Historically bad.
Historically badass.

Both winless, and for some reason, one is still really fun.

"Anyway, your Astros are terrible and I've been asked to write an SI.com story about how historically bad they might be. (Ed Wade claims it's just a matter of the bats struggling.) Care to defend your club? Or maybe pile on instead?"


And that, my friends, is how the second paragraph of the email I received from my old friend Joe Lemire went, followed by a cheery, "Cheers, Joe."

My first reaction was, "How does Joe Lemire know that I'm coaching a Little League team this year named the Astros, and how does he know we're 0-4?"

And then I remembered, the Houston Astros are even worse.

This was three days ago, by the way. The South Austin Astros got mercy ruled by the dreaded Pirates that night, 15-0, in three innings, with five outs given to us in the final frame, so we're now 0-5. And the Houston Astros?

Oh-and motherfreaking-eight.

Joe, who was my first sports editor at the Cavalier Daily in 2003, is now a writer for Sports Illustrated. He wrote this this week, but I'll always remember him as the author of this column from 2005, which has inspired me to be the man that I am today:

Johnny Damon?

Wrong. The man who stretches Beard Fortnight into Beard Q2.

I think Joe Lemire should spend his time at SI more wisely, and write a feature about how the team that Nick, David and Tony are all coaching is getting stomped on every game, but only because our Astros are almost all six year olds playing in an eight year old man's world. And how we're still having fun despite the fact that we are getting worked every Monday and Saturday. In the coach pitch division at South Austin Little League, there is crying in baseball, and we've got our share of criers.

But two things:

1) We are going to dominate this league next season

2) Who cares if we're losing?

Okay, some people.

But that's just because they don't realize that they're only six.

(And also, by the way, that photo was snapped right after I asked the Astros how many of them I had accidentally beaned that night.)

Could be worse, I suppose. I could be Brad Mills.

His players are older than six.

All that matters is that Emmett knows how to slide, Nicholas is a spark plug, Andre is my ballin' cousin, Lucy loves sitting on the bench (coach's dream), and all of the other kids are giving me constant material, too.

In a little league full of history (they say it's the oldest one in Texas, but I have no independent verification of this), the South Austin Astros themselves could be historically bad.

But there is one thing we will never fail at.

Eating sunflower seeds

Climbing trees

Playing in the dirt

Almost making contact on a fist bump

Lining up our players shortest-to-tallest for team photos while standing on the side of a hill

Adding piles of grass to the dirt after we've played in it

Making awkward high five contact after missing the fist bump

Okay that was a lot of things. But we're good at some stuff, see?

For when you need a manager with intelligence.

Finally, I will be able to say, "I am the Astros manager."

That's right. I'm coaching a Little League team in Austin, and they let us choose the team name.

It wasn't like this in college, when I coached a team of 8-12 year olds three years in a row, with all of my boys at UVa. That league had this retarded policy whereby the name of the sponsor was the name of your team. So there were no little kids at Central Little League who thought it was so cool to be playing for a team like the Tigers, or the Yankees, or the A's. Instead you're suiting up in t-shirts with that especially cheesy, 80's style cursive that say things like "Dixie Pawn," or the "Window and Door Pro's."

Our last year doing it, after having established ourselves around Charlottesville following four years of college, we were able to convince the old, slightly perverted Greek man who owned a go-to, late night burger spot called The White Spot to sponsor us. Sure we were still named after our sponsor, but with a twist: with that UVa orange and blue, the word "Gusburgers." Dmitri even gave the team about 15 free ones for picture day, which froze a moment in time when I was 22, with a hemp necklace and a big smile on my face, as all of us chowed down on semi-cold, half eaten cheeseburgers with a definitely cold fried egg spilling out the top.

Austin, though, is a even cooler than a bag full hour-old Gusburgers when it comes to team names. They give you the freedom to decide. It's so Austin of them, don't you think?

Since it's not just me that's coaching this coach pitch team, but also three of my boys from Houston (high school good times rather than college good times, this time), the answer for us was obvious.

"What would y'all like to be called?"

That's like a Hooters waitress asking Wilt Chamberlain if he wants to bang, or Fidel Castro if he likes control.

"The Astros," I said, within about three milliseconds. "The South Austin Astros."

"The South Austin Astros," my pitching coach said. "Nice."

Which is why he just bought me 250 of these business cards:

That's right. Because I'm an intelligence analyst too, get it?

But mainly because he forgot my birthday two weeks ago and he felt bad. They were "free," if you don't include the $14 it costs to ship them here within seven business days. But that is a $14 joke which is kind of like a television series called "The Best Conversation Starter Ever," and Nick is going to be able to hear me recount a different episode probably every week until the season ends in May. Any girl with any knowledge of baseball and a even a smidgeon of maternal instinct will let out an, "Awwwww!" so heartfelt upon hearing that this guy is the baseball coach for a troupe of six year olds it will sound like a free puppy giveaway.

Our players are young, like I said. Really young. Ranging from six to eight years young, with more weight on the left end of that see saw. Which means that at our first practice, I had to hold in a laugh when one of our kids was putting a right handed glove on his right hand, and when I realized another really is David after Dentist:

I swear.

And how cool are we going to look in front of the cool Austin parents when we bring in my friend and neighbor, and local Austin celebrity, Kat Edmonson to sing the national anthem before one of our games? This girl is one of the biggest names in Austin music (despite being so petite that she's only slightly larger than our first baseman), and when I asked her if she would be interested in singing it, she said, "I've been asked to do that so many times, like before UT basketball games, but I've never done it, mainly because I don't know the song." And then, "But I would definitely do it for your Little League."

Emphasis on "definitely." The South Austin Astros is easily going to be the most badass team this league has ever seen, even if we go winless.

What can I say, we're just lucky, I guess.

I can bike to practice, and to games, and it's about a baseball's throw from my favorite place in Austin, Barton Springs, to which I can also bike, meaning that I'm gonna be an intelligence analyzin', Barton Springs chillin', Little League coachin' hippie Lance Armstrong this spring, without the killer bod, and the money, but including the fact that I'm okay with that. It sounds kind of trite, but it is a fact that back when I had a summer internship in Austin, when I was 21 and still a year away from coaching the Gusburgers, I used to look at this field next to Barton Springs and daydream about one day in my mid-20's having a cool job in Austin, living near the Springs, and coaching a Little League team, like I was doing every year in those days, but not next to this inner city Garden of Eden.

Now that's what I'm doing. (And I'm wishing I was back in the days when I was wishing I could do it, but it's a nice consolation prize for having to live in the present moment.)

That doesn't mean that I can't live in the past just a little bit. Since we were assigned the gold jerseys -- it was either that or maroon -- the South Austin Astros are gonna be modeled after the late 90's Astros. I have a huge head (like, vertically; it goes up really high), meaning I can only really wear those deep salad bowls known as Major League fitted caps. So go figure that Lids is making a throwback, fitted version of the ugliest, and therefore coolest, Astros hats of all time.

It's so rare that I couldn't even find it again after just looking for 30 minutes. Not even on the Lids site, not on Google. Not much love for Bill Spiers on the ole' Google Images. But I bought one already, so I'm chilling. And trust me, it is bling. Nick, the one who bought me those business cards, is pissed, because he's trying to get one, too. It's the navy blue one with the gold star, and the gold brim. The original "Sunday alternate" Astros hat, straight out of the days of Y2K.

Mr. Romance Languages

And the story of le jeu le plus brillant de tous les temps

I'm sitting at a booth at an outdoor Austin coffee shop, finishing up a week of work on my laptop, and there is a couple sitting in the booth next to me.

The girl is your typical, sexy, tatted up Austin girl, with tribal looking wooden earrings that somewhat resemble a coil of hand carved razor wire looping through both lobes, and just enough eye liner to look damn hot without going overboard into trashy town. The guy is your typical douche.

They're speaking French. Actually it's more like a tutor-and-pupil session than speaking, and the girl is very much so the tutor. His French sucks.

The first thing I hear her say is "Zjuh, zjuh," really slowly. (It is impossible to phonetically write out the sound of the French word Je, which means I, a fact about le francais that this dude probably did not know about until three or four days ago.)

"Juh," he says. "Juh."

"No, you've gotta say it like this: zzjjjjjuuuh."

Not like jjuuudge.

"Maybe she's trying to teach him Serbian," I thought for a brief moment: like zzzzelja mi je pusta da ti svrsim u usta.

"Or Swahili." Nipe kikunde kimojjjjjja ili nitasizi na Muindaji.

And then came the flashcard session on how to conjugate the verb aller.

Mon dieu, does he sound le retarded.

They're in their late 20's, meaning it's not for some college class or something that they're sitting at a coffee shop at 3 on a Friday going over French verbs like "to be" and "to have" in the present tense. The girl clearly speaks French, and the guy, he just "wants to learn it." A hobby. 

Something to do besides work all the time, perhaps -- like what my neighbors Tony and Nicholas just did, splitting the Rosetta Stone Spanish between themselves.

But this guy is so bad; sure, it's never too late to learn a language, but that doesn't apply to 

everyone. It's too late for him.

But "Hahahaha, oui!" -- I'm hearing a lot of that coming from her. Because the guy is so damn charming. So clever. He's macking on this tutor girl, and clearly not really interested in learning French. But the girl has no idea. She does not realize at all that he is using this suddenly discovered desire to learn a foreign language (subtext: "I am so worldly and curious") as a pretext for running game on her.

It's a brilliant strategy, I must concede. I hate on the guy, because he really was a douche, but at least he had my full respect, like Greivis Vasquez from Maryland.

The Latin Stereotype

Then she goes to the bathroom, and the first thing he does is pull out his cell phone. He's dialing now.

"Bueno," I hear him say, in a Spanish accent so bad it is only rivaled by his French, "que tal?" (phonetically: kay tall?)

He's smiling that sort of fox-like, mischievous grin as he listens to the response coming from the other end.

Then something cheesy like, "Well then I guess we won't be able to hang out later and socialize with one another."

No question he's talking to a girl. You would never say that to a dude. Unless you have a crush on that dude. And this guy, he has a crush on Frenchie. But he's displaying the exact same persona while talking to what has to be a girl, but he's using bad Spanish in his game-spitting session this time!

Could it be...?

The test is now, because here comes Frenchie, sauntering back to the table. We make eye contact, but there is no smile proffered, because the other guy, he's the charming one. And he's sooo eager to learn French, remember? I'm just the one who previously tried to ask if I could share her booth -- because it really was the only place with an outlet where you didn't have to hunch over to type -- but she had smiled and said, "I would totally let you normally, but I have a friend meeting up with me."

And now that friend of yours is using the exact same tactic to try and get with another chick who is probably just as unsuspecting as you are that you're being lured into a trap by Mr. Romance Languages.

But I'm not sure yet; maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there was an intelligence failure at some point during the analytical process. We'll know based on what Mr. Iberia says about the phone call that he's wrapping up as she sits down.

"That was a friend of mine." (The exact description she'd given to me of who it was that was stealing my seat in the booth across the table from her.) "He --"

Stop it right there. He. Not two sentences in and I've already caught him in a lie. Who is this guy?

I want to yell out, "That was definitely a girl he was talking to, go Elen on his right to cell phone privacy!" But I don't.

"He has game nights at his house, and we'll go over there and chill."

"Oh, cool."

"Yeah, and we'll speak like bad French together, too, as a joke."

What, the, fuck.

"Oh come on!" I really want to yell this time, before gathering up my crappy laptop and the docking station that serves a required accessory if I desire to actually turn it on for more than 45 seconds, and marching back over to the booth to reclaim my right place at the outlet.

I speak better French and Spanish than this guy, anyway.

She buys it though, just eats it up, like a gourmet snail, and their flirtatious tutorial continues. I can see the verbs she is teaching him in my head, written in its six forms, in two rows of three: je, tu, il/elle/on; nous, vous, ils/elles/sont. For someone who only took French for one year in college, I'm not bad. This dude, though, actually says vooze once, as a stand alone word.

He isn't even really that good looking, and he's got a pretty annoying voice and a general cheesy presence. But they're paying the bill now and leaving together, and I'm still stuck in my little end table, hunched over and thinking about the story I'm going to write about the hot, tatted up Austin chick and the d-bag who was able to convince her he was the man just because he took the time to prepare some French vocab flashcards.

This dude, he may be running this same scam with all the romance language chicks. He's got French and Spanish on lock down; what's to say it's not the same story with Italian, Portuguese and oft-forgotten Romanian?

May be a douche, but I have to hand it to him: Mr. Romance Languages is a brilliant man.

But he still couldn't touch me if the girl in the booth had been Serbian, though.

And if she had been from East Africa, and saw my Swahili notebooks I have back at my place, she would be like a popsicle on July afternoon in Dar es Salaam.

Europe Union Moves Toward a Bailout of Greece

By STEPHEN CASTLE and LANDON THOMAS Jr.

.......

I put the headline and the names of the reporters for the New York Times who wrote this story in case anyone wants to ridicule them for the following passage:

Greece is pressing for a much detail as possible on rescue contingencies to ensure that it will be get some relief from the attack in the markets for imposing a harsh plan on its restive public.

------------------------------------------------

I've learned a lot about the news cycle in the mainstream media over the past year. It's really fascinating to see how one initial report can germinate into a thousand confirming reports, all of which simply restate the original report -- which is never fact checked -- in a slightly differently worded account, with maybe a new detail here or there added in for posterity. The Google machine and the era of oversupply of free information via online newspapers do make it incredibly easy to find out exactly what is happening at the ends of the earth, but it does not come without some drawbacks.

The no. 1 side effect of the dawn of this era -- one of fast, available information, which is intertwined with the emergence of what I refer to as "Generation Text Me" -- is that my pet peeve is chronic.

Where have all the good editors gone?

Greece is pressing for a much detail as possible on rescue contingencies to ensure that it will be get some relief from the attack in the markets for imposing a harsh plan on its restive public.

Hmmm...

How about we write it like this?

Greece is pressing for as much detail as possible on rescue contingencies to ensure that it will be getting some relief from the attack in the markets for imposing a harsh plan on its restive public.

The best is how the NYT clearly realized they had gotten the equivalent of a D on a ninth grade English quiz, and amended the way the story appeared online (click here and you'll see):

Aaaand they still made a mistake.



(Sigh.)

The Bob 101

"Bayless, I met a cute girl the other day who knows you."

"Really? What's her name?"

"Allison -- she's friends with Nan [my cousin]."

"Allison..." I think hard... I vaguely recall an Allison who is friends with Nan. Blonde chick, with short hair. "Is she blonde?"

The Bob hesitates for a moment. "Blonde?" he asks. "Not really blonde -- she has short hair."

As if the length of the hair somehow affects the color.

"What do you mean 'but it's short'?" I ask.

"Well it's dirty blonde."

"Yeah but what does the color have to do with the length? Unless she's got a shaved head the hair is going to be the same color whether it's short or long, Dad."

"Bayless I don't know," he says, with a faint touch of irritation, like being outside without sunglasses at 4 p.m. on a summer afternoon in Texas. "It was blonde but it was a little darker."

"But short," I reminded him.

"Correct."

Sometimes my dad speaks in a language in which only those close to him have attained fluency.

"Dad my question is why did you answer the question as if somehow the length of the hair affects its color. Even if her hair was down to her ass, if it's blonde, it's going to be blonde."

At this point the focus is no longer on Allison; I'm just trying to see if The Bob understands that he is the inventor of a dialect.

"She knows you," he says, "and she's cute," tired of my pointless questions and trying to refocus my attention on the important details before moving onto other points of conversation.

We went on to discuss the McGrady trade, how the Knicks think they're going to sign Wade and Lebron this summer, the coup in Niger, a 1099 my former party boat employer sent to my childhood house, car insurance, and the fact that no, I don't really exercise.

Pretty standard Bob talk. But it was short.

Cum see what inspired me.

We were all in the middle of discussing it -- everyone was discussing it over New Year's, I'm sure -- on the drive from Charlotte to Cashiers, North Carolina when we began to see the familiar shape of Tiger grow larger and larger in the distance. It was a billboard, on the opposite side of the highway, with a giant photo of a golfer. He was admiring his shot, which would have ended up somewhere near the Virginia border if the photo had been made to scale.

It really looked like Tiger.

"There he is!"

Surely everyone has taken down their Tiger ads by now, I thought.

"No way..."

A few seconds pass, and the billboard gets bigger.

"Yeah, you're right," another person said.

"Oh man that would have been so hilarious if someone still had a huge Tiger billboard up right now."

(One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand...)

Wait for it.... wait for it..........

"HOLY SHIT!"

One person screaming but an entire car full of people coming to the collective realization.

"IT IS HIM!"

The collective realization that the man admiring his golf shot on the billboard ahead was the man himself.

And the subsequent collective realization that he is inviting us to come see what inspired him, (so long as we click on the box affirming that we are in fact 18 years of age.)

And of course my camera was buried in my bag as we flew past it on the interstate.

"Oh man, that was such a perfect opportunity for Bayless to start writing in his blog again, too!"

"Like rain on your fucking wedding day," I said.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scene: the other car, being driven by Tom, with Martha and Lizzie as passengers.

(P.S. Tom told me when I was waiting for him to pick me up in Martha's car at the airport that he would be driving a "green Toyota thing," when in fact, it was a black 4Runner.)

"Hello?"

I was on the other end of the line, and I was trying to convince Tom to turn around and pull a U-turn, so we could get out and take a picture. Tom later claimed that Martha had predicted his phone was about to ring with this exact request from me.

"If we see a place to turn around in four miles," Tom said, to an almost immediate chorus of boos and protest from the two girls in the car, "we'll turn around," before quickly amending his promise because of the boos and protest.

"Two miles," he said. "Two miles."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I got to work writing all of this down, so we would remember where to pull off on the drive back to Charlotte should we not find a place within two miles.

PETER GUICE MEMORIAL BRIDGE
"See what inspired me."
TIGER BILLBOARD
Exit 59
FUCK!

The reason I wrote the last word in my notes is because, as I was writing my notes, we passed the exact, same, billboard. The exact same billboard, within 10 miles of one another on US-64. And still, my camera, buried in my bag.

"DAMNIT!"

Exit 59 immediately became seared into my brain. We were going to turn around on the drive home.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scene: the drive home, New Year's Day.

Wes was just as excited as I was to get a photo op with the billboard.

Some would say even moreso.

The children whose father had pulled over during a road trip for the ole, side-of-the-highway-family-snowball-fight didn't seem to notice us.




But I guess they're just not as focused as we are on the important things in life.




Like making sure I have things to write about on my blog.


"ATL Airport - wish i had better camera - the top says "thinker" and bottom says "doer" - guess which one id be pointing to if we could get another clearer pic for the blog" - text message from Wes today, with attached photo

"You don't have Christ in your life."

And how people like this actually do exist.

I had a really good friend from back in the day tell me last night that the reason I hold political beliefs that she categorized as "wrong" is because -- and I quote -- "You don't have Christ in your life."

She said this while we were at a party, doing party things. She also happened to ruin the party for me, since I spent the next 40 minutes explaining to her in a very restrained manner how offensive such an accusation is. (Something she was never able to grasp, since she "really believes" that Jesus is the only way to Heaven.)

Two thoughts:

1) My general rule of thumb is that Christians who call the guy "Christ" instead of "Jesus" are way intense.

2) I wonder if my friend would have appreciated my other Halloween costume from this past October.

Hint: I'm not the one on the right

The best part about this costume was that, every time I had someone come up to express how they were offended, I could just say, "It's okay. I forgive you for judging me."

The same goes for people who complained that my cross had hit them in the head. I would just forgive them for getting in the way of my cross.

Am I a hypocrite? Not really; at least I'm aware that my costume was offensive.

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WWKD?

I don't know what it is, maybe I'm just like the faux grad student version of a "Night at the Roxbury" guy, but I always, always, always seem to run game on random girls I meet at coffee shops. Bars? Clubs? Heavens no -- way too nerve wracking. Coffee shops is where I do my best work.

That goes for doing research papers on Angola as well. I've been working on this bad boy -- explain the entire history and geopolitics of Angola in ten pages or less -- piece for about three months now, and I'm about to hangola myself. I had to leave work early today so I could focus, and I came to my favorite coffee shop in Austin, Spider House.

About four hours in, after I'd gotten tons of solid work done, a cutie McTutie rolls up, laptop in hand, looking for a place to sit.

An extra seat at my table, with an outlet right next to me -- the coffee shop equivalent of having a lighter on you.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked. "I need a place to plug in my laptop."

"By all means." Nice, Billy.

She sits down. I thank the gods of hot girls in low top Chucks. Cutie, Mc, Tutie.

And then it gets weird.

It's clear that she's a UT student from the get go -- I mean, who carries a stack of library books on Kabbala and Hinduism for fun -- but I'm thinking 22, 21, maybe 20, at the lowest. Maybe 19 and a half.

And then, in the course of converasation, I found out something I don't want to hear: the year she graduated from high school.

2009.

I graduated from high school in 2002.

This makes her officially my little sister's age.

A dilemma, indeed.

I have a friend, his name is Kyle, who would not find this to be problematic at all. So I email him, for self assurance, and write the question "WWKD?" in the subject line, in which I lay out the entire scenario.

Kyle texts me within minutes.


Get the #, invite her out to do something this weekend, be vague until u have a good idea, obviously can't invite her to a bar, hahahaha.
Perrrrrrfect age


I then text Garland, my little sister, proud member of the Class of '09. I ask her if it's weird, what I'm contemplating, which is continuing to run game on a girl who probably doesn't remember the band Bush.


Yes.


I respond:


I disagree.


I'm going with Kyle's advice. Will let you know how it goes.

Sticks and stones may break your bones.

But sticks are also really fun.

Question: how come no one blinks an eye when you say, "Man, I've been working like a slave lately," but you have to hesitate and poll the room before you want to write the sentence, "Man, I've been working like the protagonist from 'Roots'"?

The answer: (sigh). I don't know.

Ironic, though, on two counts:

1) The reason I have not written in over a month is because my job -- which, incidentally, involves staring at a computer screen for 12+ hours a day -- has completely eliminated the notion of "free time" from my existence, and 2) The only reason I am writing now is because of something that came up as a result of me working ... at 10:30 on a Tuesday night ... while at my friend Tony's house.

I'm getting ready to give a 15-minute presentation on Somalia tomorrow.

I told Tony this.

Tony was kind of blown away.

"Somalia" is a pretty broad topic.

"Somalia?!" he responded, as we sat in his spacious living room, with a big screen TV playing Game 3 of the ALCS in the background, while my fingers punched away on the keyboard of his roommate David's expensive Apple laptop computer. "I had a pen pal in Somalia in like third grade." Tony is a year older than me, meaning this was circa 1991-92. "We'd write shit like, 'I like to play Super Nintendo! And he'd be like, 'Uhhhh... okay. I like to play with a stick.'"

After I copied down the quote verbatim in my notes -- our dialogue is going to be the opening salvo in my presentation tomorrow -- I let Tony know he would be getting sourced as footnote no. 1.

"A stick," I said, laughing my ass off. Funny because African kids really do like to play with sticks, which is exactly what the stereotype is. I thought Tony was just stereotyping; there was no way his Somali pen pal actually wrote that.

"No, you know what it was?" he said, his memory suddenly refreshed, like an Internet connection that finally just gets there. "Tennis balls. It was tennis balls! And sticks."

"Wait... wait... He really did play with sticks?"

"Oh, yeah," Tony said. "They would play games with tennis balls and sticks."

Wow. Just... just wow.

The benefits of the mustache far outweight the costs.

Update on the mustache situation: I successfully maintained it until Friday, which is today. And as agreed upon, Leticia bought me my 12-pack of Pacifico.




She also made a special flier, acknowledging my hard work, and taped it to the box. I now have it tacked onto my cubicle wall. The flier reads:

You must look like

to have one of these.

Bayless earned these by sporting a manly,
yet playful mustache all week,
so do not ask him for any!

So now, on my cubicle wall, I have a piece of cardboard Pacifico box taped to that flier, a cartoon drawing done by a coworker that depicts a stick figure of him farting in my stick-figured face, a work email about the death of a famous Hollywood director sent by an intern who shared the same name, and this:




Which was also provided by Leticia.

I think I really do look like him. Which is why I am going to be Inigo Montoya for Halloween.

(But I'm definitely shaving the mustache before then.)

My name -- this week at work, at least -- is Inigo Montoya.
Prepare to buy ... me a 12-pack of Pacifico, Leticia.

"Ya know," The Bob said, as we sat outside eating breakfast at my favorite coffee shop Monday morning, "in some cultures, it's the father who is supposed to ... ya know ... it's the father ... he's the one who makes the--"

Whenever my dad is bullshitting, he gets the same stupid look in his eyes, and he hesitates before delivering the punch line. It means that he's not clever enough to actually come up with a good one.

(The face I'm talking about is sort of a cross between the one he's making above and the one below. Anyone who has seen it knows what I'm talking about.)

"Dad," I said, not even cracking a smile. "Shut up."

He did a half giggle as my mom made her face: the one she makes whenever my dad makes his.

If I had had to describe it in words, I would have gone with, "How the hell did I stay married to this guy for this long?"

The Bob, sufficiently pleased with himself, diverted his gaze away from the two of us and settled it upon the tall mystery girl sitting all by her lonesome self at a table about 12 yards away.

"The father makes the introduction," came the punch line, about 3.5 seconds too late.

It was really kind of him to be looking out for his boy like that. But if there's anything a father should teach his son, though, it's how to hunt for his own dinner. And how to shave.

The subject line of about five emails I sent out at work yesterday read "the reason i grew the 'stache."

That tall mystery girl -- whose name turned out to be Audrey -- is the reason I grew my 'stache. I'll explain that later. What I'll explain first is how I came to erase the word "mystery" from her description.

Shortly after hugging my parents goodbye after that breakfast, and still seeing her sitting all by her lonesome self, I took one look at the stack of printed-out academic journal articles on Angolan geopolitics I had in my hands and said to myself three words: "Fuck Angolan geopolitics." As much fun as I have memorizing the intricacies of clashing rebel groups and offshore oil production in that godforsaken corner of southwestern Africa, I get to do that for more than 60 hours a week at work. At that moment, all I wanted to do was pull up a chair, and invite myself to sit down, classic Parsley style, with the tall chick.

"You don't mind if I join you do you?"

"No, not at all," she said, with a semi-genuine, semi-creeped out smile.

The Bob would have been so proud.

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I said I "grew" my 'stache, when that's not exactly the truth. I'd had a beard that morning. Nothing like I had in Serbia last July...




... when I looked like the guy from the 20 dinar note ....




... but a pretty solid one nonetheless. Turning it into a glorious moustache, then, only took a few minutes and a few strokes of the razor. But it added about ten years in age, and took me back about three decades in time.

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"All I could think to myself as I was talking to your friend in there was this: 'This girl thinks that I am Moustache Guy,'" I said to my neighbor Kevin, as we were eating burgers at his place, less than an hour after I'd come to own the 'stache. "But I'm NOT Moustache Guy!"

"No," Kevin said. "No, you're not." But he certainly was enjoying the fact that his friend Allison, who I had never met until she rolled up to the barbecue, thought I was. "Yeah I'd say it makes you look more... 'Uncle Chico'-ish."

That's what happens when you grow a 'stache for reasons other than aesthetics, though: People who you've never met will think you're Moustache Guy.

"Don't you know what it means to become a Moustache Guy?" I shot back. "It changes everything! I'd have to dress different and I'd have to act different! I'd have to get all kinds of robes and lotions! I'd have to get a new bedspread and new curtains; I'd have to get thick carpeting and weirdo lighting! I'd have to get new friends; I'd have to get orgy friends!"

Okay fine, I stole that whole last paragraph from "Seinfeld."

But the point is this: Moustache Guy is a lot like Orgy Guy -- neither are me, and both require dressing and acting different. In Austin, Moustache Guy is Hipster Guy. And I don't want to be Hipster Guy; nor do I want people like Kevin's friend Allison to view me as such upon first meeting.

Which is why I felt compelled to explain myself as I walked out the door, stuffed to the brim with burgers and guacamole, about to hop on my bike and go ride downtown to meet Audrey and her friends.

"By the way," I said as we shook hands, "I have to tell you the reason I have a moustache..."

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Because of the mussels -- which is ironic, since I'm not Muscles Guy, either.

"Yeah, it's Mussels Monday at this bar if you have a moustache," Audrey had said that morning at the coffee shop. She was referring to a place called Bess' Bistro on 6th. (Yes, that Bess' Bistro; the one Sandra Bullock loves.) "But since I can't grow one I just put on this fake one I have and go."

Seeing as my lack of shame in the self-invitation department has already been well documented, you shouldn't be surprised to find out that it took about three seconds before I offered to shave and meet them later that night. It was Moustache Mussels Monday, after all. And it was an excellent cover for trying to run game.

I went home, I read about Angola, I shaved, and I went to Kevin's to eat dinner (as mussels are not quite filling enough.)

And of course, what do I do? I eat so much at Kevin's that I find myself on my bike, riding to Bess', fighting back the urge to vomit with every revolution of the pedals, even when going downhill.

Mussels were the last thing I needed once I showed up at the bar.

"Well actually mussels aren't what's free," the bartender said when I plopped down on the stool next to Audrey. "It's appetizers that are free if you've..." -- the lady, who didn't crack a smile once the whole night, was delivering this sentence with entirely too much seriousness, in my opinion, seeing as it was in front of five moustachioed patrons, two of whom were women -- "... got a moustache."

I looked around; no one besides our small group of five had anyone in its party with a moustache. It appeared as if Moustache Mussels Monday was a flop.

"Okay well I'm even too full for an appetizer," I said. "How about..."

And this is the part where I smooth talk the manager into hooking me up with a free beer, rather than a free, small piece of food.

"We can throw away a beer on him, don't you think?" the manager said to the lady, after I'd driven home my position by reminding them that I had "a pretty legit 'stache, ya know?"

"We don't carry Lone Star," the semi-snobby, hipster bartender said when I aimed low (I felt like it wasn't my place to go for a classy beer in that situation, seeing as I looked worse than someone who watches Channel 9 at the time).

"Hey Peter man!"

(Oh and while we're at it, you may want to watch this clip -- totally unrelated to this story, but related to guys who watch channel 9 -- and get ready to be jealous of this guy's ridiculous good luck)

"Okay..."

So I got an Austin Amber, which is fantastic, and more expensive than an appetizer. I made sure to thank my moustache and its glory with every sip.

This was on Monday. Today is Wednesday. I still have the moustache. Why?

Because after I wore it to the office yesterday -- (it would have been a crime had I not at least shown it off for one day amongst the cubicles and the non-channel 9 crowd) -- one co-worker promised to buy me a 12-pack of Pacifico, my favorite beer, if I kept it until Friday.

A.k.a the easiest best I've ever made in my life.

"I think you should keep it," Audrey said when I talked to her tonight. "I think it looks good."

"You should keep it until Halloween," about three different people suggested today at work, "so you can be Inigo Montoya." (Another coworker told me she thought it made me look "more confident," whatever that means.)

"Who knows, man?" Kevin asked. "You say you don't like it now, but who knows? Maybe you'll come to enjoy it. Maybe you'll actually become Moustache Guy."

That, I highly, highly doubt.

But I definitely think I've found the secret to subsidizing my beer drinking. And I've definitely found out the secret to macking on tall chicks. It's alllllll in the moustache.

A karmic force out.

I’m on a kickball team here in Austin that plays every Thursday night. Our team name is the Freebasers.

We were apparently really good last year, though no one on the squad would deny accusations that we have not lived up to the hype this season. Last year, when I wasn’t on the team, we were good. This year, when I’m on the team, we suck. I’m just glad my initials aren’t C.D., because someone might get the bright idea to start calling me Common Denominator.

We had a game last night against the defending champs. Their team name is Team Relax. Team Relax is nasty. They’ve got a great pitcher, they’ve got a girl who is almost as good as most of the dudes on our team, they’ve got a token black kid who is an all around athlete, and they’ve got a championship trophy, which they got after beating the Freebasers in what was apparently an epic championship game, last season.

And Team Relax is cocky, too. One of their heavy hitters is drinking beer out of the trophy in right field as he’s waiting for the game to begin. It's the kickball equivalent of Terrell Owens spiking it on the star. It is grounds for a brawl.

Oh, and by the way – Team Relax? They’ve never lost. Not once. In four years. They are four years-and-0.

I want to beat Team Relax.

But guess who doesn’t want us to win?

To understand the answer to that, we've got to go back in time, so I can fill you in.

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(Three weeks ago, against a shitty team, whose name I never knew)

It was the second or third inning – we play five, total in this league – and we were losing. Man on first, one out, I’m up to bat. I kick a screaming line drive to the second baseman, who drops the ball, and has no time to make the force out at second. Mark, our captain and GM, is a fast little guy, but he wasn’t trying to slide and cut up his shit. So he ran through the bag, then hurried back and safely touched his foot down, avoiding the tag.

The tag, you see. The tag.

One of the fundamental rules of baseball and/or kickball is this: when there is a force at second or third, once the runner touches the base, that force is no longer in existence. It is then up to the infielder to tag the runner if he's off the base. I knew this rule as a six year old.

But the umpire? The girl umpire who thought she was a badass, but who was and is actually a complete bitch? She didn’t know this.

“Out!” she screamed.

Out??

“Out!”

But no, we protested. He was safe. He was not out.

“Out!”

I hate umpires that think that once they take the field, they cease to be a human being, and become some sort of infallible authority figure akin to the pope, or Stalin. They’re the umpire. And Mark is out.

“Will you at least explain WHY I’m out?” Mark asked in vain, now that there were two down and a man on first – rather than one down and a man in scoring position.

“I’ll explain,” the bitch girl umpire said, essentially snarling as she did, “after the inning.” This girl is probably a nocturnal teeth grinder, by the way.

And explain she did, after the inning – to the home plate umpire, who was a guy.

“Blah blah blah,” she said, explaining her righteousness in the form of a narrative about a force out that wasn't, “and then she stepped on the base. It was a force out.”

I was listening in intently. And at that part of the narrative, I lost it.

“OH MY GOD!” I yelled for the entire field to hear, aiming for max embarrassization. “The umpire just admitted she doesn’t know the rules! THE UMPIRE, just admitted, that she DOESN’T, KNOW, THE RULES!”

Needless to say, we lost the game, by one.

And we left with an enemy for life – who will never forget the definition of a force out.

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Okay, now let’s flash forward through time. We’re back at the same field, this past Thursday (also known as last) night.

It’s a close game – we’ve been going tit for tat with Team Relax every inning except one, when we tacked on two unanswered runs, and then again, an inning later, when we add an insurance score. Going into the last inning, the Freebasers are sitting on a 3-0 lead. But you can never relax when you’re playing Team Relax.

Man on third. No one out. We’re up three, but that could change in a heartbeat. The only reason there’s a runner on base is because I dropped an easy throw to first. If they rally, it could easily be pinned on me.

And the batter hits a lazy foul pop – to me.

“Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it,” I’m saying to myself – I’ve already dropped it twice in this game, and I can’t embarrass myself again.

I don’t drop it; I catch it, and there is one out. But before I can congratulate myself, I see the runner on third make a break for the plate. And I laser one home to the catcher, who has to tag the guy out -- because there is no force in this situation.

The runner clearly slides under the tag. He's safe. Our lead has been cut to two. But the home plate ump blows it.

"He's out!"

Out!!

I couldn't believe it.

It was a karmic make up call from the game where the bitch girl umpire screwed us.

And guess who is the umpire in the field for this game too?

That's right. The same girl.

"He was safe!" she yells from her post near second. "There wasn't a force out!" And she ran towards home to pow wow with the guy ump.

"She's using it against us!" I thought to myself. "We've created a monster!"

But the guy ump wasn't having any of it. He wouldn't listen to her; after all, she had lost all credibility after the previous debacle.

And we ended up winning the game, delivering Team Relax its first defeat ever.

And it was all despite the force.

I have 7.5 liters of sljivovica in my bag.
Now that is a souve-freaking-nir

I intentionally left room in my huge pack when I came to Belgrade because I knew I'd want to bring souvenirs home. My bag was light when I left Houston. It is very, very heavy now.

"How much rakija you want?" Mladen asked tonight as I was getting all my stuff ready to go.

"Fill up one of these bottles," I said, pointing to a plastic bottle of water sitting on the table in the common room.

"That's it?" He sounded rather disappointed in me, like a dad from Alabama finding out his only son was gay. "This is just two liter."

"How much do you have?" I asked. I'd thought my request was too much, not too little.

"Ten liter."

"Okay then, I'll take more."

He picked up a different plastic bottle. "This one is 1.5 liter."

My bag is now holding 7.5 liters of this shit.

Rakija is not stuff you can mess around with, either. It's serious stuff. You don't take shots of it. You sip it. And then you sip some water. Even tough, crazy Serbs like Mladen follow this rule.

Osama bin Mladen

Let me repeat this: I have 7.5 liters of homemade Serbian rakija in my bag that I am checking from Belgrade.

"You gonna be on CNN," Mladen just told me when I marveled at how much freaking rakija that is.

This stuff is no joke. I had nose hair until three days ago, when I made the mistake of sniffing my shot glass of it before I took a sip. And I'm taking home the good stuff: sljivovica, known in English as plum brandy. There was a Czech guy here at the Black Catz the other night who thought he was tough. While we were sipping our glasses, he was shooting his, despite my warnings. His friend, though, listened to our warnings.

Guess which one is which, 30 minutes later.