nascar: not just for white people (yeah that's a lie); plus, dating insight!

I take a passing interest in nascar. I know people that know people so I get to hear firsthand stories about the inner workings about the France family, some of the drivers and sponsors, etc. if I was lucky enough to have a similar relationship with people in MLB then I'd probably pay a lot more attention to the Woodland Hills Angels of Huntington Beach. anyway, I'll throw a race on the TV since it's in HD and i'm not busy.
I should have done it last week for the DAYTONA 500 but I was too hung over.
some observations for this first race in Fontana:

• An african-american woman sang the national anthem. I didn't know they allowed black people at nascar events. the field and the grandstands remain lily white. given that the US population is 12% black, there should be one or two black drivers.
  
• the duff sisters are honorary race officials. 'duff said.
  
• I like that the announcers recognize that this is the start of the real nascar racing season. the daytona 500 is "the great american race" but restrictor-plate racing sucks. it's just not nascar.
• this was my favorite part of the whole deal: during the race, one of the announcers explains that tony stewart refuses to talk about last weeks race (stewart was penalized for driving too aggressively). according to the announcer, stewart tells journalists "one thing I learned about history is that no one has ever changed it!" [interesting, though unsophisticated, argument from someone that didn't finish high school] one of the other announcers, Michael Waltrip, chimes in with, "and, you don't LEARN from it!"
  indeed. you don't LEARN from history. got it. I'll write that down. so profound, and yet so RETARDO.
  

that's all I have, because I went to lunch with my buddy. there's only so much not learning from history that I can take.

oh yeah, in case you forgot: girls are lame. I mean it.

dude, where's my muse? ; plus, cougars

yeah I haven't felt like writing this week.
it's a copout, writing about not writing, but there it is.
usually funny stuff happens to me and then I write about it. but not lately. hmm... that's not completely true. check this out...

I was at a wedding on saturday and me and my buddy were putting the finishing touches on our buzz after the reception. so we went to a bar in Corona del Mar (i was in my tux). while at the bar, I overheard the following exchange. I overheard it because one of the participants was me, and the other was a 40 yr old woman (for the record, she was attractive).

40 year old woman [indicating my stockpile of drinks on the bar]: are you hoarding drinks? [smiles]

drunk case [wobbling slightly]: no. i'm stockpiling. [leans on bar, looks bored/drunk/sophisticated]

40yow [tosses hair]: huh! you guys are soooo cute!

dc [still wobbly]: hmmmm... ya think?

40yow: for suuure! so, you guys like [name of bar]? is it because of all the hot older women?

dc [looking confused/ill]: no.

40yow [eyeing another woman jealously]: I can't wait until I get my surgery done.

dc [aghast]: huh?

40yow: my surgery. I'm getting the full workup now that i'm 40 - lipo my hips and waist, plus new boobs. I'm gonna be hot! [giggles]

[partner makes joke here - all laugh - I can't remember, except that it wasn't that funny]

40yow [steps closer]: so, what's with you younger guys going after older women? why do people do that?

dc [in inexplicable moment of clarity, esp. given current condition]: same reason as all other human relationships, both parties get what they want.

40yow [steps closer still]: wow! i've never heard that! you smell gooooooood! [sniffs neck, touches lapel, etc.]

dc [sensing danger]: uhh, yeah. we gotta go to... uhh... the other bar.

40yow: already? well, okay. you boys have a good time tonight! [giggles]

[exeunt all, rapidly]

only in Corona del Mar. or La Jolla. or LA. or lots of other places. but especially in CDM.

having your birthday off is sweet, and by sweet I mean totally awesome

today is my 32nd birthday.
i'm working to embrace 32. not having any success so far, but i have it pretty good so I cannot (rather, should not) complain. today is a good day.

****************
[Sappy Theological Interlude]
it was kind of a bummer of a week, so I asked my friends if they could pray for me. i'm all about specific prayers, so I asked them if they would ask God to show himself to me in a tangible way, because that's what I needed. By asking for that, I also helped prepare myself for the idea that I would be able to see it when he did. (God is with you all the time, but that doesn't mean you're willing/able to see him.)
God did show himself to me, and he did it by surrounding me with great friends. I got more calls, kind words, and positive attention in the past week than I can remember. I don't think I'm worthy of that kindness, but I'll take it where I can get it, and I'm intensely thankful.
It's good to be me, and I wasn't feeling that a week ago. Thank you God, and thank you, peeps.
[STI concluded]
*****************

having your birthday off is sweet. I have time to do some laundry, play some xbox, gym, enjoy a late lunch, and make myself a cake. good deal. it's back to the usual tomorrow, but the usual is the same as today, but I have to go to work. and there's cake.
thanks for reading. -c-

the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away

my requests have been answered: I finally found a way to blow $650 of my hard earned on a new video game console. I bought an xbox360, extra controller, and a couple games (call of duty2, and Madden '06).

I'd like to thank best buy for answering the phone, Visa for giving me credit where credit is due; plus a special thanks to Sara for freeing up my social calendar so completely (by dumping me this past Tuesday).

on the whole I would have rather kept the girl and f'd the xbox, but what're you gonna do?
the lord giveth, the lord taketh away.

monuments to me: shallowness on parade

hey I worked it out. got a picture of me in the profile.
it's not my favorite picture but whatever. i don't have that many since I'm the one that's always holding the camera.
next step, add a link to myspace page. I might have to get some work done before I do that.
i'm loving this monument to me. so narcissistic, yet delicious.



me.

ketel one and soda: not a good solution, but an excellent stopgap measure; also, Cheney takes responsibility?

ahhh, nothing eases you into a spell of depression like a hangover.

thank you, ketel one, for allowing me to embrace the suck in my life, if only for a short time. our affair was fleeting, but I cherished the time we spent together. it'll be a while before we get a chance to get together like that again.

I'll miss you, dear ketel one. don't think of this as good-bye. think of it as... until next time.

----------------------
in unrelated news, the VP of our great nation shot a man on Sunday. It was a hunting accident, and he spoke to Fox "news" about it today. One headline from earlier this week said, and I quote, "Cheney may have broken one of the first rules of hunting". That was on Yahoo. I have done a little bit of hunting.

to get a hunting license in CA you have to take a hunter safety course, take a test, etc, etc. I took it, and I don't remember if they stated the rule about not shooting one of your hunting buddies explicitly, or if it was just implied. In any case, i'm pretty sure it was one of the first rules. Definitely in the top five. If number 1 is "Don't shoot yourself", then number 2 has got to be "don't shoot somebody else".

-------------------
can anybody, and I mean anybody, get me a deal on an xbox360?
i might have to break down and just buy one on ebay. this is getting ridiculous.

tomorrow is a new day; write that down.

getting dumped: not my favorite; plus, it's past my bedtime

yeah so the ex, or until very recently, the GF, dumped me today. yesterday, by the time you read this. yes, it was on valentine's day. also our little nascent anniversary, and also a couple days before my birthday. but hey, if it's coming, why delay the inevitable? and while we're at it, why bother making an emotional investment in a person at all, ever? S. Pinker has some intelligent things to say about this (in the book How the Mind Works) , but i'm too drunk/lazy to look them up. and lonely. as per usual. ahhhh, I forgot what that feels like. allow me to take a few months and embrace the lonely...

so that happened. and I'm not too pleased about it. I really liked her.

that's all I have. shit happens. she sucks. I suck. fuck it. I don't have anything nice to say. I don't have anything funny to say, either.

happy valentine's day.

blog was edited to correct spacing error and wrong word

so much good stuff; happy valentines day anyway

ahh, lots has happened since yesterday.
the SI Swimsuit Issue hits newsstands today. you can find photos online here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2006_swimsuit/

also, the olympics continue. Bode Miller was DQd in his latest race and his best chance for a medal. reports seem to indicate that he's out of shape. he had a big year last year and I don't think he's all that motivated right now. Winning the world cup (like he did last year) is a superior achievement to winning a gold medal in Turino. (that's a joke, not a typo, thx.) I doubt he'll get it together, but you never know.

And finally, I'll try to post a picture today. you can always go over to myspace.com/casewriter, but I like blogs that have a photo of the author. so I'll get on that.
also, my birthday is Monday, 20 Feb. Be sure to call and say something nice about how good I look for 32.
xo

world whatever classic

so a bunch of overpaid steroid-addled freaks are going to get together this winter and bore me to tears in some type of athletic contest? where do I sign up to not watch/read/pay attention to this non-event?

I'm not talking about the winter olympics, I'm talking about the "world baseball classic", or MLBs attempt to grow the business outside of latin america. Mike Piazza is playing for italy, for pete's sake. Not sure if the Russian team is going to be any good, and I know that the cubans were almost banned for, umm, castro living so damn long, but i'm sure there are some third world countries where this is important. I can't find any on a map (do you know where the Dominican Republic is? what about Venezuela? I thought not).

On the upside, Cuba was finally allowed to play after they agreed to some such limitation or other. I really have no idea why they weren't going to be allowed in the first place. Human rights violations, I guess. I think selling these useless games as a form of entertainment is a human rights violation. What, exactly, did Castro do? Probably he prevented people from speaking out against him. Fair enough; that is a violation of human rights. My guess is that after 30+ years of ineffective sanctions that telling Castro he couldn't play in the WWC was the last straw. He has had all he can take. You don't have him to, umm, saction, any more. I don't think the cuban team will have any of the defectors on it, which makes it a non-factor from a comptetitive standpoint. From an entertainment standpoint, I hope Castro tells Bud "Milquetoast" Selig to Get Fucked.

re: the superbowl - way to play it, Big Ben. You looked good out there. And by "good" I mean "extremely bad". Seahawks, not much better. You played just bad enough to lose to a team that didn't look good enough to win.
thanks for reading.

making love out of nothing at all

I want to throw a shout-out to the jerk that stole the Air Supply Greatest Hits (gold edition) cd out of my car a couple years ago. You also took my All American Rejects CD, and a couple others. Maybe the Ataris. I haven't been able to find that one. My roommate didn't take it. Anyway, what the hell were you thinking? you took my car registration, too. apparently this was of use to you or some registrationless friend of yours. Did you even look at the cd's? Air Supply? sheesh.

This past weekend was a big one for the fat kid. I'm not talking about the olympics. I'm talking about re-caulking the master bathtub. who knew how much fun this could be? first, removing the caulk. a chore, but with some elbow grease and planning this wasn't that bad. it wasn't that good, either. then, you dry out the area. that's easy. I own a fan, so I put it to work. then the hard part: actually getting the caulk onto the surface. this is where things got a little cockeyed.

the caulking gun, though serviceable, is not really made for caulking a steady bead. also I'm a retard. these two things together make for a less than superb line. ahh, if there's isn't time to do it right there's always time to do it over. and over. and over. i ended up doing a couple sections numerous times, employing a variety of implements, and generally making a mess of it. repeatedly. I tested out the f word a few times.

I just don't know how to handle a big caulk. (honk!)

i hope that it'll hold up for a couple more months before I have to go back and do it again. enh, it's not that bad.
but it's not that good, either.
-------------------------
raves: mom got me a new jacket for my birthday. dear mom: you rule. if you want to check it out, go to mountainhardwear.com and view the men's Alchemy jacket. yay, mom. I've wanted one for a while. mine is black. it's bitchin. it's also 85 degrees in the oc today (not a typo), but it's always winter in the office. so i'm wearing it at my desk.

beatings will continue until morale improves (email test)

greetings from lovely Northern CA.

I still can't quite get the blogger to work from my desk at the home office (maybe the company is trying to tell me something?), so I'm trying out this "mail to an address and post" feature. absolutely no idea if it works or not. we'll know soon enough.

in news of the week I was scooped for a blog topic by Super Sam. he writes at length (on donttouchmystuff.blogspot.com) about the idiocy and hypocrisy of the people that are rioting over cartoons that depict the image of Mohammed. I agree with his post so I'm not going to reproduce it here. I don't think people protesting over this perceived slight is a big deal; I think people killing others and firebombing stuff and throwing rocks at embassies (like the US embassy in Afghanistan? what are you doing? what did the US have to do with this?) are retardo. And I think most rational people would agree.

from the raves department, I get to go home today. and I'm pretty damn excited about it.
more later.

things that don't suck: when you get to meet your hero and he's not a jerk

I didn't get to meet my hero.
but I do follow soccer, and Freddy Adu got to meet his favorite soccer player (coincidentally, also my favorite soccer player) - Zinedine Zidane. he had this to say on SI.com:

I had a nice conversation with Ronaldo, and Zidane was a great guy. It was funny. He'd read a couple interviews I'd done, and I'd said he was my favorite player. So he came over to me and said, after the game, I'd like to take a picture with you, and if you need me to sign anything I'd be happy to do it. He was pure class.

that is bitchin. kind of how you'd hope a super megastar would act if you met them: aloof, yet accomodating. you can't be buddies, because you don't have anything in common. but they can be generous with their time, because it doesn't take much and it goes a long way.

taken to school

I got my lunch money taken away on the basketball court last night.
I used to play a little basketball, now and again, in my free time. my buddy Dave (the MVP of the night) was getting a game together and said come on down. I figured, sure, why not? i don't play that much any more but it's still good to get out there, shoot a little bit.

except it wasn't good. it was about as far away from good as you can imagine. I was terrible. execrable. it was humiliating. adding insult to injury, the guys on my team were even worse. at least I know how to play and can contribute on the defensive end. my teammates, not so much. my teammates? well, you know that part in hoosiers where the little guy dribbles the ball off his foot and it goes out of bounds? my team was like that, only worse. missed layups and airballs were the order of the day. a jump shot was a haphazard, rotation-free chuck at the rim. and NO ONE would pass, at all, ever. so, let's list the keys to sucking at playground basketball, and see how we did:

1. no passing - check. every guy (except me) was a black hole. I would pass the ball, make a cut hoping to get the ball back, and no. once I got rid of it, there was no getting it back. and forget about getting the ball in a position to score. forget about getting the ball.
   
2. no moving without the ball - check. hey everybody, stand around and wait for the ball so you can keep it, throw it out of bounds, and/or throw it towards the rim (and out of bounds). superb.
   
3. no screening, either on, or away from, the ball - check. this goes with no moving without the ball, so forget about getting a pick, or expecting anybody to run in the right direction if you set a pick for them. idiots.
   
4. big guys playing the wing, small guys playing the block - check. you can always identify a bad streetball player when he doesn't use his size to his advantage and he's got no skills. which brings us to item 5
5. one-hand, or absent, dribbling skills; no shooting; uni-directional post-up play - check. team retardo really showed their mettle here. all of these elements were on prominent display, usually on each posession. you would think it would be easy to defend, since a guy could only go one way. you would think that, except you didn't see team retardo.
   
6. bumblebee spacing (on offense, everyone runs towards the ball, enabling a single defender to guard more than one person) - check. this happened a couple of times, when I'd be in the open floor and one of my teammates would run right at me, along with his defender. what the hell are you doing? take your sorry self and your guy somewhere else.
   
7. (my favorite) super-slow-mo decision making - check. if you do decide to pass: before you throw the ball out of bounds, wait for the defender to catch up. heck, wait for him to tie his shoes, eat a cookie, blow-dry his hair, do some light ab work, whatever. then let him catch up with me, and then throw me the ball. I promise I'll give it back to you so you can score, and by "score" I mean "suck".

i'm looking forward to getting back on the court, working on my game. there is no doubt it needs work. dave and ryan gave me a basketball lesson. taste it.

why the name change, and so much more

thanks for reading.
apologies for the broken bookmarks. I'm glad you found your way back.

I've been pondering a title/address change for a couple weeks now. the scope of the blog has expanded and I wanted a title that reflected its new direction. I couldn't think of one, so I used greatjoballweek instead. it came to me in a vision, and by "it came to me" I mean "I had gas" and by "in a vision" I mean "I couldn't sleep".

it's less copycat than firedickvitale; that was a blatant ripoff of someone else's good idea. GJAW (Great Job All Week, get it?) is a bit more original, esp. since nobody else had used it yet. you would be surprised how many good blog titles were already taken. I felt lucky to get this one.

this is my new favorite time waster over at mousebreaker: http://www.mousebreaker.com/games/uberbreakout2/play.php

download the new shockwave player and tell me how you do. level first, and then score. if you can't get to level 13 then I don't know you. if you do, then we can talk; the score is a tiebreak only.
xoxo

liveblogging the Duke at BC game on espnHD - or: Fellating Coach K, JJ Reddick, Duke, et. al.

greetings from my living room. not to be confused with my other living room. (anyone that has been to visit chez casey would get this joke.)

i'm watching duke play at boston college on TV. I think if Duke played the Ojai school of the Blind then ESPN would carry it.
I thought I'd come to you live because it's easier to make fun of Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale this way. we (and by we i mean dick and mike) just got breathlessly describing how great Reddick is. this is a common theme when they are on TV. probably because he is really good. he hits an open 3 in a 5 on 1 break (nice job hustling back, BC), which is my favorite kind of decision making: the kind that's good only when it goes in, and it's all JJ all the time. then he misses an open shot and Patrick says, "he hasn't had that good of a night shooting the ball". really? he's 6 of 13 you tard. that's just under 50%, and an exceptional rate when you factor in the fact that he takes a lot of 3's.

ahh, sideline reporter tells us that one assistant GM in the NBA thinks Reddick will succeed in the NBA because he has the "heart of a thief". what the fuck does that mean? Patrick tells us that he means that "in a good way." Heart of a thief? how about being a guy that makes a lot of shots? how about competing in a league where everybody is faster than you and can jump higher? it doesn't matter how many shots you can make if you can't get rid of the guy that is in your hip pocket. Reddick won't be able to. Not at the NBA level. JJ will be Danny Ferry, circa 2006. bummer.

cue montage of reddick making shots (to Fall Out Boy). I just threw up. I admit, he does fill it up.
okay, the girl is here. I have better things to do (thank God).
great job all week. xoxo

32 is the new 27; plus, big momma's what?

I have a birthday coming up.
it's Monday, 20 february. I am turning 32. I am doing a lot better with this one than I did with 31. I won't be sorry to see 31 go, although it was a good year. I started the blog, met a girl, got some work done, traveled a bit, listened to some good music, laughed a lot, and read some really good books. If 32 is much the same then I can't complain. I will complain, because as my mom pointed out years ago, I've never needed a reason.

32 feels a little better than 31 because it's 2 to the fourth, which is a good number. it's divisible by 2 (dur), 4, 8, and 16. that appeals to my OCD nature. it's a number that's got some balance, and I could use a little balance in my life.

I won't accept presents but I do appreciate a phone call, so put me on your calendar for Presidents Day. My birthday is a holiday this year. Thank you very much mr's Washington and Lincoln.
-----------
super sam has a sweet entry about the movie Big Mama's House 2 over on the donttouchmystuff blog. I recommend it.
this new movie stars martin lawrence in fat suit. who knew that they could mine such a sweet premise for another 90 minutes of hilarity and hijinks?

I also have these words: no one ever lost when betting on the bad taste of america. for examples, see: Idol, American; survivor; Bachelor, the; wife swap; Vitale, Dick; etc.
thanks for reading. call me. I miss you.