In Case You Weren't Already Feeling Old AF...

...today MLB officially says goodbye to the 20th century:

This year, for the first time, there are no players on Opening Day rosters who were playing Major League Baseball in the 20th century. 

There were two Major Leaguers in 2018 who had played in the 1990s: Adrian Beltre and Bartolo Colon. Beltre retired at the end of last season after a 21-year Hall of Fame-caliber career that began in 1998. The 45-year-old Colon -- who debuted in 1997 and has pitched 21 seasons in the big leagues -- has not retired and has expressed the desire to continue his career, but he's unsigned entering Opening Day.

Me:

Y'a Rich!

Buzzfeed posts examples of what people considered to be the pinnacle of wealth when they were kids. SUCH AS:


And yes, I did the same thing 12 years ago but in their defense, none of our answers were the same.

State du Moi

Guy in McDonalds w/a big bag of McDonalds & a fountain drink just asked me for money so he can buy some food. I said I had none & quickly looked away, then spent the next hour fantasizing how Larry David would’ve called him out for asking for money for food while holding a big bag of food.

OFAH Bracket Sweet 16

That's right people, we're down to the Sweet 16!!!!

Match-ups that were tough this round:

Heroes and Villains vs. Little Problems - of course HAV's Batman scene is an all-time classic, but LP gets the edge here because of the final scene of Del Boy watching Rodney leaving his wedding reception, with an amazing look from David Jason acknowledging that his job raising Rodney is suddenly over. Then Del reveals the reason he never got married was because he had to raise Rodney. See full scene HERE.

Big Brother vs. Friday the 14th - I've always loved F14, there's a coziness to it, but it's tough to top BB, the first episode of them all. THIS SCENE HERE does a lot of heavy lifting to set the scene for the entire series.

He Ain't Heavy He's My Uncle vs. Thicker Than Water - Uncle Albert's incredible monologue about his neighborhood during the war is narrowly beaten out by Del Boy poignantly giving his father cash before sending him away forever after seeing him for the first time in almost 20 years.

Another round in the books! As Del Boy would say, "I think we're on a winner here!"

Incredibly, a New Low

Unlike during the Bush years, I've tried to keep Trump off of these pages because he and his supporters are such garbage human beings it's just too fucking depressing. But today's announcement that they're now seeking to cut funding to the Special Olympics may be the best distillation of him and his administration: it's not enough to engorge themselves with all the riches and power to heights of absurdity - they also go out of their way to be needlessly cruel to people in need. As the Atlantic once pointed out tough things happening to these people aren't unfortunate side effects of policies - the cruelty foisted on them is exactly the very point.

And the cost of the cuts the Special Olympics, you ask? Well, it turns out it could be covered by the cost of 5 Trumps weekends to Mar-a-Lago.

If you're not fucking embarrassed to be a human yet, I really don't know what to tell you.

Hot Tip du Jour

Hungry at the airport? The one food you can trust: chicken nuggets!

But even if I didn’t harbor food-poisoning fears, only eating nuggets at the airport is a solid strategy. Helen Rosner posited in a Beard Award-winning essay that chicken tenders are the perfect food, writing, “There’s no narrative to chicken tenders, there’s no performance. That is the substance of their allure: If you’re ordering them, you don’t have to look at the menu.” The same applies to chicken nuggets. Airports are stressful even at the best of times, thanks to the snail-paced security lines, forced shoe removal, and invasive TSA pat-downs; defaulting to generic chicken nuggets requires zero consideration and offers a small refuge from the otherwise anxiety-laced process of navigating air travel. 

Xmastime on chicken nuggets over the years HERE.

OFAH Bracket Challenge

As promised, I've re-seeded the Only Fools and Horses Episode Tournament in a random order to make the picks much more interesting. This led to at least 3 first-round match-ups consisting of episodes could've been in the top 10:

Yuppy Love vs. The Second Time Around
Chain Gang vs. The Class of '62 (particularly grueling since they're the best instances of episodes featuring all of Del's friends in scenes together.)
Happy Returns vs. A Touch of Glass

The Second Time Around, A Touch of Glass, Chain Gang, Class of '62 were all featured in my top-10 list from a while back.
 
Here's the first round results. Enjoy!

I Feel Like Someone Knows Something.

Thoughts. I Have Them.

You know you’re getting old when you’re watching Beverly Hills 90210 and find yourself thinking, “you know, that is some curiously expensive ovenware for a coupla college kids living at the beach...” 

Dafuck du Jour

Guys Mr. Rogers' middle name is "McFeely"???????

The Stack

I found this article about a father's messy stack of books interesting:

The Stack had started in a recessed space near my father’s half of the bed, bounded on one side by a wall and on the other by my parents’ dresser, a vertical behemoth taller than I would ever be. At some point in the Stack’s development, it had overtopped that piece of furniture, whereupon it met a second tower of books, which, at some slightly later point, had begun growing up along the dresser’s other side. For some reason, though, the Stack always looked to me as if it had defied gravity (or perhaps obeyed some other, more mysterious force) and grown down the far side of the dresser instead. At all events, the result was a kind of homemade Arc de Triomphe, extremely haphazard-looking but basically stable, made of some three or four hundred books.

I probably found it interesting because I can relate:

When I was a young buck my father had the stereotypical “guys chair”; ie it looked like it had been dropped from a rooftop and then stuffed with pork chops before siccing Cujo on it. No matter how many times my mother would whine about the goddam thing and scream he had to get rid of it, my dad refused. His chair; “The Master’s Chair.” God forbid you were sitting in it when he rolled into the house, you’d hafta hear him actually say “Out of the master’s chair while the master is in the house.” He’d come home from work every day at 5:00 and from the moment dinner was over (lessee, he’s home at 5:00, we’d be done at....5:07) until he retired for the night he’d sit in The Master’s Chair and read, barely looking up when nodding his head at 18 second intervals while my mother talked non-stop about everything in the world. And if the shabby chair wasn’t bad enough, he insisted on keeping whatever batch of books he was reading piled up in a mountain to the left of the chair – not piled neatly, mind you, but in a mound such that if you pulled one book out it was like that game Jenga, and the shit would come down on you like the ball in Indiana Jones.

OFAMM Update

I just did Round 2 of my Only Fools and Horses Episode Tournament and to be honest, it's disappointing - no upsets. Which shouldn't be a surprise since I seeded them from best to worst. Maybe it'd be more interesting to randomly seed them, and see what runs into each other?

OFAMM

Welcome to Only Fools and March Madness!

I filledout my first round below - not a lot of upsets obviously as I'm the one that seeded them. One glitch - for come reason, the seeds for Big Brother and Cash and Curry (my least favorite episode) are flipped. Grr.

Click through to do your own first round! :)

Happy Birfday Big Bear!

Happy 13th (!!!!!!!!!) birthday to my oldest god-child 🙂. A few years ago he provided me with this gem: 

(walking to pick his sister up from school and trying to gauge if I needed to call a car service)
Me: how long does it take to get from school to home?
Him: same as it does from home to school.

Ha! 😜 

I can’t believe he’s already a teenager. 

RIP Hal Blaine

Hal Blaine died this weekend at 90. He was the greatest drummer ever, playing behind the kit for The Wrecking Crew on 150 top ten hits, 40 number one songs, and countless other hits.

Dickhead du Jour

No no buddy let me get that for you!

Questions. I Have Them.

How has there not been a definitive movie about The Shot Heard 'Round the World?

Open Question for Bill Simmons

How could you possibly have left the Cincinnati Bearcats off this list, who won TWO NCAA titles the in each of the two years after the Big O left???

State du Moi.

110 seconds of watching Downton Abbey with a 9 year-old: “Who’s she? Who’s he? Who’s he? Who’s she? Who’s that? Who’s he? Who’s she? Who’s she? Who’s that? Who’s she? Who’s he? Who’s he? Who’s she? Who’s that? Who’s he? Who’s she? Who’s she? Who’s that?” (My head explodes.)

34 Years Ago Today

Bird goes for 60, a Celtics record, against the Hawks. No matter how many times you watch, this never gets old.

My Goddaughter is a Genius Artist, Part II

Watch her draw a raccoon...in 7 minutes!!!

I Need to Figure Out How To Ca$h in On My Goddaughter Being a Brilliant Artist

RIP Luke Perry

Sad. Obviously, he’s been in a million Xmastime posts and tomorrow I’ll have an appropriate retrospective.