Why the Gays Rock

I would just like to start out here by saying that I am not, nor will I ever be, gay. Not at all. I mean, people can make all the cracks they want about tanning and pageant judging and showtunes, but at the end of the day the only thing that makes you gay is hooking up with other dudes. And that is something I have about as much interest in as moving to Bangladesh. Actually, if given a choice I would probably be on the next plane to Dhaka with a mud hut-building kit.

That all being said, I love the gays. That’s right, of all the minority groups in this country, the gays are by FAR the coolest. Seriously, does anyone ever move OUT of a neighborhood when gays move in? Do people avoid gay areas because they fear for their lives? Have you ever been in a place (not a gay club) and wanted to leave because of all the obnoxious gays in there? No, of course you haven’t. You know why? Because the gays, they fucking rock. They have the life. And here’s why…

The Gays make the BEST wingmen – I was in a club this summer and ended up sitting at a table with a bunch of gays. Next to us was a table of gorgeous South Beach models, or, at least, a table full of blondes all over 5’10” and under 120 pounds. Now, I would NEVER in a million years dream of approaching a table of chicks like that. But one of the gays got up, chatted them up for a few minutes, then invited me over and introduced me to them. An instant in with an unapproachable table. Much as I love my straight friends, even the girls have never done anything like this for me.

The Gays NEVER Cockblock – Ok, maybe if the guy is ugly they will, but typically when a gay is out with his fag hag, his goal is to get her laid. I mean, he knows he’s getting some, so why shouldn’t his girl? So unlike unbearable sorority chicks who make absolute certain their girlfriends NEVER go home with anyone but them, a gay INSISTS his girl goes home with someone. God bless the Gays.

The Gays only deal with attractive people -Gays have a great aesthetic sense, as anyone who has ever visited a gay household can attest. But it also extends to the company they keep. I haven’t met too many ugly fag hags, and a gay man is not going to associate with straight guys who aren’t attractive either. I mean, why bother wearing a $2000 outfit when your accessories are hideous? So if you're hanging out with the gays, typically, it’s going to be a good looking group.

The Gays have money – Seriously, you ever meet a gay on welfare? Shit, you ever meet a gay who had problems making rent? Of course you don’t! The gays, for whatever reason, always seem to be educated and have large amounts of expendable income. I’m not sure why this is, but when you’re shelling out $1200 for bathroom curtains, you’re probably doing ok. And the gays are, hands down, the BEST tippers on Earth. Never less than 25%.

The Gays party like rock stars – No self-respecting gay goes out and gets home any earlier than 5. And typically never comes home alone either. Not only do the gays get the BEST drugs (you ever do gay coke? You’ll never look at that shit you buy from Cracky in the West Grove the same way again), but they hook up with multiple people on a weekly basis, party on weeknights, and hang out with beautiful women. That sounds more like Kid Rock than Harvey Firestein to me. Except for the whole hooking up with guys thing, that sounds pretty awesome to me.

They Gays never have to get married of have kids – Why the Hell are the gays so caught up in being able to get legally married? It’s like the greatest out ever. Mom and Dad bugging you to settle down at 34? Sorry, State says I can’t. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a coke-infused orgy to attend. People encouraging you to have kids? Yep, can’t really do that one either. Guess I’ll have to use all that money that my straight friends spend on their kids on a new pair of Prada loafers.

The Gays dress, groom and design better than most women – Why do you think so many male models are gays?

So, Gays, in short, you guys rock. And, contrary to popular belief, they typically know when you’re straight and stay away, so they make awesome friends/people to go out with and get hammered. What this country needs are more citizens like the gays, curbing overpopulation, making money, and dressing well. Have a great weekend everybody, and go party like rock stars. Or gays.

He's Just a Football Player Folks. Get Over It

There’s a lot of differences between going to a private school in a big city and a big, state school in the middle of a God-forsaken swamp. Like, instead of having some greasy, over-dressed doorman from Buenos Aires look you up and down outside an expensive nightclub and tell you you can’t get in because you have too many guys, you can have a poorly-dressed frat guy from Palatka do the same thing at a party.

Yes, UM and UF certainly have their differences. But perhaps the one I find most disgusting is the verbal fallating and elevation to God status of any athlete who garners a mention on SportsCenter.

At UM, we treated our atheltes like athletes. You are judged on your performance, and even then you're really nobody special. Play well, and you might get a "nice game" from the throngs of students who either didn't know what football was, or could probably buy the team within 5 years of graduation. Then, you're special. Make one mistake, and the boos from the crowds at the Orange Bowl were deafening. People called talk radio just to talk about your weaknesses and students, well, students immediately turned their attention to club opening times as soon as the game was over. Even Ken Dorsey was criticized until the day he left and was publicly called "Rusty Dick" by his teammates on the campus shuttle.

At UF? The athlete worship is fucking nauseating. If you're on a team that palys on TV you are a GOD, and as such can do no wrong, anytime, anywhere, in the eyes of the student body. Say any different and you will be challenged to a fight and called a homosexual by the every Kool-Aid drinking Gator fan in jorts within 500 yards.

And nowhere, I mean NOWHERE, is this more nauseating than with one Mr. Tim Tebow. And no, my irritation stems from a lot more than him beating my boy Colt “Those Charges were Thrown Out” Brennan for the Heisman. Tebow is a pretty damn good college quarterback. And is going to make a damn fine CFL fullback some day. But he is not, as some in Gainesville seem to believe, the second coming of Christ. He’s more like the second coming of Dan Kendra.

But in Gainesville, I think more or less every undergraduate, male or female, would suck this guy’s dick if he asked them to. Apparently in addition to being able to throw AND run (and good God, there has NEVER been a quarterback who could do THAT before. At least not one who won a Super Bowl, anyway) he can feed the hungry, clothe the needy, turn water into wine, win the war in Iraq, solve the financial crisis and still have time to go to church on Sunday with his Mom and Dad.

He’s a fucking 21-year-old kid, people, not the Dali Lama. He plays football and without football he’s that creepy Jesus kid in the back who can’t interact with the rest of the class because he was home schooled his whole life. Why do you think his Heisman acceptance was the worst display of public speaking since Dan Quayle left office? I believe he said Jesus more than Allan Iverson said “Practice.”

I got an email from my gym today telling me to “unleash my inner Tebow.” Really, Gainesville Health and Fitness? I wasn’t aware you were replacing my 6:30 kickboxing class with “Circumcising Filipino Children,” but thanks for the heads up.

So yeah, Tebow is a good football player, but can everyone around here just get off his nuts? Because until Tim Tebow cures cancer or saves 100 people from a burning building, the guy is no better than you, me, or anyone else in the God forsaken swamp.

The Oldest Man in Gainesville

So yeah, I’m back. Y’all knew a raging attention whore like me could only stay away for so long. But we all know if there is one thing that is true in life it’s that the sequel is never as good as the original. Shit, if everybody who ever did anything that was really good quit while they were ahead, we’d only have about six movies a year coming out and the Rolling Stones would have stopped making albums 30 years ago. What I’m saying here is that a lot has changed since I last spoke with you all. A lot.

I’m older. I’m angrier. I’m more bitter and a lot more nasty. You know why? Because I’m fucking old, that’s why. Because I’m old enough to remember Ronald Reagan and the Cold War. I remember what life was like before computers and cell phones and the Internet. And somehow, we survived.

You know that miserable old bastard who sits down at the barber shop or the local bar or maybe, if you’re really lucky, mainlines Old Crow on the street corner in front of your apartment? Well, after a year in Gainesville I understand that guy a lot better that I used to. The kids here? They don’t know what it was like to only have 87 channels.

My role as a person over the age of 22 is to ramble on about the good old days when we read newspapers and bought CDs.

About a time when “text” was something you read, not something you did.

A time when people actually picked up their phones

A time when guys were considered pussies if they asked a girl out over anything other than the phone or in person. Or a time when guys even asked girls out.

A time when when not anybody with a camera could become a celebrity, and a time when people had to have talent to be on TV

A time when people did actual exercise instead of waiting in line for hours to play virtual tennis.

A time when kids played outside and parents had to drag them in, instead of playing inside and their parents having to twist their arms to go out.

A time when if you wanted to avoid work, you just left.

A time when if you went to dinner with someone, that was the only person you were at dinner with. Not every friend, relative, acquaintance, boss and bill collector who decides to call, text, or email while you’re eating.

A time when you could ignore people you wanted to ignore.

A time when you went on vacation and were truly inaccessible

A time when “second life” was only something the Hindu’s talked about.


You see, now I know why the grumpy old man is so angry. What I was talking about back there? That shit is from like 1997, people. The Clinton years. Not that long ago, and many of you out there reading can remember most of that shit as well.

But in Gainesville, if you didn’t grow up with email and cell phones, you may as well be an Alzheimer’s patient who eats his own teeth. I know that in America youth is King, but in Gainesville, youth is more of a fascist dictator. If you’re old enough to rent a car, you’re a detriment to society. So while you may mock that miserable old bastard on the corner for ranting on about how much better it was when they danced the Charleston and women wore long skirts, don’t laugh at him too hard. Move to a college town folks, and you’ll realize you have a lot more in common with him than you ever wanted to.

The Sultry South This is Not

There’s a lot of misconceptions out there about Gainesville. Whatever that depressed, overweight, thirtysomething friend of yours told you about the best four years of his life spent going to football games and getting drunk on Mondays in North Central Florida, well, that’s just revisionist history. Not that Gainesville is that bad, but, much like its iconic quarterback, it ain't all it's cracked up to be either.

And I was having a real hard time deciding which over exaggerated myth to first dispel for everyone until the Alligator once again threw rant fodder right in my lap with this lovely article. For those who don’t know, the Alligator is our not-official-school newspaper, which wrote a not-so-flatteirng piece about me a year ago. Since then I have not been the paper’s biggest fan.

For those of you too lazy to follow the link, the story is from the Alligator’s new sex columnist (and how anyone under the age of 25 is qualified to give good sex advice is beyond me) about the sultry, sweaty, heat-induced sexuality of being a University of Florida student (or “Gator” as some of the more spirited prefer to be called). It reads like a slightly-more-literate Harlequin novel about a deliciously ribald Southern sexcapade. Or, more accurately, like a Blanche Devereaux monologue told over a piece of cheesecake in the kitchen. The heat, and the humidity, makes sexuality boil over here in Gainesville, and everyone in the city is just aching to do something that they’ll have to deny to their roommates the next day as they rush out to Walgreens at 10 a.m.

Or such is the myth about life in a small, southern, college town.

Now, I actually happen to know the girl who wrote this column. She’s a good writer. Hell, if I were ever to admit that any college kid I had a class with was a better writer than me, she’d probably be it. But it seems that Stephanie is perpetuating a myth about this town that it is a four year orgy of sex, liquor and sweat, with an occasional break for class. And that rumor, my friends, needs to be squelched.

Now I’ll admit, I do not exactly have my finger on the social pulse of Gainesville like I may have in Miami. Hell, I don’t even have my finger on the social toenail of this city. But if the sex is hanging in the air heavier than the humidity, as Miss Dunn implies, I must be walking around with a gasmask on. Because, like I did in Miami, I don’t leave bars before closing up here, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen somebody leaving with a partner they didn’t come in with.

Just to give you an idea of how overstated this column is, here are a couple of passages that are about as accurate as your typical SCUD missile:

Ironic, isn’t it, that at home, where everyone knew everyone, you couldn’t find anyone worthy of your superior body fluids? And if you did get laid back home, you were probably either settling or unaware of your potential. Admit it.

Yeah, ok, I admit that back home I probably did settle once or 20 times. But there were also a good number of times (3) where my potential was fully reached. And the underachieving I was doing in Miami was typically just out of laziness and boredom. Here it is out of necessity.

So without much warning, you’re thrust into a strange, new arena where more than 50,000 strangers, a collective mass of throbbing, carnal energy, are after you, seeking, well, exactly what you’re seeking — sex.

Yeah, it’s fucking Miami Velvet North, Steph. Not so much. I’m pretty sure I know “throbbing, carnal energy” when I see it, and it is seldom in this town that it rears its throbbing head. And if everyone here is really out to get laid, why is it that the only blockers in Gainesville better than the guys in front of Tim Tebow are the sorority sisters of whichever girl you’re talking to at the bar?

I’m not sure how Gainesville got this reputation as a sweaty, sultry capital of casual sex. Perhaps one too many undergrads realized getting laid in the real world took more than a bong and a room in a frat house and thought it was easier in college by comparison. Or maybe it’s like so many things in life, that people like to overstate it to make it seem cooler.

But don’t be fooled folks, there’s about as much sexual tension in this town as there is in the bedroom of a 50 year-old married couple. The hot and humid part she got right, but the sexual energy? I think that got left somewhere on the Turnpike.