My Experiences with Unions and Monkeys: The Commute

I graduated from college without a job so I moved home to zmother's house.  After about six to nine weeks I got a job at the aforementioned union shop so I commuted there from the Neck.  This involved driving on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, locally known as the Palisades or, more affectionately, the Pip (but not the Pip).

Although I have a handful of fond memories from the early 1990s relating to time spent in cars on the Rockefeller and Alpine lookouts, the Pip might have been the worst stretch of highway in the Northeast back then.  Neither New Jersey nor New York would invest any money in it, both asserting that the Port Authority was responsible for its maintenance.  It had so many potholes that it was like driving on the surface of the moon.  People would routinely get flat tires, so there often were cars on the side of the road.  And it's an ancient road with no shoulder or acceleration lanes, so people bomb onto it with a full head of steam.  It has a 50 MPH speed limit and tons of hidey-holes for Johnny Law so it's easy to get a ticket.  And it spans the NY/NJ border so, of course, many of the drivers who use it are raging assholes.

I had many bad experiences commuting on the Pip.  Some people drove below the 50 MPH limit because the road was so chewed up and it was not uncommon to get stuck behind two cars driving 47 MPH side-by-side in both lanes.  It was just as common to deal with maniacs doing 80 MPH, perhaps in a hurry to get to White Castle.  These maniacs liked to tailgate, and I would get out of the way when I could but sometimes there was simply nowhere to go--I was boxed in by the other cars and had to deal with being tailgated.

The Pip is a scenic road.  As the name implies, it rides atop the Palisades Cliffs so it has great views of New York City.  This means that it's right on the Hudson River so there are times when the cliffs, and thus the Pip fill with fog.  There were two or three occasions where the visibility was almost zero (even worse than that ride back from JMU in the snow, a reference for only two of us).  It was not fun.

All of this is to say that driving on the Pip sucks.  They've since repaved it so it's better, but it still has no shoulder, a 50 MPH limit, and NY/NJ assholes driving on it.

As a result, this Jalopnik article did not surprise me.  I recognized the Pip after not more than 5 seconds of video, and this is exactly what it was like commuting to work.

Here's another angle.

Yes, people drive like this on the Pip.  And yes, people who drive on the Pip cheer when other people crash on the Pip.

I'm sure TR will opine that I was an aggressive driver in my youth and I will agree, I drove faster than I should've.  But this is next level idiocy by everyone involved.  And this is how I used to start my day!  Luckily TR's homeboys' Aunt Fanny had a place to rent so we moved to Money Earnin'.  But then I had to commute on the Sprain which might have been worse.  Foreshadowing!  Postcount!

Fair and Balanced

We've written a lot of words over the past 18 months about Donald Trump, nearly all of them derogatory. And since he's going to be President soon, or at least pretend to be, we figured it was time to follow Thumper's Mom's advice.



It was a challenge, frankly. So much so that we had to contract it out to a FOG:TB. Our newest guest contributor hails from Pittsburgh by way of Central Jersey, and answers to the name Brother of Fat Guy in a Speedo (two or three of you will know who he is by that description - to the rest, he'll remain anonymous). He's got a lot to say about one of Trump's greatest qualities, and something Mike Tomlin knows something about:

Alright, let’s just swear in this asshole already…

Donald J. Trump is one of the most perfect assholes in the history of mankind.  Please don’t stop reading if you love DJT, or jump to any conclusions yet – just hear me out.  I am using the term “asshole” to categorize a specific behavior type.   The term “asshole” is and always should be bipartisan, it should not be relegated to a particular political party, race, group or nationality – it is a specific term to describe a specific behavior in a specific type of person.  I thought Hilary was a great asshole too, but her issue – she tried to hide and suppress her asshole-ness, and as a result she came across as just an uninspiring, bad actress.

Since the primaries I’ve been struggling daily to rationalize and understand the appeal of DJT to any human on the planet (other than his children, who were born into his Trumpian alternate reality, like the hidden tribespeople of Papau New Guinea).   I’ve been trying to categorize than man the world has deemed as “uncategorizable” and I think I’ve found a way to do it.

From my observations and readings, he was an asshole as a husband, he was an asshole to his partners and people who worked for him, an asshole at parties, he was an asshole on his TV show (you’re fired! Is such an asshole thing to be known for); he was le royal asshole to a few farmers in Scotland over a golf course.  He was an asshole to Obama over the birther movement, he was an asshole to Jeb, Marco, Kasich and Ted during the primaries, and he was an asshole to Hilary during the campaign.  He was an asshole to a Gold Star family.  He acts like an asshole around other men because he does not know how to be a “guy” “dude” or “fella”.  He is an asshole many times a day on Twitter and he is an asshole to the media.  He simply does not know how to - not be an asshole.



Again, this is not a political diatribe or an “I Hate Trump” commentary; it is merely an observation of the human behavior DJ Trump has perfected and 100% personifies day in, day out.  Beyond DJT, I would argue that this specific behavior is a necessary tool at times to achieve certain outcomes in certain situations.  Sometimes before I walk into a client meeting, I coach myself that I have to be an “asshole” in the conference room in order to get the right deal done for my company.  Or I might be an asshole to the people who work for me to make a certain point.  It’s actually kind of easy and somewhat of a lazy way to behave; it’s obviously better to properly articulate specific truths and confront people in an honest and constructive way.

Being a total asshole can get shit done too.

But when I truly came to understand that Donald Trump is one of the greatest assholes of all time it kind of all makes sense to me.  So the burning question - Why did he win the election?  Most of the U.S. population abhors Washington D.C., they think it’s full of assholes.  So how do we combat that?

We elect our own asshole, the people’s asshole, and send him down there to speak asshole, behave asshole, and antagonize the hell out of every participant in the big asshole show.  (Editor's Note: Jon Stewart predicted exactly that in one of his final shows.) Most of the globe thinks Americans are assholes, so guess what, we now have the world’s greatest asshole as the face of our nation.  We actually have the best asshole in the world – is that not most American?  To have the absolute best in every category we can measure?

So you don’t like assholes or care for that behavior?  Too bad, we have unleashed the asshole and now we have to deal with it.  At this point in time I don’t think we need major league assholes any more, thought they were quite effective throughout human history – Kaiser Wilhelm II comes to mind.  The sooner you deal with the fact that we just happen to have a big time asshole as the president of the U.S., the easier the next four years will go down for you.

This Week in Wrenball: Holding Out for An Asshole

Tomorrow begins one of the most unusual CAA Tournaments in conference history. As a result of defections and academic struggles, four of the league's 11 teams didn't make the trip to Richmond (ODU, Georgia State, Towson, and UNCW), leaving a somewhat-less-than-magnificent-seven to vie for the NCAA Tournament autobid.

Sage observers in the Community of Gheorghe have long held that abbreviated tournament offers our Tribe their best chance in years to break the Curse of Bill Chambers and advance to dance, if only based on the odds. And while W&M's 7-11 CAA record (13-16 overall) doesn't necessarily presage a championship run, some of the underlying fundamentals indicate that it's at least a possibility.

The Wrens enter the tournament winners of 4 of their last 6 games, and boast the CAA's best shooting percentage (.467), second-best three-point shooting percentage (.374), and have made more three-pointers than any team in the tournament. W&M also has a positive rebounding margin for the first time in years, and leads the CAA in assists/game - they've shared the ball extremely well over the season's last third. Combined, these stats tell the story of a team that's capable of getting hot for three nights and shooting their way to Dayton.

But, and it's a capital BUT, for that to happen, the Tribe must find a way to mask their single biggest flaw. Invariably, and almost predictably (seriously, go look on Twitter - I totally predicted the last time this happened), this W&M team has inexplicable stretches of somnambulant play. They go from crisp, attacking basketball to head-scratchingly passive effort. Since February 11 alone, the Tribe blew a 10-point second-half lead to lose at home to Northeastern, let a 25-point lead dwindle to three before beating UNCW at home, let George Mason go on a 19-1 run to erase a 13-point deficit and win in Fairfax, allowed a 15-0 run to end the first half at UNCW before regrouping to win, and gacked a 16-point halftime edge to drop the season finale at home against JMU. It's not at all unreasonable to suggest that this team should be headed to Richmond on a seven-game winning streak. Because they should.

After they blew the JMU game, Tony Shaver hit on the season's key, saying "We’ve got to have somebody take charge — somebody slap the floor, slap each other." In other words, this Tribe team needs some redass. They've got a bunch of great kids - players who we should all be proud to have represent our alma mater - but they don't have any assholes.

Holding out for an asshole doesn't make for a great lyric, but unless one shows up against JMU in Richmond tomorrow at 8:30 pm, it may well be 'wait til' next year' time again in Williamsburg.