Salt Bae Should Be Canceled After Coronavirus

I'm writing this pretty late because I wasn't sure if I should blog tonight. It didn't feel appropriate with everything going on in the country and on Twitter. But the more I thought of it, the more I felt like I should bang one out. If someone is looking for a distraction and finds my blog, even it's for a few minutes, I guess that's something. Trust me, I don't think I'm doing God's work here, but if you want to read it it's available. Without further adieu, it's time to take down the nation's true enemy, Salt Bae. 

Salt Bae first went viral for slinging his meat on Instagram and salting his steak like he's better than everyone else. He's a pompous prick. Salt Bae owns his own restaurant and will sell you a steak for $80 and judging by his videos, try to sleep with your date in the process. Which really shouldn't be much of a shock for us 90's kids, since he looks exactly like Wandisimo. If you aren't familiar, Wandisimo was a fairy in the Fairly OddParents with a shocking amount of sexual charisma for a Nickelodeon character. A character who always tried to sleep with the main fairy's wife. See the bottom for a comparison, it may shock you. 

After this pandemic, Salt Bae is toast. I know that most cooks will still be touching my food barehanded in the kitchen but out of sight out of mind. Nobody wants Salt Bae's elbow shrapnel in their food. Germs. Put the salt on with out being a jackass, there's no need to bounce it off your elbow. I mean, I've heard of putting in elbow grease before but this is ridiculous... 

   

 

There's A Good Chance I Lose My Job

Well, this is not good. If these cuts hit my area, I'm very gone. Not cause I stink at my job or anything, but because I was the last one hired two years ago and I'm still technically part-time. I have all the responsibilities of a full-timer, I just get paid a lot less and don't receive benefits. While my co-workers are buying houses and starting families with their salaries, I'm going out on the weekends and chipping away at my student loans. Oh fuck, how am I going to pay my student loans. 

You might be thinking, well there's always unemployment. No son, not for me. I'm actually paying unemployment right now. It's funny when I say it out loud. Unemployment shafted me about two years ago after they approved me to collect and then invoked take-backs. I got a call from the state where they were like, "Hey remember that money we said you can have? We need it back. We made an oopsie when we approved you.". So when Big Unemployment is paying a record 14.7% of the nation, I'm the one doofus paying Big Unemployment. If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all. To be honest though, I don't know if 14.7% unemployment is a record, I'm not up to date on my unemployment trivia. I am however, up to date on my unemployment payments.

So what's a guy to do? My best work friend, who most likely will be furloughed right alongside of me, seems to think that panicking works. I don't know, not really my style. I'm more of a, suppress your fears until you have a heart attack at 52, kind of guy. It's sort of a family tradition. I'm actually a bit jealous of his nervousness? It's seems like a nice release. During his rant to me about how fucked we are, my mind drifted off to me wondering if there's something wrong with me for not mimicking his concern. At the end of what I imagine was an articulate and passionate rant, the best I came up with was "Ya know, what're you gonna do." He was visually disgusted. 

I think it's probably just easy to distract yourself when you have a lot of personalities. For a quick second today, I thought about how I might have to go back to bartending or driving a truck to keep up with my payments and my cheeks started getting hot. But then, a voice in the back of my head said "Yo you know how after you turn on your fan by your bed, you still have to hit it twice and it makes you look like The Fonz? That's pretty cool." And I thought hey, that is pretty cool. I might be fucked. I might not be fucked. All I know is panicking sure ain't gonna help. 

What Happened To Skateboarding?

Last night I was scrolling through Instagram and happened upon some Matt Tomasello skateboarding clips. They were the definition of gnarly. I went through his page for over an hour. I mean really fucking crazy groundbreaking tricks. I was so confused why I had never heard of him. Then I remembered, I haven't given a shit about skateboarding since about a year after the Lords Of Dogtown movie. 

I can't speak for the rest of the nation, but where I grew up, every kid wanted to be a professional skateboarder at one point of their life. We searched for local "gaps" and quoted Grind way too often. We knew every skater. Bob Burnquist, Rodney Mullen, and Chad Muska were household names. Most of us hadn't even had our first kiss yet and we were already talking about how we were going to slay like Sheckler. Now the skateboarding world, as far as I know it, has been diminished to people laughing on Twitter about Tony Hawk not being recognized in public. 

My skateboarding years weren't exactly a cherished time in my life. I had long hair and growing boy boobs that more than I'd like to admit, had me mistaken for a young lesbian. I was terrible at skating. I could barely ollie. I could barely jump. I was terrified of the concrete. The smallest cut and the gentlest fall normally put me on the IR for weeks at a time. That didn't stop me from making my parents spend way too much money on a dope board for my birthday though. 

I dressed the part too. Big shoes I never scuffed from too many kickflips, Indecline stickers, Volcom t-shirts, Kirra cologne, and beanies during the summer. One day in the seventh grade, people kept saying "TAP" in front of me and ran away giggling. I kept asking people what it meant but I couldn't get a straight answer. I started saying it too and laughing along, but inside it was driving me crazy. Eventually during recess, one of the nice girls told me it meant "TKJ's A Poser". Fucking earth-shattering. I needed to prove myself as a badass skater. It turned out that the kid who started it was the best skater in our school. So when the bell rang, I beat him up.

I sucked at skateboarding, but I enjoyed the rebellious teenage world it introduced me too. During my middle school years, the skating world dominated our pop culture. Everyone talked about Don Vito's latest prank on Viva La Bam. Or we argued during Hacky Sack about who was the true goat out of the Lords Of Dogtown trio. If your favorite movie wasn't Grind, it was Jackass. But no matter what, everyone's favorite video game had "Tony Hawk's..." in it. Mine was Underground. Video games were most likely the reason for the skateboarding boom. Luckily, they announced that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is being remastered and set to be released in September. The nostalgia for millennials strikes again. As much as I'll probably regret this statement, hopefully Tony Hawk creates another wave of skater bros out of Gen Alpha. So if you want to feel twelve again or get in the mood for the new Pro Skater, check out matttomasello on Instagram.  

A Crazy Story About My Dad For His 62nd Birthday

Most kids tell crazy stories about their dads that aren't true. My issue was never if the story was made up, but whether I was allowed to tell it or not. I know everyone thinks their dad's stories are true, but my dad always had accomplices. He wouldn't do something without witnesses, for him, it'd be a waste of doing something astonishing. Two things you need to know about my dad for this story, he loves the Yankees and he has balls of steel. This is the story of how he snuck into the Yankees World Series dinner in '96 and '98. 

Dad really really loves the Yankees. His first choice for my name was Don, after Don Mattingly. After my mom vetoed that, he went with his second choice, his own name. During the 90's my dad, my uncle, and their two friends went splitsies on an RV that they used to travel to their season ticket games. The whole thing was decked out in Yankees and the paint job was pinstripes. The bottom of the toilet was the Red Sox logo. They've had Steinbrenner (George and Hal), Giuliani, Torre, and countless players take pictures in and out of the "YankeeMobile". They were even asked to ride in the Yankee's World Series parade, twice. They were always getting into shit. 

After I believe the '96 World Series, they found out the hotel where the Yankees were holding their championship banquet. As fate would have it, one of their compadres knew a security guard in the hotel. He got them up to the floor where the banquet was being held and then basically said you're on your own from there. They were in suits but didn't have passes to access the dinner. My father was watching people in vests walk into the swinging doors in the hallway and come out in the banquet hall. It was the kitchen. He told my uncle and his friends to follow his lead and above all, act like you belong. They put linens over their sleeves, walked into the kitchen like they owned the place, grabbed some trays of food and walked out into the Yankee's World Series dinner. They met the players and ate fancy dinners, while the Yankees were going around signing autographs. 

The '98 dinner was a bit trickier. Their inside man told them that they had upped security and that there wasn't much he could do for them. Dressed to the nines they stayed in the crowds and waited for their moment. When Joe Torre decided to do a press conference they used it as a distraction to get into the elevator. Since they knew what floor the hall was on from their previous dinner they had no trouble there. Out in the hallway, they once again found themselves unable to get through the main entrance. The kitchen was blocked off this year, a squandered trip to NYC seemed evident. The lucky bastards, Bernie Williams decides that he needs to use the bathroom in the hallway and that it couldn't wait until he got inside the banquet hall. My dad saw opportunity. He said that the hotel security was there but they were overwhelmed. So my dad goes up to the bathroom entrance, screams out my uncle and his friend's by name, and goes "We got it from here, boys no one gets into that bathroom while Mr. Williams is using it". They were pretending to be security. When Bernie got out he was rushed by the crowd and my dad yelled "Mr. Williams will be happy to sign autographs once he's inside. Right now folks, we need to get him to his seat.". They made a path and walked right through the front door with Bernie Williams. 

Happy birthday Dad, you crazy old man. Love you. 

My Fantasy League Member Set His Lineups From Jail

For some of us, fantasy sports is life. For others, it's 25 to Life. I normally spend all year playing in fantasy leagues and I'm starting to have withdrawals. We need it back. I play fantasy hockey, baseball, and football. Football is king though, always will be. If you want to gauge what fantasy football means to people, I'll tell you the story of the guy in my league who was setting his fantasy lineups from jail. 

The league is a 16 team auction league, four keepers. Depending on what price bracket your keepers fall under determines the increase in their salary. It's $350 a team which is pretty high roller for my neck of the woods. A couple of years ago, we had a wrestling belt made that we paid a grand for to present to the champion(s) at the end of the season. The pay outs are pretty nice too. 

I was invited to split a team with a friend of mine. I didn't know majority of the people in the league before my first season. A lot of people split a team so there is about 25 guys in the league. My friends make up six of the teams. The other teams are made up of teachers, construction workers, a Costco manager, a guy who owns the gas station in town, the local dive bar bouncer, my barber, a couple of other people with mystery professions, and a lawyer. 

The Lawyer is a nice a guy. I thought so anyway. He's funny as fuck, he's an attentive owner, and he cooked these gourmet meals for the whole league on draft day. He was normally shorted money for what he put out for the food and spent hours cooking, but he never complained. About two months after our draft this year, The Lawyer was arrested for stealing funds from clients. He's a real estate attorney and was accused of telling clients he'd put their house in escrow and then just took their money for himself. I don't know real estate law all too well, but I do know if he's found guilty on all counts he'll do 5-10 in state prison. I'm not sure if he's had his day in court so it's not my place to judge him, but it did feel like he was in Puerto Rico every other week. 

I'm on the Board for the league now and we discussed a temporary owner for The Lawyer while he figured out his legal issues. Unbeknownst to me, The Lawyer wasn't having any of it. He called another Board member every day to discuss trade proposals, keep up with scores/standings, and set his lineup. The show must go on. The worst part was, I lost to him while he was in jail. Completely and utterly demoralizing. 

That's what fantasy sports is, a distraction from the reality around you. We need distraction. We need fantasy football. Please God, Trump, NFL, the Illuminati, whoever needs to hear this, please let us have football this year.

Bonus story: Everyone has that one friend in the group who is just better at life than everybody else. Our friend like that just so happens to also be in this league. He was the first one in our group to buy his own place and he thought he was better than us. He employed The Lawyer to buy his house. He even bragged about how The Lawyer took him and his family out to an expensive steak dinner to close on the home. We never let him live it down that he might have been an accessory to.  

RIP My MDW

First and foremost, I'd like to acknowledge the fallen heroes who sacrificed their lives for us to continue living our own. I don't like throwing the h-word around but that's exactly who we are memorializing today, heroes. American badasses. Not to completely flip the script here, but I'm going to talk about drinking, partying, and listening to music too loud because that's the American way. 

I am done with the obnoxious bar scene. I'm 27 now, so it's kind of been a long time coming. That means no more Bar A, no Parker House, no Osprey, no Leggetts, and certainly no D'Jais. If you aren't from the tri-state area, these are know as the Jersey shore town bars. Not like that Jersey Shore, but not unlike it either. 

If you haven't been to one of these bars I'll try to explain to you what it's like. You wait in a line for about forty minutes which is starting to kill your pre-game buzz. You've had to pee since five minutes before you even got in the line. You begin to weigh in your head if it's worth it to pay a peeing in public fine over possibly pissing down your pants. Sometimes when you get to the front of the line, if they don't like the way you look they'll trip up your license on a technicality and won't let you in unless you have 7 other forms of ID. If you're lucky enough to get past security you have to pay ten to twenty dollars to get in. 

Once you're in, you have to do your best Moses impression to part the sea of belligerent 21 year olds to get to your predetermined spot with your friends. If you didn't choose a spot before you got in, you're going to get separated from the group and spend the rest of the night looking for each other. If you're a big guy like myself, throw comfort out the window. People are going to be shouldering you all night to get around you while sweat spots start to form through your shirt. 

The drinks are over priced. It isn't that the service is slow, but there's just so many people that it takes twenty minutes every time you need to get another round. So you order too many drinks at once and start feeling it too early in the night. Now you're in the middle of a high school reunion that you otherwise wouldn't RSVP to. You say a silent prayer that one of your buddies doesn't try to fight the guy who used to sleep with his girlfriend, or his ex's current boyfriend. Either one is possible. You start talking to a kid that you weren't friends with and haven't seen in four years. He tells you about his pyramid scheme he's in where he sells cable. He dresses it up as his company that he started called Atlas. You get out of the conversation by saying you need to pee. 

The estimated bathroom line is thirty five minutes and you already feel like your bladder is going to rupture. You stand in line with a stranger who tries to small talk you about literally nothing. Powerless, you watch as girls use sex appeal to cut the men's line and use our restroom. You're not happy about it either but small talk guy goes way over the top and starts calling them c-words to you, while you look around and hope nobody thinks your with him. If you're a large bearded fellow like I was, find the scrawniest looking dude at the head of the line and tell him you bounce at the bar and tonight's your night off. 9/10 times he'll let you cut him, that one's for free. 

After climbing out of the zombie pit, you find your friends again and there's another shot waiting for you. You guys decide you're sick of talking to the same girls you've seen every weekend since 2008 and go on the prowl. Almost immediately you're belittled by a hot group of girls who have a lot more money than you and ditch you to go back to their VIP section. Amongst yourselves somebody suggests that they were probably lesbians and you order more shots to nurse your pride. Someone almost knocks you over on the way to the bar. 

You wake up on a couch you don't recognize. Your voice is gone from screaming over house music all night. That and probably the pack of cigarettes that mysteriously wound up in your pocket. The first familiar face you see gives you a cheeky smile and asks you how you're feeling. You wipe last night out of your eyes while your friends tell you that you're the one who got everyone kicked out for starting a fight with your girlfriend's ex. 

Or something like that. 

This year I worked Saturday, but met my buddies late for a couple of drinks to celebrate our friend's return from Marine training. Yesterday I went to my other friend's BBQ. While they got hammered, I baby sipped a couple of High Noons and watched golf. I stopped after my third drink because I knew I had to put in my grandparents AC units today (Monday) with my little brother. I went home at nine when my friends went to another BBQ. I woke up to my brother staggering into the house at nine in the morning. He told me to wake him when I go to my grandparents house. I went to Target to buy my dad a birthday gift from the both of us. He's 62 today, the old fuck. At 3:30 I tried to wake my brother and got banshee screamed at. I did my grandparent's AC by myself and damn near threw my back out. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do for my dad's birthday dinner. My brother is still asleep. I can't wait for him to be fucked by the responsibility monster. 

This was the perfect end to my MDW run. Normally this would be our first weekend in our Squan house. The lines this year would have been quadruple the size with social distancing and all. You know that employee that has spent too many years at a company? They don't want to fire them so they start hinting that they retire before someone has to make a decision they don't want to make. That was God or the Universe or whatever with me this Memorial Day Weekend. I was forced into summer bar retirement, it feels shockingly refreshing. 

P.S. Drastic changes for Jersey men is very in right now. My timing as always, is impeccable. Look at this picture I just found of DJ Pauly D. 

  

The Only Honest Blog About Judge's Girlfriend

In case you are living under a rock, Aaron Judge's girlfriend got a DWI, bad stuff. Then she tried to drop his name to get out of it, double bad. The whole internet is giving her a proper roast and throwing out words like "entitled" and "obnoxious". I get it, and it's cute to pretend that preferential people don't get preferential treatment, but be honest with yourself. Preferential treatment is America's true pastime, not baseball.  I don't hate her for trying. Do you want to know the God's honest truth? It would've worked on me. 

I'm a Yankees fan, if that last sentence didn't give it away. Here's what I would have done. After the name drop, I would've asked for proof. If she could prove it, I'd park her car, and tell her to get into my back seat without a word. Then, I would drive her home and explain to her that Judge needs to come to the door so I know she's left in good hands. He comes out and I explain the situation. Then I tell him where the car is and urge him not to let her out of his sight because my job is now in jeopardy if she leaves intoxicated. We dap up. I wait a week, then I leak my own body cam footage to TMZ. Immediately fired. I tweet at Judge and say "yo it's me, I got fired". Judge DMs me and I tell him I'm looking for a security job now because my dreams as a cop are gone forever. He makes me his personal head of security. The job pays one million dollars a year and we become best friends. I have a speaking role in his documentary twenty years after he retires. 

Pretty flawless if you ask me. 

The obvious point to her story is get an Uber. If you don't, truth is, it's still just a traffic violation. Learn from it, you could've seriously hurt someone. You'll lose your license for three months and pay out the ass in fines. That shouldn't be a problem for a person who literally doesn't have to drive for the rest of her life if she just said the word. Fuck, I wish I had been a cop in Arizona. Don't drink and drive.