Thank the Troops

The Blonde had this link on her blog, where you can go to a website and select a postcard which is automatically sent (courtesy of Xerox) to a troop in Iraq. If you appreciate the fact that US Troops are fighting on behalf of all Americans, risking their lives, then take a minute to go send a postcard expressing your feelings.

I don't want to get into a political debate here, because I don't think it's about politics - it's about common sense - I certainly appreciate the fact that these soldiers are risking their lives so that I can sit here and write about shit like gambling, ludicrous stories, and of course, my uber-cute dog. Speaking of which, here's a pic of Oscar getting religious.

Turns out I'll be in Vegas next weekend, December 8th-10th, which happens to coincide with a blogger meeting out there. If anyone who reads this will be there, drop me a line in advance.


I was on the treadmill today at the gym, and they have these nice individual TV monitors where you can choose from basically any cable channel. I happened to flick to a replay of the ESPN WSOP main event, where Dmitri Nobles was dishing out bad beats, and pushing his stack around with the finesse of an offensive linemen. I was so violently tilted that I almost fell off the f'n treadmill, which of course, made me laugh. Fergalicious!

until next time,

KD

Crown Their Ass!

I'm not big on going to a bar to watch football: I'd almost always prefer to watch it from the confines of my own couch. However, being located in NYC, with the Giants playing Sunday at 4pm, I was part of one of two metropolitan markets in the country whose FOX 4pm game was Giants @ Tennessee rather than Bears @ Patriots. Thus, me and Scooter headed over to Barrow Street to watch the carnage, as the Patriots showed the Bears what happens when you go up against a real opponent.

I had previously gone on record to Dirty Dave with my guaranteed 10 star parlay of the year (which, since I have quit betting, is COMPLETELY assured of success): NE - 3, Under 37.5, and Rex Grossman over 1.5 Interceptions. Of course, all three legs came through with ease, as the 17-13 final score was never in doubt.

Did you see Junior Seau break his arm in the first half? Holy shit - this was a play so ugly that you won't see a replay, because they don't show replays of disturbing shit like this: Seau fell on his own arm, which was levered over a running back's leg - and broke his own forearm like a twig. He grabbed it, and the camera zoomed in to see it dangling like a limp wrist - only it wasn't his wrist, it was 6 inches higher. Disturbing, and possible a career ender for Seau.

The play of the game was the not-so-fleet-footed Tom Brady scrambling for a 4th quarter first down, as he put a shake-and-bake move on the lethal Brian Urlacher. Then Brady got in his face and talked shit to him - awesome stuff.

And how about the Giants-Titans game?!?! Talk about muther-fuckin SIGMAs!!!!! The Giants jumped out to a 21-0 first half lead, which is how it stayed until the 4th quarter, when Tennessee suddenly clawed their way back into the game with 2 TD's. Then, with 4th and 10 on his own 15 yard line or so, Vince Young was wrapped up by Giant's rookie Mathias Kiwanuka for a game ending sack - but there was one problem - Kiwanuka let Young go without a whistle! Young scrambled for a first down, and Tennessee scored an inevitable touchdown of destiny to tie the game. Then, Eli Manning threw an interception at midfield with less than a minute left, Tennessee ran a few plays and drilled a game winning 49 yard field goal. Sigmalicious.

Mrs. Dynamite joined us for the final quarter of the Patriots game, and got me all aroused when she uttered this simple inquiry: "Can't you arb the point spreads of the game?" Oooh baby... Bringing together the concepts of arbitrage and sports betting - THAT'S my GIRL!!!

"Elaborate," I urged her, wanting to see what she was thinking of.

"Well, if the line was New England -3, and now it's New England - 4.5, couldn't you bet both sides of it and clean up?" My baby was looking for a middle! I'm so proud.

I realized that the pro sports bettors must have absolutely CRUSHED this game, as a middle like this covering two key numbers (3 and 4) with two big defensively oriented teams is a phenomenal play. I explained to her that you have to pay a 10% vig, so you'd be betting $1000 on each side of the game, which ensures a $100 loss, with a chance to win $2000. 20-1 odds on a NE-CHI 3 or 4 point NE win is probably a very nice price. And Mrs. Dynamite had it the whole fucking time.

until next time,

KD

Are You Kidding Me?

Impossible "DYKWTFIA" moment from a friend of mine who was out on a date last night. The story starts with an IM teaser tidbit which my boy Greg copied from our boy DZ:

"we were out for hours... everything seemed cool. she was in a black dress, burberry jacket. looked preppy. then just lost it."

as Greg tells me "some chick bit DZ last night!" Holy cow - I immediately try to extract the meaningful info from Greg (seductively? angrily? vampire-ly?), but he doesn't quite have it, so I go straight to the source: DZ - to find out what really happened.

Basically, DZ was out with this chick at the bar that is the epitome of everything I hate about Murray Hill: Wet Bar. After several hours, he has to leave, so on his way to the bathroom, he pays the tab at the bar, and when he returns, all hell breaks loose.

She starts screaming at him "YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING! YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME? GOOGLE MY FAMILY'S NAME - SEE HOW MUCH MONEY WE HAVE! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"

Meanwhile, DZ is standing there stunned, and, in his own words from IM:

DZ (11:28:58 AM): she was like "do you know who i am?"
DZ (11:29:04 AM): i said," absolutely not!"
DZ (11:29:07 AM): "i have no idea who you are"

KidDynamite (11:29:08 AM): DYKWTFIA - do you know who the fk i am?
KidDynamite (11:29:12 AM): and what did she say? (answer: he never should have paid the bar tab)

DZ (11:29:35 AM): i said you're right, i really wish i never paid that bar tab. lets go to an atm and you can pay me back.

Holy cow! Is this tremendous stuff or what? Not only did DZ have HIS FUCKING DATE ask him "Do you know who I am," but he had the style to reply, "Absolutely not, I have no idea who you are." Kudos DZ - nice hand.

He goes on to tell me more:

DZ (11:37:35 AM): while we were at the bar, this trashy girl sat next to us. my date and her were chatting for a bit. she was complaining about the wine she had so when we got our round, i offered to get her another drink, just because she was talking to us. then during the tirade, my girl said "and you bought that slut with the big boobs a drink! you think you know everything!"

KidDynamite (11:38:46 AM): AWESOME!

DZ (11:38:54 AM): i was like -- you were the one talking to her.

She also ranted "You think you know everything because you went to Brown - well you DON'T."

But the kicker is that, after making this scene in the bar, ranting and raving like a lunatic who had a switch flicked in her brain, she BIT HIM ON THE HAND! Holy shit! Are you fucking kidding me?

And DZ's punchline is classic:

DZ (11:42:04 AM): my buddy got her roommates number the week before. i told him "i think i blew it for you"

Now I know what you're thinking: what was her name? Well, I beat on DZ for an hour today, as he repeatedly claimed that he didn't know her name - that he'd forgotten it. I eventually managed to extract a first name, Julie, but Julie's last name remains a mystery for the time being. Believe me, if I uncover anything juicy, you know I'll rant about it here.

Until next time,
KD

DYKWTFIA?

Do you know who the fuck I am? Apparently, I'm a fat, 30 year old, perpetually injured, out of shape gambling addict with freakish symmetry. Let me explain.

First the easy part: Gambling addict: yep - after my 3rd straight week of absolute NFL futility, which left me down 30 units for the season, I wrote the Big Show a check for my debit balance and quit cold turkey. I literally went something like 3-18 in my NFL picks the past 3 weeks, which left me so frustrated and unhappy, that I decided to do something about it.

After "quitting" sports betting earlier in the morning, I was kind enough to offer up my Monday Night Football pick for Dirty Dave and the Big Show. I warned them that, since I was no longer betting, my perfect contrary indicator status would almost certainly, due to ultimate irony, be reversed. I didn't think Carolina should be laying 10 points to anyone in the NFL, even the hapless TB Bucs. TB was a mortal lock. When I turned on the game late in the first quarter and saw TB up 7-0, I laughed. As Carolina failed to score for the rest of the half, I did a phenomenal job controlling the boiling TILT inside of me, as uber-irony was clearly in effect: the moment I quit betting, I'd be able to pick games with 80%+ accuracy. However, when I woke up and checked the final score, like EVERY other time this season I woke up to check the score on my picks, I found that I had (or would have, had I bet) lost. Carolina won 24-10. Strangely, I can't tell you how happy this made me! I was still a perfect contrary indicator! (If anyone is wondering, I, former Certified Dallas Cowboy Hater, LOVE Dallas at home vs Indy this week.)

Perpetually Injured: I was once an athlete. It's true. Back in June,2005, I suffered a violent blow to the left shin in a soccer game that left me with a welt the size of a tennis ball, and kept me out of action for almost a year. I still have a bruise on my left leg. Earlier this year, in May, 2006, I made my triumphant return to the green felt: the turf soccer field, where, late in the game I made a heroic run from fullback, getting myself open near the net, where I promptly whiffed on a cross from one of my teammates, jammed my right knee into the turf, hyperextending it, and fractured my medial tibial plateau. This injury has kept me out of action since May, and I'm just getting back into some light non-impact cardio, like the elliptical machine, which sucks ass.

Which leads us to fat and out of shape: I kinda have an excuse, since my knee is fucked up, but nothing which explains my FIRST PERCENTILE showing in a cardio test at the gym today. Let me explain: two years ago, my wife purchase a 10 pack of personal training sessions at my gym. After using four of them, she quit the gym. So now, I've finally decided to make use of the already-paid-for sessions. Today was my first - where they hook you up to a high tech machine to measure weight, body fat, flexibility, bicep strength, cardio strength, and a barrage of other health and nutrition surveys.

So my trainer takes all these measurements (pushups: 75% percentile, situps: 35% percentile, bicep strength: 78% percentile: back in the day I would have been a contender baby!), and then has me do the Vo2MAX Step Test - this is to measure the max oxygen your heart pumps through your blood. You step up and down on a 16 inch step for 3 minutes at a steady pace, and then sit down and count your pulse. He told me to count my pulse for a minute, and I came up with 125. He inputted it into the "system" and it shows: POOR. FIRST PERCENTILE. "Does that mean I'm the best?" I joked. He gave me a steely gaze. "Come on, no fuckin' WAY that's first percentile bro - there is no WAY that's as bad as it gets," but he insisted it was.

Now, Kid Dynamite is not first percentile in anything. No way. No matter how out of shape I am, not matter how hard I breathe walking up the stairs out of the subway, I'm not in the mutherfuckin' first percentile - THIS I know. So, I come home and look on the internet, and find the chart I linked to above. Said chart says to count the pulse for FIFTEEN SECONDS and input the number into the box to find the heart rate in beats per minute. It lists 125BPM as 95th percentile! I'm guessing what happened is that the trainer fucked up by having me count my actually beats in a minute, as opposed to counting 15seconds, putting that number into the machine, and having the machine do the advanced math of multiplying it by four. At least that's what I'm hoping. First percentile my ass!

Anyway, I now have a full cardio, nutritional, and workout program, which I'll be able to ignore because it will be too fuckin' cold to go to the gym, and I'm confident that the 1st %-tile reading was a fuckup. Actually, I'll try to hit it hard and become the Adonis I once was.

I do have one thing going for me: Freakish Symmetry! (actual words used by the trainer!) In the words of Bobby Bracelet: "You hear that ladies?" That's right - FREAKISH symmetry. Calves equal. Pythons equal. Proper Hip-waist ratio. Knees equal. Thighs equal. The only lack of symmetry was in my right forearm, which was 1/2 inch bigger than my left forearm. The trainer instantly diagnosed a solution to that: "Jerk off with your left hand instead."

Vegas trip is booked for Dec 8th. It looks like the forces of Kid Dynamite and WickedChops will finally collide, which will surely provide for more entertaining trip reports.

Until next time,
KD

Fergalicious

I remember back when I used to read Sports Illustrated, there was a little sidebar called "This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse," and it would have the ridiculous item of the week from the sports world. Nowadays, I don't know if they still have this feature, as ridiculousness has become commonplace, with athletes shooting up cars outside of strip clubs, and characters like Ocho Cinco.

However, when I was driving to Boston this weekend with Mrs. Dynamite, I had the displeasure of realizing a definite sign that the Apocalypse is near, when the song Fergalicious came on the radio. I was driving, and, in a state of utter shock, nearly drove into the ditch in the median on I84, as I listened to the verbal vomit that is Fergie's Fergalicious. Seriously - words cannot describe how bad this song is. A post on WFNX's message board said it best: "Fergalicious is slightly better than My Humps or London Bridge, which is much like saying diphtheria is better than leprosy." I can't verify that Fergalicious is better than those other two crappy songs, as I think it is quite possibly the worst song I have ever heard.

Now, this is saying a lot. After all, it means that Fergalicious is worse than K-fed's PoPoZau - which I had previously thought was the worst song ever recorded. Listening to Fergalicious, though, made me long for, beg for, PoPoZau. It got me thinking that I may have to go buy K-fed's album after all, as I heard something about PoPoZau not being on the album, since it didn't meet K-fed's strict standards of quality. I mean, if Fergalicious is on the radio, and PoPoZau is BETTER than Fergalicious but NOT AS GOOD as K-fed's other shit, than his other shit may be seriously legit. I'll let someone else investigate.

On Sunday, on our trip home, I was finally coming down of the Fergalicious-induced-TILT from Friday evening, when another song came on the radio in the car: Justin Timberlake's "Bringin' Sexy Back." Holy shit. This song is also 100 times worse than PoPoZau, although not quite as bad as Fergalicious. Still, Bringin' Sexy Back is uber-TILT-inducing.

Dirty Dave and I used to utilize the term POPOZAU! to describe any insanely TILT inspiring situation. For example: you're an Oakland Raider fan, and your team just set a record this week by becoming the only team in the history of the NFL to be shut out on Monday Night Football twice in the same season: POPOZAU!.

You're the Dallas Cowboys, on the road in Washington, freerolling to win the game with a field goal attempt at the end of regulation in a tie game... The kick gets blocked, returned, and has a 15 yard face mask penalty tacked on, allowing for a final play by Washington with no time left on the clock, where they nail a 47 yard game winning field goal: POPOZAU!

You're Kid Dynamite: watching the Pats-Colts on Monday night, having wagered on the total score: Over 48.5. You're a lock at halftime, 17-14 Indy, and in the 4th quarter you need a mere fieldgoal when Indy is up 27-20, but Adam "Automatic" Vinatieri misses a field goal for only the second time all year (the first time was earlier in the game!) as does the Pat's FG kicker. Brady throws his 3rd and 4th interceptions, and your "over" goes down in flames. POPOZAU!

After conferring with Dirty Dave today, I explained to him the relative value equation:

PoPoZau > Bringin'Sexy Back > Fergalicious,

and that henceforth, all formerly PoPoZau situations would become FERGALICIOUS! situations. Get sucked out on when your opponent spikes runner runner in a $1500 pot? FERGALICIOUS! Accidentally call your wife when you sit on your cell phone while receiving a lappy d? FERGALICIOUS! Drew Bledsoe gets replaced at QB so you can no longer bet against him? FERGALICIOUS! You get the point.

In other news: yesterday was Oscar's first birthday! This was a big deal in the Dynamite household. Mrs. Dynamite baked Oscar a cake (banana), complete with cream cheese frosting, and his friend Buddy came over to play. Today we went to the pet store so Oscar could pick out the toy/treat of his choice. Yep, the little guy is one, and has made is wicked happy so far.

until next time,
KD

Vagina Man

I met Vagina Man last night. Yep, it's true. Who, you may ask, is Vagina Man? Let me explain.

Halloween in the West Village is a complete and utter zoo. It's basically the lyrics to Ten Years After's "I'd Love to Change the World" come to life: "Everywhere is freaks and hairies - Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity."

So Mrs. Dynamite and I are out walking amongst the throng of revelers, with me carrying Oscar in the BabyBjorn carrier (don't even ask), and he's wearing his Ewok hood, looking insanely cute, just like an Ewok.

There was the usual quota of slutty cops, slutty football players, slutty firewomen, slutty schoolgirls, slutty sluts, slutty referees, slutty cowgirls, slutty Little Bo Peeps, slutty Tinkerbells, slutty rock stars and slutty Catwomen. Gotta love Dress Like a Whore Day.

Two doucheballs dressed as the Super Mario Brothers walk past us, and ten feet behind them are two more guys who also look kinda like the poor man's Super Mario Brothers. One of these guys is wearing a little fake moustache, and a white terry cloth cape, with a big V emblazoned on it. He's strutting kinda like Ric "The Nature Boy" Flair, and hamming it up.

I give him an inquisitive eyebrow, wordlessly conveying the sentiment "What the fuck are you dressed as?" He looks right at me, and in a mock Superhero voice, booms, "Vagina Man," before twirling his cape with a Zoro-esque flourish and moving off into the throng. I was impressed, laughing loudly, as I regretted not pulling out my camera to provide evidence for my eager throngs of bloggers who will now be left tossing and turning sleeplessly at night wondering exactly what Vagina Man looked like. I apologize.

I know some of you are also disappointed that Vagina Man has nothing to do with The Bracelet, or Joe Speaker, who were both likely candidates for the moniker. I have to give the Bracelet props for being the only one to fully appreciate my 9 inch pie crust story.

until next time,
KD