Can you tell what’s missing from this picture? Could it perhaps be an…

Elizabethan Collar?*

People, people, people. Ming has a collar that scares people. It is so tall and sharp that if he’s not careful putting on his coat, he could cut off his head. Or at least give himself a good neck shave.

Why do you think he’s bald? He kept shaving off the back of his head. Instead of having to tell his henchmen why the back of his head was always bare, he shaved the whole head.

^{*It amuses me to think that Ming has to wear that collar so that he won’t chew out the stitches from his recent castration.}

In case you missed the first “I’m peeking at you,” I commented on the search terms people most typed into Google to get to my site. Here’s the April edition; my hosting peoples start me fresh at the beginning of the month, so I thought this would be the perfect time. Following are the search terms with the number of times people typed them in to get to Balding Angrily.

Always with the bullets.

• alex knesnik (10) - Who dat? Over the past month I’ve slowly come out of the closet about the website to my loved ones. These are all people to whom I’ve said, “Yeah, I have a website, but I don’t want you to read it because I’m embarrassed about the stuff I write about.” So. Hi mom!
• alex balding (7) - Who dat else? Let’s think of all the other balding Alexs. Alex P. Keaton wasn’t; he’s shaky but not balding. Oo, a Parkinson’s joke. That, ladies and gentlemen, makes me a bad person. But really, it doesn’t make me love him any less. I think Katherine Hepburn was the most beautiful and talented actress in the history of cinema, but she was a bit shaky.
• kiefer sutherland (4) - I Googled Mr. Sutherland after I saw this to see how far down the list Balding Angrily was. I got to about page 6 and gave up. You must be pretty hard up for Kiefer bits if you get here using that search term. You must need a Kiefer drip. “Really, this is the last website. After this, I’ll shut down the computer. I just want to see if this next site has just an itsy-bitsy, minute, barely visible slice that I couldn’t get from the other 200 websites.”
• frequency kenneth gay (4) - How often does Kenneth get gay with his work buddies? Twice a week? What does Kenneth do when he gets gay with his work buddies? Over-the-underwear activities? Does he have a martini party? Does he match the towels in the executive bathroom to the bathmat? And who’s curious about poor Kenneth and the frequency with which he gets gay? What kind of friends are those?
• jcrew employee discount (4) - Hm. Sorry I didn’t provide an answer before. I believe it was 50% except on special items. That discount applied to sale items too. I have a pair of pants in my closet that were originaly $120. I got them for about $20. If you were wondering if you should apply, I’d say, yeah. If they still have that discount.
• batman spanking robin (3) - My favorite part of this exercise is finding out about people’s little quirks. Some would call them sicknesses, but I won’t. At least 3 people want to see pictures of Batman spanking Robin. That’s cool. I think, though, to be fair you should also want to see pictures of Robin spanking Batman or Superman spanking Batman or Aquaman spanking She-Ra or Skeletor spanking Man-at-Arms. To limit it to just pictures of Batman spanking Robin seems incomplete, like you’re just not committing fully to your sickness quirk.
• get to know you questions deep (2) - Who is judging how intimate I should be with my questions? Who is telling me that me and my questions should go to a happy hour and spend three hours discussing our common loves and losses? I’m happy with the relationship me and my questions have right now, thank you very much. Maybe in a couple of months we’ll want to take it to that next level, but, you know, we just met. Why rush things?
• balding suicide (2) - I told you before the last time you did this; Jesus loves your bald head. Actually, this is a little more serious than the others. It makes me sad if someone out there is considering suicide because they’re going bald. There are many, many, many, many other things in this world that are more depressing and worthy of anxiety than a chrome dome. Do me a favor. Tell those other pretty-boy, skinny, black-hearted queens that their spiked, bleach-tipped hair looks ridiculous. Tell them they look like a porcupine run over by beauty supply van and their Armani WW1 flight goggles/sunglasses make them look like a Devo music video from the 80s. Tell them that you are a real person from the top of your shiny head to the tips of your unpainted toenails. Tell them to kiss your (more than likely) hairy white ass and not to come up for air until they are ready to recognize that bald is beautiful. That Bruce Willis gets more tail then they’ll ever hope to get. That Mr. Sexy-Ass-Kiss-Me-In-The-Morning-Then-Just-Walk-Away Jason Statham could tranport their sorry kneecaps to the backs of their legs. That the mother fucking King of Siam told you to tell them that “they be only womens and Christians and therefore unworthy of Buddha’s interest,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• tailoring shirts tight pecs (2) - This sounds like a dance. It’s all in the hands and arms with this one. In the first part of the move, the “tailoring shirts” part, you put your arms in front you and make like you’re threading a needle, and in the “tight pecs” part, you feel on your breasteses in a circular fashion but with opposite hands, forearms crossed. Do it with me. A one and two and tailor shirt, and three and four and tighten pecs. Do whatever you want with your legs. Hopefully you’re close enough on the dance floor to the person you want to have sex with that they’re not looking down at your legs. And who cares anyway? He’s drunk. If you’re doing the Watusi with your legs, it wouldn’t matter because your beautiful, perfect, hairless head says to him that you are virile; you could last hours in the sack.
• batman spanking robin’ (2) - Now with apostraphe! For added possesiveness.

I work with a guy that I hate for no other reason than I don’t like the way he walks and talks. When we pass each other as I’m going back to my cube after taking a leak and he’s going to get some coffee, in my head I see in his head that he thinks he’s better than me. This could be because he looks right through me while I try to give the obligatory one-sided smile/smirk that says, “I acknowledge that we work in the same office while not actually working together…and I know nothing about you…please let’s keep it that way.”

Today, as I was working on a floor plan that took about thirty percent of my conscious mind, I imagined getting into a fight with him and calling him an asshole, then getting fired. I would say loud enough, “Good! This project is shit! I’ve been wasting away my time on it for too long. This is exactly the kind of kick-in-the-butt I needed to get to doing what I really want to be doing.” (That thing that “I really want to be doing” is of course a mystery.) I imagined punching the dismissive asshole in the nose, making it bleed and stain his blue shirt and tie. I imagined grabbing every guy in the office that I think is good-looking in the crotch and kissing them full on the lips.

I think this is the same kind of fantasy I used to have about purposefully yanking the steering wheel to the left to crash into the living room of an innocent house in my driving instructor’s neighborhood. I pictured me sitting in his car in the living room, the wall of the house coming down around me like I was Jack Tripper and some blonde, feathered, roller-skate-wearing bimbo was giving me a blowjob. There’s a name for this kind of fantasy (not the blowjob part…the self-destructive part) in a psychology textbook. If you know it, please let me know.

About four or five times over the past month my mind has wandered with less violent images. I would be driving to work and notice that I missed the last minute of the podcast I was listening to. Last night it happened while watching a movie. It’s kind of scary because I’m usually a very conscientious driver/movie-watcher. I get on Jerry’s case all the time because he looks at the pretty birdies while he should be watching the road. Yesterday, my dad told me that, as opposed to when he was younger, he comes out of a movie knowing whether he liked it or not, but not being able to recall what the movie was about. I really hope I’m not getting senile early.

We invited a friend-couple to Oscar Night explaining that we aren’t the type of gays to throw a blow-out, gold lamé gown-required celebration of pomp. We’ve read about those. We have people over, eat Frito Pie, and make fun of the celebrities. The guy part of the friend-couple wrote back.

i have never, ever, ever gone thru the pain of watching an ‘oscars.’ it simply does not seem to be a very manly thing to do.

and like at t’giving, where ‘the girls’ played house while ‘the boy’ watched sports, will there be anything else for me to do?

damn, this sounds wimpy. so i will need to consult ‘the ticket’ before i can commit. they have a segment called ‘gay or not gay’ where they offer advice on perplexing dilemmas of this sort

i will post you accordingly…

He has an aversion to capitalization. I asked him why, and he didn’t give me a satisfactory answer. He also writes, “thru.” He’s not a smart person.

I wrote back.

If you do come, I suggest you brush up on your stars and starlets in the tabs. A lot of the time will be spent deconstructing the fashion choices of said stars and starlets. Look at it as a new kind of sport. The Superbowl and Oscar night share some of the same things: behind-the-scenes drama, disappointment, loss, tears, triumph, Cinderella stories, a mad fascination by the media, the chance that you might see a nipple-slip, if you’re at our house maybe some yelling at the television for a bad call, and unfortunately LONG stretches of very little happening.

Last year I yelled at the TV because Brokeback Mountain lost. Jerry also responded to him.

I can’t wait to hear the advice offered up by the enlightened brotherhood of The Ticket listeners. I’m certain it will be profound!

You can bring all of your back issues of Sports Illustrated to flip through. And, while we drink cosmopolitans we will serve you a very dark and heavy lager (out of a bottle - no glass). Oh, and you can scratch and burp and fart at your leisure.

He answered today.

based on your two very persuasive responses, how could i possibly say no to such well-meaning individuals.

by the way, i’ve checked with the guys at “the ticket” and they have told me i can go. but i cannot breathe a word of this to anyone!

and yes alex, you can quote me if you wish…

Gay panic.

Brendan Higgins is a himbo.  If you follow the wikipedia definition, it’s no surprise that a local news anchor is an “attractive but vacuous man.”  That was the whole premise of Anchorman.

What’s a surprise to me is that I just figured it out this morning.  Every school-day I wake up, scratch my chest and ass, stand in front of the mirror for about ten minutes trying to determine if I can see my ribs better, pinch my love handles trying to determine if they’ve gotten smaller overnight, take a shower, feeling my other parts that might have grown or shrunk, and pour myself a bowl of cereal.  Then I turn on Channel 5 News, watch Brendan and Deborah and chew fiber goodness intending to make my stool nice and loose.  Maybe it’s the cereal or the news, but it works like a charm every day.

This morning Brendan and Deborah had to vamp before it went to weather.  I expect my news to be relatively free of chatter.  I don’t want to know that he went to the game last night right after hearing a story about a person who died in a flash flood.  It’s my thought that Brendan ended up an anchor unwittingly.  He really wants to be the sports guy.  I’m thinking this as I watch Deborah react to his dopey smiley comments with a straight face.  She encourages him.  She thinks his blather is fine for a morning news program.  I said to myself, “what an idiot…but he’s cute.”  And I loves me some dumb, cute guys: Ashton Kutcher, Sean William Scott, Johnny Knoxville: I loves ‘em.  That’s when I realized that Brendan Higgins is a himbo; I like him like I like Joey Tribbiani.

I feel I’ve grown since I’ve had this moment of self-realization.

Also, I love a good person-gets-caught-in-their-car-in-a-flash-flood news story.  I love pictures of cars sinking into water with people standing on top of them.