Ocean City, Maryland

I used to enjoy having being younger than most of my friends. For some reason, as a child, I assumed this meant that I got to live longer even if it meant being shorter and skinnier than my peers. Obviously, this was pretty dumb reasoning. Being younger than all of your friends stops being fun right after your 20^th birthday.

My friend Dan and I are the last in our group of friends to turn 21. This means that while everyone else gets to go to bars, Dan and I recreate my social life from age 11 to age 16. Basically, I have enough time to start a Madden franchise and play through the 2027 season. As an aside, I always hated how Madden allows players to take storied franchises with deep ties to the local community – such as the Packers or Steelers – and move them to hundreds of locations in the country, including Puerto Rico…but not to any cities in New Jersey. Yes, the geniuses at EA Sports will allow you to take the Giants and move them so home games are played in Yellowstone National Park or something, but I can't move the Jaguars to Newark.

Another friend of mine, Jon, came up with a list of the worst possible fake IDs which one can use. This was inspired by a story of a time that this kid we both knew actually took a novelty McLovin ID from a Superbad promotion and used it at a bar, and the bouncer thought it was so funny that he let the kid in. Jon's list included:

1. A Dominique Wilkins jersey
   
2. The limited edition director's cut of the movie 21, in which a talented group of misfits from MIT takes on Vegas…and wins! (spoiler alert)
   
3. An index card with the number 21 written in Sharpie. *must have charisma and/or moxie to get away with this one
   

Neil, previously mentioned in my recap of the Toronto Spring Break trip, turned 21 over Memorial Day weekend. Dan, Mike, me, Nate, Neil and eight of Neil's high school friends chipped in and rented a house in Ocean City, Maryland to celebrate. As mentioned, Dan and I aren't 21 so our weekend was considerably tamer than the ones everyone else experienced. Still a great trip though.

Thursday 12:15 pm – 2:15 pm

Technically, not part of the trip, but this time period certainly affected my travel plans. I had to drive my friend Ojus to the Department of Motor Vehicles to update his license since he too had recently turned 21. The DMV remains a model of efficiency matched only by Comcast's tech support and the Philadelphia Eagles' 2-Minute Drill. I had intended to leave Jersey by 1:00 pm but was delayed nearly two hours.

Thursday 3:30 pm – 8:00 pm

The Drive. If I were John Elway, I would just capitalize everyday verbs so I could make them feel epic, though I guess at some point they begin to look like titles to Seinfeld episodes (The Deal, The Fix-Up, etc.). Thank god the annoying writers from Friends didn't work in sports journalism in the 1980s, or Elway's exploits would all have titles like The One With the Drive or The One With No Regard for His Body, First Down Denver.

Unlike Elway, I actually went into Baltimore. I had to stop there on my way south in order to pick up a friend. The first thing I saw from the highway was the shipyard made famous by Season 2 of The Wire. Baltimore on its surface doesn't seem so bad – nice skyline, sparkling football stadium, plenty of waterfront areas. But I guess the genius of The Wire was exposing the corruption and urban decay that lurk slightly below the surface – even though tourists like me are completely oblivious to it.

Thursday 9:00 pm – 12:00 pm

I left Neil's and went to my cousin's for dinner and to watch Game 5 of the Suns-Lakers series. For the past decade, I would mark the end of the season for a given league in two ways. First, the season was pretty much done the day Nets or Cowboys were eliminated. But, I would breathe a sigh of relief and consider the season truly over once the Lakers and Eagles were prevented from claiming the championship. Once those teams were out, I could enjoy the rest of postseason play stress free.

Why? Because for most of the past decade, the Nets and Cowboys have sucked. Dallas was great in 2007 and the Nets were decent in a crummy conference for two years, but that's three seasons out of a total twenty combined NFL and NBA years where my teams had a realistic chance of winning a title. In contrast, the Eagles and Lakers are something like fourteen for twenty in terms of combined contending seasons. And I don't hate the Patriots as much as the Eagles because New England wasn't beating Dallas by forty points twice a year for ten years.

So, I was rooting pretty hard for the Suns. Thank god Ron Artest provided me with the following two quotes over the next three days; otherwise I'd be legitimately bummed out by his Game 5 heroics:

"Say Queensbridge!" – to Craig Sager after the game.

"Growing up in New York, if you called someone for charging, you knew someone was getting stabbed after the game." – from a SportsCenter report on how Phil Jackson wanted his team to draw charges in the Finals.

Friday 9:00 am – 2:00 pm

We wake up early to pack and head to the beach. The Friday before Memorial Day is one of the busier traffic days of the year, so we knew ahead of time it was going to be brutal. One of my few talents is the ability to fall asleep during any car ride, which means that instead of being awake for five miserable hours, I went to sleep and woke up at the beach. One of the special features to an extended edition Lord of the Rings DVD said that Elijah Wood used to fall asleep all the time on the set. Again, I really didn't have a social life from age 11 to age 16.

Friday 3:00 pm – 8: 00 pm

I paid something like $39.99 for two slices of pizza before eight of us got a pickup football game going at the beach. I hadn't gunslinged in several months, but gunslinging is a lot like riding a bike – assuming that the bike has no brakes and maybe one tire inflated. In short, I was awful. Still a fun time though.

Mike, who was previously named Gunslinger of the Year for his decision to drive from Philadelphia to Disney World for the night, is a high roller. As the rest of us were putting our groceries away and determining bedding arrangements, Mike called some beach company and began a spirited defense of his title as Gunslinger of the Year. The conversation went as follows:

Mike: Hi, how much does it cost to rent jet skis?

[inaudible response by the other person on the phone]

Mike: Oh ok, thanks. I'll keep you posted. [hangs up]

Jetski would make a great last name for someone from eastern Europe.

Friday 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm

We went to dinner. Ocean City, Maryland is nice, but not as nice as Ocean City, New Jersey. A lot nicer than Seaside though.

Dinner was key since it was the last time I ate a vegetable until Monday at 9:30 pm. In fact, renting a beach house and living with a group of friends is both a lot of fun and incredibly disgusting. For example, my friend Nate claimed he was happy he showered on Sunday morning because it was the exact midpoint of the trip. It was his only shower over 3 days.

When you're at a beach house, a lot of little things that make life livable get taken for granted. For example, no one buys any antibacterial soap. Many people will seek to be magnanimous and state that they will buy some the next time they go on a 7/11 run, but it never happens. Meanwhile, the only groceries we bought were all pseudofoods – Ramen, hot dogs, etc. We would have been better off just pouring salt in oil and drinking it. So to recap, your hands are going to be encrusted in filth because no one buys soap and you're going to be eating nothing but material that put the "stuffs" in foodstuffs. And yet I keep coming back.

Saturday 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm

More football and lounging on the beach. My ankles and knees were killing me from running on the sand all the time. Andre Bynum recently had 70 milliliters of fluid drained from his knee, which are almost two shots of knee fluid with which Ron-Ron can chase down that Hennessy at halftime.

There was a radio blaring 808s and Heartbreak in front of a sign that said Free Magic Show. I don't know what the magician was getting at here.

Saturday 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Dinner at a kebab place on the boardwalk. Still no sight of a vegetable. Six or seven of Neil's high school friends came up for the night, which relegated me to the bench. Still, I did a solid job of bailing out failed jokes and staying out of the way – a good performance from a hustles/intangibles standpoint. This was me.

Saturday 11:45 pm

An extra large coffee is purchased.

Sunday 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm

I hung out with our neighbor for a bit and then headed to the beach. I think what bugs me the most about political commentators on Fox and MSNBC (no one watches CNN, whose programming now consists mainly of John King reading assorted Twitter feeds at you) is the insistence on grouping people into monolithic demographics. Nascar dads, soccer moms, the key backgammon seniors block of western Ohio.

The neighbor I met would have made a pundit's head explode. He drove a pickup truck and cursed at the Volkswagen we saw driving by our shared building. But he wasn't religious or into sports. He didn't attend college and worked as a contractor. He didn't hate the government.

Anyway, by Sunday, my diet had consisted of nothing but pseudofoods. I don't know how the hot dog eating contest is legal. The winner usually eats around 60 hot dogs, which comes out to something like 660 grams of fat. This is equivalent to nearly 30 KFC Double Down sandwiches. Identity politics are pretty awful.

I soon spent $60 on boardwalk games trying to win a Brandon Jennings jersey. No dice.

The boardwalk, as required by law, had many of those stores where you can buy t-shirts of things like Calvin wearing a Redskins jersey peeing on the Cowboys logo. Strangely, these stores were also selling tons of sweatshirts with the Monster drink logo. I don't wear energy sweatshirts though, since they make me jittery.

Monday 10:00 am

The drive home begins. Very bittersweet that the weekend was ending – most of us begin work in the days right after Memorial Day, so it was a de facto end to summer vacation.

Monday 6:00 pm

We arrive at Neil's house eight hours after leaving the house. Memorial Day traffic was a dagger, but luckily I fell asleep for most of it.

Monday 9:22 pm

I arrive at my home in New Jersey 223 miles away from Neil's house. As the announcer in N64's Star Wars Episode 1: Podracer would have said, "It's a new course record!" Have I mentioned that I had no social life between the ages of 11 and 16?

Monday 9:30 pm

I eat a vegetable.

Graduation

Pollen¸ Jerry Bruckheimer, and college seniors are all known for coming up big in the middle of May. Yesterday, I attended my cousin's graduation from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

I have a passion for solid offensive line play and sound logistical planning. The Rutgers graduation committee did an excellent job organizing an efficient ceremony for several thousand students and their respective families. Parking was not only ample, but also supple and firm.

The ceremony had all the familiar trappings of a graduation. The phalanx of graduates' seats was flanked by a parenthesis of foldable plastic chairs in which sat their impeccably dressed parents.

Some, that eternally unidentifiable group of others upon whom lazy writers heap scorn, find graduation ceremonies to be excruciatingly boring events. I am not some. Specifically, I was looking forward to the speech by Eric Knecht, the President of the Rutgers Class of 2010 and the only scheduled student speaker. Public speaking isn't difficult in and of itself. But, Knecht would have to balance obligatory graduation day platitudes against the pressure of saying something interesting and memorable. His introductory speaker, a vice dean, approached the podium to give a short introduction on the class president.

Knecht's biography was remarkable. A summa cum laude graduate, Knecht has also chaired or founded several university organizations and will be teaching underprivileged children in Washington, D.C. this fall. If he were from "right here in hard-workin' northeast Ohio", he could have been part of a presidential candidate's stump speech. The parents in the audience were impressed. An awed murmur of "woahhhh" swept through the crowd with each successive fact the vice dean told the crowd. The introduction ended and the class president neared the microphone.

When the home team in basketball falls behind by, say, fifteen points and goes on a run to cut it to two, the crowd gradually crescendos. Still, they wait for the exclamation point – the three pointer that triumphantly marks the home team finally taking the lead – in order to explode into happy delirium. Sometimes, this shot misses. Twenty thousand people simultaneously groan ("ohhhhhh") and the announcer says something like "they woulda blown the ROOF off if that had fallen!"

Thanks to his glowing introduction, the class president approached the stage essentially having cut the lead to two. The crowd was firmly in his pocket. We were waiting for the exclamation point.

The exclamation point never came. It was soon clear that his speech, by his own design, could not have had one.

First, he gave the standard remarks alluding to their first days together as a class in fall 2006 and mixed in some tepid but crowd-friendly jokes about dining halls and Facebook. Pretty safe material, but Knecht's a natural speaker whose delivery was effective nonetheless. Soon, he took an enormous risk for which I must give him a lot of credit.

He talked politics. And, he did not equivocate. Knecht forcefully stated his convictions in blunt language, convictions which were soon transmitted over two enormous video boards and dozens of loudspeakers. He did not hide, and though the speech was well received and he earned a warm round of applause, I couldn't shake the feeling that many of the same parents who were "ooh"ing during his biography were made squeamish by hearing Knecht's political views on this particular stage.

I was pretty squeamish as well. I don't really care what a person's political views are, but most political statements are couched in arrogance and feigned piety. As soon as Knecht started talking about 2008, I had a feeling he would start talking about politics. Much like male nudity in a Judd Apatow movie, I knew it was coming, and I knew I was going to be uncomfortable, I just didn't know when.

Michael Jordan was once asked by a Democrat why he didn't make political statements. Jordan replied, "Republicans buy sneakers too." Knecht didn't care. He gave his speech the way he wanted to and earned a well-deserved round of applause, even if it meant forfeiting a chance at a standing ovation.

After Knecht's speech, students who had earned awards or scholarships were recognized for their achievements. Seventeen students had a perfect grade point average. Winners of department level awards, such as the Arthur C. Cope chemistry prize, stood up. My favorite was the one student who received the Geroge Washington Carver Award for Excellence in Peanuts.

Later that night, my freshly graduated cousin, his family, and my family all went to dinner. His father, my uncle, is like a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Vito Corleone. His medical empire in central Jersey is wildly successful and he is regarded as one of the top immunologists in the state. His word is law and he has inspired loyalty bordering on devotion in those who work for him. Still, he never met a fart joke he didn't like.

Most first generation immigrants from India were taught British English as schoolchildren, which means they refer to "math class" as "maths", likely a shortened form of "mathematics". This extra "s" presumably migrated from Rutger University, which is what my uncle's friend repeatedly called the home of the Scarlet Knights.

I'm happy to be incubated in college for one more year. Good luck, class of 2010.

Lingua Pura

Language can be hilarious:

1. I was gunslinging some conversation at an attractive woman when she said "she had to run to the ATM machine." I told her that she was being redundant, because the M in ATM already stands for "machine". Thanks to my hilarious knack for stomping all over my own game, we didn't speak after that.
   
2. At a recent barbeque, a girl told us how her globe-shaped earrings were based on the planet earth. I didn't understand she meant planet earth and not Planet Earth, because any earrings that involve 6 months of time lapse photography and Sigourney Weaver must be taken seriously.
   
3. Writers of TV shows such as Lost like to make characters read books so that they can add depth, hoping that viewers like me will go "Literature! Wow! They mean business!" For example, a recent episode had one character read Of Mice and Men, which makes sense because parts of the sixth season have been like getting shot in the back of the head by your best friend.
   
4. A few of my friends were trying to figure out – without looking it up – when Catcher in the Rye was set. One person thought it was the 1920's, another the 1980's. I blurted out "you're way off, it's set in the future!" but I said it with such pinache and perfect timing that I expected to get a solid laugh out of it. Crickets!
   
5. Pitchfork, the hipster music website, actually started a review with the following passage:
   

   "Akira Kosemura's entrancing Polaroid Piano is my favorite ambient-inclined piano record from Japan since Radicalfashion's Odori, which it often resembles in faded miniature"
   

   
   

   I guess they were embarrassed that someone actually thought it was a good idea to write like that, because the current version of the review deletes that line. I had to look up the cached version of the page to find the line. It was such pretentious writing that it was seared into my memory.
   

The comedy in language has been successfully mined by entertainers from Larry David to Randall Munroe. Munroe is best known for his comic strip XKCD, which often comments on the link between romantic angst, Fourier transformations, and Venn Diagrams.

Tony Soprano once said "'Remember that time?' is the lowest form of conversation". I thought he was being an idiot – I love to talk about old times with friends. But, I guess he meant that eventually the words get stale and you have nothing left to talk about.

I don't speak with some of my close friends from high school anymore. Not that we had a falling out or wouldn't enjoy spending time with each other now. It's just that over time, the stories atrophy. You run out of things to talk about and become trapped in a prison of "how're classes going?" conversations.

The language and structure of sports films had grown depressingly stale, but this changed in recent years. I love movies like The Replacements in which a scrappy group of misfits comes together to beat the more handsome and better funded villains. But, films like The Wrestler remind me of Raging Bull in that they are sports movies that require the viewer's focus and attention and not just an ability to fight through quicksand. I don't know how my Quest to run Broad Street is going to end. There are no square-jawed, arrogant runners taunting me, and no out of my league romantic interest for me to win. Just a lot of dirty laundry and lower back pains.

Day 15, March 16 2010: 2.5 miles

Day 16, March 17 2010: 8.0 miles

Day 17, March 18 2010: 3 miles

Day 18, March 19 2010: 2.67 miles

Day 19, March 20 2010: basketball

Day 20, March 21 2010: basketball

Day 21, March 22 2010: basketball

Day 22, March 23 2010: 2.0 miles

Day 23, March 24 2010: basketball

Day 24, March 25 2010: rest

Day 25, March 26 2010: rest

Day 26 March 27 2010: basketball

The Year in Gunslinging

In December 1999, most of the world was excited and ready to celebrate the end of one millennium and the dawn of another. This, of course, was mathematically inaccurate as December 31, 2000 was actually the last day of the millennium as there was no year zero. In my case, my strict fundamentalist gunslinger beliefs meant that I celebrated the new millennium in early 1993.

As the year and the decade come to a close, a remarkable number of "Best of" features have undoubtedly flooded your consciousness. But how many have devoted themselves to gunslinging? I Wikipedia'd every month from the past year. A look back at the finest moments in gunslinging in 2009.

January 1, 2009: A nightclub fire erupts on a Bangkok dance floor, injuring more than 200 and leading to an unbelievably cruel Sean Kingston song that coincidentally makes for a killer ringtone.

January 4, 2009: Chad Pennington cannot game manage the Miami Dolphins past the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the playoffs. It is incredibly difficult to win games when your goal is to go 9-23 with 110 yards with 1 touchdown.

January 7, 2009: Satyam Computer Services, the Indian technology behemoth, is brought down by a massive fraud perpetrated by its chairman Ramalinga Raju. Still, Raju deserves kudos for being a gunslinger. Listen, if there's only two minutes left in a game and you need one chairman to exceed quarterly revenue expectations, you go with Brett Favre. But, if he's busy, you'd have to give the nod to Ramalina Raju.

January 9, 2009: Microsoft releases the beta version of Windows 7. It was my idea. January 9^th was also the release date for Gran Torino, which had a climactic scene that included one of the finest displays of play-action gunslinging of all time.

January 10, 2009: Jake Delhomme throws 5 interceptions in a home playoff loss to the upstart Arizona Cardinals. Analysts continue to insist that Jake can "be an elite quarterback in this league." I'd delete everything after the word "be", leading to the name of a great bluegrass band and fantastically existential statement, Jake Be.

January 15, 2009: Chip Sullenberger lands a plane in the Hudson, a feat that took remarkable poise, skill, and courage. Sullenberger's accomplishment, sadly, only left him at #4 in the GCS since Texas was rated higher in a preseason poll based on last year's gunslinging.

January 17, 2009: Lady Gaga's breakthrough song "Just Dance" reaches No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 to become the top song in the country. Gaga is so successful that someone named Colby O'Donis briefly enters the public consciousness just by being associated with her. Is it true that I, a red-blooded American male and staunch disciple of Bruce F. Springsteen tried to get tickets to a Lady Gaga show near Philadelphia two weeks ago? I can't remember but it's all right a-all right.

January 27, 2009: Lil Wayne, inarguably the biggest name in contemporary rap, releases "Prom Queen", the first single from his rock-themed album Rebirth. As Rolling Stone put it, the rock endeavor is nearly the equivalent of Michael Jordan choosing to play baseball for two years.

January 30, 2009: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at roughly 8000, down 1000 for the month and down over 6000 from its all-time peak in October 2007.

February 1, 2009: The height of the first on campus recruiting session after the financial meltdown. Though only a sophomore at the time – juniors are the main group that firms target - I decide that times were dire enough that it was time for my resume to embrace truthiness (I called Ramalinga Raju for his advice since, as predicted, Favre was busy). I added in my summer spent at Gunslinger Capital Management and my charitable work with the non-profit group Borders without Borders, which seeks to spread retail bookstores to the developing world. My GPA was suddenly a perfect 158.3 on a 4.0 scale, which may have raised some red flags.

Super Bowl XLIII was also played on this date. Not a ton of gunslinging until the very end, when Ben Roethlisberger found a way to avoid three Cardinal defenders and proper offseason conditioning to simultaneously win the Super Bowl and gain 25 pounds. Naked photos of the game's MVP, Santonio Holmes, surfaced on the internet in the days following the game. Bruce Springsteen performs brilliantly at halftime and slams into the camera. I was personally hoping that Bruce would refuse to play his stadium anthems and instead play a 12 minute rendition of "Reno" off of Devils and Dust.

February 3, 2009: Republican Senator Judd Gregg nominatedd forr cabinett positionn.

February 5, 2009: The infamous Michael Phelps photo ultimately leads to his suspension by USA Swimming. It's not possible to go from being the most admired athlete in America to a borderline pariah in less than six months without having a little bit of gunslinger in your DNA, and perhaps some THC in your fatty tissue.

February 7, 2009: Jennifer Frigge becomes the first woman to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Jennifer So Friggen' Good becomes a Chris Berman favorite, as Tom Jackson adds "knock it down!".

February 8, 2009: 51^st Grammy awards take place take place in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, forcing the Clippers to play their home game in the parking lot of Went Englewood High School (the gymnasium was being used for Senior Appreciation Night – thank you class of 2009, you guys are the future!). Weezy F. Baby walks off with four trophies, and Springsteen takes home one for "Girls in Their Summer Clothes".

February 9, 2009: The mythical birthplace of Zeus in Greece is allegedly found by some gunslinging archeologists. Lou Dobbs remains unimpressed and insists Zeus is not a real Greek god until Dobbs is allowed to fondle his birth certificate.

February 11, 2009: Iridium Satellite LLC's space vessel collides in outer space with another one, destroying both. Due to an unfortunate and elaborate system of alliances, conflict erupts between Lanthanides and Actinides.

February 17, 2009: General Motors and Chrysler inform the United States government that they will need an additional $22 billion in funds. The fabled restructuring specialists hope that a new foray into building cars will put them on the path to prosperity.

February 18, 2009: South Korea snitches on North Korea.

February 22, 2009: The 81^st Academy Awards are held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. Slumdog Millionaire wins Best Picture despite a fairly mediocre second half. The Academy refuses to nominate The Dark Knight for anything important, continuing their impressive streak of not rewarding excellence in film to 81 consecutive years. On this same date, I decided to sling my way into living at my current off campus house…hey, you can't win them all. It is what it is.

February 23, 2009: The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls to its lowest level since 1997, wiping out 12 years of growth and presumably dozens of Dallas playoff wins since then.

February 23rd also saw the Philadelphia 76ers visit the New Jersey Nets. My friend Dan is a passionate Sixers fan and I went to his house to watch the game. Since our college's cable package at the time was not supplied by Comcast, we were unable to watch the game on TV and were forced instead to watch a Chinese-pirated stream of the game over the internet (made possible by the fact that Yi Jianlian is a fan favorite over there). This means that there was roughly a one minute lag between the time something actually happened in the game and the time we were able to watch it over the pirated stream. Anyway, we were watching the game and saw that the Sixers went up by one point with very little time remaining and the Nets had to inbound the ball from their own end. Remember, by this point, the actual game was already over but the rebroadcast had yet to show us the final play. My other friend back in Jersey was able to watch the game live and sent me a text saying something like "NETS!!!!!!!". I showed Dan the text and he was as confused as I was. Moments later, the Chinese rebroadcast finally showed us what happened. Amazing.

February 25, 2009: Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 crashes at Schiphol Airport. Airline officials ungratefully leave the futon in bed position before leaving.

February 26, 2009: More archeological gunslinging as the earliest footprints of anatomically correct humans are found at Kenyan dig site. How they were able to tell the humans were anatomically correct based on footprints is beyond me, but archeologists are a strange folk and I'll take their word for it.

February 27, 2009: China's Navy thwarts Somalian pirates in the Gulf of Aden and goes on to beat China's Notre Dame for the second time in three years. In a pique of diplomatic gunslinging, China's State Council criticizes the United States' human rights record.

February 28, 2009: "Pokerface" reaches Billboard Top 10 just as "Just Dance" falls off. You gotta hand it to her.

February 29, 2009: Calendar enthusiasts worldwide observe one-fourth of a day.

March 1, 2009: The Basque Nationalist Party wins a plurality of seats in their eponymous country's parliamentary elections. And by the way, if you haven't had the lobster basque, it's fantastic.

March 2, 2009: Consumer spending, which makes up a whopping 70% of the American GDP, rises after six successive monthly declines. Can't deny it takes a gunslinger to spend in the face of economic apocalypse.

March 6, 2009: The 6 Somali pirates transferred to Kenya by the European Union. The pirates are forced to forfeit a year of eligibility while fatcat coaches forfeit nothing. I can't wait for Pirates of the Caribbean IV: Rise of Admiral Redshirt. "Arrrr, you thought ye had me Jack? I have one more year of eligibility! I played semi-pro baseball for 5 years! Mwuahhahahah!"

The Watchmen is finally released, much to the delight of graphic novel aficionados everywhere. Or, so I'm told – I spent the weekend watching the adorable Felicity Huffman in Phoebe in Wonderland. Besides the amazing introductory title sequence, the rest of the movie was kind of weak.

March 9, 2009: The Dow reaches closes at 6547, its lowest close since April 1997. But hey, don't be silly!

March 10, 2009: The United States Senate passes an omnibus $410 billion spending bill, leading many analysts to wonder what we're going to do with so many omnibuses.

March 13, 2009: Japan announces it will intercept North Korea's satellite if they seek to launch one; Korean Aerospace executive Jong Il-Cutler vows to "cut down on future mistakes" and "establish a winning atmosphere around here".

March 17, 2009: Last day for frugal MLB owners to cut someone and pay only 30 days salary instead of 45 days salary. This is coincidentally also the last day of the season that the Royals are competitive (only 10 ½ out!).

March 19, 2009: A bomb severely damages a building in Athens, Greece and a whoopee cushion hilariously damages a municipal building in nearby Crete.

March 21, 2009: 100,000 protesters in Sicily gather to voice their opposition to the mafia. In Sicily, the women are more dangerous than shotguns. Besides, this is a completely legitimate protest…these protesters fell off the back of a civil disobedience truck.

March 23, 2009: Tim "The Sling" Geithner announces an unprecedented plan for the Treasury Department to purchase high-yield debt from banks in the hopes that the combination of a cash infusion and relief of toxic assets will spur bank lending. Tim spends the rest of the day getting into comical predicaments as Paul Volcker gives him advice with his face obscured by a fence. Hohohogrunthohohohogrunthohoho.

March 28, 2009: Villanova wins its regional final in order to earn a berth in the Final Four. I met Jay Wright once at a basketball camp roughly seven years ago; he's a really nice guy.

March 31, 2009: The Taliban's Students Movement claims responsibility for an attack, though most of those chumps are just doing it to get into college anyway.

April 1, 2009: Gunslingers everywhere decide to just play it safe. Also, Albania and Croatia join NATO's new Southeastern Conference with the Nashville Predators and Atlanta Thrashers.

April 2, 2009: Bangladesh's government outlaws begging in order to get rid of it by 2014. "Hunger" and "afternoon sluggishness" next on government crackdown watchlist.

April 5, 2009: The Communist Party wins an absolute majority in Moldova, capping an otherwise weak reunion tour. In other political developments, Macedonia has the second round of its presidential election, causing millions of American office employees to lose productivity as they head over to cbs.sportsline.com for live, streaming updates. I can't believe Ivanov won! I had Tulsa.

April 11, 2009: Anti-government protests cancel the Fourth East Asia Summit in Pattaya, Thailand, but it's actually a good thing because East Asia Sumit III: The Resumitting sucked anyway. "Poker Face" reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

April 15, 2009: Tea Parties erupt across the United States, immediately followed by Honey Parties and Lemon Parties, though the latter is noted only for its unwavering support of old, naked men.

April 18, 2009: The Netherlands' Korps Commandotroepen rescue 20 Yemeni hostages from Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Despite their illustrious history and community ties, the Korps proceeds with plans to rescue 5 hostages a year in Toronto. In a related development, I am stunned to find yet another entry in Wikipedia's month-by-month year recap devoted to Somali pirates.

April 19, 2009: I'm goin' down to lucky town, downnnnn to lucky townnnnnnn…

April 20, 2009: Oracle purchases Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion.

April 20^th also marks the data when China's government discovered 2390 more miles of the Great Wall of China, but I suspect they stole it because I just lost 2390 miles of Great Wall last week. Come on China, you used to be cool.

April 21, 2009: The smallest confirmed extrasolar planet, Gilese 581, is discovered.

April 25, 2009: Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis slings and selects Darrius Heyward-Bey with the seventh overall pick in the draft. Al Davis has a ton of upside, but character issues have plagued him in recent years and we'll have to see if he can put it all together and become something. Must Improve: Senility.

April 28, 2009: Across campus and throughout Philadelphia, fraternities celebrate the end of classes with their respective "Semi Formal" events. I almost went to a Semi Formal once, but it was actually a Business Casual, and it ended up being a bunch of dudes just milling around wondering whether or not they were overdressed.

April 29, 2009: I flaunt the conventions of reading days and attend my first ever Bruce Springsteen concert. No, they're not booing, they're chanting Deuuuuuuuuuuce in loving remembrance of the above-average erstwhile Eagles running back.

April 30, 2009: The upstart Chicago Bulls defeat the Boston Celtics 128-127 in a thrilling triple overtime game in their first round playoff series. Sadly, neither team won the series as Steve Javie turned in a dominant performance in Game 7 to claim the victory for himself.

May 1, 2009: My history of terrible gift giving continues with a thoroughly mediocre birthday present for my sister. The list of words you do not want to hear as reactions to your gift: functional, pragmatic, bipartisan, spread-covering.

May 2, 2009: The Pacific Islands Forum indefinitely suspends Fiji for charging into the stands during a brawl, totally derailing a loaded Oceania's hopes for a title. When Eurasia won the title, it was doubleplusungood news for everybody involved.

May 4, 2009: The Lakers lose game one of their series to the scrappy Houston Rockets, led by a footslinging Yao Ming. The loss raises the real possibility that the huge favorites might lose the series. The NBA responds by expanding the series to best of thirteen, and repeatedly ejecting Shane Battier for playing unnecessarily good defense and having inexplicable vertical lines on his head.

May 7, 2009: An American man is arrested in Burma for trespassing on National League for Democracy General Secretary Aung San Suu Kyi's property. What happened to you National League for Democracy, you used to be cool.

May 8, 2009: JJ Abrams brings Star Trek to the big screen to rave reviews despite a Lost-esque convoluted plot involving time travel.

May 9, 2009: A lazy Saturday with nearly three full days before my last final exam means that anything is possible. "Anything" turns into watching an entire season (over twenty episodes) of Arrested Development, while eating a full pizza, two cheesesteaks, and a bowl of ice cream.

May 12, 2009: Despite having a final exam at 3:00 pm, I heroically choose to play football for the last time of the semester from 1:30 to 2:45.

May 13, 2009: The Cannes Film Festival breaks precedent and allows an animated film, Pixar's Up, to open up the festivities. Madagascar 8: Seven 8 Nine does not make the cut. Also, Lost airs its fifth season finale, which in the finest tradition of the show provides more question marks (and ampersands, number signs, and exclamation points) than answers. What the #&?!# happened??!?!

May 14, 2009: The South Korean naval vessel Mummu the Great captures 17 Somali Pirates.

May 22, 2009: LeBron James hits this shot to defeat the Orlando Magic in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals. James followed up his amazing shot by incredulously begging the officials for a foul call.

June 1, 2009: I spend my first night in my current house in Philadelphia.

June 3, 2009: As the NBA playoffs enter their fifth (and decisive!) month, I have only one memory: Oh baby youuuuuuu, you got what I neeeeeed. But you say he's just a friend, when you say he's just a friend….

June 5, 2009: Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost makes its debut in theaters. Two weeks later, Michael Cera's Year One is released. I wish the two would team up for a buddy comedy called Typecast in which a zany, hairy foul-mouthed character teams up with a comically shy, angst-ridden teenager and they battle over whose radio station to listen to in the car and whether or not they understand the words coming out of their respective mouths.

June 6, 2009: Eminem releases Relapse, his first album in five years.

June 7, 2009: Courtney Lee misses an alleyoop at the buzzer, ultimately leading to an Orlando loss and a 2-0 championship round deficit from which the Magic could never recover. This shot also prompted me to look up players who wear a face mask. Note how Bill Laimbeer looks just like David Puddy. Gotta support the team.

June 8, 2009: Apple debuts the 3GS version of its iPhone.

June 9, 2009: William Jefferson, a Louisiana congressman, goes on trial for bribery and racketeering. Jefferson was actually found with $100,000 in his freezer. So stupid…everyone knows you keep your bribe money in the crisper. That's what it's there for!

June 14, 2009: Comedian Kobe Bryant perfects his Michael Jordan impression. "Ever notice how he pumps his fist, and then counts how many rings he has on his fingers? What's the deal….with THAT?!"

June 24, 2009: The worst movie of all time, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, pollutes screens across the country. Michael Bay's insistence that the film is actually a careful study on race relations in
America is ultimately proven false.

June 27, 2009: "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas continues its month-long reign atop the national radio charts.

July 1, 2009: Public Enemies, a film starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, finally comes out. I had planned on seeing it until a friend of mine ruined the ending, claiming he couldn't be held accountable because the ending was already widespread public knowledge since it was published in a 1960s beatnik poetry anthology he read. This actually happened. This is now the number one moment of a friend ruining the ending to something for me, narrowly edging out the time in 2000 when I was watching The Sixth Sense and halfway through the movie my friend revealed that M. Night Shyamalan would have a disappointing career.

July 4, 2009: 233rd anniversary of gunslinging, baby.

July 10, 2009: General Motors emerges from bankruptcy protection with some semblance of hope for the future.

July 13, 2009: Confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor begin. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham engages in some bipartisan gunslinging as he chooses to vote in favor of Sotomayor.

July 14, 2009: Judy Chu becomes the first Chinese American woman elected to the House of Representatives.

July 17, 2009: 500 Days of Summer hits theaters. The lead actor looks just like Tony Romo, probably another reason I liked the movie so much.

July 18, 2009: I finally get around to seeing Harry Potter VI. It was enjoyable but not as good as the fifth one. I've read that the producers are going to split Harry Potter VII into two parts in order to better explore the depth of the book. I find this questionable. Literally nothing happens for the first 300 pages of Harry Potter VII; there's a gas shortage and a Flock of Seagulls. That's it. If they are going to squeeze two movies out of one book, maybe the first half can be devoted to exploring the wizard economy – it seems as if there is only one street on which all commerce takes place and 90% of the population works for the government. Plus, if Peter Jackson could condense The Return of the King into one book, I don't see why David Yates needs two movies to finish up the series.

July 19, 2009: As Wikipedia's entry for July 2009 puts it, "Giant jellyfish
wreak
havoc around the Sea of Japan." The havoc reaches a fever pitch when the jellyfish force the Japanese to speak poorly dubbed English while scurrying around frantically.

July 20, 2009: India and the United States sign a defense agreement, which is good since defense wins championships (except the '99 Rams).

July 22, 2009: Astronomy enthusiasts everywhere witness the longest solar eclipse of the 21^st century over parts of Asia and the Pacific Ocean. When asked to describe the phenomenon, they insist they "didn't see nothing", confirming anecdotal evidence that states astronomers never snitch.

August 1, 2009: A housemate of mine completes eight weeks living in and working for a lab in Spain. It takes a ton of intestinal fortitude to pack up and leave to a foreign country for an entire summer, but this is only the second biggest sling that this man did this year (more later).

August 9, 2009: Terrell Owens makes his debut as a Buffalo Bill against the Tennessee Titans in the NFL preseason. The game is noteworthy mainly because Jeff Fisher comes up with a brilliant fake punt.

August 10, 2009: Murphy's Razor, the simplest explanation of which is that what can go wrong while shaving will go wrong, is discovered by my face.

August 12, 2009: Scientists discover that killer whales create 'social clubs'.

August 14, 2009: District 9, made by a protégé of Peter Jackson, opens at number one in the country. The Goods, starring Jeremy Piven as Ari Gold with a moustache, is also released.

August 21, 2009: Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, a hilarious homage to campy World War II-era typos, is released.

August 29, 2009: Black Eyed Peas' record setting run continues as "I Gotta Feeling" closes out the summer on top of the nation's radio charts.

August 31, 2009: Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" becomes the single with the longest overall time on the Billboard charts, with 71 consecutive weeks. "Knew I would love you like a fat kid love food..."

September 1, 2009: Ireland bans samurai swords in order to curb a growing crime problem. Again, all of the facts that I cite are from the Wikipedia entries for what happened in that month. I am not making this up. The creepier part of the Wikipedia month summaries is that the summaries for each month from 2010 are already uploaded.

September 2, 2009: Michael Jackson passes away.

September 3, 2009: Fresh protests are recorded in the province of Xinhuang, China; protesters are given 25% off if they present a fresh protest membership card.

September 7, 2009: Kraft Foods announces a planned takeover of Cadbury for $16.7 billion.

September 9, 2009: An absurdly late Labor Day forces the first day of classes to come in the middle of the second week in September. This is also "Beatles Day" worldwide with remastered editions of all of the iconic British band's albums released as well as the launch of Beatles Rock Band. I don't think that there is a more overrated entity than the Beatles.

September 12, 2009: Ten Warhol paintings are stolen from a museum. I wonder if I'm the only person who looks around in a museum, wondering if I could get away with swiping some art. I doubt I could, mainly because the paintings are really unwieldy and the frames seem pretty heavy. I'd probably need a crew of fellow art thieves, but then the whole thing is liable to get bogged down in bureaucracy.

September 13, 2009: Kanye West classily slings his way onstage just to let Taylor Swift know that he respects her and he will let her finish.

September 15, 2009: The Red-Green Coalition of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is elected for another term in Norway despite losing the key color blind bloc.

September 19, 2009: France's government holds emergency talks with farmers amid falling dairy prices.

September 20, 2009: 30 Rock and Mad Men dominate the Emmys. I stupidly state that 30 Rock is one of my 5 favorite sitcoms of all time – with the list at that point being Seinfeld, Cheers, The Office (British), The Office (American), and 30 Rock. The new season has been fairly weak, which simultaneously makes me look myopic and hyperbolic and makes me eligible for an analyst gig with ESPN. "Let me tell you guys something right here….I don't care WHAT the numbers say, According to Jim is the most exciting show on television!"

September 27, 2009: Brett Favre…the greatest gunslinger of all time.

October 1, 2009: Citing low ratings, the Netherlands Antiles agrees to dissolve.

October 2, 2009: I discover and start watching Top Gear clips on YouTube, and soon after download the series and begin watching full episodes. To echo the sentiment of a critic whose name I cannot remember, the show combines dry British humor with footage of expensive supercars being pushed to their limits. One quote: "Driving this car is like sitting in a bucket of warm paste reading a Jane Austen novel…"

October 3, 2009: I travel to Jersey to watch Bruce and the Legendary E Street Band close down Giants Stadium. Bruce plays Born in the USA in its entirety, but he proves he's not a true fan since he skips over "My Hometown". Even more incredibly, Bruce has been drawing huge crowds since 1975. Is there anyone from today's musical landscape that I will be travelling an hour and paying $100 to see 34 years from now? Obviously not.

But, if I had to guess three mainstream artists that have an outside chance at being popular in 2043, I'd guess 1) Beyonce 2) Taylor Swift and 3) Alicia Keys. All three make music that is dependent more on vocals and talent than "danceability". Plus, each has a devoted fan base right now and all three are relatively young. That being said, I don't see any of them selling out Giants Stadium in thirty years.

Sadly, none of the mainstream male artists I listen to now have a chance at being huge three decades from now.

October 4, 2009: One week after his game-winning heroics, Brett Favre plays a nearly flawless game and destroys the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football.

October 7, 2009: The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to three men for their studies on the structure and function of the ribosome. Cell biology in high school was all about reducing complex organelles into simple metaphors. For example, the mitochondrion is the engine of the cell, the ribosome is the protein factory, the lysosome is a possession receiver.

October 9, 2009: Couples Retreat, starring Vince Vaughn, is released. If you watch the trailer there is some guy who looks just like Shane Victorino who apparently has a minor role in the movie. My friend and I once got into a heated debate over whether Vince Vaughn has gained a lot of weight for the roles he plays or if he's just gotten fat over the years. I maintain that he has just gotten chubby; this isn't De Niro in Raging Bull, it's Vince Vaughn doing dopey comedies. Gaining weight doesn't add anything to the experience or heighten the realism. I also once debated whether or not Kevin James was wearing a fat suit in the underrated Paul Blart: Mall Cop, with my dad being convinced that he was.

October 14, 2009: The Dow closes above 10,000 points for the first time in more than a year. Tim Berners-Lee apologizes for making // part of URLs, saying "it seemed like a good idea". Not a gunslinger move.

October 17, 2009: "Down", "Party in the USA", "Run this Town", and "Whatcha Say" team up to finally dethrone "I Gotta Feeling" atop the Billboard Hot 100. I can't stand that song, but its success is undeniably impressive.

October 19, 2009: Penn gave us one day for fall break this year.

November 1, 2009: Republican Dede Scozzafava withdraws her name from an election, dropping out to endorse the Democrat in the race.

November 4, 2009: The New York Yankees claim world championship number 27*. Michael Bloomberg also wins a third term for mayor after rewriting city laws to enable him to run for a third term.

November 7, 2009: "Fireflies", by Owl City, becomes the most popular song in the country.

November 13, 2009: 2012 is released in theaters. More importantly, the best movie of the year, Fantastic Mr. Fox, comes out. I used to think Wes Anderson was nothing more than a hipster doofus and that George Clooney was too smug to be likable, but I was completely wrong. Mr. Fox is not only the best movie of 2009, its one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

November 18, 2009 Senator Robert Byrd becomes the longest serving member in the history of the United States Congress. Cal Ripken Jr. wasn't even that good for the last decade of his career; from 1991 to 2001, he hit better than .280 only twice. I don't know how Byrd's been doing in the Senate, but Ripken was definitely overrated for a while.

November 22, 2009: The Senate votes to allow debate on the health reform bill…with the debate scheduled for November 30^th. Apparently agreeing to talk about the bill was too tiring and everyone needed a week off.

November 25, 2009: Ninja Assassin is released, marking Tracy Jordan's first big screen adventure since Samurai I Amurai.

December 2, 2009: Tom Morello joins Bruce Springsteen at the 25^th Anniversary Concert of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, leading to a killer performance of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Morello's karaoke vocals can't compare to Springsteen's heartfelt performance, but the Nightwatchman had a demonic solo that overshadowed everything else.

December 4, 2009: The New Jersey Nets win their first game of the season, after losing their first 18.

December 6, 2009: Bruce Gradkowski slings the Radiers past the Steelers, crippling the defending champions' hopes for a playoff run. Flamengo wins its sixth Brazilian soccer league title, despite the best efforts of the Magic Rat and Barefoot Girl.

December 14, 2009: Researchers discover a type of octopus that uses tools.

December 18, 2009: Avatar, which took James Cameron 15 years and $300 million to complete, is finally released. I can't believe it took this guy 15 years to come up with this piece of garbage. The only way that this movie represented 15 years of work is if he has the worst time management skills of all time. At least if it was constructive procrastination – a phenomenon which involves putting off studying in favor of menial labor like washing dishes or cutting your nails – he'd have something to show for it. The visual effects were pretty cool, but I said the same thing about The Day After Tomorrow and The Matrix Revolutions, which means that no one is going to remember this movie in five years. Plus, all the characters were one dimensional and all the dialogue sucked.

December 29, 2009: Several family friends come over our house and we decide to rent a movie from FiOS On Demand. I was the lone voice speaking out against Night at the Museum 2, and since it was ultimately selected, I must say that I was absolutely wrong. The movie is hilarious and very well done.

December 31, 2009: Fundamentally Soundd shakes off a terrible November with a huge December.

The year in gunslinging was certainly a fun one. Five gunslinging predictions for 2010 before I name the top gunslinging moment of 2009:

5. Two words: Keanu Reeves. I see a massive comeback year for the Hawaiian even though IMDB says he only has one movie in production. Why does IMDB list Keanu as appearing in one episode of "Bollywood Hero" in 2009? And why haven't I seen "Bollywood Hero"?

4. The mice will return…with a vengeance. I haven't seen a mouse in Philadelphia in over two months, thanks to the fact that I gave up eating and I now sleep at 7. I think the combination of cold weather and an empty house for a month (over Christmas break) will bring them back in full force.

3. The media will turn on Brett Favre (remember, these predictions are labeled "gunslinging" for a reason). I see Favre throwing some disastrous interceptions against Philadelphia in mid-January, single-handedly ending his team's season for the third year in a row.

2. My intramural basketball team will win one game. In my career in intramural athletics, my football teams have gone something like 0-10 with 7 mercy rule losses, and my basketball team was once down by 40 in a game with 16 minute halves and a running clock. But this year, I'm a wily veteran and I'm hungry for that first W. Plus, I can update my Twitter after a win with something like "NE1 C DAT WIN!!??!?!" or "WUTS POPPIN NJ JUST GOT DAT W". My favorite athlete tweets are definitely film reviews, which usually boil down to a subdued, lower case "dis movie ite. Ne1 no another 2 watch?"

1. LeBron James will join Dwayne Wade in New Jersey after the Lakers win another title.

And finally, the number one gunslinging moment of the past 365 days:

My friend, we'll call him Sergei to protect his identity, is known for being a gunslinger.

For example, freshman year he swerved across four lanes on I-95 while driving 100 mph in order to avoid missing an exit ramp. He also bought a $1500 HDTV (with his own, saved money) on a whim in September 2008. Recently, Sergei shed twenty pounds and ran a half marathon because he "felt like it." Most confusingly, he has seen every episode of CSI: Miami.

Sergei is committed to becoming a doctor one day and takes his classes very seriously. As you can imagine, this means that the period during finals when he should be studying for his tests in higher level biology and physics would indeed be spent burning the midnight oil.

Instead, he chose to pick up his girlfriend, drive to Florida, spend the day at Disney World, and then drive back the same night. Zero hours of sleep and over 25 hours and 2000 miles of driving in one weekend during finals.

During historic moments in sporting events, the best sportscasters don't feel the need to blather on and yell about how amazing and phenomenal the incident we all just witnessed is. They let the gravity of the moment and the delirium of the crowd speak for themselves. The reaction was similar in our house after Sergei told his story. Complete, stunned slience. His housemates, myself included, hadn't seen him for 48 hours and assumed he was dead somewhere. He is the finest example of gunslinging in 2009.

Happy New Year!