Hey Everyone. Sorry I missed last week, but we had a family sort of emergency. Usually, what I consider a “family emergency” has something to do with not having enough whiskey in the house, but this one was actually real. My mom had some medical stuff going on. She’s much better now and things are looking up, but it was a tough little period to go through.
We spent a lot of time at Carle Hospital and I will say this. Yeah, I know they get a fair amount of crap from the community about taxes and expansion and whatever. This may or may not be deserved, but either way, I felt a fuck of a lot better knowing that my mom was getting treated at a great medical facility. Sure, there were times when I was pissed off at them, but then again I was pissed off at a lot of things and Carle was pretty low on the list.
The staff was friendly and considerate, and I think that sort of attitude made both mom and our families feel better about her being there. So, since it appears that mom is back in business, it also appears that I can get back to writing a column and being a general rat bastard. It was genuinely sort of hard to be nice to everyone for ten days. Let’s get it on.
MY MUD IS NO LONGER TOUGH
As you may remember, the little Tough Mudder event is this weekend. I’m totally juiced for it … in the same way most fellas look forward to a good swift kick in the grapes. Oh, but I’m prepared for it … in the same way Pearl Harbor was prepared in December of 1941. I have a feeling it’s gonna suck … in the same way that things that suck usually suck.
So, yeah, it sounds worse and worse to me as the day approaches. The only thing that seems worse than doing the goddamned thing is not doing the goddamned thing and feeling like a candyass. So apparently they have me right where they want me.
The latest news from Tough Mudder, or as I now call them “The Worst Organization Ever,” is that since the area where the event is held has been flooded very badly, participants will no longer be allowed to park at the event. Okay, this sucks for several reasons. First of all, it means we have to park about an hour away and ride a godforsaken bus both to and from the event. Even though I haven’t seen the bus, I’m pretty comfortable calling it “godforsaken.”
So, um, nothing prepares someone for a fucking 10-mile run through the mud like a bus ride. By the same token, at the end of the race, nothing says, “job well done” like a bus ride back to your car. I’m sure I’ll have a fairly good base of mud in just about every damned orifice I have and I look forward to having a bouncy-assed school bus push all that mud even further into my body. There’s a good chance next week’s column will be about how I’ve been dealing with my cholera.
Now it’s not just mud and obstacles, but everything that goes along with a school bus ride. I genuinely hope it’s the last “Lord of the Flies” moment in my adult life. I think a lot of people lose control of their bowels in a regular race, so I totally expect that bus ride back to the car to be quite the glamorous event. My only hope if that I hurt myself so badly I have to be removed from the course by helicopter. Yes, no one wants to get hurts, but on the other hand, no one wants to ride a fucking bus very much either.
Either way, the other part of the course being flooded thing that sort of sucks, besides the bus ride, is that, you know, the course is flooded. It seems dangerous enough with all the shit they do to the course. I can’t imagine an act of God making any of the obstacles user-friendlier. I’m already having nightmares of drowning in a tube of water because some dickhole with a Dave Matthews Band shirt is trying to climb over me. Hopefully the mud will help at least cover the smell from the dirty hippie that will probably be my demise.
As always, attitude is the most important thing in events like this, and I already have a pretty fucking bad one, so I may have at least a slight chance of actually coming back home. If I do make it back, I would advise everyone to steer clear of me by Saturday evening, as the cocktailing may become even more extreme than the race I’m sure I will have forgotten by then.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
If I wrote that someone was considering remaking the wonderful movie, Point Break, no one would believe me. It sounds made up. Well, maybe it isn’t. Rumor has it that there is talk of just that. I don’t know, while it would be hard to make that movie much worse, it also seems like it would be hard to make it much better, too. Still…
EXTRAS
Let me preface this by saying, “Yeah, I know it’s just a Burger King,” but the Burger King in Savoy is really nice. The people are friendly and it’s pretty clean.
Those Bing versus Google advertisements should really just say, “Bing has more pictures!”
Wouldn’t it be great if having dandelions in your yard was a sign of prosperity?
Former Plimsouls guy, Peter Case, is coming in June, the guy who sang, “A Million Miles Away,” in Valley Girl. I am sort of looking forward to that.
Buona sera, senorina, kiss me goodnight.