The Todd Fields World

A League of Your Own

2011-09-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was in Kansas for a wedding. At the end of thetrip, checking in my bag at the airport to start my trek home, one of the maleworkers informed me that I looked “exactly like Bradley Cooper.” Now, I thinkI’m a decent looking guy depending on how healthy I’ve eaten that week, when mylast hair cut was, and if the lighting in the room accents my skin tone andeyes properly. But I’m no Bradley Cooper-- except in Kansas, where apparentlyI’m the equivalent. I hear in Kentucky I’m Brad Pitt and in Arkansas I’m RyanGosling (but only with my shirt off).

Here's me at the Kansas airport.
Having a great hair day.

But the Kansas compliment got me to thinking about thedifferent definitions of attractiveness and success in different parts of thecountry (and the world). In the middle of America, a guy like me is theequivalent to Bradley Cooper-- I’ve got a good career in the entertainmentindustry, I’m not 600 lbs with BBQ sauce all over my face and fingers, and Idon’t consider “traveling” to be simply driving to the further Sonic burgerbecause it’s the only one open past 2 am. But in L.A., where I live, where Idate, where I am on a constant search for the love of my life, do you know whois the equivalent of Bradley Cooper? The actualBradley Cooper. And a guy like me is just that: a guy.

In Kansas, the only place you have any options is at Hometown Buffet. But Los Angeles is a city packed with attractive, successful, intelligentpeople. And I’m not putting myself down and saying I don’t belong in thisgroup. However, I am saying that there are a lot of options for men and women here when it comes to dating, and in a city as full of ambition and opportunity asL.A. is, it’s tough to find someone who is willing to simply be happy with whatthey have rather than be obsessedwith what they could have.

In no way am I immune from this disease. Often times, I amguilty of trying to date out of my league. And just like I’ve been out withgirls who I can tell after five minutes I would never date again, I’m sure I’vebeen on dates where the girl finishes her glass of wine, still doesn’t findwhat I have to offer good enough, and feels grateful that she was at leastsmart enough to order the most expensive thing on the menu. Or more likely ithappens when I pick them up in a Honda.

Drive a Honda Hybrid in LA and they will think you're poor.
Drive it in Kansas and they'll think you're a gay.
Either way you're going home alone.

In some ways, I think that the perfect couple is made up oftwo people who think they don’t deserve the other one. While this set up canlead to insecurity or jealousy when it pertains to people who aren’t confidentin themselves, I’m more referring to people like me, who think that they are apretty great catch, but still yearn for someone who in many respects is“superior” to them, or at least brings something better and brighter to theirlives:

One has looks, one has humor. One has money, onehas culture. One has ego, one has modesty. One has work ethic, one puts familyfirst. The combinations go on and on. We are all puzzle pieces looking for theplace we fit. But in Los Angeles, where there are more quality puzzle piecesthan perhaps anywhere in the world, even a perfect fit isn’t always enough tokeep a puzzle together, no matter how beautiful a picture it creates.

In Los Angeles, perfect fits are hard to come by.
And even harder to keep.

I say this because I’ve seen relationships between two greatpeople deteriorate when one person decides they want an upgrade, whether theydeserve it or not. As soon as one half of a relationship takes the other forgranted, the jig is up and eyes start to wander for the next best thing. Oftenthe “next best thing” is a more attractive person, a richer person, or simply aperson who resides on the other side of the fence, where the grass appearsgreener. Of course, more often than not, once you hop this fence, the grass onthe other side begins to look wonderful without you standing on it.

Recently, I decided to go way out of my league and shoot forthe stars. For a guy with a deep understanding of my own flaws and improvablequalities, I’m not shy when it comes to going after something or someone Iwant. We have all been through the darkness of rejection, heartbreak, and pain,and eventually the sun rises, so all you’re risking by putting yourself outthere is some time and the chance of humiliation. But not putting in theeffort, in my opinion, is the more humiliating waste of time.

When everything is an option, it's tough to stick with what you have.

Well, despite my optimistic approach, the effort left meempty handed and I ended up wishing we had met in Kansas, where maybe she wouldhave thought of me as a more worthy catch than she did in L.A. At the sametime, once any chance for a relationship was dashed, I began to think whatactually dating this girl would have meant: she was beautiful, kind, social,popular, ambitious, talented, and smart. And she was a resident of Los Angeles,the City of Options. A girl who is constantly rising to the next level willalways be looking for a staircase, and what were the odds that she would chooseme as a final step rather than just a middle one?

Maybe I am scarred from the past. Maybe I am bitter frommemories of feeling not good enough even though deep down I knew I was too good. Maybe I am looking for reasonsnot to go out and try again. It’s so much safer to date someone below you. Lesschallenging. Less stressful. Less pressure to rise to a higher level becauseit’s so much easier to sink to theirs. But is this really any way to live life,especially when you’re talking about finding someone to spend the rest of itwith?

A friend of mine told me that it was “time to move on” frommy crush. His advice was meant to help me and I appreciated it. And while I’msure I will move on from her, it doesn’t mean that I will give up on wantingsomeone who is better than me, someone who forces me to be better, and someonewho makes me stop looking at my other options. As I said, a perfectrelationship needs two people who feel like they don’t deserve the other. And theday I date someone who I don't feel lucky to be with is the day I have officially given up.

Giving up on a girl is fine. Some puzzles aren’t meant to be solved. Butin Los Angeles, the City of Options, giving up on myself isn’t one of them.

I may not be Bradley Cooper, but Todd Fields isn’t so bad.

Anchored Man

2011-07-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight at the gym, I decided to run on the treadmill in front of the TVset featuring CNN since it was a slow night for sports. Though I could not hearthe sound, I could tell by the grisly images of the charred bodies on thescreen that Anderson Cooper was doing a story on the cast of The JerseyShore. Now I typically am a fan of Anderson. He’s done a lot of greatreporting in the past, both within our borders and behind enemy lines, gettingthe scoops on stories we may not hear about otherwise. This terrific journalismearned him my nickname “Anderson Scooper.” But now, after spending ten minutesof his “Ridiculist” segment tonight discussing Snooki and the rest of theidiots from NJ, I’m ready to brand him with a new moniker, “Cooper Scooper,”because spending time mocking The Jersey Shore when you are on a respectable news channel like CNN issimply serving up a pile of crap.

The only thing easier than picking on Snooki
is picking on AC for picking on Snooki

One could argue that my criticism of Cooper’sill-advised use of his television platform is hypocritical for two reasons:

1) I have this blog and many of the topics I discuss are less than worldchanging. To that I would argue my blog only gets a few hundred visitors per week, andthere’s no telling how many of those are from me checking the site multipletimes a day to see how many people read my latest post. Meanwhile, Anderson hasa show on CNN that reaches millions of viewers every night and, with everythinggoing on in the world, should be spending all of his time discussing moreimportant issues than J-Woww’s breasts, the Situation's abs, or Snooki's penis.She's a dude, right? I get that a lot of news-watchers can’t stand KeithOlbermann’s condescension or Sean Hannity’s insanity, so infusing some funtopics to break up serious stories on war and recessions may be a smart tacticto pull in less serious viewers. But it doesn’t make it right.

2) The other reason one could question the validity of my criticism ofCooper is that I work in Reality TV and promote many "celebrities"who are as bad if not worse than the J.S. cast. My resume includes showsthat featured the Kardashian family, Paris Hilton, and the Real Housewives ofNY. Not exactly the role models I want my potential future daughter looking upto. To this observation, I have no excuse, other than that the reason I get apaycheck for working on these fine pieces of art is the same reason Andersonfeatures their stars on his show: Supply and demand. America loves thisshit! As soon as our culture stops idolizing reality stars and othercelebrities, I’ll go back to writing more of the things I actually care about,and Cooper Scooper will be back to earning his old nickname. Until then, weboth have to pay the bills.

If all my tombstone reads is, "Worked on Khloe & Lamar,"
please just cremate me.

I don't see a change happening anytime soon.Stand in line at the supermarket. You're surrounded by tabloids and magazinesfeaturing every celebrity, from the most famous to the never-heard-ofs. As longas they have a recent break up, a bikini shot with visible cellulite, or anewly adopted African baby, they are front-page news. And you know, I don’thave a problem with that because people need their guilty pleasures. We alldeserve to put aside our vegetables and go for a bowl of ice cream once in awhile. But when CNN is covering reality stars instead of reality wars, it’slike we’re eating our vegetables in the form of Spinach Artichoke dip. That'snot a real vegetable just like Snooki isn't real news. And yet, we all continueto crave our unhealthy obsessions.

Anonymous shopper in line at the store:
"Got my cheese. Got my gravy. Got my pork chops.
Oh, ya! How did Jessica lose all that weight?...
And some Milk Duds, please."

When I sit down at a computer I admittedlycheck my Facebook, my fantasy team, and then probably my Facebook again beforefinally moving onto my favorite news sites. And even then a juicy story about acelebrity divorce catches my eye before anything having to do with the DebtCeiling. We can’t constantly be bombarded with the bad news of the day. But Ican’t help but think there are better stories to intersperse with the misery ofthe world’s events than the latest on something as meaningless as TheJersey Shore.

Is it naïve to think Americans would rather watch an inspirational storyabout an every day citizen surviving cancer? Or would they rather just watch ashow simply titled Survivor about a bunch of half naked people trying towin a million bucks? No matter how well written a script or how well acted ascene, these television shows can never match the intensity, the drama, theemotion or the importance of actual life. After 8 years in the industry, I can tell you, it’scalled “reality” TV and not “real” TV for a reason. Whether we like it ornot, when the last flame is put out, when the last rose is received or when thelast Idol has sung, the real world is still out there-- and it’s not 7drunk assholes living in a house.

Patriot Games

2011-07-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

When I was in elementary school, I loved going to one of mygood friend’s house because his parents always allowed us to eat whatever wewanted. His mom ordered pizza for dinner all the time. Their fridge was alwaysfully stocked with soda and their cabinets were filled with candy. They evenmade their own beef jerky. On the other side of the coin, my parents wouldn’tallow us to have sugar cereal and my mom would usually cook meals, which weredelicious, but always included more vegetables than just the olives and greenpeppers you might find on a large pie from Pizza Hut. As a 10-year old Ithought it was great that my friend was allowed to eat whatever he wanted,whenever he wanted. Until recently when he wrote me a message on Facebooksaying “hello” and I realized that my once thin friend was now a pudgy roundball. I believe that the story of my friend’s family is representative of theUnited States as a whole, not only in the way we eat, but in every facet of theway we live. Americans are always bragging that our country is the “land of thefree,” and while freedom and the ability to do as we choose is a right weshould never take for granted, constantly abusing our liberties to make thewrong choices nullifies the greatness of having them at all. Sure it’s great tohave so many liberties, but if all we do is abuse them, do we still deservethem?

Americans put the "dumb" in Freedom

America is like the star football quarterback in a small town who ends up doingnothing with the rest of his life and can always be heard reminiscing about theold days when he ruled the world. Sure we fought off the British to take controlof our land (well Native Americans’ land but who’s counting?), and we kickedass in World War II, and we stared down the Russians in the Cold War, not tomention taking it to them in the Miracle on Ice. We created Disneyland,Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s. We landed on the moon, designed the A-Bomb, and cameout with the iPhone. Beat that, Asians! From this great land came AbrahamLincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Who cares if all the guys whoshot them were from here, too?) It’s undeniable that the US of A has plenty ofpast achievements to brag about. The problem is that pesky little word: “past.”High school is over. We were once carried on the shoulders of our allies at the50-yard line holding the championship trophy above our beautiful blonde head.But now we’re retired (aka jobless), staring at our rusty trophy, living off ofpast accomplishments rather than working on creating new ones.

This is America

When the US women’s soccer team recently defeated Brazil in dramatic fashion,many of us felt a wave of patriotic emotion-- odd how it usually takes a sportsmoment or a national tragedy to bring all of us together. After the game manyplayers and fans were saying things like, “This is what America is about!” and“Today we showed the world what Americans stand for!” Look, I love this countryvery much and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world (at least notfor more than a couple years, anyway). But comments like these are delusional.If they had said, “This is what America shouldbe about!” or “Today we showed the world what Americans want to stand for!” then maybe I couldget on the same page.

American's always pull together when
a set of twin towers are involved.

I’m not saying we all need to get into politics or fight inthe military or donate all of our money to charity in order to be a viableAmerican. All I’m saying is we need to look at our Constitution and the rightsgiven to us therein and wonder how we can honor such a great document with our actions, ratherthan simply manipulating it to indulge in ridiculous behavior. For instance, I love free speech. It givesme the right to write this very blog and call people assholes if I want to.(Yeah, I’m talking to YOU, Guy-Who-Didn’t-Pull-Up-Far-Enough-And-Made-Me-Miss-The-Left-Turn-Light.)But it also gives the Westboro Baptist Church the right to protest militaryfunerals with signs that read “God Hates Fags.” And I get that people want theright to own guns in order to hunt or protect themselves from intruders, butthen people go out and shoot each other for no good reason. So while we Americans should be proudthat we give ourselves these freedoms, we should be ashamed with what we dowith them. We should stop patting ourselves on the back for being free, andstart focusing on being decent.

Now I’m not advocating that the U.S. government put us insome “Big Brother” state and take away all of our freedoms, but at the sametime when Sarah Palin criticizes the First Lady as some Fascist extremist foradvocating a healthier diet for kids, I think that things have gone a little too far. When Palin brought a batch of cookies to a school in order toprotest a proposed governmental restriction on the amount of sugar studentscould consume at school parties, she wasn’t just saying “Don’t let governmenttell you what to do,” she was saying “Don’t let government tell you what to do even if their advice is good for you.”It’s moronic ideas such as this one that have created such hatred for agovernment that is often times trying to help the citizens who are fighting itso intensely.

The real Cookie Monster

I would love to trust my fellow Americans to do the rightthing with their freedoms, but most of our adult citizens usually act likechildren and need to be treated as such. The government is by no means perfect,but if we didn’t have such distrust for the leaders of the country we claim tolove so much, maybe we would be open to some of their parenting once in a whileand we could all improve together. If we all, myself included, acted like ourmothers were watching over our shoulders with everything we did, maybe wewould finally start to make some better decisions.

Supporting an American baseball team,
an English Band, at a Spanish Bar...
Taking the best from all of our cultures.

And when the American government is not in the right, would it be so wrong for us to look elsewhere for guidance? I know it can sound snooty when people talk about theirtravels, but the truth remains that the majority of those who pump up theUnited States as “the Greatest Country on earth” have never been to any othercountry. It’s like declaring Del Taco the best Mexican Food without even tryingChipotle. While overall our country may have many of the “best” foundations and ideals,many other countries have admirable qualities that Americans, if we weren’t sostubborn and proud, would be better off trying to emulate.

I love the patriotism our country exudes after a big sportswin, a horrific tragedy, or some other moment that makes us all come together.However, I can’t help but view this “patriotism” as a temporary emotion ratherthan a permanent state of mind. True patriotism exists every day and isembodied by a constant desire and effort to make this country a better place,not simply by reliving the glory days of her past, but by trying to improve herfuture. It’s nice to talk about the Championships we won many years ago. Weshould hang those banners. We should honor our heroes and remember ourvictories. But at some point, isn’t it time to focus on next season?

The Speech

2011-07-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well they both said "I do" and now Eric and Romi are enjoying their honeymoon on a beach somewhere in Greece. Here's the speech I made at the Rehearsal Dinner. I followed most of the rules I laid out in my previous blog, most notably, the speech wasn't caught on tape. But here's the transcript...

Goodevening. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Todd. I've known Ericsince our days at Taft High School in Woodland Hills. I’m a year older than himand in the decade plus we’ve known each other I have seen Eric shrink into theman he is today... I’m not talking about his character here, people... He usedto be fat.

In highschool Eric and I were friends, but in hindsight we weren't that close. Amongthe group we ran with, Eric was much better friends with Darryl. Jake. And eventhe cafeteria lady, Esmeralda. By the way, I ran into her the other day Eric andher 10-year old son looks exactly likeyou.

With Ericand I, our lives were like an episode of Friends where Eric was Chandler and I was Phoebe. We were part of thesame social group but we rarely had our own storyline together. Things didn’tchange much when we went off to college. Eric was in Arizona and I stayed in Californiaand we rarely saw each other except for over summer breaks, which I happilyspent drinking his parents’ alcohol and trying to have sex with his sister’sfriends. I expect the wedding tomorrow to be much of the same.

Eventually we both graduated and Eric and I moved in with Jake who withoutquestion is the Ross of the group, and by that I mean he’s really smart andnobody really likes him. The three of us lived in Park La Brea, and for awhile, Darryl even moved in with us. Darryl is definitely the Joey of our group basically because he’s buff,funny, and he looks nothing like Jennifer Aniston.

Chandler, Ross, Joey, and I guess I'm stuck being Phoebe.
Michael, you can be Marcel the monkey.

Though we all had college in our rear viewmirrors, our apartment in Park La Brea turned into a quasi-fraternity house andthis is where Eric and I began to grow much closer as friends. Dodger Games.St. Nicks. Naked wrestling matches on the lawn. Oh, I mean… playing baseball onthe lawn. We were all single with good jobs and we were enjoying the fruits ofour labor. Even with Eric’s penchant for buying guys drinks and falling asleepat the bar by 11 pm, we still had a great time. For a few years, with differentcombinations of roommates and in different areas in LA, the group stucktogether and we made memories that will stay with all of us forever.

And then came Romi, the “Monica” to Eric’s “Chandler.”   

Romi, what can I say about you that I haven’t already told my therapist?

(If people aren’t laughing, apologizeprofusely.) Oh my mistake, that was just a note to myself...

Romi knows what she wants and isn’t afraid togo after it. Case in point, Eric. It wasn’t long after they met that Romi hadlanded her soon-to-be-husband. At first I wasn’t so sure about therelationship, mainly because Eric is such a good guy that, no matter who hedated, I wouldn’t have thought anybody was good enough for him. Eric truly isone of the best people I know and he’s always been an understanding and loyalfriend to me. And Romi has definitely proven herself deserving of such a greatcatch. It’s clear that they’re two peas in a pod. Like peanut butter and jelly.Like eggs and bacon. Like French fries and ketchup. Sorry Eric, am I making youhungry?  

With their beautiful home, scrappy dogs, and great families, Eric and Romi areset to have the perfect life. And while Friends is a television seriesthat was canceled years ago, at least I know we’ll always have the reruns.There will always be the amazing memories we made together. And I’m just happythat I was able to be part of the cast. Congratulations Eric and Romi. Mayyou have a long lasting spin-off.

Speech Therapy

2011-06-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

Wow only a couple days left until the big weekend. Some people may remember it as the weekend where my friends Eric and Romi got married, but anyone with any sense of history will remember it as the weekend where I made another epic wedding speech. For those of you who weren’t there, a little while back I spoke at my friend Jake’s wedding and stole the show. The rest of the night whispers of, “Sure that’s a nice wedding dress but who was the guy who made that speech???" and “Jake and Julie are lucky that their anniversary is on the same day as Todd’s speech, a day that will live in infamy.” Even the bride was wondering if she married the wrong guy. But as any one hit wonder can attest, with success comes pressure, and now with another wedding upon us and another speech on the way, I’ve got some pretty big shoes to fill. My own.

No matter how big or small the audience, public speaking is never easy.

The art of speaking at a wedding (or in this weekend’s case a rehearsal dinner) is to mix entertaining anecdotes about the bride and groom with sweet moments that will have the grandmas smiling and the bridesmaids swooning. While this may seem simple, I often have difficulty walking this tight rope because my standards for an offensive joke are much different than the standards of an adult crowd. Most of them come wanting to dance to “We Are Family” not hear jokes that could be from Family Guy. What stories can I repeat, what insults can I spew, what deep dark secrets about the groom’s past can I reveal? The answers to these questions are the difference between a great speech that will have the room buzzing and a snooze fest that will have your 97-year old Great Uncle Bernie looking at his watch, wondering why he isn’t dead yet.

"I'd rather be sleeping." -Great Uncle Bernie

A rule I’ve learned after my speech at Jake’s wedding is to never let someone film you. In today’s society where seemingly every mundane event is captured on anything from an HD camera to a cell phone video, nothing is left to the imagination. Where our Grandparents can tell us stories of the giant fish they caught when they were 8, if a friend told us about the same feat today we would demand to see visual evidence. When my speech at Jake’s wedding wasn’t caught on tape I was originally upset, but as time has passed, I realized the lack of proof has only added to the legend of my speech's greatness. I mean imagine if Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address had been recorded. Sure it would have a bunch of Youtube views by now, but the mystique would be gone. Don’t you ever go see a stand up comedian and die laughing while in the audience then go check out his DVD and it’s just not as great as you remember? Or don’t you ever have an amazing sex session and then later when you check the tape from the camera that you had set up in your cracked open closet you realize that your partner’s ass looks like a bucket of Knudsen cottage cheese and your hairy back makes you look like a horny ape out of some National Geographic documentary?

Sure it felt good, but this is what it looked like.

The human mind tends to remember things happening much more dramatically than they actually were. If you almost got hit by a car, you’d probably remember leaping out of the way of a speeding Hummer when in reality a Prius came to a stop in the crosswalk 20 feet in front of you. And if you go to an enjoyable concert you are probably updating your Facebook page with comments like “OMG Gaga is Amaze-balls!” when really she’s was just Above-Average-Balls. And at a wedding, during the speeches, since everyone wants to be entertained and see a good performance, most people have laughter at the tips of their lips and all they need is a mediocre joke here and there to bring it out of them. So when they hear a superior speech like the one I delivered at Jake’s wedding, they walk away thinking, “Holy Shit was that Eddie Murphy, Barack Obama, and Jesus all rolled into one?” And where normally wedding attendees would watch the speech again on tape with the high expectations that their memory had given them only to realize it was just a few wise cracks from a dude who looked nothing like the epic speech-Frankenstein they had formed in their mind, now they can only recall it fondly, with each joke getting funnier and funnier as more time passes.

"What did he say about my granddaughter?
No seriously. What did he say? I can't hear anything"

Another rule for groomsmen is never, and I mean never, say anything bad about the bride. Even if it’s a joke. Say what you want about the groom. How he killed that homeless guy when he was drunk. How he still owes you 10 grand from that gambling binge in Vegas. How he cheated on his then fiancée with a toothless stripper. But never say anything bad about the bride because 1) While the groom’s family most likely knows you and likes you, the bride’s family is probably wondering, “Who is this douche bag?” and one misstep can lose half your audience. 2) Women never like to be teased, especially on their wedding day, no matter how funny the joke is. Trust me. Knowing this fact and yet still ignoring it is the reason why I’m single. 3) You risk pissing off the groom and he’s the reason you’re up there in the first place. You don’t want him coming back from his honeymoon and telling you that his new bride was miserable and screaming at him the entire time because you called her a bitch in your speech. Even if that very situation proves you to be correct.

Additionally, and this is specifically for bridesmaids, don’t tell personal stories that nobody else gets. Save that for some alone time when you’ve had too much champagne and you want to get sentimental one on one. I don’t want to hear about that one time in college when you stayed in drinking boxed wine and watching the Lifetime Channel until 4 am. Unless you were both naked when it happened, nobody cares.

If you wouldn't take diet advice from this woman,
why would you take life advice
from your alcoholic cousin Travis?

Finally, don’t give life advice, especially if you’re drunk. Nobody wants to hear how “You will have ups, you will have downs, but most importantly you will always have each other” from some drunk 30-year old who has complained about his or her spouse ever since they put on 30 pounds after their own wedding. And keep it short. A wedding speech is like a blog entry. People will listen as long as they are entertained but if it goes on forever they will start to think about all of the better ways they could be spending their time. Speaking of, let’s wrap things up…

In the end, just make your speech heartfelt. No matter what you say, be sure you mean it. Not everyone is wise, not everyone is clever, not everyone is funny. So be yourself and do the best you can. Either way, if you’re going to be boring or shocking, sincere or sarcastic, just make sure it’s not on tape. If it sucks people will forget, and if it’s great, people will immortalize you and be talking about you for a lifetime. Let’s just hope the marriage lasts that long, too.

Some additional wedding speech suggestions:

Use a microphone whenever possible. Half of the audience is probably old deaf people and God forbid you have to compete with someone’s stupid crying baby.
Have an accent. Everything sounds better with an accent.
Memorize the speech, don’t read it. If you can set up a teleprompter, that’s a happy medium.
Cry. I don’t care if you have to look into the lights or spray the lime from your vodka-tonic into your eyes. A few tears go a long way.
Last but not least, never speak after the father of the bride. He’s guaranteed to have some good material on the bride and he has a free pass to rail into the groom. So he’s going to be a tough act to follow. Plus he’s paying for everything so people are going to laugh just so they don’t feel bad about cleaning out the open bar.

Good luck!

You Say You Want A (Sexual) Revolution...

2011-06-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

Normally when asked the age-old question, “What came firstthe chicken or the egg?” I give the obvious response, Who cares they’re both delicious! However, this possiblyunanswerable question takes on a useful meaning when applied to the currentsexual status of our country, if not the world. Seemingly, every day we arehearing about a new sex scandal involving cheating, pornography, or some weirdfetish that hadn’t been invented any more than a year ago. What used to be reservedfor damp basements or vivid imaginations is now commonplace in our society. Sowhat came first, the chicken or the egg? Has society—with their boobs on TV andRihanna’s songs about S&M-- turned us into a bunch of sexual miscreants orhave we always been this way and technology and lowered societalstandards have finally allowed us to unleash our inner perv?

In today's society, asking who came first is an invitation
for someone to make a bad sexual pun.

Look around you. That man sexting on his phone behind you inline at the bank isn’t chatting with his girlfriend. That guy speeding past youon the freeway is in a rush to get home so he can masturbate with strangers onSkype before his wife gets back from picking up the kids. That buff dude withthe snap off pants and tank top walking down the street in Chatsworth is on hisway to shoot his first porn scene. It will be available for free on the Internetin 427 different 30-second clips and he’ll get paid $50 and whatever he wants fromWendy’s. Enjoy!

All of these naughty proclivities have one thing in common: Technology. Textsand Twitter. Plastic vagina molds and Japanese Sex dolls. Webcam loving andhook up websites solely for married folks. What happened to good ol’ bangingthe milkman or the secretary? Most people accept the fact that marriage and onesexual partner can grow boring without working hard at keeping it fresh. But itseems now even typical sexual cheating has lost its excitement for most people.They’re bored of their wives. They're bored of their mistresses. And when thathappens, like a date with a girl from Craigslist, you know things are gonna getweird.

If you think she's attractive now, wait til you try her stir fry!

While the ways we have sex have changed—as well as the ways we get caught whenthe tryst is an inappropriate one—are we as humans truly different? Of course there weren’t kinky cavementrolling the Internet looking for any woman with a bottle of lube and a noose,but that doesn’t mean he only did missionary. So, what came first, the chickenor the egg? Have we led ourselves down this naughty path to Sodom and Gonorrheaor have all of these desires, impulses and tendencies always existed in thehuman experience?

The first Kama Sutra book.

It’s a certainty that many of our neighbors, teachers, friends, coworkers,priests and significant others are partaking in sexual indiscretions, but tohelp analyze this situation, let’s focus on a few of the more high profilecases we all know about: Tiger Woods, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and AnthonyWeiner.

While Woods and Weiner were brought down by technology (text messages andtwitter posts), Arnold’s fate was sealed with evidence of the more traditionaland less permanent variety (a love child). While it’s easy to assume that these3 powerful men simply abused their high positions in society to woo women, wemust again apply the chicken or egg question. Did these slime balls already havethese sexual urges and seek power in life in order to have a better chance atfulfilling them, or did they change into sexually obsessed men once they hadachieved their status and realized the benefits that came with it?

To answer this question, let’s look at what they actually did. Arnold fuckedthe maid. Weiner didn’t really even cheat on his wife, he just sent pictures ofhis junk to women on the internet, and Tiger confused a golfer’s desire for alow number on the scorecard for a low rating on a hook up’s appearance. I mean,he was married to a Swedish model and he was banging waitresses from the WaffleHouse. Do these indiscretions seem like the type of goals only achievable bypowerful politicians and athletes? I can send anyone a picture of my privates. Seriously.What’s your number? And I bet with the right amount of charm I could even scorea Motel 6 maid or an IHOP waitress. Wow, imagine a life of endless sex, towelsand pancakes. What more do you need?

IHOP... 4 implants and a dozen wings away from being Hooters.

Point is, these guys weren’t abusing their power to scorewith super models or celebrities. They were all married men looking to have sexwith… for lack of better term… anyoneother than their wives. They were bored. And that has been an issue marriedcouples (and even single men and women) have been dealing with since thebeginning of monogamy.

They say that behind every great man is a great woman. While that’s very oftentrue, it’s just as common that on top of every great man is a mediocre lookingwhore. Think about it. Bill Clinton had Monica Lewinsky. Charlie Sheen decidedon a couple of average looking porn stars. Hugh Grant cheated on Liz Hurleywith a nasty hooker. It’s true, men need power to gain access to the elitethings in life. Clubs. Restaurants. Beautiful women. But the ladies involved inthese sexual scandals are in no way elite.

Because of this, I argue that before they gained an ounce of power in life,before they received one single vote, or shot one blockbuster film, or held theirfirst championship trophy, these guys were all average to below average men whowanted nothing more than to feel socially accepted by women. And even oncetheir raised status in life brought them beautiful, intelligent, loving wives,the chip on their penises that remained from years of feeling insignificant,unwanted, and powerless with women made them go out and keep trying to score. Theyare still that scared, insecure 15-year old that was rejected by their crush,only now they have the ability to get revenge.

Does this look like a man thinking clearly?

While I agree that these guys who cheat on their wives arethe sleaziest of the sleazy, one must also take into consideration the state ofmind a person must be in to follow through with their infidelity. PictureAnthony Weiner. Sitting down after a long day on the Hill. His wife won’t behome for a few hours. He’s got his favorite lotion. The candles are lit. Hepulls out a crinkled Playboy from 1983 and realizes, Wait a second, there’s gotta be a better way! So he gets online andfinds a treasure trove of porn. (Again, chicken or the egg: Is 99% of Internettraffic for porn because we are sex obsessed? Or are we sex obsessed becausethere is so much porn? As with any business model, I would argue that demand iswhat influences supply. If markets started carrying tons of broccoli, Americanswouldn’t start eating it more. But if every teenager went home and wanted todevour broccoli 3 times a night and once in the morning before school, grocerswould stock the shelves.)

While Weiner looks at all of this Internet porn hediscovers new sites where he can interact with women. Where he can send thempictures of his bulging underwear or his creepy pectorals. Before he knows it,the chemicals in his brain are racing, his heart is pounding, his underwear aregrowing, and suddenly he has sent a college girl a picture of himself dressedin drag. Now I’m not defending this behavior, but as we all know, when a man isgetting sexually riled up, he doesn’t make the best decisions.

I mean look at Arnold’s situation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a littleLatin flavor in the bedroom to keep things spicy, but this woman looked likeshe had been using her own face to mop the floors. Not to mention she gotpregnant. Though I’m sure Arnold’s sperm are buff and all, I have to assumethis means that he didn’t wrap it before he slapped it. Does that sound like aman using logic and common sense or does it sound like a horny 15-year oldabout to lose his V-card to the hot cheerleader?

At least their kid won't be weird looking...

Again, this phenomenon has been with us forever. It’s chemical. It’s as much a part of aman’s physical make up as adrenaline pumping through our veins in a dangeroussituation. If anything, men in the past were probably worse at controllingtheir impulses than men of today. It’s just that men of today are caught moreoften because the technology that enables them also helps expose them.

While it’s clear that many perverts, scum bags and sexual deviants walk amongus, one would be hard pressed to blame technology for what appears to be arevolution with how we have sex and how we cheat. Sure a laptop bringseverything we want to our (finger)tips and makes access easier. But as they sayin Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.”And if a man wants to cheat, once the seed has been planted in his horny littlemind, it’s going to grow, whether Twitter is there to water it or not. Men inpower have been sneaking around on their wives forever, they just didn’t have a24-hour news cycle to expose and shame them. There’s nothing we can do to avoidelecting officials, rooting for athletes, or idolizing movie stars who aregoing to eventually cheat on their wives. All we can do is live up to our ownpersonal standards, and if and when we are tempted to flirt, sext, or all outfuck a person who is not the one we are committed to, we need to decide whattype of person we want to be. Because in the end we can’t blame technology orsociety or our heroes for the mistakes we make, we can only blame ourselves. We are the chicken and the egg.

Alright, time to masturbate!

We are baaaaack!

2011-06-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

I owe all of my readers an explanation for why I took my blog down. The answer is not simple and is best explained by breaking my reasoning down into percentages:

51% Lack of blogs

The only thing worse than no blog at all is a neglected blog. It was sitting there for a month with no new posts, covered in spider webs. The Todd Fields World started off it's career at a blazing pace and was maybe even headed for the "Blog Hall of Fame." Then, suddenly, the unforgiving injury of writer's block ruined what was a promising career. Rather than try to stay on the field and survive like the rest of the average blogs out there, my blog retired at that top of it's game. But now it's back like Jordan wearing the 4-5...

20% Spite and Self-Pity

Some people wake up every morning and check on their sleeping baby. Some roll over and kiss their wife. Some hop on the computer and check their stock portfolio. Some check their fantasy football team. Some cook up a ridiculous breakfast burrito. For me, the way I started every morning was by checking the amount of views, comments, and "likes" (or "dislikes") that my blog posts received. And while the views continued to stay at a strong level, the feedback I was getting became fewer and far between. I'm a writer people! I can be sensitive. I can be insecure. I need people to tell me how great I am. When I wasn't getting that, I lost some of my motivation to keep writing. This blog isn't a diary where I get things off my chest, it's where I go to try and entertain and stimulate my friends, family, and even the occasional stranger who stumbles across the site. If it doesn't seem like people care about the blog, then I don't really have a reason to, either.

20% The Blog was a Social and Romantic Cock Block

For every sweet blog about my new puppy or my adoration of John Lennon, there was a blog about sex, hook ups, getting drunk, or just being an all around idiot. For these topics, I caught a lot of flack. A co-worker defriended me on Facebook. A girl I had been on a couple dates with told me she couldn't see me anymore. Even I started to question some of the things I was writing up there. To me, the more revealing and blunt the blog was the more interesting my writing was. Nobody wants to read something boring. And if I tried to fake outrage at a topic, not only would I feel like a phony, but the blog would suck because people can see through lies. However, I did get frustrated when what was an off color joke here and there would be taken seriously and negative consequences would come my way. Eventually I realized, in the end I probably shouldn't be friends with too many co-workers on FB anyways, a girl who doesn't get my humor isn't a keeper, and I enjoy writing stupid, silly, or controversial things because the way I write them, I find them quite witty and smart. I don't need to make excuses for what I write. (And yes, I realize that's what this entire paragraph was.)

9% I gots to get paid!

If my business card says "Writer" that means I should be making money as a writer. I don't normally care about money and I have a career in Reality TV, but a lot of people find ways to make money off of their hobbies and part of me wanted in on that action. But in the end, I'd rather just write for fun on my blog and try and make some money off of the other stuff I'm working on. Basically, when I finish my book you better buy it. And once I have your cash, I won't have to worry so much about getting your feedback ;)

Anyways, the blog is back. I'm going to try and keep up my one-a-week pace, but sometimes life happens and I can't get it done. But I promise, the more you read, the more I will write...

New blog coming later today...

The Weighting Game

2011-04-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

I recently watched the documentary Super Size Me where the filmmaker spent his money and risked hislife to prove the never-debated point that fast food is unhealthy. While thedocumentary had interesting moments, my biggest problem with it was that it failedto achieve it’s intended goal: to make me rethink taking a cab throughMcDonald’s to satisfy my Chicken Nugget craving this Saturday night. If peopleeat fast food regularly—or even at all-- I can’t imagine that simply proving tothem how unhealthy it is would change their eating habits. I don’t know anyonewho eats fast food believing that it’s good for them. People eat it for fourreasons: 1) they’re poor and can’t afford anything else, 2) they’re too lazy tocook or go to a slower serving restaurant so they choose to stay in thefriendly confines of their car while their food is prepared, 3) they’redepressed or drunk and make a bad spur of the moment decision, 4) they’re sofucking fat that they’ve given up any hope of improving the flabby exterior theyrefer to as their body. None of them are under the impression that when theyeat fast food they’re being healthy. So really, the movie was proving a pointthat has already been made.

Realistically, the Hamburglar is probably in jail because
when the police spotted him he was too fat to run away.

For me, the most interesting moment in the film came when itwas pointed out that it is socially acceptable, though usually pointlesslyobnoxious, to tell someone to their face that they shouldn’t smoke, butcriticizing someone’s eating habits is usually a literal “big-fat-no-no.” Tome, this is a huge part of the problem with obesity because while many of usdeny caring what others think, I’m hard pressed to believe that always beingtold not to eat burgers, cheese, sodas and the like by people who care about you would not eventually take atoll on an overweight person’s psyche and cause a change in their eatinghabits. Granted this “change” may be that they begin to eat even worse in orderto drown their sorrows rather than eat better to finally shed some pounds. Butthis choice, as with all choices we humans make, comes down to personalresponsibility and self-discipline. But as our country gobbles and sweats its way to being the fattest in the world, isn't it time we try and change how those around us eat?

So as someone who is also unhappy with his body, I’m saying, with love from meto you: stop being fat!

When I was younger I could eat anything I wanted. Literallyanything. I ate a bug off of a tree once. Had no affect on me other than when Iwould brag to girls in my 1st grade class about it they would yell, “Eww!” andrun away—which in 1^st Grader Language means, “I want to hold yourhand behind the handball courts.” But growing up I was always active, mymetabolism was unstoppable, and eating candy, hot dogs or Icee’s had no negativeeffects on my skinny physique. Andthen, like some cruel joke, all at the same time, around the ages of 18-21, mymetabolism started to slow down, I stopped playing sports 5 days a week, and Idiscovered the Devil’s Juice, aka everything from Coors Lite to Jager Bombsto a drink called the 4 Horsemen (I’m not sure what was in that but let’s justsay the only bartender who would serve it to me is now dead, and I’m notkidding. R.I.P. Marlin).

I've been eating unhealthy ever since I was little.

Of all of the contributors, I think alcohol was the biggestfactor in my weight gain. Not only because alcohol itself is unhealthy, butbecause of the other decisions it led me to make: late night snacks, toohungover to go to the gym, etc. I think it even gave me “beer goggles” onmyself, because I believed I looked fine until I saw a picture of myself fromcollege, looking as sexy as I always imagined I did, except my cheeks didn’tlook like they were filled with donut holes like in the photos I was currently posingfor. Comparing the old picture to new ones had me scrolling through my Facebookuntagging myself in any shot that wasn’t taken from the perfect angle. And Iwasn’t even sure that “perfect angle” existed.

Like a fat suit out of a bad Eddie Murphy movie, my body hadturned into an unrecognizable shape. The kid who used to eat Double-Doubles andfries and then finish his friend’s milkshake was nowhere to be found, coveredin a thick sheet of blubber and shame. Now I know what you’re saying: “Todd,who cares if you put on some weight, as long as you’re rich girls will stilllove you!” To which I would reply, “Hey, you’ve been reading my blog!” But thistime it wasn’t just about what others thought of me, it was about what Ithought of myself.

Being fat is fucking depressing. Especially in Los Angeleswhere there are so many fit people. I know it’s usually a female who iscomplaining about this type of stuff, but men deal with it, too. Do you know how many women are out there who will only date a guy who is in great shape because forsome reason they haven’t evolved out of their cavewoman state of mind wherethey need to cling to the strongest male for protection from WoollyMammoths and pterodactyls. It doesn’t matter that none of these meatheads canspell either of those animals, these are the men they instinctively go for.

This guy is the reason I hate the gym.
And the tanning salon.
And the thong store.

But protection-seeking girls aside, I wasn’t happy with theway I looked so I started hitting the gym. And let me tell you, this is a bigdeal because I hate the gym. It takes a lot to keep me there. If my iPodbattery dies, I leave. If the hot girl in front of me on the treadmill stopsrunning, so do I. If there is a guy lifting weights next to me and screaming soloud that the pimples on his back pop in unison, I head for the exits. So thefact that I made it to the gym 2-3 days a week was basically a small miracle.Of course, afterwards I would head home and I’d lift my shirt in the mirror andsilently curse myself: “You fat worthless piece of shit.” Without much visualevidence of improvement I’d step on the scale and find out I only lost onepound. Soon I wanted to give up. But then I realized I was still eating asunhealthy as before. So I started bringing sandwiches to work, getting mydressing on the side for salads, and forcing myself to throw up Chipotlewhenever I gave into the craving. Just kidding, I would never disrespectChipotle like that. Eventually, with exercise and eating healthy, 2 of my top 3most hated things in the world (the 3^rd is washing dishes), Istarted to see some results.

Now I’ve lost a few pounds and I’m feeling better about myself. I still havework to do, but eventually I’ll get there. By no means am I trying to preach orsay, “Hey I did it, so can you!” All I’m saying is that eating unhealthy is anaddiction just like smoking. And with addictions, people always try andrationalize reasons to "just have one more" or say that they’re "going to quit… tomorrow." Whether they are trying togive up heroine, cigarettes or Happy Meals, the challenge is the same, and I thinkmaking it socially acceptable to say (politely) to someone you care about, “Maybe you should eat a salad,” isn’t a bad thing.

Don't waste food by eating it only
to throw it up later. There are people
starving in Arica (and apparently Malibu).

So listen fat people: losing weight is a marathon not a sprint.And yes, I realize that you don’t know what either of those things are. But mypoint is that you have to keep trying, and there are going to be set backs whenyou just have to eat that burger. Or those plateaus where it seems like there’sjust no way you can lose another pound without resorting to cutting off yourleg. And there’s even going to be times when you convince yourself that you’rehappy with the way you look and that forcing change to accommodate your body tosociety’s standards is pointless. If that’s truly how you feel, I agree. Youshould do what you want. But when my health care costs go up because of yourdiabetes or your kid gets made fun of at school because you taught him that pizza is a food group and now he’s in 4^thgrade and weighs 250 pounds or you get kicked off of a plane because your gutis leaking over onto my laptop, don’t get mad at society. Look in the mirrorfor that one. And then truly ask yourself if you’re happy with what you see. Andif you aren’t, make a change.

Now go grab a napkin, you just spilled mayonnaise all overyour keyboard.

Asians in the Library

2011-03-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

By now you have probably seen the Youtube sensation Asians in the Library, a video blog (vlog) done by a portly white female UCLA studentin which she criticizes the Asian students who attend her school for not using“American manners,” for having their parents do their laundry and groceryshopping and, apparently worst of all, for talking on their phones in the library. Her statements have caused an uproar in not only the Asian community, but in pretty much everyone who has seen the video (except maybe the campus librarian). While I don't approve of what this Hobbit said, I feel that if she truly wanted to be heard rather than ridiculed, she should have made her point in a different way. Now listen, I’m not above a racial joke here and there-- especially towardsAsians because they are the least threatening race. In fact I made an entireweb series based on Asian stereotypes entitled The Adventures of Mung Chung: An Asian in America with myex-girlfriend. But a joke is called a joke because it's supposed to be funny. No one was offended by my Web Series for one simple reason: it was hilarious. The difference between Mung Chung and Miss Piggy’s video isthe comedy factor.

It looks like she does most of her studying in the cafeteria.

There’s a simple formula for racial jokes:

Racism+Funny=

Socially Acceptable

And yes, an Asian person helped me figure out thatmathematical equation. See? No one is offended by that joke because it’s clever!

I’ll admit, the “Ching Chong Wing Wong” part of her rantcould have been hilarious had she led off with that. But instead she tookherself way too seriously from the start. She spoke as if the “Asians” who bugged her had invadedher country and her school and brought with them their rude, foreign ways. In reality, most UCLA Asian students are probably all from LA, SF, SD, or OC. But because theylook, sound, and think differently than her she believes there’s no way theycan be American. I bet she thinks Obama is from Kenya, too.

Racism is allowed as long as it's funny.
(Still from Mung Chung Ep. 2)

Even with all that is wrong with what this littleMarshmallow said in her vlog, there’s something else about this situation thattruly upsets me. The most watched version of this video currently has over 3 millionviews on Youtube. Three million! I’m lucky if a couple hundred people read myblog entries, and that’s probably just because they like the pictures. Sure, once in a while I take a controversial stand but I don’t think anything I’veever written has been nearly as offensive or just plain idiotic as this girl'svlog. And my viewership is suffering because of it. It's clear that to have a successful blog with millions of readers and even some paying ads, I need to step up thecrazy on here. I need to go Kramer. I need to go Mel Gibson. I need to go…Charlie Sheen.

That guy is Internet gold and he knows it. Sure nobody willever take him seriously again, but who cares? He got a million Twitterfollowers in one day! To achieve Sheen-level notoriety, there are several steps I have to take. First, I need a catch phrase along the lines of“Winning!” Even Chubbs McArmfat from UCLA has “Ching Chong Wing Wong” to hercredit. If that phrase is not on a Blue and Gold t-shirt under a picture of anAsian kid on a cell phone in the next two days, then there’s somethingwrong with the world. After I get my catch phrase I need to say something reallyshocking and offensive. I need to claim to have Tiger blood. I need to offend an entire group of people so badly that when other people do the same it's known as "pulling a Todd Fields." Maybe I can make oneof those “Too soon” comments? Maybe 9/11 related? It's been ten years people get over it! Even I'm offended by that! Maybe I can get whatever I say to be turned into an Autotuned #1 single. With my singingvoice, that’s the only way I would ever have a hit song anyways. I’ll beAntoine Toddson! It’s so easy to make it big with technology today. I canalready smell the Internet fame!

My new single "9/11 (Get over it!)" drops this Summer!
B-Side: "Let's Roll!"

But now that I think about it, maybe that’s the problem withgetting famous on the Internet. In the past, the cliché was a person got their“15 minutes” of fame after a random event thrust them into the spotlight. Buttoday, most people are lucky (or unlucky) to get a mere 15 seconds. No one hasheard a peep from Antoine lately (maybe he’s hiding with his kids and hiswife?). People are sick of Charlie Sheen already. And soon, PushUpBra McGeewill just be another slutty sorority girl researching STDs on the libraryInternet. While it’s easy to burst onto the scene with a viral video or blog,it’s hard to have any lasting impact without doing anything of real quality.

Zach Galifianakis has a great Webseries called Between Two Ferns. There was an awesome internet television seriescalled Clark and Michael starringMichael Cera that is one of my favorites. And the blog for Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 is a great way to kill a few hours during the day. Sure allof these internet sensations contain offensive or controversial material at onepoint or another, but they are consistently putting out a hilariousproduct so their lifespan is longer. Rather than sink to the depths ofliving with porn stars or going on a racist rant for my 15 seconds, I’m goingto put quality over quickness and keep trying to put out an interesting blog. Even if only a couple hundred people read it, at least I'll know they are enjoying an intelligent, funny product and not some idiotic entry only put there to rile a few readers in a sad attempt to grasp fleeting Internet infamy.

With all of that said... I still want that “Ching Chong Ding Dong” T-shirt. I'm talking to YOU Westwood Urban Outfitters!

"Winning"... for now.

Cheese and Rice!

2011-03-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

“What the hell is that on your forehead?” I asked my friend.

In hindsight, the question may have been a littleinsensitive but I was an Atheist at a religiously affiliated University and Iseriously didn’t know what the hell that was on his forehead. Moments likethese offered me a chance to learn about other cultures, belief systems, andtraditions.

The answer to my question of course was “Ash,” as it was thebeginning of Lent and my Christian roommate was observing the occasionappropriately. He explained to me that he had to give up something-- anythinghe wanted-- for 40 days in honor of the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in thedesert.

My first question was that if Jesus could turn water into wine, why couldn’t heturn sand into sandwiches? But I had already insulted him with my first queryand thought it better to keep that one to myself, so I moved on to my secondquestion:

“What are you going to give up?”

“Cheese,” he said with a lamenting groan.

And here is where my confusion set in.

If you're giving up cheese for lent,
I recommend making this your last supper.

First off, what kind of God would ever want you to give upcheese? Cheese is ridiculously good. It goes on salads, paninis, crackers,tortilla chips, and don’t get me started on burritos. Asking someone to give upcheese is like asking someone to give up oxygen or Facebook. It’s just plaintorture. Especially for my roommate, who ate it all the time. But he explainedto me that the fact that he ate cheese so much was the precise reason he wasgiving it up for Lent. If he didn’t have such a love for cheese, it wouldn’t bemuch of a sacrifice.

So the more important the indulgence you give up, the morerespect you are paying to your religion? Well if that’s the case, and if thisJesus guy gave up ALL foods for 40 days, why do you only have to give up onething? If you want to really showJesus your solidarity, do what he did. Go all out and stop eating altogether. Imean if you are only giving up your daily dose of pepper jack but your Deitystarved himself for 40 days, it seems like you’re not really honoring him properly. Why don’t you just knock Lent down toa week while you’re at it?

Dear Jesus,

I know you starved in the desert for 40 days, so in honor of that I’m not goingto eat cookies. For today. That may seem like an insignificant gesture, but Ireally, really, REALLY love cookies. Especially chocolate chip! Damn, now Iwant a cookie…

Okay, I can’t lie toyou, I just had a cookie, but don’t be mad. I know you’re a forgiving guy,right? I’ll start my one-day cookie diet right now. Woops. Just had another one.Okay, starting… NOW. I promise.

Love,
Cookie Monster

P.S. Is cookie doughthe same as cookies?

Bad habits should be given up for more than 40 days.

I will give in and acknowledge that Christians believe Jesusis the son of God, so he was able to fast for 40 days more easily than most merehumans would have. But if humans don’t have to give up eating altogether, toeven things out, why don’t they give up their indulgence for more than 40 days? It makes sense to meand I’m sure Jesus would appreciate the extra respect.

If religion is truly there to guide people through this minefield called “Life,” why doesn’t it push peoples’ limits more than simplyasking them to pass on the cheese every time they order a Five Dollar Footlongin the next month and a half? If what you’re giving up is something you recognizeas unhealthy in your life, I say give it up for good. Jesus couldn’t have givenup all food forever because he wouldhave died, and there’s no coming back from that. Well, err, you know what Imean. But taking your 40-day commitment to give up cheese or cigarettes or coffeeor whatever it is and expanding it into a lifetime goal sounds like an awesomeideal to preach. And that way, over time, your sacrifice will turn into apositive in your life rather than simply a 40-day test of faith.

Or is that what Lent is? Simply a test. A hazing ritual tomake sure you earn your way into the coveted fraternity of J.C. If a religionwants to truly make their followers healthier and happier, they should ask themto give up a bad habit for good, not for 40 days. Otherwise, the tradition of Lentis just that: a tradition-- with no goal or true meaning other than keeping inline with the practices of the people who did it before you.

Haze Jesus!
(C. Spring Break 18 A.D.)

Some of the definitions for the word “tradition” include 1) a long-established or inherited way ofthinking or acting, 2) a continuingpattern of culture beliefs or practices, 3) a customary or characteristic method or manner. A lot of peoplelove traditions, and that’s understandable. They often bring comfort andfamiliarity to an individual or group event or they offer a way to honor thosebefore us by repeating their customs. But nowhere in the definitions of theword “tradition” do we see anything about a learned or evolved behavior,customized to incorporate what we have found to be true in more recentgenerations. All we see is a way of thinking that has been blindly passed downfor thousands of years without question or ridicule.

I get that it’s easy for me, as someone who doesn’t believein God, to say, “Don’t just do something because your religion tells you to.”And by no means am I asking you to question your faith in God or Jesus or Allahor Xenu or whatever you worship. All I ask is that you consider whetheryou want to be a follower of a religion that asks you to practice rituals thataim to make you a better person, or simply aim to test your faith by asking youto take on torturous sacrifices for no reason other than a book said a guy fastedin the desert for 40 days. When you groan that you’re giving up your favoriteindulgence for Lent, you’re not honoring Jesus, you’re only punishing yourself.And if those things have to be intertwined, you might want to seek out yourreligion elsewhere.

It’s lunchtime and I’m going to go get a cheeseburger.

Cheat Sheet

2011-03-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine was recently cheated on by his girlfriend of a year. He was stunned. I was not. This girl had many of the characteristics that women who eventually cheat on their significant other have. While it's probably rude to tell a friend "Hey your girlfriend is probably going to stray, you should reconsider moving in together," maybe you can just forward him this list of characteristics that I believe are usually found in ladies who cheat. And as with all stereotypes, these are 100% accurate.

Don't let this happen to you...

Top 10 ways you know your girlfriend will eventually cheat on you:

1. She sleeps with you on the first date. Most girls know, that if they are looking for something serious to develop with a guy, not to sleep with him the first time you hang out. A guy is pretty much always going to try to get laid immediately, it's just the way we're wired. But if a girl does this it means she does not have the self-control to stop herself when she's physically interested in someone, even if the consequences will be something different than what she wants. This lack of self-control will eventually rear it's ugly head sometime during your relationship and she will make a mistake with another guy.

2. She is better looking than you and not financially reliant on you. Never trust a hot girl who says she loves a guy with a good sense of humor. They love attractive men or rich men. If you don't have one or both, she will eventually upgrade to someone who does. No matter how funny you are.

Just close your eyes and dream of money.

3. She is under 20 and you are over 30. No explanation necessary. You're creepy and when she cheats with the guy down the hall in her dorm, you deserve it.

4. She has fake boobs. A girl who gets fake boobs can say it's so she feels sexy inside, but really her feeling of inner sexiness is determined by outside recognition of that sexiness. Sure you can say you got implants so you can finally wear a shirt that shows cleavage. But what's the point of cleavage without guys to ogle over it?

Would you trust this girl as much
as she trusted her plastic surgeon?

5. She brings up, jokingly or not, involving someone else in your sex life. Even if she wants to bring in another girl, this is a red flag for your relationship. Whoever she wants to bring in, the fact of the matter is, you aren't enough.

6. She doesn't have any female friends. This means that girls don't like her and guys do. Pretty girls like to contend that other girls are just jealous and these "would be friends" are tired of all the guys only hitting on the pretty one. But if the pretty girls did a sufficient job of steering away the guys into the arms of their less-attractive entourage, maybe the jealous uglies wouldn't dislike them so much. In truth, the pretty girl is probably an attention whore, a trait that usually leads to cheating. Especially when she uses her looks as a built-in excuse to only hang out with guys.

7. She was a virgin when she met you. She's always going to wonder what it's like with another guy. Even if you're Justin Timberlake.

You don't have to be crazy to cheat on JT...
But it helps.

8. She has a male friend she talks about a lot. If she's always bringing up a guy at work she has lunch with or her friend's brother who always crashes girls' night or her Swedish gym trainer named Hans who she can't believe doesn't have a girlfriend, it's because she's picturing their faces while you make boring love to her.

9. She has an STD and you don't. You cannot catch them from sitting on a public toilet.

10. She is more focused on getting married than having a career. When she falls asleep at night she's dreaming of a man to complete her life, rather than fulfilling her potential on her own. People like this will always be missing something on the inside and the second that you no longer fill that emptiness, someone else will. With their penis.

I'm sure there are more traits that I haven't noticed or that I'm forgetting, but I think that's a good start and ten is a nice round number. I would love to make this same list but about guys and help some of you ladies out, but guys are all slutty pigs and really there are no signs to look for to anticipate who might be a cheater and who might be faithful. We don't even know what we're capable of. So it's a roll of the dice with all of us.

If I could leave you all with one piece of advice, guy or girl, if you aren't happy in your relationship don't be a selfish prick and cheat, just end it and move on. It's better for everyone. Except for Hans.

Valentine's Year

2011-02-14T00:06:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day is a silly holiday. And I know what you’rethinking—that I just feel this way because I’m single and while you’re outhaving a romantic evening with your significant other, I’m going to be homealone getting my keyboard pregnant. But that couldn’t be further from thetruth. In fact, the reason I think V-Day is so silly is that it’s only once ayear. A holiday that encourages you to surprise your loved one with gifts, aromantic night on the town, and expressions of love and gratitude should be celebrated yearround, not just once in the middle of February.

If St. Patrick's Day was every day,
both of these people would be dead.

So many holidays represent 24-hour windows on the calendarwhere we’re allowed to indulge in something we shouldn’t be doing. Christmasallows us to buy a bunch of gifts we can’t afford for our family and friends,Thanksgiving allows us to eat a kajillion calories we don’t need, and St.Patrick’s Day makes it okay to summon the tiny Irishman in all of us and drinkourselves under the table-- sometimes alongside an actual tiny Irishman. Could you imagine if we had these holidaysyear round? I mean 365 days of Halloween would lead to every kid under 15having a million cavities and West Hollywood would probably be permanently buriedunder an avalanche of glitter and condoms. Okay, maybe just glitter.

Those are all indulgence holidays so one day a year is perfect. ButValentine’s Day is about making the ones we love happy and it shouldn’t just be a spot on the calendar where we all of the sudden pretend everything is fine in our relationships because the guys simply say “Well, I’ve been a work obsessed, uncaring jerk of a husbandfor the past year, but hey, I went to Jared!” and all the women can rationalize "I've been turning down sex for as long as I can remember but I'll throw on this lingerie, get it over with, and he'll fall asleep with a smile for once." These things should besurprises spread out all over the lifespan of a relationship, not reserved forone day a year where all of the prices for presents get jacked up and you can’tget a table at your favorite restaurant until 10 pm.

"I can't wait for tomorrow when I can go back to hating you!"

I’m not saying that all couples only celebrate their love on Valentine’s Day.Obviously there are those of you out there who still have passion andexcitement in your relationship and that’s an amazing thing. But the chances of thatpassion and excitement dwindling sometime in the future are great unless youwork hard to keep it going on a daily basis. It’s not always easy tocontinuously create those moments where at the end of the experience you say to each other, “Weshould do this more often…” But it’s always worth it when you try.

And speaking of trying, I have another issue with Valentine’s Day, and that’sthe simplicity of the gifts that have been deemed acceptable for this holiday. Now if I believed everythingcommercials told me I would think that the only gifts women ever want are flowers, chocolates, and jewelry, but I would also believe that Taco Bell actually has a “Drive Thru Diet.” So let's just say I'm skeptical.

If it seems to good to be true...
you should probably try it out at 3 am just to make sure.

While I’msure women truly do enjoy receiving the gifts that the TV tells us they do, I still think that if we’re going to onlygive these presents one day out of the year, we can at least think of some better options. A bouquet of roses that arriveson V-Day might as well have a card that says, “Society told me to givethese to you!” I mean is there a better way to say "I have no idea what you like!" than getting a woman a box full of 30 assorted chocolates? Sure it’s nice that your man made the effort to get you a gift,but it kind of reminds me of when my puppy goes poop near the back door. It’s nice that she tried to get outside to goand I’m happy to see that she made an effort, but in the end I’m still pickingup crap. I won’t truly be satisfied until she learns exactly what I want andfollows through on it. And Iget that diamond jewelry is always a welcomed option, but it should saysomething that a husband gets the same gift for his wife on Valentine’s Daythat he does when he’s looking for forgiveness after he cheats on her.

If this is your Valentine's Day gift,
either he really loves you or he did something really bad.

Maybe it’s asking too much from the powers that be that Valentine’s Daybe thought of as an official year round experience that can be celebrated spontaneouslyrather than just every February 14th. I mean think of all the shit African-American people have been through and all they get is Black History Month. One month! I can just picture some groupof old white guys who decided, “Well we basically kidnapped them and made themdo a lot of work for free, and things still aren’t great for them, so let’stake one month a year and use that to have HBO show documentaries on ThurgoodMarshall and ESPN can talk about Jackie Robinson. That should shut ‘em up!” Canyou imagine that same group deciding to dedicate the entire 12-month calendar to a sillylittle emotion like love? Neither can I. But I guess the good thing is we don’tneed their permission to celebrate it ourselves. So tonight, whether you are celebrating with flowers, chocolates, diamonds, and a dinner that ends at midnight, or with something more original, here's to hoping when all is said and done, you utter the words “Weshould do this more often…”

Man's Best (Girl)Friend

2011-02-08T23:48:00.000-08:00

I hesitate to write this blog only because I’m fully awareof the negative ways a comparison between owning a dog and having a girlfriend can comeoff. It could seem crass, insensitive, and just plain rude. And yet, I’m goingto write it anyways.

For those of you who haven’t been bombarded by the pictures on Facebook of my treasure/terror, more commonly known as Abbey, I recently adopted a puppy from the shelter. Notthe Chihuahua from my earlier post.Unfortunately I wasn’t able to help her. But at the same shelter, I found acute little mutt who has come to be known as “the Abbster” or “Abba-Labba Ding-Dong”or “Abbey Dhabi” (when she’s behaving well) or “Abigail” or “Little Shit” (whenshe’s misbehaving) or “Fergie” (when she’s peeing all over the floor).

Abbey is working on next year's Super Bowl
Halftime performance as we speak.

Before I saw the Chihuahua running across the street a fewweeks back-- an event that has had a domino effect on my life, leading me to where I am rightnow (sitting on my couch with Abbey nibbling the corner of my laptop)-- I had nointention of getting a dog. They’re always nagging you for attention, theynever listen to your demands, and they’re expensive as hell. And although theeasy joke would be to say, “And that’swhere the girlfriend comparisons begin!” I’m not taking this blog in thatdirection.

While I put Abbey through the best Puppy Boot Camp I can-- a regimen of Beggin’ Strips, butt spankings and stern fingerpointings-- she’s putting me through a type of Girlfriend Boot Camp, training me to be more prepared for my next relationship. And the results areimpressive! I’m learning to share my bed (I usually like to spread out when I sleep),I’m starting to go out less and have more calm nights at home in front of the TV (Abbeyis really into Family Guy), and mybaby talk voice has even come back (to the disturbance of my roommate who hearssome pretty strange one-sided conversations coming from my room).

Maybe he'll start going to the gym again
when you go back to shaving your legs.

Most of all, I’m learning to think about other people's needsand work them into my typically Todd-centric schedule, an issue I’ve struggled with inpast relationships. For example, Abbey has many hobbies such as eating, goingto the bathroom, chasing tennis balls, chewing shoes, and growling at herbeaver (I know that last one sounds weird, but I’m referring to her stuffedanimal). So because I have to come home and take care of all of Abbey’s pressing needs, I no longer can go to dinner with the guys or hit the gym after work. That’sright, I’m not seeing my friends as much and I’m getting fat. If those aren’tsymptoms of having a girlfriend, I don’t know what are.

The most glaring similarity between owning a dog and havinga girlfriend is the satisfaction one gets from all the hard work you put into the relationship. Sure it’s apain to take Abbey on walks at 3 am or to wrestle with her after a long day ofwork, but in the end, when she gives me kisses and undying love, it’s all worthit. And that’s what a human-to-human relationship should be, too. Whenever Isee my friends fight with their significant others or get yelled at for leavingthe toilet seat up or have to miss out on going to a game because of dinnerplans with the in-laws, I think to myself that it’s so much easier being single.But with most of them, I never see the intimate moments they share in privatethat make all of these difficult parts of their relationship worth it.

Abbey and her beaver.
What were you thinking?

And although in many ways it would be easier to stayon my own, I know that with anything in life, taking the easy route usuallydoesn’t bring as many benefits as taking the hard route. And I’ve been reminded of that from havingAbbey in my life. So despite my occasional desires to be a bachelor or free ofresponsibility or just plain lazy when I get home from work, I’ve learned thatI’m ready for a girlfriend. Even if I’ve realized that when I do get one--because I’m such a sucker with the way that I love and care for Abbey, not to mention all the baby talk-- I will definitely be the one wearing the leash. I just hope I get as many awesomenicknames as Abbadabbadoo does.

Dog Days

2011-01-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is January 20^th, and while most peoplemay recognize the date as the two-year anniversary of President Obama’sinauguration, I recognize it as the two-year anniversary of my break up with mylast girlfriend. Yes, that’s right, my ex and I honored Obama’s message of "hopeand change" by agreeing to play with other peoples’ genitals. Despite a fewtumultuous months following the break up where it wasn't uncommon for me to have a good cry here and there, I felt content with thedecision, believing it was the right one and that everything in my life was fine. Eventually the tears dried up and the earth kept spinning. Butafter the events of the past week, I’ve realized that everything was not fine, and hadn't been for a long time.

Driving home from work Friday night I saw a flash of whiteand tan bolt across a busy Burbank Blvd. Brake lights brightened and tiressqueaked as the crowded road came to a standstill. As I leaned forward, I was able to get a betterlook at the tiny traffic stopper: a collarless Chihuahua still runningaimlessly in the middle of the street. Despite my passion for Taco Bell, I’m notreally a fan of Chihuahuas. They’re typically not cute, they’re too tiny to holdand play with, and in the Paris Hilton influenced world we live in, they remindme of an accessory more than a pet. That said, with the frenzied dog whippingback and forth across the street, narrowly dodging cars along the way, Idecided I should do something to help.

I pulled my car over, got out, and went after the dog. As I tried to cross the busystreet I heard two tragic squeals, one from a tire and one from the dog. I mademy way to the other side of the boulevard and found the shivering Chihuahuacurled up underneath a parked car. I eventually got her to come out and realizedher back left leg was dangling limply. After waiting around for 15 minutes,petting the dog to keep her calm and hoping the owner would show up, I decidedto take her to the nearest animal shelter in Van Nuys.

...and free health care.

Every day since Friday I have been calling to check on the dog. No one hadclaimed her. No one had put signs up in the area where I found her. No one hadposted a “lost” add on craigslist. Yesterday the clinic finally got around todoing X-rays and discovered the dog’s leg was indeed broken. With thisknowledge I headed down to the shelter this morning with the intention ofadopting her. I had called around to a few different veterinarians and gotestimates on repairing a broken leg: if it only needed a splint the total costswould add up to about $500, but if the dog needed surgery, it could be in thethousands. At the clinic I was briefed by the on site vet who heartbreakingly informed me thatthe dog would most likely need the more serious, more expensive option ofsurgery.

As much as I wanted to help my new friend out, financially it just wasn’tfeasible. My mom had come to the clinic to meet me and we took copies of theX-Rays and medical reports, hoping to take them to another doctor for a 2^ndopinion. But with the knowledge that I most likely wouldn’t be able to adoptthe dog, and knowing she would be sitting in a small cage for weeks, if notmonths, with an undertreated broken leg (if they kept her alive at all), I justbegan to cry. It had been a while.

Adopted animals love you more.

This is not a happy story. Not just for the injuredChihuahua, but also for the hundreds of other dogs I saw at the shelter lookingfor a home. My mom and I looked at others and I am considering adopting adifferent dog that wouldn’t require as much initial cost and needs a homejust as bad as the Chihuahua that I found. But making eye contact with theother dogs and starting to fall in love with them too, I felt like a guy tryingto get laid at his wife’s funeral. The phrase “too soon” had never been moreappropriate. So I plan to wait on the 2^nd opinion before decidingwhat to do.

This is what happens if you don't
spay and neuter your pets.

This also doesn’t feel like a happy story for me. Though, hopefully,in the end, it is. In the two years since my break up, I have been selfish,self-serving, and unwilling and/or unable to allow myself to care for anyone or anythingelse. In hindsight I fear I was even like that during my relationship and that’s why it didn’t work out. Sometimeswhen you’re in a situation it’s hard to step back and see how things truly are,especially when dealing with emotions. But with this Chihuahua, this little tanand white blur that flashed across the street for an instant but feels like shewill stay in my mind forever, I have been able to step back and see the personI had become. And now, even though I can’t fix her, she may be able to fixme.

While our country is still working on that whole "hope andchange" thing, 2 years later, I’ve finally started to achieve it for myself.

You never know where hope will come from...

Days of my life...

2011-01-03T12:32:00.000-08:00

To celebrate New Years Eve I went toSan Diego with a group of friends. We went to a hotel party that was a lot offun. About an hour into the night I started chatting with a girl and then headed to the dance floor with her. She was cute, nice to talk to and fun todance with and I was having a great time. However, at some point the flashinglights of the club hit my new friend at the right angle I realized she had asmall crusty circle on the side of her lip. It looked like she tried to eat aglazed Krispy Kreme donut using only the corner of her of her mouth.

I wasn’t sure if she simply had chappedlips (it was cold outside and maybe she forgot her Chap-Stick) or somethingmore serious. So I did the only logical thing I could think of, which was to askmy friend Michael to take a picture of her and I, but rather than frame the twoof us in the shot, I wanted him to zoom in on her lips and snap a photo. Thephoto session went off as planned until she asked to see the picture (girlsalways do that!) and Michael had to tell her it “didn’t look good” (not a lie)and he zoomed out and took another one of the two of us. I told my picturepartner I had to go to the bathroom and went off with Michael to analyze theevidence. The results were undeniable: This girl had herpes.

When it comes to STDetective work,
"Holmes & Watson" have nothing on "Todd & Michael"

While I couldn’t see any other explanation for her dry lip, part of me worriedthat it would just be rude to not talk to the girl for the rest of the night withoutconfirming my suspicions. So, I went back onto the dance floor and found her:

“Hey so I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a question. I noticed you have abig dry spot on your lip. What is that?”

“What?” I couldn’t tell if she wasshocked I noticed it, shocked I asked her about it, or maybe the music wassimply too loud.

“What is that on your lip?!” I said, louder this time.

“Oh… It’s a cold sore,” she sheepishly admitted. AKA: Herpes.

Yikes.

I reported the news back to my co-investigator Michael and his girlfriendDarlene. And while Michael, who I have known over 20 years, wasn’t surprised thatI was so forward about asking the girl about her STD, Darlene was a littletaken aback. Apparently bluntly asking the girl about her disease was not howeveryone would have handled that situation. And it got me thinking…

Throughout my life I have beencriticized and complimented for my frankness and forwardness when it comes tomy inner thoughts and emotions. My tendency for brutal honesty has drawnreaction in everything from the realm of romantic relationships to friendshipsto even this very blog. While I always take full responsibility for my wordsand actions, I believe I can attribute/blame my affinity for honesty to one majorfactor from my childhood.

Mother-Son Bonding at its finest

From my childhood into my teen years Ihave great memories of soccer, baseball or hockey practice a couple nights eachweek, most often with my dad as my coach. This was the typical father-sonbonding time that most kids share with their dad. But I also remember a morepeculiar daily ritual I shared with my mom: every night, after my mom got homefrom work, we’d queue up the VHS tape she had programmed to record thatafternoon and we’d watch… Days of Our Lives.   

Soap operas are inherently the most dramatic type of television. Each scene isdripping with conflict, whether it be something as typical as a love triangleor a murder or something as disturbing as the devil taking over Marlena or thattime Hope was buried alive in a coffin equipped with a camera and an oxygentank but no place to go to the bathroom.

While Marlena was being taken over by the Succubus,
I was being taken over by the drama of Days...

For a young child to watch a show of this nature, it’s only a matter of timebefore he or she begins to believe it’s normal for people to constantly beconfronting each other, creating drama, and never backing down from an awkwardsituation. So while other kids were learning life lessons from Tale Spin and Duck Tales after school, I was becoming entrenched into the evil ofStefano DiMera or the “Salem Strangler.” While kids were wondering whether Zackand Kelly would get together on Saved bythe Bell I was wondering whether John Black would ever discover his trueidentity. Who can blame me for my personality when for an hour every day I wassubjected to some of the most petulant and precarious people around? Sure they werefictitious, but an 8-year old doesn’t know the difference. No wonder I work inreality TV!

Harmless or Herpes? Catch it this Fall on VH1!
Hosted by Mike Sorrentino. "Now that's a situation!"

So yeah, maybe I was wrong forconfronting the nice girl at the club. My aim wasn’t to embarrass her, but was onlyto figure out if her lips were harmless or herpes (that sounds like an awesomenew game show, btw). Maybe it was a little dramatic but that’s how I know tohandle those situations. Sure it may have been awkward and uncomfortable forthe two of us, but that’s life. Or more poetically: like sands through thehourglass, these are the days of our lives…

Where there's Smoke there's Fire

2011-01-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

Driving home from San Diego after a long weekend ofcelebrating the beginning of 2011, I found myself stuck in traffic and growingbored of the songs on the radio. In order to pass the time, I texted back andforth with a few friends and called one other. I know what you’re thinking, andyes, in California it is illegal totext or make calls while driving. But fortunately for me, cops don’t pull overwhite people in hybrids. At the same time, I do recognize the safety risk one takes when they text or dial a phone while operating a moving vehicle at 70 mph. And this got me thinking of another bad driving habit many peoplehave that I believe is equally dangerous, if not more so, than texting or callingwhile at the wheel: smoking while driving.

Think about it. In order to smoke, one must pull out their pack of cigarettesand then strike a match or spark a lighter. Once the cigarette is lit, thedriver holds it in one of his or her hands while steering with the other—justthe same way they would hold a cell phone while texting or calling. Sure thesetasks don’t seem too difficult, but neither does texting "LOL" to the stupidmessage your friend sent you which is probably what leads to half the accidents on the roads these days. I would argue lighting a cigarette is just as distracting as dialing a phone, not to mention you won't ever catch on fire dialing a phone. If you drop your Droid while drivingthe worst that can happen is maybe you accidentally hang up on the person youwere chatting with. If you drop a cigarette, the consequences can be muchworse...

About to rear end a car OR dropped a cigarette in his lap?

And "some people" might also point out that lots of Asian people smoke and lots of Asian people suck at driving. I personally would never say that because it's racist. But "some people" would.

Better than littering...
Until you drink it.

Another benefit to banning smoking while driving would be the reduction of littering on our freeways and streets. While a driver simply tosses their cellphone onto the seat next to them when they’re done with it, most smokers throwtheir used cigarettes out the window, compounding one disgusting habit with another.I only know one person (my dad) who doesn’t litter his cigarettes when he’s done.Instead, he deposits the burning butt into a half filled bottle of water. This seemed like a genius solution until one time my mom accidentally drank out of one. She was not happy. Somaybe it isn’t a great option after all. Maybe as an answer to the "Bluetooth" device for phones we can create some type of mechanism that lights your cigarette and places it in your mouth for you so you don't have to be distracted while driving. It can be called the "Yellowtooth."

And finally, while it can be argued that talking or texting on the phone toomuch can be mentally harmful, the facts about the physical toll cigarettes takeon a human being are irrefutable. Which makes this New Year as good a time asany to find new ways to help people cut back on smoking. According to USA.gov, one of the top New Year’s Resolutions for Americans is to quit smoking, and as anyone who has ever been addicted to something can attest, giving up that vice can be nearly impossible. To date, in order to help smokers quit, there’s the patch, the chewing gum, and laws againstsmoking in office buildings and restaurants, among other places. I think banning smoking while onthe road could be a step in the right direction to help eliminate one more part of the day where smoking would be a temptation.

We all have addictions.

And to make the deal even sweeter, if you promise to stop tossing your cancersticks out the window at my speeding car, I’ll promise to quit talking and texting while I'm driving. I think this could be an awesome wayto start off 2011 for all of us.

Happy New Year!

The Social Nitwit

2010-12-30T09:57:00.000-08:00

“One for The SocialNetwork at 9:30,” I meekly requested as I handed my money to the femalecashier at the box office. Before I lived in Spain a few years ago I never wentto movies by myself, but at the end of that trip as winter approached and Ibegan to run out of money I killed a few cold Barcelona afternoons inside ofthe local theatre watching a subtitled film alone. Ever since, being a spontaneoussingle guy, I often found myself wanting to see a movie on a random Wednesdaynight and not wanting to call friends to join me, assuming they have surely alreadyseen the movie, made other plans or are already settled on staying in for thenight. There’s nothing worse than calling up a bunch of friends to hang outonly to find they are all busy living their lives with no time to go to a moviewith you. So instead, I just don’t call at all.

There's a reason people who go to movies alone
are sometimes looked at strangely.

And now I’ve seen dozens of movies alone, but it’s anexperience I will never be completely comfortable with. Maybe it’s the fear ofrunning into people I know and appearing pathetic and friendless, maybe it’s theidea of being that creepy guy sitting in a dark theatre by myself, or maybeit’s the knowledge that there’s no way I can finish all of the popcorn thatcomes in my “small” $6 bucket. Not to mention, now that most theatres areassigned seating, I can’t even pick a seat strategically set away from myfellow moviegoers and disappear from reality and into the darkness, which isone of the best reasons for going to see a film.

As I glanced over the seating chart of the theatre theattendant asked me, “Are you going to be sitting with him but paying separate?”My confused expression caused her to nod behind me where a sad, strange lookingold man was in line all by himself. “Oh no, I don’t know him.” The only personmore embarrassed by the mistake than the attendant was me, now feeling evenmore humiliated about my lonely night out. I purchased my ticket and walked bythe old man, staring at him as I passed. Was I looking into my future? Wouldthis be me in 50 years? Still going to movies by myself? I considered askingthe elderly gentleman if he wanted to sit next to me but thought better of itsince he was old and he undoubtedly smelled like funky cologne and sour milk and would pester me withnon-stop questions throughout the movie assuming his hearing aid wasn’t turnedup loud enough.

I entered the theatre, following a couple in their 60s whohappened to end up seated next to me on my left. To my right was another couplecloser to my age. While one might assume I would get all sad and gooeysurrounded by so much love when all I had was a box of Milk Duds and no one toshare them with, I was actually happy about my seating arrangement. Because Ientered the theatre with the older couple and sat down next to them, theyounger couple probably assumed I was with my parents. And since I sat downnext to the younger pair, the couple I entered with probably thought I wasjoining my friends after my stop at the concession stand. It was a perfectsituation that allowed me to watch the movie without worrying that the peoplearound me thought I was pathetic. Yes, these are the things I think about.

If I don't get my social skills in order,
I might as well start dressing like this.

And that’s the real issue here. Why should I care whatpeople think of me for going to the movies alone? I am sure other people do it.That old guy was there alone. No one was judging him. In reality, the only person judging me for going alone is me. And when I think about it, I am not trulyconcerned with the fact that I go to movies by myself. What really disappointsme is my lack of effort to try and find people to go with. Whether it’s my fearof rejection or just plain laziness, I’m not putting in the effort I should beto spend time with my friends. At least the old guy had an excuse: all of hisfriends are probably dead. Maybe one day I will be a lonely old man, but thatday shouldn’t come when I’m 28.

So, who wants to go see a movie?

Screw You, Todd Fields!

2010-12-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

Screw you, Todd Fields!

No, this isn’t an angry outburst of self-deprecation. I’m referring to a differentTodd Fields. Yes, there are two of us. And it gets worse…

Yesterday, a friend of mine informed me that when he Googledme, hoping to find my blog, he only discovered multiple pages for a different Todd Fields. This impostor isa Christian Rock musician. Usually I wouldn’t mind being confused with a rockstar, but with song titles like “Breathe On Me,” “Jesus Reigns,” and “God IsDelicious (Featuring Lil’ John)”-- okay, maybe I made that last one up-- Iwould rather just keep my name for myself. I’m so embarrassed. It’s like beingnamed Hitler in the ‘40s, OJ in the ‘90s, Osama in the ‘00s or Snooki in the‘10s. To make matters worse, he’s white and blonde (frosted tips to be exact).What if people Google me looking for my blog or just wondering what an old juniorhigh school crush is doing with his life (hey, it could happen!), and theystumble across this other Todd’s website, the cleverly named www.toddfields.com, and think that it’s me? That would not be good for myreputation.

This is NOT Todd Fields!

For those of you who have ever started a blog or a website, you know howdifficult it is to recruit readers and patrons to your page. But then when youbasically take away the benefits of Google searches because someone has thesame name, it becomes all but impossible to advertise to anybody who isn’t onyour Facebook page. And seriously, aren’t there enough people out there pumpingthe Bible? There’s not a copy of my blogin every hotel room in America. Every Sunday, televangelists don’t speak to millionsof people about the benefits of wanting to go snow boarding or date crazychicks. How am I supposed to advertise my blog-- or “spread the word of Todd,”if you will-- when he’s stealing my best chance at publicity?

People don't flock to hear someone read from my blog...
But they should.

This is actually karma, or as Todd would call it, “God’s plan.” A few yearsback, when more people than Tom, Tila Tequila, and 20 million sexual predatorswere on Myspace, Todd actually sent me a message asking to use my URL, whichwas www.myspace.com/toddfields. He wanted me to cancel my account and let himtake it so he could “promote my music and spread God’s teachings.” Wrongapproach, buddy. Since he was looking to advertise his business, I told him hecould purchase the URL from me, but I never heard from him again. Apparentlydisciples of organized religion only like it when they ask you for money.

Is this a registry of sex offenders or is it
someone's Myspace friends list page?

And now, years later, the tables have been turned and it isTodd “Frosted Tips” Fields that has the upper hand. He is the one standing inthe way of my words and the ears and eyes of my audience. It’s a tough realityfor me to face, but there’s really nothing I can do about it. So I finally gavein and gave some of Todd’s music a chance. I listened to one of his tracks and,based on the title, expected it to be about him and I. Turns out it’s about hisrelationship with another egomaniac, but still I found it’s name perfect forour situation. The song is called “Nothing Can Separate Us,” and as long as weshare the same name, nothing Todd has sung has ever been closer to the truth.

Honest to John

2010-12-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was little, I have been plagued by insecurity.I know what you’re saying, “Todd, you don’t seem insecure,” to which I wouldreply, “Are you calling me fat?!?” I can remember being in elementary schooland just sitting by myself because I wasn’t as good at making friends as theother kids and I didn’t feel wanted by those around me. In high school, I spenta large portion of my senior year sitting in solitude writing my screenplays orbooks or short stories. Even in college when I went through difficult timesadjusting to my first relationship, I felt alone in sorting out my issues. Butthe fact of the matter is, for my entire life, every time I felt unwanted bythe world and unnoticed by those around me, I had the music of The Beatles, inparticular the songs of John Lennon, to keep me company and soothe whateverpains were aching.

My childhood friends...

Today is the 30^th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder. And while youcan find a million articles and videos on the internet dedicated to lauding hisgifts to the world with anthems about peace and love like Imagine, Give Peace a Chance,or All You Need is Love, I’d like totalk about his affect on me as a person. Despite my love and admiration forthese anthems to and for the people and the world, I always felt more connectedto John’s more personal songs because of his willingness to reveal his trueself, a quality that I can not only relate to, but try and emulate in all of mywriting.

After he met Bob Dylan, John was inspired to write from a more personal place,no matter how raw and revealing the outcome was. From this inspiration camesongs like Nowhere Man and Help! and in his later career songs likeWoman and Jealous Guy. In these songs, John beautifully and bravely exposedhis weaknesses and his wants to the world:

“Doesn’t have a point of view, Knows not where he’s going to,

Isn’t he a bit like you and me?”

Sometimes we all need someone to lean on.

“But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.”

“Woman I know you understand,
The little child inside the man.”

“I was feeling insecure,
You might not love me anymore.”

It was this type of writing that drew me to John as myfavorite Beatle and kept me comforted in all of my moments of solitude. Whilemany songs can complement happiness with a bouncy tune or fun lyrics, songs ofloneliness, angst, and insecurity can make someone enduring those emotions feelnot so alone and help them survive to a better state of mind. For all of us whohave gone through tough times, knowing that others have felt the sameway—especially when those “others” include the great John Lennon—goes a longway to changing someone’s mindset from sorrowful to strong.

Strawberry Field
Liverpool, England

One of my favorite Lennon lyrics is from his song Strawberry Fields Forever where he sings, "No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low." John's explanation of the lyric is that he knew he didn't relate with anyone, but he wasn't sure if this was because he was a genius or just crazy. And how do any of us know if we don't put ourselves out there?

I’ve had people tell me they can’t believe the things I say or admit to on thisblog or in person. The fact of the matter is that I don’t have a choice. Thereason I felt so alone so often in my life was and is because I don’tcommunicate well on the surface level with other people. Many humans connect overthings like occupation, race, religion, or even something like sharing a favoritesports team or hometown. Small talk such as “How is work?” and “Did you have anice weekend?” is lost on me. Because I don’t define myself by any of thesethings, I like to dig deeper to find out what people are really about, and inreturn, I like to show them the true me.

The Cavern Club
Liverpool, England

This openness takes a lot of courage because people canoften misinterpret or simply dislike blunt honesty, whether it’s because theydon’t like the idea of someone being so free with their thoughts or becausethey simply don’t like the thoughts themselves. But being that, in my mind,there is no afterlife, the only way to survive and be remembered in thisuniverse is with what and who you change or affect here on earth. If I don’t expresswhat’s inside me, no one will ever know what it is. Sure, they may not care,but I have found if you truly are honest about who you are, you will find a lotof people who say, “Me too!” who may not have had the courage to admit itotherwise. I know because I would never have been able to accept myself ifit weren’t for John Lennon.

The Snowball Effect

2010-12-07T12:27:00.000-08:00

Ugh it’s that time of year again. The weather is gettingcolder, the snow is falling, and all of the hot girls are going snowboarding.When did this happen? And why wasn’t I warned when I was younger that the bestway to impress a girl was knowing how to carve it up on the slopes? (Is thateven a saying? “Carve it up.” See, this is the shit I need to know!) Here I am just trying to keep a job, stay in shape and not get an STD, but I have no ideahow to skid down a snowy hill on a wheel-less skateboard, so I am stuck, feeling really left out.

"I'm getting laid tonight, bra."

I have only been to the snow once. I don’t mix well with nature. One time incollege I went “camping” and I ended up sleeping in the car eating Arby’s.(Note to future campers: When there’s no bathroom around, do not eat Arby’s.) My trip to the snow was so long ago thatsnowboarding wasn’t even invented yet. All we did was ski, which nowadays isconsidered lame. It’s the “missionary position” of snow sports—everyone does it when they're first starting out and when they do it now odds are they’re not impressing anybody.

And don’t get me started on hiking. I’ve been on record assaying, “The only people who like hiking are girls (and guys who want to sleepwith girls who like hiking).” Why would a guy want to walk through a dirt trailup a hill in the heat? How is that fun? It can’t be for the workout because if that were the case the guy wouldjust rather play sports or go to the gym. I can only assume they just want to updatetheir Foursquare to say “Runyon Canyon” so girls will quiver, “OMG, according to USWeekly Justin Timberlake was there last Thursday!”"

She left him for a guy who snowboards.

The same reason I don't snowboard now is the same reason I never got into video games. I never had a system other than NintendoNES, so while everyone else was conquering Sega or Nintendo 64, I was stillrunning through the sewers trying to save that ungrateful princess. Sure Icould have gotten one of the better systems to try and improve, but at somepoint it was just too late. I would never be as good as my friends who had beenplaying them for years. Same logic applies to snowboarding. I don’t want tocome back to the cabin and listen to everyone else reminisce about theirawesome day on the mountain while I can only brag, “I made it down the hillwithout falling. Once.”

Thankfully, I am finally realizing this is a completely demented way tolook at life and I should step out of my comfort zone and just go for it. Atthe very best I pick up the skill quickly and have an amazing time and at thevery worst I die. That's a risk I'm prepared to take. Thisseason is finally going to be the year I try snowboarding. It’s time to breakout of the bubble. It’s time to lose the safety net. I don’t want to be thatguy eating Arby’s in the car. I don’t want to be that guy playing Mario Bros. while everyone else issniping each other on GoldenEye. It’sa new and improved Todd. Willing to take chances and try new things. Just don’texpect to see me at Runyon Canyon with JT.

Yeah, he looks like
he's having a blast!

Curb Your Enthusiasm

2010-12-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

Pete Peeve #3,957

I was just talking with friends about this the other day... Why is it that we can get parking tickets for so many small offenses (forgetting our car in street cleaning, spending too much time at the store and our meter runs out, taking a handicap spot at Ralphs because you're buying a lot of groceries and what are the odds that 8 handicapped people show up to the market at the exact same time?) but you can't get a ticket for pulling the biggest a-hole parking move of all time: taking up two spots alongside a curb.

I saw the above offensive parking performance outside of my work this morning. The car in front left a good 4-5 feet of unused curb in front of his car, forcing the car behind him to squeeze in to where he would normally fit with ease.

This street is notorious for being short on parking. I frequently have to park an 8-10 minute walk away from my office because there are no closer options. So the fact that this guy took up two spots on a Monday morning is that much more inexcusable.

And of course, the car that had to squeeze in ended up with a small portion if it's back bumper in a red zone.

Now granted the driver in the black Rav4 should be blamed for not only purchasing a Rav4, but also for having the stupidity to park in the red. When you're living in a bankrupt state like California, the odds are that you will get ticketed...

And sure enough he did. He parked in red. He should have gotten a ticket. I'm not arguing with that. But what is the bigger offense? Blocking a red curb where only a miniature police car can fit anyways or being a douche bag and taking up two spots on a street where parking is limited? I think the answer is obvious.

I'm so tempted to leave a link to my blog on this dbag's car. Written with my key.

Pet Peeve #3,958

Guys who go pee in the urinal right next to you when there are other urinals open. Don't do that people!

Chew On This

2010-11-15T11:54:00.000-08:00

Some people inlife are more adventurous and risk taking than others. They go skydiving, theyclimb Mt. Everest, or they don’t use a condom with a prostitute. I am not oneof these people.

But while I could possibly be coaxed into trying some of these things, there’sone area of my life that people are always trying to change about me and itreally needs to stop: I’m not an adventurous eater and I don’t like when otherstry and force me to eat new foods…

“You want to try my lamb?” my date asked, referring to the slab of bloody meat onher plate at the Indian Restaurant she made me go to.

“No thanks. It’s too chewy. I don’t know how people eat it.” Actually, I don’tknow how people eat anything that used to be cute. I stick to ugly animals likecows, chickens, pigs, and whatever hot dogs are made out of.

What kind of a person looks at this and thinks:
"Mmm delicious!"

"They have to eat something. Theyhave a food shortage and there’s like 200 millionpeople starving in India," she lectured, channeling her inner-Wikipedia andstaring at me with a face that was 50% shock and 50% disgust.

"Of coursethere are. I wouldn't be eating if I lived there either. The real shock is thatthey don’t have a toilet paper shortage." Now her face was 100% disgust.

I'd had this sameconversation countless times before: I'm on a date, at a party, or just talkingwith friends and I reveal the apparently horrific fact that I’m a picky eater.Their extreme anger implies they actually inventedtomatoes, pumpkin, salmon, apple pie, mushrooms, raisins, mint ice cream or any of the other popular foods that I don't eat. I've tried them allbefore, and I don't like them.

When it came to eating curry, Ghandi took the easy way out.

I get the most criticism for my particular eating habits when it comes to seafood. This is mostly due to the fact that I haven't given the majority of it a try. While I'venever eaten lobster, crab, mussels, clams or scallops, I don't need to in order totell you that I don't like them. Evolution gave me multiple senses but there’sno reason to use all five of them tomake a healthy decision. Maybe some seafood dishes look good, but I’ve been taught not tojudge a book by its cover. And the same applies to food. Even though some of itmay appear appetizing, I can smell seafood and I can touch seafood, and neithergives me a pleasant sensation. So why would I have to taste it to make my final decision?

If I walk past adog turd on my front lawn I can tell from just smell and touch that it's thereal deal and not one of those plastic prank toys from Aahs! It would be silly to think I have to eat some of it to knowfor sure. Same logic applies for your seafood Paella. So please, stop trying to make meeat it.

Real Love

2010-11-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

We must welcome thefuture, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect thepast, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.

-George Santayana,
philosopher, poet

In 2003 when the Red Sox blew the ALCS in the bottom of the11^th inning to the rival Yankees, I was comatose. My girlfriend atthe time couldn’t understand. “It’s just a game,” she pointed out. “There’salways next year,” she comforted. She was right. It was “just a game” and therewas “always next year,” but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the sportsfranchise that I loved more than any other had suffered a crushing defeat andno matter what anybody said to me, I was going to need some time to recover.

Heartbreak

We broke up shortly after that, and while I famously entered a “Blue period”only rivaled by Picasso himself, she moved on to a new guy. And then anothernew guy. And then another. Now, years later, time has healed the wounds of thatrelationship, just as it has healed the wounds of that brutal loss to theYankees that fateful night in October. But looking back, I can’t help but finda connection between her reaction to the Game 7 loss and her reaction to ourbreak up.

My ex-girlfriend, like many girls that I have dated, seemed to always need aboyfriend. And with each boyfriend they are with, they claim to “love” them. I love the Red Sox. I live and die withtheir games. When they won in 2004 and again in 2007 I was over the moon. Justas their losses made me miserable, their victories made me ecstatic. And thatis how love should be. Love is an emotion, the only emotion in fact, thatshould be allowed to run free without containment, restrictions, orrationality. When you’re in love it’s perfectly okay to go dance through thestreets, scream in joy at the top of your lungs, or just giggle to yourselfwhile sitting alone at your desk. And just the same, when you’re heartbrokenafter that love goes away, it’s okay to mope through the streets, scream inpain at the top of your lungs, or just cry to yourself while sitting alone at your desk.Feeling emotions that run the entire gamut means you are truly allowingyourself to love.

"Love" should make you do crazy things.
If it doesn't, it's just "like."

So why, when a relationship ends, do so many girls skip the misery and move onto a new guy whom they claim to love just as much? People are always asking mewhy I am single. The simple answer is I don’t want to settle. If I am going to be with someone it will because I truly love them. When I meetpeople who jump around from relationship to relationship I wonder how they cando it. Most people are so annoying. And the more you get to know them, themore comfortable they become around you, and the more annoying they get. How isit possible that some girls find so many guys they can stand? Is it lowstandards? Or are they just so desperate to say they have someone to “love”that they cling to any decent looking, money-making, non-abusive guy they canfind?

Girls who jump from guy to guy are equivalent to bandwagon sports fans.They are those assholes that break out their Lakers flags when the team iswinning and toss them into the corner of the garage when they’re losing. Butwhen you’re next to one of these fake fans at a bar and your team wins thegame, your exuberance for the victory cannot be matched by that of the frontrunning fan, because if your team lost, while you sat with your head in yourhands, sulking in defeat, the other guy would just be wondering what game wascoming up next. You are allowing yourself to love, and in doing so, you are making yourself vulnerable. To pleasure and to pain.

Now here's a man who knows what love is

I get that nobody wants to bemiserable. And trust me, when I was depressed about my break up, I know I wasnot fun to be around. But while this time in my life was hard, it wasn’tpointless. Had I simply jumped to a new relationship, the time that would havebeen truly wasted would have been the time I spent with my ex. Mostrelationships end in a break up. Even half of the ones that lead to marriageend in a break up. So either all of these doomed relationships are a completewaste of time, or they are an experience that each person should enjoy and thenlearn and grow from. I’ll go with the latter. While my ex and I clearly werenot meant to be together, I’d rather go through the suffering of a break up andeventually be able to look back on some of the nice parts of the relationshiprather than simply move on to a new person and completely block out and forgetsomething that I had dedicated so much of my time, my mind, and my heart to.

With love, it should be all or nothing.
No matter how stupid it makes you look.

That Red Sox loss in 2003 killed me. But when they overcameall odds to beat the Yankees in 2004 and go on to win the World Series, thepain and suffering from the year before made the taste of victory that muchsweeter.

Parental (Mis)Guidance

2010-10-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

The saying, especially in America, is that every generation wants the next generation to have more opportunityand more success than the previous. It’s a nice sentiment that parents canstick to when they are deciding to put money into a college fund rather thantake a vacation or when a family sneaks across a dangerous border in order toensure their son or daughter has the ability to find a job, even if it’spicking fruits and vegetables in the murderous sun or mowing some rich guy’slawn in Beverly Hills.

Unfortunately, not all parents subscribe to this philosophy. They may think they do, but they don’t. All toooften narrow-minded parents believe that the better life their kid deserves isthe same life they themselves had as a child. Granted, a lot of what existed inthe past would be welcome in today’s world: kids being able to play safely ontheir front lawns, humans talking in person rather than texting or Facebooking,and people actually giving a shit about baseball. Those positives aside, toomany parents are trying to force their outdated childhood on the lifeexperiences of their progressive children.

Recently, I have been sickened with two stories from close friends regardingthe lack of love and support they received from their parents about the choicesthey made in their lives. One friend was struggling to find work and decided toget into the film industry; a choice frowned upon by her lawyer parents becausemoney isn’t a guarantee in the arts, especially when you are just starting out.She’s currently working on sets 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and her parentsdon’t even know. While she’s disappointed she can’t clue them in on hersuccesses, she’s ridiculously excited with the progress she’s making in hercareer working in film. She may not be cashing million dollar paychecks forwriting contracts or getting murderers out of prison, but she is happy.

Do something good with your life...
Become a lawyer.

Another friend recently got engaged, to his parents chagrin. In a time wherethey should be feeling joy for their son, they felt anger and betrayal. Notbecause his fiancé is a terrible person and not because she won’t make theirson happy, but because she’s not of the same religion. It’s hard enough in thisworld to find someone that you like,not to mention love, and they want totake that away from him because she believes in a different Santa Claus thanthey do. Insanity.

The common thread between these two families is religion. Religious people arethe worst at thinking they know whatis best for everyone else while telling them to follow a path that has noappeal to anyone but themselves and their like-minded followers. This epidemicof stunted thought processes can be seen in today’s political world. Candidatesare attempting to appeal to their religious bases by decrying such concepts asgay marriage, legalizing marijuana, or allowing illegal immigrants to becomelegal citizens. These people have grown up being told, “Gays are icky sinners!”and “Don’t smoke weed!” and “White is right! (Unless they are cleaning our house!)”Living such a restricted life leads to jealousy of those who are able to guiltlessly indulge inwhatever it is they choose. And just like a teenage girl who throws fruit punchon her rival’s better fitting prom dress, when adults are jealous, rather thansimply look away and live their life the way they choose to, they need to do everything in their power to impedethe other person’s happiness.

Why else would someone be opposed to others smoking weed or being gay orbecoming a citizen? I don’t smoke weed. But I drink once or twice a week. Andalcohol is much worse than weed. Ihave a lot of friends, good responsible people, who have gotten DUI’s. Alcoholoften brings out the worst in people and often leads to injury, death, oralcoholism, which can ruin lives, careers, and families. Meanwhile, weed makespeople stay home, eat Cheetos, listen to The Beatles, and watch Half Baked. Who gives a shit? Andlegalizing it will help the economy. Gay marriage? People don’t want it becauseeither 1) They’re not gay and they don’t like other people indulging in experiencesthat they themselves do not take part in (like weed), 2) they are gaythemselves and hate themselves for it because of everything they have beentaught since childhood, and therefore don’t want others to be able to partake(like weed), or 3) the Bible says so. Newsflash, the Bible says a lot of stupidshit that most civilized people realize is ridiculous so when they are pickingand choosing what they want to follow from the book, they avoid those sections.Why can’t we do this on the Bible’s view of homosexuality? All Bibles should berolled up and burned (like weed).

What leads to worse decisions, alcohol or weed?

The same people who have a hatred for a drug they have nevertried, probably because they are so lame no one ever offered it to them, arethe people who don’t want gays in the military or teaching in our schools oradopting babies that no one else can take care of, as if their homosexuality isgoing to rub off on all of those around them. Or maybe the gays can’t betrusted around children because they’re all a bunch of child molesters, right?You know who are a bunch of child molesters? Priests.

"God says homosexuality is a sin!
He also says I need a blow job! Who's up first?"

And illegal immigration? I agree we need to clamp down onthe borders, but for the people here who are currently working a bunch of jobs that“whitey” won’t do anyways, let them be citizens. The only reason Americansdon’t want a bunch of Mexicans here is because they don’t want “our” country toturn into a country of brown people. Well, on the coasts, it’s too late. Go toCalifornia and Florida where there are huge Hispanic communities. Guess what?They work hard, their women are hot, and their food is delicious. It’s morethan I can say about the “real Americans” in the Bible Belt who are all lazyfat fucks who eat nothing but the animal they just shot and grilled cheesesandwiches.

"Dem' Mexicans are changing the face (and the gut) of this country!"

As much as we look at adults as people of maturity andexperience, deep down a lot of them are angry little kids. As far as religiongoes, practicing adults fall into two categories: 1) those who place their socialacceptance and comfort above their individualism and the ability to represent one’sown unique thoughts or 2) those who truly believe in their religion, be itbecause of fear of death, an inability to rationally look at the ideas thathave been planted into their heads since they were a child, or (mostfrightening of all) they actually believe that “God” exists and allows all ofthe horrible things in this world to happen, all the while helping Musicianswin Grammys, athletes win championships, and Christine O’Donnell win elections.Either way, too many religious adults are looking to push the invalid idealsand concepts that were forced upon them onto their children. And in theinstances where their children decide independently that their path tohappiness lies elsewhere, their parents are abandoning them.

I think these parents, although misguided, truly believethey are doing what is best for their kids. They have spent their entire liveshaving no control over their own life except for what God they pray to and whatthey can tell their kids to do. When they start to lose power, they cling, justas religious people cling even harder to their ideals when confronted withinconvenient things like truth, facts, and science. In order to regain control,parents simply want their kids to take a safe route. Get the job that offersthe most money. Marry the woman with the same faith. Hate all people whothreaten your flawed way of life. Because concepts like “love” and “happiness”are not represented by numbers in a bank account, many people have troubleunderstanding why others choose a path that leads to them, as opposed to asuccess that actually can be quantified, like money or religious conviction.While I believe that the parents of my two friends think in their minds thatthey want what is best for their kid, their definition of “best” is completelydifferent than their son or daughter’s.

I’m lucky, I have the greatest parents in the world. They always supported mein whatever I wanted to do and they never forced me into anything. Was there anegative side to this? Of course. I’m not in a career that guarantees monetarysuccess, but I love what I do. And yeah I felt like the only 13 year old in mygroup of friends who didn’t have a Bar Mitzvah, but I’m also free to date andmarry whomever I want. Plus I’ve never had to spend a weekend in Church orTemple. And while I, like my parents, made choices in my life that made me whoI am today, and it turns out I’m not gay, I’m not a pot head, and I’m not an illegal alien, thatdoesn’t mean I can’t respect the wishes of those who are.

The Fields Family
Sure we look happy now, but we're all going to Hell

Homeless Halloween!

2010-10-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

This Halloween I think I’m going to dress up as a homelessguy. Now, I know that seems a little tasteless, even for me. But hear me out…

With the most important holiday of the year upon us, I’m realizing I may have made a very big mistake 2 years ago when I moved out of my last apartment. Back in college, I worked for my university’s local TV show Nightcap. The show featured lots of stupid “characters” ala Conan’s Masturbating Bear, and when forced to come up with a new one, a writer on the show donated her full body reindeer costume to the show. I was lucky enough to don the suit for a couple episodes before the character was retired, never to be heard from again. Until the next Halloween, that is.

For the next 5 years, I wore the reindeer costume to every Halloween party Iwent to. We went through a lot together: spilledJager shots, stumbling through bushes on a walk home, or passing out in themiddle of the dance floor, my head comfortably resting inside the large,overstuffed head, and my body remaining warm inside the soft, furry suit. Thereindeer took care of me. Unfortunately, with all of my Halloween drunkenmisadventures, I didn’t take care of him.

Glory Days

After over half a decade of having the best costume at every party I was at,the reindeer suit was a mess. Stained with alcohol, smeared with dirt, andsoaked with sweat, the suit had to go. I was moving out of my apartment,looking for any excuse to toss useless items in the trash rather than pack themaway into the crowded Uhaul. And the reindeer was an unlucky casualty. However,a few days later-- trash day to be exact-- I woke up at my new apartment in apanic. How could I have thrown this suitaway? What an idiot! So I rushed over to my old place and looked in thetrash bin, but the suit was nowhere to be found. I was too late.

Pathetic on so many levels...

Now, after suffering the embarrassment of being a soccer player last year(could I have been more lame?), I’m on a mission to find a hilarious, original,and comfortable to sleep in costume for this Halloween. But costumes for guysare horrible. With no reindeer suit, a holiday that used to be my favorite by along shot (followed by my birthday and any holiday that gets me out of work) isnow more of a stressful pain in the ass than anything else.

We all know that Halloween for females is just an awesomeexcuse to unleash their inner skank. And that’s the way it should be. But guyshave an additional option. We can try and be equally sexy or we can go the funny route. Now I meet plenty of girls who say they find a sense of humor “sexy.”Everybody knows that’s bullshit. Nobody wants to go home with the guy in thehilarious Brett Favre costume (complete with shoulder pads and a cell phonewith pictures of a penis on it). They want to go home with the guy dressed uplike “The Situation,” aka a tan, buff guy with no shirt on. Girls who say theylike “funny” guys are just using that as an excuse to date rich guys. That waywhen their friends ask, “Why are you dating Chaz?He’s 45 and ugly,” they can respond, “Because he’s funny,” when actually Chaz is just ridiculously rich (probably becausehe made a fortune by knowingly offering faulty loans to people who didn’t speakEnglish and now those people are being evicted while he’s driving around in aMercedes with a license plate that reads “GRACIAS”).

Can I buy you a drink?

I don’t have the body nor the mind to go for the sexyoutfit. But when you Google “funny Halloween costumes” the results aredisappointing. No, I don’t want to be Super Mario. No, I don’t want to be JackSparrow. No, I don’t want to be the Magic Mountain Dancing guy. Okay, maybe alittle. But even he is more creepy than funny.

You can always get clever and put together your own outfit from scratch, likeAntoine Dodson (of “Bed Intruder” fame), Justin Bieber, or even Dora theExplorer. But I don’t have time to do that and even if I did, I’m sure therewould be 10 other people at the party with the same outfit. Nothing will everbe as unique and awesome as my reindeer costume.

And that is why I am dressing up like a homeless guy this Halloween. Here’s thething. I know that I beat the trashman to the bin that morning 2 years ago. Someone must have taken the suit outbefore I got there. And logically, it was probably a homeless guy just hopingit would keep him warm for the winter, only to realize he had discovered thebest Halloween costume of all time. And if he thinks it’s cool to steal myoutfit, well I see no problem with me stealing his. And maybe, just maybe, if fate is on my side once againand I happen to run into him, he’ll want to switch back. Either way, I’mnot going to be a fucking soccer player again.

R.I.P.

Dress CODE RED

2010-10-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

Many will have you believe that Global Warming is thebiggest threat to our next generation. I beg to differ. If one takes a closelook at today’s youth, it’s clear that the real problem is their fashion. Mainly with the females. Short skirts. Low tops. Tons of make up. And don’t get mestarted on the “fuck me” boots. All completely acceptable, if not encouraged, once you reach a certain age, but in high school? Not so much.

I was driving back to work after lunch and passed a highschool that was just getting out. Some kids were hopping into their father’scar. Some kids were going to go buy candy from the sex offender in the icecream truck. And one group of girls walked across the street towards anundetermined location. But if I had to guess from their clothes, they wereworking the afternoon shift at a strip club.

With high schoolers dressing like this, pedophiles
are going to start pulling a "Billy Madison"

Since when do 14-year old girls dress like this? And who are their parents thatthey allow it? Don’t get me wrong, if I was in high school I would love everyglimpse of cleavage, butt cheek and areola I could get. But now it just makesme feel weird. It’s very deceiving. There I was slowly passing the group ofgirls, rolling down my window, preparing to shout out “What’s up ladies?!”followed by my signature two fingered whistle. And yet instead of releasing myinner Mexican construction worker, I noticed the scantily clad pedestrians werewalking down the street-- rather than driving-- because they were too young tohave a license. I immediately rolled up my window, took off my fake mustache,and sped off, hoping Chris Hanson wasn’t going to jump out of the bushes andstop my car.

Admittedly, I didn’t get laid much in high school. In fact, I didn’t get laidat all. I thought a vagina was a couple inches below the belly button and lookedlike a mix between an un-mowed golf hole and a toothless mouth. Little did Iknow, it’s much weirder looking than that. I remember, there was one girl whodressed shall we say, “ahead of her time” and she was a distraction. Not asmuch to me as to the teachers. We had history class together and the teacher,Mr. Daly, would always teach his lesson sitting next to the overhead projector.Why he couldn’t stand, I’ll leave up to you to figure out.

My high school girlfriend. Wasn't she a hottie?

Now, the last guy I want to be is the “Back in my day things used to be so muchsimpler” guy, but I like the fact that I can look back at my high school daysand know that the only thing I was putting my fingers inside of was a bowlingball. Kids have enough to worry about as it is. Do the boys really need thepressure of mastering their “I wasn’t looking at your cleavage” eye shifts? I can barely pull that off now. And do the girls really need the pressure ofdressing like their P.E. class is titled “Pole Dancing?” I mean at this point,as soon as a female student walks into her meeting with a Career Counselor, thecounselor just declares, “Prostitute!,” stamps the seal of approval on her lowerback, and calls in the next student.

By no means am I a prude. And while many may read this and think I am justbeing mean or critical of innocent girls, that couldn’t be further from thetruth. If anything, I am trying to protect them. The few girls I knew in high schoolwho dressed like that dated “college” guys. It was fucking creepy. Especially because by “college”they meant community college and they were actually 32. When I was in college Ihad my experiences. But all the girls were my peers. And it’s college. It’swhat you were supposed to be doing. If my son does what I did in college, I’llgive him a high five. If my daughter does it when she's in high school, I’ll lock her in her room untilshe hits menopause.

Call it a double standard, but guys aren’t the one’s who get pregnant. Guysaren’t the one’s who already face a tough time moving up and getting respect inthe professional world. Guys aren’t the one’s who have the pressure to looklike the hottest celebrities. Girls look at magazines and music videos andthink they have to look like pre-psycho Lindsay Lohan or pre-donuts BritneySpears. The most popular male celebrity is Justin Bieber, and even HE is prettier than most girls. It’s just not fair to the females.

Would you want the pressure
of living up to THIS?

One of these days they’ll realize that less is more. Not less clothes, lessskin. If a guy is going to see your genitals it should take more than a strongbreeze and if he’s going to see your boobs he should know how to snap off a bra,not just tear down a tube top. If you start dressing like that in high school,how will you step up your game in college, where it’s completely necessary andappropriate to get a little slutty? High Schoolers, you don’t need to be aloser like I was, but you should have some self-respect. So buy some jeans, anice blouse, and some regular heels. High school boys walk around with unstoppable bonersas it is, you don’t need to be sexy to get their attention. You just have to have a golf hole right below your belly button. Thank you.

Okay, now I just have to solve Global Warming...

Wedding Bells

2010-10-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

There’s a scene in the 1995 Beatles Anthology where Paul McCartney is describing what led tothe break up of the Beatles:

“I remember thinking of it like armybuddies. One of the songs we used to love in the past was Wedding Bells. ‘Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.’ And this idea that you’dbeen army buddies but one day you have to kiss the army goodbye and get marriedand act like normal people. It was a bit like that for the Beatles. We alwaysknew that day had to come.”

Eventually we all find someone, whether our friends like it or not.

Well now I know how they felt. About a year ago one of my best friendssince junior high school got married. I was really happy for him. I spoke atthe wedding. It was an awesome time and he’s really happy, living in New York.Then, in the past few months, three of my close friends have gotten engaged,and one more has moved to San Diego for his girlfriend, or as he puts it, “fora job.” Whatever, Michael. To make matters worse, recently I have worked on tworeality shows about weddings and brides. And, of the two girlfriends I’ve hadin my life, one was recently married and one just got engaged. I feel like DaneCook in the Good Luck Chuck, exceptwithout the skinny jeans and pockmarks.

We're gonna need a bigger beard.

While I am nothing but ecstatic for all of my friends, my exes and their respectivewives and fiancées, I can’t help but wonder about my own situation. Should I befollowing suit? Many people blame Yoko for the break up of the Beatles, but itseems like it’s just normal that when people reach their late 20’s they decidethey want to settle down. It happened to all of them, and now it’s happening toall of my friends. What’s wrong with me that I don’t have the same itch?

Since I am an expert on myself, my professional opinion isthat I am still too selfish to be in a relationship. But not in a, “Cook medinner before I am home from work, woman!” type of way or a, “No we can’t watchGrey’s Anatomy because Sportscenter is on!” type of way. More in a, “I don’twant to change who I am just yet” type of way. I realize that I am an imperfectperson who is still growing, but I want to make progress at my own pace, ratherthan someone else’s. Too many people get married when they are still growing,only to find ten years in that they have nothing in common with the person theyare with, or even the person they are,while the person they wanted to be is all but dead. When I propose I want to beasking, “Will you marry me?” not “Will you bury me?”

For example, in writing my blog, I have gotten all kinds of feedback. Mostof it has been positive, but I have had people criticize me with everythingfrom “Your blog is too serious” or “Your blog is too offensive.” While thisfeedback may have merit in some cases, the wide range of reaction my writinggarners tells me one thing: I can’t please everyone. Which is fine, because I canhandle the criticism. But if I had a girlfriend or wife, two bad things wouldhappen. 1) She would have to put up with or defend everything that I put outinto the world, and no one should be held accountable for my words other thanme. Sure you want to read my blog from a distance, but you don’t want to haveto answer to your mom when she calls you to say, “Your boyfriend wrote aboutpeeing in pools and kissing strangers at bars. And I think he’s an atheist!”And 2) I would feel obligated to take my girlfriend or wife’s feedback intoconsideration, which could muddle my message, if not silence my thoughtscompletely. That would create resentment and friction in our relationship because most of my writing is a revealing and honest look into my mind, whether I am expressing fleeting funny thoughts or pontificating on my life's philosophy. And to be in a relationship would be like a stand up comic getting a sitcom on CBS. Any jokes about race, politics, religion, or anything meaningful fly out the window and you are left with jokes about how you forgot your wife's anniversary or how you hate it when your in-laws come over because they complain about your cooking.

Look at all the jokes he's keeping inside.

I’m not ready for that yet. I’m not ready to be a part of ateam. While many feel being part of a couple makes them stronger, for mepersonally, every time I have been in a relationship I have lost a part ofmyself, and it’s always a part I don’t want to give up. But I don’t blame thegirl for this. It’s not her fault that I choose to shut down a major part of mypersonality to make her happy. I guess I could just be myself and give the girla chance to love me, but odds are she will run for the hills, so I might aswell wait until I am more loveable (or rich).

The only reason I would want to be in a relationship now is because all of myfriends are. And I guess it’s nice to have someone there for you all the time.Just because I am good at being alone doesn’t mean I like being lonely. I waswatching those Chilean miners get rescued and they each came out and huggedtheir wife or son or daughter. All I could think was how sad it would be forone to come up from 2 months of captivity in the mine with 32 other guys onlyto be “rescued” to a world where he had no one.

Place holder.

Although my group of friends has broken up, much like the Beatles did-- all ofus going to start new endeavors of our own-- I am the only one moving forwardalone. But while John Lennon was able to create music, films, art, andeventually a family with his bride after the break up of his band, I am stilllooking for my other half, my partner in crime, my Yoko. And until then, mysolo career will have to be just that: Solo.

Crazy, Hot Girls

2010-10-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

In the last couple days, the topic of the “crazy, hot girl”has come up a few times. Being a resident of Los Angeles, a survivor of anInternet dating site, and a man with a proclivity for pretty girls, I have hadmy share of experiences with some of the wild women of the world. Some Ihave merely hooked up with, some I have casually dated, and some I have fallen inlove with. But all have led to my current life status: single and scared.

Relaying crazy stories-- of the girl who told me she waspregnant when she actually wasn’t OR the cyber genius who hacked my e-mail andFacebook accounts and questioned me about their contents OR the first date whotold me she had a gun and would kill me if I screwed her over OR WORSE thevolatile vixen who told me she would kill herselfif I didn’t spend the evening hanging out with her OR the girlfriend whoinsisted on knowing where I was and who I was with (and if she was pretty) 24hours a day --isn’t really the inspiration of this post. Surely they are goodfor a laugh or two, but in the end they are just sad.

"It's YOURS! Trust me...

To me, the more intriguing topic is the question of why there are so manyunstable, beautiful women out there, scaring us innocent young men into theirbedrooms and out of their hearts. In analyzing these insane hotties, one mustfirst question the “facts” in order to make sure they aren’t simply stereotypeor generalization. I can attest from my aforementioned experience that thereare plenty of insane and attractive ladies out there, but could the reality bethat all women are equally crazy, whether they are hot or not?

I don’t have much experience with unattractive ladies. Sure there have beendrunken make outs at bars or clubs with below average girls, but theinteraction never went any further than that (Other than me finding them onFacebook the next day to remind myself of what they looked like. And yes, somethings are better off forgotten). So the only evidence I have that would leadme to believe these less-than-beautiful ladies are crazy is that they weremaking out with someone like me. Ididn’t talk with any of them long enough to evaluate their sanity. The point isthat we know an attractive girl has a tendency for craziness only because wetook the time to get to know her and learn the dark truth of her brain. Anunattractive girl could be just as nuts, but she dates fewer men and garnersless attention so fewer people discover her potential madness. So is it reallythat pretty girls are crazier than unattractive one’s, or just that the ugly girlat the end of the bar is actually this generation’s Hannibal Lecter, but we’llnever know or care because we’re too busy trying to bang her hot friend?

"But I'm beautiful on the INSIDE."

While it’s conceivable that the ratio of crazy unattractive women to crazyattractive women is equal, my experience with human beings tells me it’s not.In general, humans want to fulfill their potential in the two main walks oflife: career and relationships. If they don’t, it’s simply out of guilt offear. Some people feel guilty for success because so many others are sufferingin the world or maybe they grew up underprivileged and feel guilty about losingtheir roots. And some people fear going after their desired goal because theyare afraid to take a chance and risk being rejected. For everyone else, theywill go after and take whatever they can get 100% of the time. This is why Ilaugh when I hear about peoples’ shock over Tiger Woods’ infidelity. A good-lookingmale celebrity athlete worth a half billion dollars who travels all over theworld for a living isn’t cheating onhis wife? Really? Of course he is. Because he can. If we can do something, and we want to do it, we do it.

Hot girls are no exception. They are crazy because they can be. With no repercussions. They’ll still attract tons of guysdespite being unrepentantly unstable. An unattractive girl doesn’t have thisluxury. She can’t go around accusing guys of getting her pregnant orthreatening to kill them. She has to learn skills to keep her man (like cookingor anal). Every human being has the ability to be crazy. We’re just animalsafter all. It’s not our fault. But we also have the ability to control-- or atleast conceal-- our insanity when we have to or when we want to. Hot women never have to pull back the crazy because guys don’t care. For awhile. Then crazy hot girl pushes the limits and tests her man to see what shecan get away with and inevitably he gets scared off, only to jump to a newwoman whose crazy is only a moment away.

And this is where my big issue comes up. Humans are creatures of habit. We likeeating at the same places, spending time with the same friends, and fallingasleep in the safety of our usual beds. We develop these normal routines and,even if we don’t realize it, we stick to them, whenever possible, usually forthe rest of our lives. The same tendency for repetition applies to our crazybehavior. We get used to being a certain way and we don’t want to change. Or ifwe do want to, we find it difficult to achieve. Hot crazy women will always becrazy. That shit starts early on. By the time she gets to you, whether it’s at16 or 61, her habits are so deeply ingrained in her mind that there’s noturning back. And on the other side of the coin, the men who date these womenalso develop dating habits that are hard, if not impossible, to break. Someonelike me who has dated his share of wild women can now never get used to someonewho is just normal. And someone who is just normal could never get used to me.Going from the bed of a crazy hot girl to dating a normal, sweet young ladywith no issues is like a soldier coming back from war to hang out with hisbuddies on the golf course. We both get PTSD. But for me it’s Post Traumatic SexDisorder.

To this day, if I am dating someone, I don’t like talking onthe phone because I am scarred with the memory of someone demanding to knowwhere I am and who I am with even if the innocent answers are “on my couch” and“Ben & Jerry.” I don’t like people using my cell phone or laptop because Iam paranoid that they are going to look at my texts or read my browser history(I’ll save you the time, I look at ESPN and porn). I worry if I ever break someone’s heart or let them downthey’ll threaten suicide or murder (or worse: pregnancy). With all of thatsaid, my biggest fear in relationships is boredom. I’ve been trained to dealwith the crazies. I’ve built up a tolerance and I can usually figure them outafter a while. It just takes patience and the ability to bite my judgmentaltongue. But the uninspiring nature of normalcy is one thing I have never beenable to deal with.

Dating a crazy girl is playing with fire...
Lucky for them, some of us like to be hot.

While certain types of insanity are unacceptable, there’s anarmy of guys out there who have suffered and smiled through years of trainingin order to combat the evil and enjoyable villain that is the crazy hot girl. Ipersonally won’t date an e-mail hacker or a baby faker or a phone stalker everagain. But some guy out there will. And just as they will find each other, I’llfind someone out there who’s weird and crazy in a way I can’t cure, but I can comprehend.And maybe, if I’m lucky, she can understand my insanity, too.

The Reality of Fantasy

2010-10-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

I love fantasy football more than anyone. I love fantasyfootball so much that I didn’t join a league this season because I acknowledgedthat my addiction was taking over my life. In years past, girlfriends wouldcomplain that I didn’t have enough time for them. Friends would wonder why myphone went straight to voicemail during Monday Night Football. I wasn’t leavingthe house on Sundays unless I had to. And if I had to, I was checking scores onmy phone every other minute. To make matters worse, I usually won, and myextreme efforts were rewarded with cash prizes, therefore validating my uglyhabit. Something had to be done.

At the mercy of my fantasy fetish, I knew I needed toprotect myself from myself. Like a smoker throwing away his cigarettes or a sexaddict becoming a priest (Okay, maybe that last simile doesn’t work). If Isigned up for another league this year I knew that I wouldn’t get anything productivedone in my free time. No longer would I exchange precious moments in which Icould be writing or exercising for hours in front of the TV watching ameaningless game. Never again would I check espn.com on my cell in betweeninnings of my softball game when I should be focusing on an actual sport (yes,softball is an actual sport—ask any lesbian).

After softball yesterday, my team headed to a local sports bar to enjoy somebeer and football. That sounds like awaste of time, you might say, but since it was spent with friends and notalone, curled up in the fetal position after “my” quarterback threw his 3^rdinterception in the first half, I argue it was an afternoon well spent.Unfortunately, at the bar I spotted several guys dabbling in a social crimethat made my former fantasy addiction look like a healthy habit.

In a room full of rowdy football fans, high fiving and “cheersing” mugs ofbeer, sat multiple individuals—none of them together-- with a laptop in front ofthem, watching the games, and taking advantage of the bar’s free Wi-Fi as theychecked their fantasy teams. I wanted to suggest one of them Google the word“vagina” so they would finally know what one looked like. These guys hadinvented a brand new and improved kind of loser. What the hell is going onwith our society? From Facebook to a nuclear bomb, all technology is neutral.It’s what humans do with thattechnology that makes it good or bad. And this was as bad as it could get.

What you do with your computer at home is your own business.

I’m not against fantasy football. I’m not against checkingyour team’s stats constantly. As I previously stated, I used to do so myself.What I am against is taking up an entire booth at a bar so you can haveone-on-one time with your laptop. You can’t be discreet and check your cellphone? Are iPhones not advanced enough for you? And why must you do this inpublic? Are you paying for so many fantasy league entry fees that you can’tafford cable or Internet in your mother’s basement? What’s next, logging on tomatch.com while you’re in the middle of a club full of single ladies? What’sthe point? Fantasy leagues are for talking smack to your friends and winning alittle cash, not exposing to the world your social dysfunction while taking seatsaway from people who actually have friends not named “Mac Book.”

The highlight of the day came when a touchdown was scoredand one of these fantasy nerds jumped up in joy as if he had scored thetouchdown himself and looked around for someone to high five. Unfortunately, noone was there to receive it. I’m sure the adrenalin secreted from his team’spoint total jumping up six points was quite a rush, but when he realized he hadno one to share his exaltation with, he slowly returned to his laptop and watchedthe rest of the game in silence.

And therein lies the problem with wasting too much of one’slife taking part in activities that revolve around the word “fantasy.”Eventually, they all come to an end and we have to return to this inconvenient placecalled reality.

Eye Opener

2010-09-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

This week I had a near death experience. Okay, maybe that’sbeing a little dramatic, but I did have a bit of a health threat that got methinking about my life and what is important to me.

Tuesday morning I woke up and my right eye was blurry. I chalked it up to notgetting enough sleep and went about my morning. As the day wore on my visiongot worse and by lunchtime I was seeing double. My left eye was fine so Igoogled “blurry right eye.” The search yielded a long list of potentialailments that could have led to my condition, ranging from a stroke to a tumorto something called “ocular herpes.”

While a stroke or a tumor certainly sounded like an awfuldiagnoses, ocular herpes (or as I call it OH, as in “OH shit, I have ocularherpes!”) seemed the most embarrassing. I immediately began to wonder how Icould have contracted such a virus. I hadn’t 69ed or had a girl use my face asa stool any time recently. I wondered if I possibly rubbed my eye after puttingmy fingers in that bowling ball the night before. And no, that’s not a metaphorfor using my hand to pleasure a fat girl-- I’m actually in a bowling leagueMonday nights.

How does one get Ocular Herpes?

Concerned that I could have the dreaded OH or one of the other conditions, Iset up an appointment with my optometrist for the next day. And then myimagination kicked in. I began to worry about the worst-case scenario: What if I had a tumor and they had to removemy eye? Would I be able to drive with no depth perception? What about my softballcareer? I hadn’t been hitting well lately as it was! Worst of all, I was currentlysingle-- how would I meet a woman in a city as superficial as LA if I only hadone eye? Would this mean I would have to settle for someone with only one eye?I think I’d rather be blind!

“Come here often?”

I watch a lot of Houseand it’s always a “happy ending” when the clever doctor solves a case and savesa life, even if the patient is left with a missing limb, limited use of theirfaculties, or some physical deformity. Rather than stand and applaud thesescenarios, I always think, Fuck that, I’drather be dead.

Now, after reading the abundant amount of medical“expertise” offered on the Internet, I began to hope for a terminal diagnosesas opposed to one that would simply mar my face. Somewhere in the back of mypotentially doomed brain I wondered, Whatkind of a person am I if this is how little I value my life? For manypeople out there, “life” was purely survival-- battling poverty, disease, genocide,etc.—and they were happy just to stay alive another day. And here I was, onlyworried about my hybrid car going to waste, my softball stats suffering, or myability to meet women taking a hit because I would scare them off with myflawed facial façade.

“Congratulations! You’re healed!”

If I were lucky enough to survive a serious illness, shouldn’tI just be happy to be alive like the characters in House? Shouldn’t feeling the sun on my face or making my friendslaugh or spending time with my family be enough? In the past, I had always neededmore than the basics to life to give me a reason to get out of bed in themorning. I wanted to do something special with my time here. I wanted to leavethe world with something significant and unique to who I was, and have a greattime doing it. I wanted to live life,not merely “survive” it.

At least that’s what I thought.

I had my optometrist appointment yesterday. As I sat in thewaiting room I realized I didn’t want to die-- I hadn’t even had a threesome ortried lobster yet! No matter what deformity I was left with, I would find a wayto be happy. The doctor called me in, and after a few tests, my fate wassealed. Apparently I simply had astigmatism and that was causing my blurredvision. I won’t be dying anytime soon-- at least not from a brain tumor.

The thought of dying at my young age made me appreciate all theseemingly small things that I never thought were enough to make me happy, butwere actually the only things that should really matter. Maybe in a few dayswhen I’ve forgotten about the eye scare, I will go back to taking these thingsfor granted, but for now, it was a nice reminder to always appreciate everythingI have (friends, family, career) and everything I don’t have (ocular herpes). It’s ironic that it took blurry visionto get me to finally see things clearly.

Missing The Cut

2010-09-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Last week I went into Floyd’s for a haircut. I never requestthe same stylist because my hair is pretty easy to do. As long as the persondoesn’t force me to make conversation while a loud buzzer is right in my ear, Ihave no complaints. Something about being involved in a conversation with ascissor-wielding stranger that I can’t walk away from doesn’t sit well with me.

I sat down in the chair and the stylist, an artsy looking dude named Dillon, askedme what I wanted. “Trim the bangs, trim the top, number 3 on the sides,” Iinstructed.

He went to work and for the first few minutes we sat in complete awesome silence.Perfect. Then he had to go and ruin it by asking me what I do. I explained tohim my role in reality TV and he told me how he thought it was ruining society.Well, good thing you’re saving the worldwith your hair gel and oversized bib, I wanted to say. But seeing that hewas holding the aforementioned cutting device only inches from my face, Ithought better of it.

Completely unprovoked by me, he then got into the details of his life. He toldme how he came out to LA to be a musician but he gave it up because his ex-girlfrienddidn’t support him. I should mention, this guy was at least mid-30s and he wasblaming his failed music career on his ex-girlfriend. Surely to do this, Iimagined, she locked away all of his instruments, especially the one betweenhis legs.

He then told me how he hates the “music scene” in LA because whenever he goesto see a show on Sunset or at The Wiltern he knows everyone is judging him,thinking that he doesn’t belong. Take it from a master of insecurity. NOBODYnotices you, man. Even with your jet-black goatee and double nose ring. Evenwith your suede vest and light blue colored eye contacts. The only person wonderingwhy you are there is YOU. Much like his ex got the blame for his failed musiccareer, the other people at the club got the blame for his failed social life.I was starting to pick up on a pattern.

Dillon continued to blabber on about his hatred for all things musical in LosAngeles. Apparently, in his mind, the music industry sucked and the only stuffthat made money was garbage. He claimed he could write a song and make amillion dollars without any effort at all, but if he did he couldn’t live withhimself. The world’s poor musical taste was at fault for his lack of a numberone single.

Being someone who had once blamed an ex-girlfriend for all of the unhappythings in my life, I figured I would give my new Emo friend some advice. “Maybeyou shouldn’t care about the ‘music scene’ or what makes money or what yourex-girlfriend supported you with. Just make the music that makes you happy anddo it as an expression of art, an expression of yourself. Not to sell records.If you make a profit off of it great, if not, at least you were true toyourself and created something you are proud of.”

It was then that I realized my bangs had been cut uneven.Maybe the stylist couldn’t see through his tears. I politely asked to have themevened out and he responded with the following:

“That’s another thing I hate about LA. People need things to be perfect. Back where I’m from peopledon’t care what their haircut looks like. I just cut it and they’re happy.” Nowit was my fault that he sucked as ahair stylist.

As the inconvenienced Dillon did his job and fixed my uneven hair, I realized thatmy advice about doing something he would be proud of was completely lost on him.Dillon did everything half-assed except complain and put on his black nailpolish with little white skulls in the middle of each nail. Life was so mucheasier if he hated everything, so that way he had a built-in excuse to not put effort into anything.

Okay so maybe his girlfriend told him his guitar playing wasno good. Maybe his beauty school professor didn’t teach him the proper haircuttingtechnique. Maybe the people at clubs in LA arelame. There are a million ways to blame a million people for a milliondifferent things that suck in this world. But if you suck at life, that one,Dillon, is on you.

DON'T BE SCARED

2010-09-23T15:34:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert’s October 30^th “Keep Fear Alive” Rally(along with Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the same day) got methinking about us human beings. No one can deny that some of us are smart. Weuse our intelligence for many things good (landing on the moon, the iPhone) andmany things bad (atom bomb, toilet car). Unfortunately, the people who exhibitthe genius it requires to become an inventor, a doctor, a scientist, etc., arethe exceptions when it comes to our species, not the rule. Most of us areidiots.

Sometimes we use our intelligence to make crap.

Not surprisingly, these idiots are easily controlled bythose with power. And the best way to control them is through fear. Too manytimes people read an article or watch a television program and simply acceptthe “facts” that are being told to them. They’re taught to question nothingfrom those who are preaching to them and whenever they are questionedthemselves about their beliefs, they adopt an “Us vs. Them” mentality that makesthem even more sedentary in their views.

My explanation for this is 1) bad parenting-- too many parents raise their children wanting them to be just likethem and not allowing them to make any decisions on their own. This often creates a carbon copy child that has the same narrow minded point of view as the people who raised them-- and 2) Organized Religion-- religion is theultimate cult when it comes this “follow everything, question nothing”mentality. Try having a conversation with someone where you question theirreligious beliefs. Within minutes, if not seconds, they will be upset anddefensive. Whether you throw science or just common sense at them, by the endof the conversation they will believe in their faith even more than when theystarted and nothing you said will resonate with them. It's not a coincidence that most Republicans are uber-religious (or at least claim to be). They've been training to be a sheep all of their lives.

His vote counts just as much as yours.

This stubbornness is due to fear. Fear that what a person has believed for so long, whether it came from a parent or a pastor, isn’t true.And most people would rather be wrong and proud than right and humiliated.Usually people don’t even realize they are acting out of fear because they’vebeen doing it for so long they believe it’s actually part of their personalityrather than a simple knee jerk reaction that has been instilled in them since they were first told not to masturbate.

******

I dealt with a bout of fear myself earlier today, but luckily I was able to overcome it...

What the fuck? Ithought to myself. My work has blockedFacebook!

Short of being fired, a worse thing couldn’t have happened regarding my job.Had they been monitoring me? Looking at all the sites I visit? Reading my Gchatconversations? No, I thought, if they were reading those I would have beenfired days ago.

It wasn’t until I took my lunch break and heard on the radio that Facebookwas down for not only me, but millions of people all over the country (and theworld) who were undoubtedly forced to WORK instead of just being able to “work.” It seemsthe site is up and running again so surely productivity will soon drop off themap and people will spend the rest of their day complaining ABOUT Facebook ONFacebook. Can't wait...

Anyways, the scare did get me thinking about Big Brother and whether or not mywork was spying on me. I only started last week but I am already engaging ina web surfing expedition or two whenever I need a break. We all do it to anextent, depending on how busy our days are. I think the creators of Ritalin areputting ADD in the water. Maybe that’s why Arrowhead tastes so bad.

After working at about 7 or 8 different companies in the past 6 years (no, Idon’t keep getting fired, I work freelance), I have come to the conclusion that the existence of any type of monitoring system at companies is just a myth, an old wives’ taletold to scare would-be-slackers away from the temptations of Facebook, fantasyfootball, online shopping, and TMZ. If these spying systems were in place, Iwould be standing in the unemployment line right now (unless the computer geek they put in chargesimply got a kick out of my inappropriate e-mails and didn’t put a stop tothem).

The Boogeyman.

Believing Big Brother a myth doesn’t mean that every time I start anew job that somewhere in the back of my mind there isn’t a small amount of fear that I’m being monitored. But rather than play it safe and stay off theInternet, I go straight for it and test it out. If they’re watching, I want tofind out right away rather than suffer three months without updating my Facebook statusout of fear. And here I am, still collecting a check.

It’s similar to how I behave at pool parties. Just like I put the myth of BigBrother watching my websites to the test, I also like to test the myth of thatchemical people put in their pools to know if someone has peed in it. I can’tremember the last time I was in a pool and didn’t pee in it. Even if I’m notswimming, I usually find a way to pee in the pool. Some people find this grossand disturbing, but from what I’ve read pee isn’t toxic and the chlorine killsoff whatever might be in it anyways. Oh, you have a salt-water pool, you say? Well,you’re welcome for the free refill. I won't let your scare tactics keep me from urinating wherever I feel like it.

In all my time testing out the pool chemical theory, I have never had the wateraround me turn any color other than a hardly noticeable diluted yellow. And in all my timeprocrastinating on the Internet at work, I’ve never had a suit from HR tell me to knockit off. So the moral of the story is, don’t believe everything you hear and don't give in to fear-- whether it’s from you parents, your boss, your "god" or Fox News. People like to spreadfear to get you to do what they want. Don’t take what they say for granted. Sometimesyou just have to test the waters yourself.

And yes, I wrote this blog at work.

The Todd Fields World

2010-09-22T15:44:00.001-07:00

By far, the worst part about how the internet and affordable technologies have made communication and media so accessible to the world is that any idiot out there with a computer, a camera, or a microphone can broadcast him or herself to the world without anyone to stop them. The best part is that I am one of those idiots. With my Youtube channel, my Facebook account, or my old blog on Myspace, I have multiple outlets to express myself, without anyone or anything (except common sense) to talk me out of it. Rather than have myself spread out across the internet like Britney Spears' legs, I decided to bring everything together here, on this site. In addition to linking to some of my new additions to those sites, I'll be updating this site with a blog as well as my newest venture into the art of podcasting with "The Toddcast."

One of my favorite videos from my neglected Youtube channel is this interview with myself:

With this site, I hope to inspire myself to create more often than I have been and recruit enough fans to somehow make money off of doing what I love-- no, not being sarcastic and judgmental. Making people laugh (by being sarcastic and judgmental).

I am really excited for my first podcast which will be out by the end of the week. I really appreciate any and all support from you guys so please leave comments, subscribe, and tell your friends.