How hirsute...NOT

How is the mustache coming? Remember, this Wednesday night at River Run Bookstore in Portsmouth at 7 p.m. Rusty Barnes and I will ostensibly be reading poetry and fiction, but really, I'm looking for someone who is really, really rockin' the 'stache.

My mustache is not going so well. Some of you may have noted that I shaved my goatee on Wednesday night, thinking I'd have a week to grow a robust hedge of facial hair above my top lip. I was wrong. At best, I'll look a little like an eighth grade boy whose father hasn't bought him his first shaving kit yet. It's weak, folks. Really weak.

Hope, however, is not entirely lost. While watching an infomercial for hair transplants today, and seeing all of these men around my age with their pubes stapled to the tops of their heads---and pretty damn happy about it---it occurred to me I could look into having hair transplanted from my head, where it is plentiful, on to my top lip. Why not? Transplants must work. It's not like famous Red Sox-trader asswipe and sex-addict Wade Boggs would steer me in the wrong direction, right?

Then, there's the Cliff "Wolfman" Clavin approach. For those of you who watched Cheers, you might remember the episode where the guys at the bar had a beard growing contest and Cliff, whose beard was spotty and chintzy and weak, super-glued hair to his face at the last minute and won the contest.

Regardless, with or without a mustache, I hope to see you in Portsmouth on Wednesday night. Happy hair-growth.

Dewey Evans Mustache Contest

Growing up, right-fielder Dwight Evans was one of my favorite Red Sox player. In fact, aside from J.D. Drew, who goes on the DL for 60 days for an ingrown pube, the Sox have had a couple of affable right-fielders in my lifetime. Although he was one of those Jesus-freaks who should have been born with mute button, it was hard one not to like Trot Nixon as well; unless, of course, you're a Yankee fan.

But Dewey. Not only was the man a Fenway favorite, but he had one of the most impressive mustaches of his time, or any time, for that matter. It wasn't that his mustache was overly robust or unruly; instead, it exuded style and charm and masculinity. Everything a good mustache should do.Lord, what I wouldn't do to have a mustache like that.

Therefore, in honor of Dewey's 'stache, and my recently published poem "Men with Mustaches," I will be giving away free prizes to any man (or woman) who shows up at my reading with Rusty Barnes at River Run Bookstore in Portsmouth, N.H. on January 27 with a mustache. The prizes are limited, so if there are multiple men with mustaches in the crowd, Rusty and I will have to judge the winners.

Gentleman, this gives you two weeks to get to work. Ladies, you can either purchase a fake mustache---or maybe you can grow one, I don't know---or encourage your husband/boyfriend/token gay friend/stalker/etc. to grow a mustache and come with you to the reading. My vision is an audience full of beautiful Dewey 'staches.

Good luck.

Note: I realize this could completely blow up in my face, and no one will participate (or show up), and I'll be the only asshole with a mustache. But, hell, who wants to go to a stuffy reading with a stuffy crowd and stuffy writers reading stuffy stuff? That's not how Rusty and I roll. That's not "The Situation." Hope to see you there.

Baseball can't come soon enough...

Yesterday, The Patriots looked like a bunch of old ladies playing backyard bocce ball. They were subsequently humiliated, and now the season is over. It's still January. The Sox won't be starting for another two months, and watching spring training games is a little like combing the newspaper for underwear ads. I'm not a big basketball or hockey fan---I'll watch the games when it gets to the playoffs---but baseball will have started by then. What am I supposed to do? What will I watch during the long frigid nights of a New England winter?

Deep in the despair of a jilted fan, I sunk to a new low in my television viewing last night. I know, I could have read a book, sat quietly on the couch, and avoided this whole train wreck I'm about to describe, but I was feeling lackadaisical after the Pat's loss, aggravated with their slipshod performance, so utterly exasperated, I watched two hours of Jersey Shore on MTV. In fact, two hours of watching eight (then seven after Angelina, that bitch, left) of the most interesting sociological case studies of recent record didn't quite sate my appetite, so I watched another two episodes On-Demand.

This morning I woke up feeling, I assume, what I'd feel like if I slept with one of these people: guilty, dirty, stupid, and strangely satisfied.

Okay. For those of you unfamiliar with this reality-television retch of hair gel, high heels, and protein shakes, the basic premise is the producers of the show placed eight carefully chosen "guidos" and "guidettes" in a beach house on the Jersey Shore. That's it. They didn't need to do anything else. Just watching these people, whose superficiality makes Paris Hilton seem cerebral, is both awesome and terrifying. Like a there's been a terrible car accident on the side of the road, you can't look away. Every episode is the same thing, more hooking up in the hot tub, getting in bar brawls, and a tacit competition to see who will speak the new "stupidest thing you've ever heard." And each episode one-up's the previous one.

Having grown up in Rhode Island, these people are not entirely foreign to me; in fact, Pauly D., who has also made multiple appearances on the Hot Chicks With Douche Bags blog, is from Johnston, R.I. We used different titles to describe them---sparcones, hairspray whores, da-na-na's, Cranston chicks, jerk-off's, and, of course, douche bags---but they're all the same thing. And now, fifteen years later, they're back in my life, and I welcomed them with my arms wide open.

Was last night an anomaly? Or will I watch Jersey Shore again? At least until baseball season. Should I be reading a book instead? Probably. But, seriously, lighten up.

Or, as Mike "The Situation," whose entire world centers around his abs, might advise, I could hit the gym, the tanning booth, and then the laundry mat. Afterwards, I'll comb the bars and creep on some bitches.

By the way, I have some new poems in The Fox Chase Review. Currently, I'm working on a manuscript of love sonnets dedicated to Ronnie and Sammy "The Sweetheart." It's tentatively titled You're So Fucking Hot.

A New Year (thank God)

While I was very upset that Jennifer Lopez stole my New Year's Eve outfit, like most people in this country, I shed no tears watching 2009 pass like a bad bout of gas.

While blogging last year, I also realized I was spreading myself too widely in my imagined roles. In other words, I realized I can't be an imaginary sportswriter and an imaginary author (although I have books published, I'm still largely imaginary in the literary world), as well as being an imaginary cool guy (okay, so that's only imagined by me). So I've decided, in 2010, I'm going to stick to my guns and SOLELY be an imaginary sportswriter. This, mind you, doesn't mean I won't tie pop culture, sophomoric humor, and irrational editorializing into my blog. Imagine me as a cruder, less funny, and less talented Bill Simmons, one who writes poetry and fiction because he's a masochistic man with a Peter Pan complex and doesn't REALLY want the pressure of being taken seriously (or so that's how I explain rejection to myself).

So we embark on a New Year, my 30 friends. A few of you have dropped from my "Followers" list lately, but fear not. I watched a documentary on David Koresh and The Branch Davidians the other night, and dropping out from a group headed by someone who is clearly unstable is quite common. It weeds out the cowards. Stick with me. And for this fine new year, I promise you, my friends, there will be no shortage of Yankee cum-rants, outrageously absurd baseball conspiracy theories, the lovely non sequitur, and sprinklings of self-promotion.

For example, anyone who has read this blog knows I'm full of shit, but now I'm Full of Crow.

Anyway, thank you to those of you who read my insanity, buy my books, or give me your precious time while you're bored at work, trying to look busy while mindlessly surfing the web, quietly happy that there's something new to read in your "I'm bored at work" internet queue.

If Jesus loves you, that's all right with me. If not, try Facebook. Someone will love you there.