iPhone 4S Sucks

I don’t know. Maybe look out the window?

The new new Spiderman Sucks

Seems like it was told a few years ago.

I apologize if you’ve been looking for my post on the new new Spiderman, but you’re going to have to wait until 2020 which is the point at which I will be ready for another reboot. The good news is that it will have been rebooted three or four times by then so I’ll have some choices.

The Miami Heat Suck

I loathe the idea of the Miami Heat winning the NBA champion for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my strong desire to not have to hear LeBron or Dwyane mistake no one wanting them to do it with no one believing they could. Because if and when the confetti falls on the Heat, and everyone outside of Florida (or frontrunners like Yankees fan LeBron) is trying to choke back down the better part of their digestive system, one of our heroes is going to remind us that nobody believed in them. Maybe Dwyane will talk more about the tremendous sacrifice his warrior-of-virtue teammates made as he did several times following The Decision(Florida tax laws be damned). While they will have defied most everyone’s desires, they will have defied no one’s belief.

This will doubtless be the greatest oversight by pundits and fans since 2007 when Dustin Pedroia said none of us believed his second-highest-payrolled Red Sox could win the World Series.

I guess I have to root for J.J. Barea (see link for Pedroia), and his patented hump the leg, hump the leg, hump the leg–FLOP! defense.

Ke$ha Sucks

There is just barely, barely room in my heart for one Lady Gaga, and that’s only because I think it’s refreshing to see a 14 year-old boy make it in the world of Pop Divas dominated by modestly talented women. Besides, in our new green America, is it really economical to have two girls dressing up in three-foot monocles made of first-gen iPods?

Diabetes Sucks

I went to the doctor because my penis (that’s right I said penis. Penis, penis, penis. Grow up!) hurt. The good news is I don’t have syphilis.

Upon returning I walked into the house and was met by my mother. And she got all nosy like mother’s do. Get this: she asked me, ‘How are you?’ Geez, what’s with the 9th degree, Ma? What’s next?Are you going to ask me if my penis hurts?

Anyway, this is how it went:

Mom: How are you?
Lyle: Diabetic

And I wasn’t joking. The Doctor found ketones in my pee. This is how it went:

Me: Ketones!? So Tom Cruise isn’t full of crap!
Doctor: You’re thinking of ‘thetans,’ and yes Tom Cruise is full of crap. Have you seen ‘Top Gun,’ that movie’s lame by any standard. Even hipsters watching for a smug sake of irony cringe.
Me: So I won’t have to go to Venus for re-implantation?
Doctor: Ehh… no.

After the ketone discovery the doctor took my blood and found a lot of sugar in it. (Here I was thinking about making a ‘because I’m so sweet’ joke, but I’m going to need a couple more weeks to craft it.)

That’s right dear reader (I’m hoping to make that ‘readers’ plural any day now, so please tell your friends about my blog, Garrett), I am diabetic. And not fat, old guy diabetic; but nerdy kid at the slumber party diabetic. I feel like I’m too old to be diagnosed with Type I Diabetes, but then I’m also too old to be living with my parents, which leads me to another parallel: Neither me, nor my pancreas work.

So I get to shoot-up every day. Shoot up in the morning. Shoot up in the evening. Shoot up before every meal. And not the kind of shooting up that gets you record deals and biopics either. Doc says I have to start counting the Oreos I eat by cookie rather than by sleeves as well. In the past (like yesterday) I’d order my meal with Coke rather than Diet Coke because I’d rather have Diabetes than cancer. Those days are over and sadly realized. I’m an aspartame man now.

Portland Sucks

Quick. Think back to your childhood bookshelf. I have found The Land of Waldos and it is Portland, Oregon. Replace Waldo’s standard blue jeans with a pair a bit tighter; his red and white striped sweatshirt with a flannel or a cardigan; his cheerful grin with a scruffy young guy beard; his round, thin-framed glasses with square, thick-framed glasses; his hat with a smug sense of moral and cultural superiority; and his walking stick with a Toyota Prius (what kind of a monster doesn’t drive a Prius?*), and you have 85 percent of men aged 27-38 in the city of Portland.

They shop more conscientously than you, eat more educated than you, and vote more compassionately than you. Sure you may have an Apple laptop just like they do, but they bought theirs for superior reasons (give them an inch of moral high ground and they’ll take a mile), and not just to look better at their favorite cafe where they park their fixed-gear bike outside (if your bike has gears, get the HELL out of Portland) and sip coffee that you have never heard of and which they secretly hope you never do.

I don’t know how I’m not a millionaire yet. All I need to do is open a small market in some hip Portland neighborhood and listen patiently while my customers show me the new NPR apps on their iPhones. I’ll buy jars of natural peanut butter and replace the labels with ‘Bolivian Co-Op Mantequilla de Cacahuate.’ Portlanders will taste the difference in the identical peanut butter because it’s from Bolivia and housewives and Republicans have never heard of it. And I can mark it up 150 percent because… well, for the same reasons. Nothing is as delicious or thrifty as exclusivity.

With my millions I will buy the world’s largest SUV and drive around Portland until Prius drivers cast looks of scorn on me (it won’t take long or be infrequent) at which point I will throw hundreds of dollars of carbon credit vouchers at them with a bored look on my face.

*Subarus are probably okay, especially if you have rescued a dog from the humane society.

LeBron Sucks

I saw Nike’s Project: LeBron Reclamation commercial and I hated it because it sucked. LeBron kept asking ‘What should I do?’ in a patronizing manner suggesting that fans’ expectations weren’t and aren’t fair or reasonable. My only expectation for LeBron is to not be an a-hole if he wants to sell me shoes, hot dogs or underwear like the man whose expensive basketball and pitchman shoes were primed and ready to be filled by the ‘King.’ He failed to meet that expectation spectacularly with ESPN‘s: The Decision. Nike is now aiding that failure with this commercial.

Look, I’d love to move to Miami with my friends.  Who wouldn’t? If he chooses to go play with his friends where he can prove nothing on the court–either he wins with the odds stacked in his favor and impresses no one; or he loses and is a failure–but be happy, that’s fine. Just don’t be an a-hole about it if you want to sell me things when ESPN has to take a break from slobbering all over you to air commercials.

With a new season, and a huge new ad campaign to begin redeeming himself, LeBron (and Nike) blew it (just like his move to Miami) like a real a-hole.