Spring 2003

There was a girl I was OBSESSED with my freshman year of college. She was a fucking psycho, an Irish Cali girl with no brains and the brawn of a wildcat. We will call her "She-Ro". She had a couple of superpowers: the first being the ability to magically change phone numbers: in the years I was in contact with her she must have used about 15 to 20 different phone numbers, probably because of the disproportionate number of guys she had in her phonebook to the amount of numbers her phone allowed her to store.

Her second superpower was the ability to magically switch boyfriends from one day to the next. During the time I knew her, there were about 25 different guys who she introduced me to, and I firmly shook hands with, who she was either "dating" or she claimed to be her boyfriend at the time.

EVERY guy in my massive dorm complex (second biggest non-military dorm in the country) had some kind of story about this girl by the end of freshman year. I would start conversations at parties like this:

Me: Hey, you know (She-Ro)?

Felix: Are you kidding me? How can I not know her?

Mike: She slept with 2 guys on my floor.

Me: REALLY?

Joe: I made out with that bitch at a club during orientation. In a bathroom. You hit that, Scotty Boy?

Felix: It's like "Hello". You really can't see anything but those boobs.

I didn't believe them. It was well known that I had a thing for this girl, my whole floor thought I wouldn't shut the fuck up about her, and my friends from back home started to gossip. But it was clear that I was chasing the classroom slut. And it was hard to tell from the start.

During freshman orientation, I had danced with her at some "break the ice" event with a dancefloor. Among thousands of people, She-ro found me and started a dance, unlike any of which I had experienced before. It was almost like 2 minutes of captivity, pulling me over with a massive masculine grip, and basically took full control of my upper body. Apparently she recognized me from the previous summer at Georgetown. After the next song came on, she immediately released me, stopped the dance, and basically disappeared out of thin air. I wouldn't see her again until the fall. I was transfixed.

First week of class, she made it a point to ask me for notes repeatedly, and during the second month of school, October 2002, which was a hellish month for me for other reasons, she really brightened one of my dark days with an old-school note-passing exchange during a boring lecture.

She-ro was sitting 3 seats away from me, with no one in between. When the professor started speaking, droning on and on about pre-Cold War Russia or post-nuclear physics or some such bullshit, this girl began smiling, giving me seductive looks. This girl was very, very masculine and so were all the guys she knew, but not to the point that I couldn't get a major, raging hard-on in the middle of the lecture hall. I tried to cover it up with my notebook, but she saw what I was doing.

Then, she tore out half a page in her notebook, wrote something on it, and motioned a couple guys sitting behind us to pass it over to me. The note read as follows: "I want you :)" Enough even to get me to smile. This was my response, which I wrote "Sure thing babe, that's awesome yo"

Not sure what I was thinking with that one, but it definitely elicited a giggle. Then the professor ended his lecture, and everyone went their separate ways, so I couldn't catch her again next day. That Thursday, I did manage to find her after one of my classes in the hall.

Me: Hey there, what are you doing this weekend?

Her: I don't know yet. Probably going to Rain Thursdays, then Luxe on Friday and The Roxy Saturday.

Me: Alright, well I'll give you a call and maybe we can meet up.

Her: Alrighty then. Maybe kid.

At the time, this was unthinkable to my 18-year old brain. How could a girl who seemed to like me so much be unable to spend even a fraction of her weekend with me? I actually ended up going to the Roxy Saturday night, paying a 20 dollar cover to get into the club and walking around asking everybody if they had seen a fiery redhead tearing up the dancefloor. She was nowhere to be found. I went outside and called her number, or the first of the many numbers she gave me.

Me: Hello

(Picks up phone, loud music and crowd noise)

She-ro: Who is this?

Me: It's Scot. From class. I'm at the Roxy, just wondering if you're here.

Her (more loud music and crowd noise): Who is this?

Me: Scotty. Scotty Dukes.

Her (shouting above the crowd noise): Gotta go. Bye (click)

I saw her the next Monday after class and cornered her.

Me: Hey, I was at the Roxy Saturday night. I looked all over, where were you?

Her: The Roxy? We went to Swirl Saturday night.

Me: I thought you said we were going to meet up at the Roxy.

Her: When did I ever say that?

Me: On Thursday, remember?

Her: I don't think so. anyway I got class. Gotta go.

What an bitch. The girl was ICE cold. Yet I chased it. Every weekend I would call asking where she is. Sometimes I got loud music and crowd noise (Note: NO ONE should ever pick up their fucking phone at a club. Maybe a dive bar, where conversation can be audible. But a CLUB? Only the worst of the worst have ever done that to me). Sometimes I would get the immediately recognizable "This is no longer a working number" tone.

Yet still, I chased this crazy, unpredictable dragoness. Then one weekend, I got a random phone call from her at 2 in the morning. Caught me off-guard, I thought I must be seeing things on my cell phone. All my friends from home were there visiting me at the time, and they knew what it was.

Me: Hey what's up?

She-Ro: Just got back from the club. I'm exhausted. You wanna grab breakfast in the morning? West campus cafeteria

Me: Umm, sure. My friends are here though.

Her: Bring them.

Wow. Holy shit. Didn't see that one coming. My friends were all intrigued as to who this person was whom they'd heard of so much. So they agreed upon my friend "Kadavir" as the breakfast guest.

So we show up there, and amazingly she is there, giving me among the most ackward half-handshake half-hugs I've ever gotten. We get food, sit down, and as soon as we sit down, Kadavir runs away from the table, leaving me and her alone. We chat, and she tells me she has a "very exciting project" coming up, which is why she called this meeting. Nearly half an hour later, Kadavir returns, panting and sweating hard.

She-Ro: Well, that was kind of a long time to be going to the bathroom. Where did you go?

Kadavir: Oh, well I had to take a call from this producer we're gonna be working with.

(I had told her the fake story that we were an independent rap duo trying to get a record deal. She bought it.)

Her: Oh, that's awesome!

Five minutes later, she had to "go run", and pulled one of her familiar diaappearing acts. Apparently, she had just come from an early morning run. Fake story. I asked Kadavir what that was really about.

Me: Dude, where the fuck did you go? I was supposed to tell her this story about our rap career, you were supposed to be the color commentary.

Kadavir: I just took the biggest diahrrhea shit in human history.

Me: For half an hour? Damn dude.

Kadavir: I dunno. I saw this girl, took a good look at her, saw how much of an ice queen she was and she made me nervous, made me queasy. I immediately lost my appetite. Icy cold.

If that isn't a sign that girl is bad news, I don't know what is. For the next month she vanished. She was not in class, not around the dorms, absolutely nowhere to be found. I wondered if she had failed out or got kicked out or transferred to another school, none of which was uncommon for freshman year. Maybe that's the "project" she referred to.

Then, sometime around early April She-ro suddenly resurfaced, in the most shocking way imaginable. Freshman year I had a dorm-mate named EuroBaller, who was a cool guy. He was the first guy to send me the leaked version of Eminem's "Lose Yourself", the first person on the floor to hear Radiohead's new album, discovered Homestar Runner years before everyone else. He obviously had his ear to the street.

Euroballer came into my room one Saturday afternoon.

EuroBaller: Yo Scotty. Remember that girl She-Ro who you used to be obsessed with?

Me: Yeah. What about her.

EuroBaller: You... you gotta check out this website man

Me: Oh no. Was she in a porno? That wouldn't surprise me.

EuroBaller: It's pretty freakin' close man.

He then took charge of my computer and directed me to a certain website. All the guys on our floor would pass around pornos and stuff to each other, so nothing really could have shocked me. But this did. My reaction to this website would have to be equivalent in nature to anyone reacting to "Two Girls One Cup" for the first time.

Euroballer: She has a nice ass, doesn't she? The girl, front and center. You recognize that hair?

Me: Oh... OH god! NO way. That's her! Holy shit!

Euroballer: Comes out next month. You might want to check that out.

Euroballer went on to call the other guys from our floor into my room to tell them of his discovery:

C-Rock: OH SNAP! Scotty's girl is in a porno movie. OH SNAP! (this was C-Rock's famed expression whenever something crazy went down on our floor)

Famguy: Jesus Almighty. What section is she in?

Me: 301.

Famguy: Mind if I sit in on your next class?

BillBrassky: Boobs have got to be Double-Ds at least. Ass is definitely a bedonkadonk.

Jada: That is a hell of an ass. I would kill to touch that in da cluub.

Basically, She-Ro was chosen out of millions of girls to take part in this movie produced by MTV which showed normal girls turned into viscious sluts when placed into a promiscuous situation: Spring Break. Basically it took a group of like 20 people, 10 guys 10 girls, and put them on a Spring Break trip together with cameras everywhere at all times and documented every raunchy detail of what happened, who had sex. what fights broke out, etc. High-quality entertainment for my dollar. And HER ASS in a tiny bikini was chosen as the cover shot of all the movie's posters, website, promotional flyers, everywhere. The hair was recognizable. It was definitely her.

I would MUCH rather she be in a porno. Then, it would only be a small and select people who see her open up. Here, her promiscuous spring break exploits would be shown on a big screen in every theater in the country!

Ultimately, after much deliberation I just decided to see the movie. I bought a late-night Sunday ticket the weekend it came out, and asked my friends Linzo and Madrid to go with me as "moral and emotional support". And with that kind of movie, I would need all the support I can get. We walk in, the theater is practically empty except for the three of us. Good sign.

So the movie starts, everyone gets off the plane looking all conservative. Then the second day there, they all have a wet t-shirt contest, and this conservative dude breaks out of his shell, goes apeshit and wins. Next scene, it's a hotel pool late at night, and it's the wet t-shirt winner alone, with my friend She-Ro, on the big screen. They are in the pool, naked, making out and fooling around. Next scene, they are in a bedroom, a nightvision camera capturing them having sex.

This is when I start freaking out. Not really, but mentally i did. Let's say I had hooked up with her after that note-passing exchange? Does that make me automatically eligible for contracting an STD? The shock of it all was too much to handle for my poor young brain. If it was any redemption to me, the movie was an absolute bomb and MTV wasted millions of dollars on advertising for it. Very cool. On the other hand, she came out a winner with a free Spring Break trip and her 15 minutes of fame, neither of which she and her friends would shut up about for a very long time. Not cool.

I was "friends" with She-Ro for the rest of the time we were in college. Sometimes I saw her, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes she had another dude on her arm, very rarely she didn't. But I never looked at her the same way again. Never chased her again. Even had an opportunity to make out with her at a party, the following fall. Possibly. Either way I turned it down and it never happened. And for my long-term health, it's probably better that it never did. She was "that MTV girl". Those thoughts had long been filed into foreclosure.

Even a few weeks ago, I got a random IM from She-Ro (not sure how she still had my IM)

She-Ro: Hey there.

Me: Umm, hey. I thought you moved to Iraq or something after we graduated.

Her: Yeah, I was in Iraq with my soldier boyfriend, then I lived in Egypt for a year. Now I'm back in the states and I'm moving to NYC (doesn't everyone eventually?).

Me: Oh. Well that's great.

Her: You know, I really could use some help getting around. Can you show me around maybe, how to use the subway?

Me: Oh sure. Maybe. I'll give you a call.

Her: I changed my number again. It's (number). Just making sure you had it.

Me: OK sure I'll call.

That Saturday night I called her 5 times, no answer. The following Saturday, called 5 more, just for the heck of it. No answer each time. The next week, I got a new phone, and did not bother giving her MY number. She can chase now, because I'm done. Good riddance.

An Essay

If you’re a happy person, if you’re satisfied with where you are at right now in your adult life, and where things are going for you and your job, your marriage, home, etc, then you can STOP reading this right now. I mean it. STOP! Go watch some football, some TV, American Idol, anything. The rest of you, don’t say I didn’t warn ya...

A long time ago, there was plenty of “opportunity” in this world. Throughout elementary school, in the early 1990s I was constantly told I was among “the best in my class” and there was “so much opportunity” for my future in middle school. Then when I was in middle school, in the late 90s’ they said the same thing to me about high school and beyond. Then when I was in high school in the early 2000s, they told me the same thing about college. Then in college, during the universally hated “Bush Years”, they all said same thing about my “career.” Professors, parents, and other nagging adults wouldn’t shut up about how there was “so much opportunity” in this world. My peers wouldn’t shut up about how excited they were to stay in touch with me once they all settled in to live their lame yuppie lives, and planned “adventure weekends in the Berkshires” for all our friends once a year, or promised to “get together at happy hours when we we’re all living in NYC and rich”. So much opportunity back then it seemed, so much promise.

That is an old world order mentality, an order of investments, 401Ks, 9-5ers, yuppies, office culture, happy hours, “working for the weekend”, “work hard, play hard”, company retreats, BBQs, fraternity weddings, baseball games, Sunday NFL beerfests, company box for Jimmy Buffet, charity softball tournaments, etc, before becoming a slave to the same old grind come Monday morning. And where did I fit into that world order? I never did. Never have, and never will. And mark my words: that douche world order is dying fast.

Think about it: Why do people try so hard at their jobs, working so many hours doing shit they absolutely hate? So they get access to a company-exclusive happy hour? NO. So they can get tickets to one free concert or baseball game a year because their IT guy has a hookup? NO! So they have a chance to out-belt their rival in Accounting on Thursday karaoke nights at the bar by singing along to “Don’t Stop Believin”, or any other lame douchebag sing-along? NO! NO! NO!

It’s because they believe it will lead to a FUTURE, and lead to the OPPORTUNITY to go horseback-riding, spend a year in Israel or open a restaurant in The Bahamas or whatever common fantasies working Americans have. Why did I bust my ass doing a million different activities in high school, trying to impress a million different people doing useless tasks that ultimately didn’t lead to shit? It’s because I was told they would lead to opportunity. Why did I spend every Friday night of my freshman year making musical beats and rapping instead of partying? It’s because I was told in high school that I had “talent” and “might be able to “land a job” with my music. That sure as shit didn’t happen to me.

Today, I barely even try. I wake up when I want to, go to sleep whenever the hell I want to, play by my own rules. I stopped playing the old world order games when I realized they weren’t getting me anywhere. I have worked several jobs where upon hire, they told me there was “so much opportunity here” or “I couldn’t be in a better place”. The whole time I was working for these jobs, no matter how hard I actually tried, no one would say anything to me except about all these things that I SHOULD be doing and how much more I SHOULD be like someone else in the company. That’s like if you’re sitting next to a girl at a party, and instead of saying how cool you are, she keeps talking about her douchebag boyfriend: “Frank’s doing so well at his job” or “Frank’s taking me to Thailand. What are YOU doing?” How would that make YOU feel? Exactly

Then each time, I ended up a few months later exactly where I started: sitting at home, employment terminated. No “goodbyes” or “thanks for coming out of your way to join us each day when you could’ve been kissing another company’s ass.” Instead it was just plain and simple. To paraphrase: “You’ve taken way too much of our money, now get the hell out of here before you take any more”. That’s cold and it hurts. I don’t do fucking cold. Not anymore.

Even colder and nastier would be the feeling of a guy who’s spent 20 years working at the same company, living “the life” toiling away at accountability or insider usability testing or whatever the hell people do. Married to his “high school sweetheart” with 2 kids, highlight of his year is dominating at company softball games, etc. Then one day, he hears “I’m sorry, we’ve laid off your entire department. And we have to terminate your life savings also. Company policy. Goodbye”

This, EXACTLY THIS, is happening, on average, to 8-10 THOUSAND people EACH DAY in 2009. Think I’m bluffing? Look here (LayoffDaily.Com) and Here (layofftracker.blogspot.com). THIS may very well be the end product of all your labor and business etiquette and struggles. I don’t play those games. Not anymore. A new world order needs to take shape.

First of all, people need to think for themselves. So many people I’ve met are unable to formulate a single original thought, one thing that isn’t based on “what they do” or what co-workers and friends and roommates are doing. When I walk outside during the day, when I might stop in a bar for a beer or two, I see thousands of blank faces, in suits and ties, people more transfixed on a project or a seminar or the Mets game than on the fact that tomorrow, the world as they know it may collapse. I see no color, no emotion, no personality on these people’s faces. They are slaves to a lost cause. I see a Zombie Nation. And people wonder why the terrorists still hate us after 9/11. WAKE THE HELL UP!

Second of all, once the mass layoffs stop, if they EVER do in our lifetimes, the structure of corporate environment needs to change. If it takes the deepest “recession” in history to wake people the hell up, then sobeit. People need to stop toiling endlessly towards unattainable goals and things that may or may not happen (they may or may not look at your resume, you may or may not pass some stupid test towards some endless tasks for some program that doesn’t mean SHIT). People need to take control of their situations, realize when something isn’t leading anywhere, realize most of the stuff they do is dead-end, and make new futures based on ideas. Change the game by not playing the game. Make your own goddamn destiny instead of putting your life, your future, in the hands of some douchebags who may or may not give a shit you even exist.

So the next time someone tells me jack about opportunity, tells me everything’s OK and the opportunity is there to have everything I will ever need, or that a young folk like me shouldn’t have ANY trouble in today’s job market, then I may or may not be inclined to scream, at the top of my lungs, ENOUGH!

May 2009

I woke up last Saturday in a complete daze, my mind still in an alcohol fog from the night before. I had gone to a concert or something, then drank some more afterwards and ate a lot of pizza. Something like that, typical Friday night shit. Who cares? As I usually do I immediately thought of where the hell I was the night before, and if I had anything important or even worth my time that day. Nine times out of ten on a Saturday, that answer is no. But this day was different.

This day I had a gig. Three hours of filming and taking photographs at a wedding ceremony. How and why I got this job, I won't say, but I was happy to have it. But I was in a post-drunk funk and had a couple short hours to snap out of it. It was one of those days. I rolled out of bed at noon, left the house at 2 and I was swaying.

The people around me were suddenly big and imposing. I was seriously frightened to see yuppie meatheads in their Michigan or Penn State football gear walking around Murray Hill. What was going on? I couldn't explain it. These people SCARED me. I had to get food in my system tho, and had to get batteries and stuff from a pharmacy for my camera. But I couldn't get myself to do it, to walk like everybody else on this crowded block on a Saturday with all these people I suddenly could not even get myself to even look at. I looked at them as suits in disguise. And I hate suits.

So I broke into a full-on sprint. As I ran full-speed into Duane Reade, I accidentally brushed against this girl, but with my overwhelming momentum she mistook it for a full-on charge. It wasn't and I apologized. As I began to walk towards the camera section I heard the girl and her friend rampaging, chattering, running their mouths on me:

"This guy is a fucking jerk"

"Did he seriously just do that"

"I seriously want to kill this guy".

I came back and apologized again. The chatter continued. It turns out that the pharmacy did not have the parts and batteries I needed. They told me I needed to go to another store, 2 blocks away. Just great. So I leave the store and begin walking towards the other store. Midway there, who do I pass but those same two girls. The chatter was still going strong:

"Oh, this lunatic again"

"He should only die"

I couldn't listen to this chatter a second longer. So I turned around, looked them dead in the face, and said it:

"You don't like me? I said I was sorry. What are you gonna do, SUE ME?"

The chatter continued:

"Is this guy serious"

"Uh, I'm a fucking lawyer you jerk"

Oh yeah, sure she's a lawyer. As I reached the store, I turned around and gave these two a nice long shot at my middle finger. Goodbye. As I began to search around for these camera parts, these two girls stormed into the store, and the floodgates to hell opened. One of them, a portly twentysomething woman with brown hair, went right up to my face and began yelling:

"Um, I am a lawyer, don't you ever fucking say that to me. Give me your information NOW. Who are your people? GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING INFORMATION..."

This girl was a LUNATIC.

"I will sue you for every penny you have. You are a fucking idiot and I truly hope you die. Don't you EVER think for a moment that I will not sue you."

She continued like this, on and on for five full fiery minutes. I was truly terrified. All the store employees were riveted by this scene. Keep in mind that this was a small store on a not-so-busy day, and this girl was screaming.

The only words I could muster were a weak and sincere: "I'm sorry". I could kill this girl. I wanted to smash something. But somehow, I was the bigger man. I was put in my place and I stayed there and took it like a man.

I prayed it was over. It wasn't. I closed my eyes for ten seconds and prayed that this girl was done and out of the store. She wasn't.

Her final words: "If I ever see you again you are a dead man. Nada. Broke. File a Chapter 11. Who are your people? YOU ARE A DEAD MAN." I had never seen this girl in my life before. All this, and not a word from me. I keep thinking over and over: "It's gonna blow over. She has to realize she's wasting her breath at some point." She never did. Then, Lord have mercy, she left the store, finally realizing it was a lost cause.

It took me a full twenty seconds to even breathe after this. My blood was boiling, my hair was standing on end, and I began wishing that I was anywhere but here. Then I turned around to face the shocked store employees. Like, What do you say in this situation? Some girl just came into their store to yell at you for a good five minutes. Is there really anything you can say to restore order?

I gave it my best shot: "How is everybody today? Beautiful day we got"

The clerk's answer: "Better day than yours." I tried to crack a smile, but I just couldn't. My adrenaline was pumping, my heart rate was a mile a minute, and somehow I wanted revenge on whoever makes the universe this way for me. That nameless being who can turn any random minute of any day into a living hell.

It turns out after all that, they didn't even have the camera parts I needed. They were in a bag in my closet. After all that, I didn't even need to leave the house! I walked out of that store and delivered an earth-shaking roar. I screamed so loud that Zach De La Rocha may have to move over and let me be the new official singer of Rage. A primal scream of rage, of misunderstanding, of every emotion that was boiling through my body at the time. It was one of those days when the universe hated me, the city gods did not want me to exist. What should have been one of the greatest days of the year was ruined.

It took me a full six hours to crack another smile after that. It took a full half hour for the most primitive of rage to subside. I lifted weights, jumped up and down, literally could not sit still for the next 30 minutes. I thought of all the bad things I could possibly do to this girl. Then I had a thought. From Psych class, freshman year. She is a poor soul who probably got fired or dumped or something and projects rage on others. It took me five full hours to realize this possibility, that maybe, just maybe someone in this universe was pissed off for some reason besides my existence. But once I did, it was a beautiful day

2006-07

My first official "Job" job after I graduated college was a part-time position at one of America's top radio providers. I have mentioned this position before, because it was the one which completely devastated my New Year's party in the year 2007.

But even in that tiny description, I could not exactly convey just how many ways I absolutely got on these guys' nerves. I mean, don't get me wrong, this was probably the only job I actually liked. It was a position essentially handed to me through a family connection, and involved sitting in a large room with a lot of people listening to a sports game and pushing a couple of buttons once in a while to assure that ads ran at appropriate times and there was no dead air. We were told in our initial hiring talks that every second of airtime was listened to and scrutinized by millions of sports fans. However, for some of the games I had to do I questioned the validity of that statement. (Ex. Idaho Disciplinary Prep Falcons vs. Montana State Seminary College Mountain Hawks). When I could hear individual claps from the crowd during the game, and announcers that sounded like teenagers, I could tell that NO ONE gave a shit about my game.

It was a job that allowed me to rekindle an interest in the sporting world without having to make a large financial commitment of going to games, buying merchandise, and other fan-related activities. Those activities I will NEVER take part in again, for a very strong reason. But that's for another story.

Instead, I let the sporting world make ME money. It wasn't that much money, because all I could do is come in and do 3-4 hours of a game and take whatever I could. But, then again, money is money. That's where the positives end.

Negative Number One: This job took away anything even barely resembling a traditional "weekend". NFL, college bball, and hockey games went well into the wee hours of the morning on Friday and Saturday nights, and the NFL games were ALL DAY Sunday.

Number Two: From the middle of June to the beginning of September, there was absolutely nothing for me to do, because all their major sports had ended. This meant long stretches of time just... sitting on my ass and doing nothing, waiting for a call to pick up a lone shift.

Number Three: My supervisors and co-workers were nothing but the worst pieces of douchebag dogshit you have ever seen. This was the most anti-social job I have ever worked, and yet the only way to move up and advance to other positions in the company was through social interaction and making your own connections. No "team meetings", no happy hours, no field trips, just sitting at a desk for four hours, then you leave and that's it. Maybe say hi to someone in the bathroom, or maybe when you're getting a soda, but that was the extent of the social interaction. And not like any of these people had any personality that was worthy of starting a conversation with anyway.

Number Four: This position required a bladder of steel, which unfortunately none of us possess. Once your shift began, there were absolutely NO bathroom breaks allowed until the last second of post-game coverage was over and done with. Not even a quick halftime piss- there was always something going on which needed careful monitoring. Many times I broke this rule during a boring talk segment and many times I was caught. The worst were NFL or Nascar Sundays, with an 11AM call time after a long night of drinking. Just when you sit down at your desk for a long shift, you feel a heavy beer shit coming from the pizza slices you ate at 3:30AM the night before. That pain is essentially indescribable, and like nothing I have endured since.

Number Five: Keeping me off the Internet when there is a computer in front of me is the equivalent of keeping Lindsay Lohan from taking drugs at a party. It just won't happen. There was absolutely no Internet usage permitted when a shift was in progress. But of course, this tempted me to check my Email, check a website, check Youtube, or anything that didn't have do with the game. This was likely what got me into the most trouble, because it was a rule barely enforced in our initial training, and one I guess we needed to learn ourselves. I never did. In fact, the creation of this very website occured, "illegally" during a shift of this job.

So how long did I last in this position? Amazingly, exactly a year. I was caught breaking these "rules" several times, but always seemed to elicit a genius cover-up. Also, keep in mind that this was back in 06' and 07', when the economy of the USA was fairly stable and thriving, unlike the absolute mess it is now (in 2009). So how close did I get to an embarrasing situation. Here's how:

Valentine's Day, February 07'. I had to take a night shift and couldn't find time to grab a bite and get the food out of my system beforehand. So I had no choice but to stop off at the nearest Wendy's and get some food to eat during the game I had to do. I ordered a chili and a hamburger, and put it in a brown paper bag to take upstairs. It was a rainy, snowy mess outside, and as you may know paper bags and moisture do not mix. So I ran across the street and jumped into the elevator up to the studio.

While I was in the elevator, I noticed the bag's instability. I checked in quickly and ran over to the desk I was supposed to operate from. Just as I was about to sit down, the bag gave way, splattering the remnants of my chili all over the desk and surrounding area. Keep in mind that there was someone who worked out of that desk during the day, and subsequently was not happy to find the remnants of a chili dinner all over her stuff. I tried not to make that big a deal of it, and cleaned up the mess the best I could, but it was not enough. My supervisor said nothing to me about the incident, so I thought it would be forgotten. The next morning at 9AM, I got a call from my boss, DeuschBag. He was not happy. Here is how out conversation went, verbatim:

DB: Good morning Mr. Dukes.

Me: Morning.

DB: I hate to inform you, but there's been an explosion.

Me: Excuse me?

DB: Last night, apparently there was an explosion.

Me : Wow, that's awful, sorry to hear.

DB: An explosion of meat and cheese and sauce at the desk you were working at.

Me (barely, painstakingly holding back my laughter): Oh was there really? That's awful.

DB: Yeah it was pretty bad. They had to re-apply the carpeting, one of the worst jobs I've ever seen.

Me: OK. So why are you telling me this?

DB: Because you were the only one at that desk last night, and I would have to suspect you. Everyone is saying that you did it.

Me: I know NOTHING about this, sir

DB: You're sure you know nothing about this.

Me: Absolutely sure. I had nothing to do with this.

DB: OK that's fine. In that case we'll have to review the security tapes to see who did. Sorry to bother you, have a nice day.

Amazingly, not another word was ever said about it after this conversation. So I miraculously managed to escape the ax here, but you may be wondering how I got it eventually. It happened after a shift around Thanksgiving of 07', with no advance warning. However, one of my co-workers, an attractive woman named "Rave", somehow knew. The day before what was to be the last shift I ever worked, she said this to me: "I hope you're having a nice day today", and she winked at me after her shift ended. I had seen that girl hitting on every single other one of my co-workers, but she had never said a single word to me before that night. Then, the next day, DeuschBag called and confirmed the obvious: that he and the supervisors had been watching me screw up for awhile and just couldn't help me out anymore. No goodbyes, no thank yous, he just said "Your employment has been terminated. Have a nice day. Goodbye".

It turns out that less than six months after I was gone, the company completed a controversial business transaction, and its stock price has recently plummeted to less than a dollar a share, so I probably would have been "terminated" soon enough anyway. But the fact that one of my co-workers sandbagged me like that, and it took the company months of not saying shit to me before they suddenly cut me off like that, makes me regret ever going there. Now I miss the job, because sports jobs are harder and harder to come by, but at the time it felt like my world was over. What should have been the most positive work experience of my life went down in flames. Have a nice day

February 2009

A few months ago, I went to visit my friend Phase, who was staying in Boston. Originally my trip was supposed to be only one night, but given that it had been almost three years ago, if ever, that I had spent an entire weekend away from the city, I decided to make it a traditional full weekend journey. Given that I could only stay with Phase one night, and had no alternative places to stay, I was forced to go to online travel websites and ask them to give me their cheapest last minute deals. I ended up booking a place that, unbeknownst to me, is notorious for being one of the biggest pieces of shit in the US. Here are some of the reviews of the place, posted verbatim from TripAdvisor.com:

• "The owner was very odd and used to lurk the corridors waiting outside the bathroom at odd hours of the night but that was mild compared to the fellow guests in particular one man in his 50s who used to appear everytime me or my friends went to use the bathroom even if that meant pretending to use the bathroom every 5 mins. He would try to corner you or if you had already made it safely into the bathroom he would be working on the lock outside trying to get the door open. It got so bad we would have to go to the bathroom in pairs while the others watched from the little crack at the side of our door. Late at night we could hear his voice as he banged on our door manically and when we finally left the hostel for the bus station at 7am one morning he emerged from his room and glared at us holding his crotch and watched us from the top of the stairs while we lugged our luggage down the stairs."
• "The beds looked nasty, the sheets were stained and cig burned, the TV had no remote, the A/C barely worked, the door lock was nearly busted, etc. Worse than the dirtiest dorm room or trailer I've even seen. I would have preferred camping in a public park."
• "Avoid (name of hotel) like the plague, or you might just get it."
• "My husband and I were reminiscing about our worst hotel experience ever. By far, after 28 years of extensive traveling, (name of hotel) is the worst, scariest place still not condemned and still tricking visitors into staying there (where IS the health department, by the way? Who has jurisdiction?). To describe it as the Bates Motel from Psycho is a start."

So there you go. Bates Motel meets Rapist City meets Haunted House. For one night? Sounded like a wager to me. After five months in job-recession hell, I was in desperate need of a real adventure. If only I had known what kind of horror story this house had waiting for me.

After a long, uncomfortable and heavily trafficked bus ride, I arrived at this shithole. Old and dilapidated it was, to the point of almost falling apart. i was escorted up to my room by the maitre'd, a "New England redneck" who was almost as quaintly creepy as the reviews describe, and even physically resembled Norman Bates from "Psycho". My room came with asbestos-filled exposed brick walls, an 1800s-model push-button phone which did not work, and a 1950s-model TV which only picked up a single channel, a bizarre public-service station that looked like it was produced in the 70s' or before. The bedside desk contained a Christian Holy Bible, which most people would desperately need for any chance of surviving a night here. I'm surprised there was not a coke needle or a gun in there as well. This place was already giving me the willies. After settling into my room and changing for the night, I gave myself a quick tug to relieve my travel anxiety (Drama from Entourage is right, it works wonders).

Then I realized that the Burger King lunch I had on the rest stop of the bus ride was not fully out of my system. And my room did not even come equipped with its own restroom- I would have to walk out of my room and down a long hallway to get to it. So I pulled and turned the doorknob hard to leave my room, and the doorknob fell off the door! I tried wedging my finger into the doorknob frame to get it open. Then used my key. Both did not reach. I was trapped.

I took a deep breath, looked carefully at the walls to make sure they were not closing in on me in a Dr. Evil-type trap, or that this was not a bizarre Scare Tactics prank that one of my friends was pulling on me. After five minutes of paranoid staring around the room, I determined that neither was the case, and I really was stuck.

Then I looked to my phone. I considered calling Phase, who was 15 minutes away, to see if he would be of any help. Then I realized that he is cruel in nature, and that would be pretty much be like feeding myself to the wolves. He would most likely laugh in my face and tell me he hopes I get stuck in there for the whole weekend. I wisely decided against. But as I took out my phone to consider calling someone, I realized that my phone had long since died. My phone has a tendency to fuck with me and die at the worst possible moment, doesn't it? And since the hotel was so old, there was not a single electrical outlet that I could plug in to charge it. And naturally, no wi-fi network or landline. I opened my computer, and with what little juice I had on it, tried to jump on "Rick's Sandy Vagina", and other similarly named wireless networks from the college student housing located nearby. All required passwords. That was not an option.

At this moment, I looked back to any book I had read on Basic Survival 101 and any Worst-Case Scenario-type thing I have ever seen. I considered my options:

-I could use all the strength I have to try and bust down the door. There is very little chance of this succeeding, for there could be a metal coating directly behind the frame. And even if I do succeed, there is likely a multi-thousand dollar fine awaiting me for destruction of property, and possibly another date with a judge. No go

-I could jump out the window. Upon looking out though, I see that there is a three-story drop if I choose that option. Which would result in me breaking every bone in my body, thus costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in surgery to repair.

-I could scream my head off until someone hears me. If I choose this option then there is a chance I could be arrested for disturbing the peace, verbally abused for disturbing someone, or maybe there just won't be anyone out there to respond or give a shit that I'm locked in my room. After all, I come from New York City, where no one gives a crap about you, talks to you, smiles at you, or even acknowledges your presence if you're in such a situation. But considering that it could potentially save harm to both my wallet and my body, I consider this to be the best option

Well Kitty Genovese may have been killed in New York because no one heard her tortured screams, but I put my hope and faith in the fact that someone in Massachusetts would be compassionate enough to respond to my cries for help. I opened the window as wide and I could and let loose at the top of my lungs: "HELLO! HELP! SOMEONE! IS ANYONE THERE!

Three floors below, cars passed, music blared from distant parties, car doors slammed, but no one heard me. I waited five minutes, conserved my breath, and tried again. No answer from outside the window. Then I went up to the busted door and hoped that someone in this madhouse of a hotel would have the piece of mind to respond.: I walked right up to the door and let loose: "HELLO! SOMEONE! ANYONE! PLEASE! PLEASE! HELLLOOOOO! 5 minutes of that, and no response. 5 minutes later, with my lungs burning from all the screaming, I tried again, with the hopes there would not be police nearby to suspect a murder: HELLO! SOMEONE! Then just for the fact that I may be stuck in there for awhile, I started to mix up the things I screamed, even throwing in a quote from Will Ferrell in "Talladega Nights" at one point: "HELP ME GOD! HELP ME JESUS! HELP ME TOM CRUISE!" Nothing.

And then, with my throat burning from screaming so hard, one last-gasp "HELLLLOOOOOOOOOO!" Then, like an answer from the Gods, I heard a response "Hello" from the other side of the door!

Me: Yes! Yes! God are you there? Hello.

Older Female voice: Hello.

Me: Yes, Thank you.

Female Voice: What in God's tarnation is all that racked about in there? I'm tryin' to sleep goshdarnit!

Me: I am trapped in my fucking room. The door handle fell off. Please get whoever is at the front desk to come up here with a key to this room immediately

Female voice: I'll see what I can do.

Me: Thank God.

At this point I crossed my fingers and said a prayer, one of the few times in my life I was reduced to prayer and desperation. This woman seemed like she was in no mood to show any kind of compassion. But five minutes later, I heard someone coming up the stairs, and then after what seemed like an eternity, saw the empty door handle frame turn, and a covered-in-sweat Norman Bates open the door and enter the room.

Norman: What in God's name is the problem here?

Me (pointing to door handle on the floor) Um, that.

Norman: Oh, damn that's the third door handle I've had to fix today. Why don't you just open the door with the lock handle from now on, and I'll see if I can fix 'er in the mornin'.

Me: Um, thanks then. I'll do my best.

Norman: Happy sleepins'.

I don't think I have ever been as relieved to see a redneck as I was there at that second. That kind of physical relief was a good pick-me-up after a half hour of genuine fear. I then decided that for me to have any chance of getting sleep in such an awful place, I would have to get as drunk as physically possible. I went out to all my old favorite bars from college for and did exactly that for the next five hours, drinking as much as I could, as fast as I could, and not giving a shit about money spent. This night culminated in me getting kicked out of one of my all-time favorite bars, exactly at the moment three of my old best friends from college were coming in, leaving them to all ask themselves the question "What the hell happened to Sherm?" Read this story and you will see why I was in such a badly wasted state.

After surviving the night and checking out of the hotel the next morning without any other catastrophes or the ghosts of rape victims past showing up in my room, I realized that a survival-seeking adventure was exactly what I had needed. In the months since, I realized that I have not felt any sense of joy as real and palpable as when I saw that door frame open. As a matter of fact, with their affordable nightly rates and reputation for danger, I think I might have to rent the Bates Hotel out for a residency. Haunted House 2009 maybe? Who's ready to get scurred?