The Blog About Nothin'

Fathers Day pt II

Picking up where I left off at, here go the remaining 5 moments from my top 10 of me and my dad:

“Goddamn Mike!! … Thats it for today”

As i said before, i used to play little league baseball wen i was a kid. Pop was the assistant coach. Every day he used to take me to this little alley by my elementry school (Hawkins Street watup?!?!?) and he would pitch to me while i practiced hitting. Well, one day hes putting some heat on the ball and im having a hard time catching up. Im getting mad, hes getting mad. So i finally get a piece of one and it hits a part of the wall that was sticking out and comes right back to me and clocks me in the eye. Yo i dropped like Mike Tyson got a shot at me. I told my dad i didnt wanna hit no more and he starts telling me i have to work thru pain blah blah blah… So i get back in there, im pissed off cuz i didnt wannt hit no more AND i just got hit by a ball that I hit lol. The very next pitch i ripped over a fence an my dad goes “good hit” the following one i send over a building and hes like “great hit” so im starting to feel myself. The third one i hit went STRAIGHT into my dads knee and he crumbles like i shot him with the .40 caliber lol. As soon as he hits the floor he goes “Goddamn Mike!!!” i was like im sorry and that wen i got hit i had to keep going thru pain (kinda tryna be a smart ass). He looked up at me and said “Fuck you! I got hit in my knee, thats it for today” lol

“Thats not the nurse’s signal!!”

Back in ‘04 my dad got really sick at one point. I dont remember what was wrong but I do remember him needing surgery to correct it. I remember going to the hospital after school one day to see him and meeting my sister up there. We go up and my dad is laying in the bed real still-like. I imagine that hes sleeping but my sister isnt tryna hear that shit. She starts whispering “daddy…. daddy wake up.” when he doesnt wake up she decides it would be a good idea to poke him in his side to try and wake him up. She pokes him RIGHT where he just got closed up from surgery. He woke up and gave her the DIRTIEST look lmao i wish yall couldve seen it. It was a mixture between the “u ate my leftovers from the resturant” look and the “u spilled ketchup on my white tee” look. Not only that, but she had gotten so nervous that he hadnt woken up that she pressed the “nurse’s” signal like 6 or 7 times (the thing that look like a click pen with a string attached). When my dad saw that she had the “nurse’s signal” in her hand he asked what she was doing with it. She said she had clicked it a few times to call the nurse when he wasnt waking up. My dad, drowsy as ever, told her “Thats not the nurse’s signal!!! Thats to dispense my morphine wen im in too much pain!!!” my sister had my dad high as hell in that bed lmao.

“That was like the Furious Racers!!”

Car problem story!! Hooray lol. One time my dad stayed late at work and wen he went to come home his caddy wouldnt start. Hs had me come to his job in the van with some piece that he had at the house. I get to his job and he puts in the part. I told him i didnt know how to get home from his job so id haveta follow him, he says no problem. We pull out of his job and this man starts FLYING home. I was at a disadvantage already cuz he has a V.8 307 in his caddy and the van has a V.6 250. That and the van is a 3/4 ton vehicle so its goin slow as hell. We were both doing like 85-90 easily and hes swirving in and out of trucks an shit. Wen we get home i get out of the van like y the hell would u speed like that? U kno i didnt kno my way home!! He comes out of his caddy with the cheesiest smile ever with his hand up on some “high five” shit. I started smiling too but on some “wtf is he thinking about” shit. He gives me a high five and is like “wow i didnt kno u could race, me and you got home in 10 minutes!! That was like the Furious Racers!!” i was like furious racers?!? It took a few days to finally realize he was TRYNA say “Fast an the Furious”

“Clean it and hide it from your mom”

Leaving the kids home with dad lol. I remember once my mom going out, maybe with my aunts or something, and me and my sister staying home with my dad. We went the whole morning without eating and we were hungry as hell. We told my dad and he got outta bed and walked to the fridge. My mom had left some tuna fish in there somewhere in a glass bowl. We COULDVE just put it on bread and ate it but my dad wanted to heat it up for some reason. He puts the glass bowl right on the stove and starts heating it up. HIGH HEAT. hes standing in front of the stove, little chris is sitting down, and im standing to the side of the stove. Im watching the bowl thinking this shit is gon be nasty, daddy cant cook. Rite then i saw a small crack in the bowl. Somehow my instincts said “DUCK!” so i did. All i heard was glass shattering and i automatically assumed thy we broke my mom’s new glass bowl. I stood up and looked around and everybody was silent. My sister was still sitting down but now with her hands over her ears. My dad was just looking at the mess on the stove. I was looking at him to see what he was gonna say about it. He looked at me and my sister and then jus said “clean it up and hide it from your mom” lmao. And THATS how i learned to take responsibility for my actions lmao.

“Its because of my Whore-Ah”

Yo, im sorry but i cannot- for the life of me- remember how this story goes. I remember me, my mom, my sister, and my dad were all talking and he was gassing himself for some reason. Everybody that knows my pop knows he has that crazy accent. Well he was assing himself like i said and for some reason the line “its because of my whore-ah” comes out lmao. He was obviously tryna say “Auora” an we all knew it but damn that shit was sooooo funny. My mom was like “ur what?!? Ur WHORE-ah????” he was like yea i have a “Whore-ah” lmmfaooooooo another one of those classic “immediate family” moments lol

Hope u guys enjoyed these stories, these are just a few of the funnier moments ive had with my pop. Hope u also enjoyed ur Father’s Day. Happy Fathers Day to all the Fathers out there!!

-TAP

I started to write another blog post this week then it hit me that Father’s Day was coming up so I had to talk about that, y’kno keep up with whats going on. I could blog about some sappy shit but that really wouldnt be me. Keeping with the theme of “everyday experiences” and the humor in them, I present my top 10 moments with my pop (in no particular order):

“That FUCKIN’ Plow” Classic moment within the immidiate family. One year (2003 maybe) we got hit with this crazy ass snowstorm and so me, my mom, my dad, and my sister are all busting our asses shoveling. We had just done the front stairs, the driveway, the sidewalk, and the street immediately in front of the driveway. We were on our fuckin grind people! So its like 10:30pm rite now and my dad turns to the garage to tell my mom somethin and a plow comes and leaves a wall like 2ft high on the side of my dads car. He gets all pissed and is like “Mike, help me get the snow from my car.” we go in on the snow cleaning it out and shit. THE SECOND we finish a plow comes down our block again and dumps ANOTHER WALL on the side of my dads car while he curses the guy out. At this point i go inside cuz im like fuck all this. Maybe an hour later me and my sister go looking for my dad to give him some coffee and find him sitting in the darkness of the outside stairs, eyes squinted at another plow adding to a wall that has been building for an hour, taking a deep pull of a cigarette and all he could say was….. “that FUCKIN’ plow man….”

“BAM!…….. Ummmmmm…” For some reason, my dad likes to compete with me. I donno what it is. If we were tryna see who could fix a car faster, hed bust my ass no doubt. His problem is that he tries to beat me in things that Im proven to be better than him at. March 26, 2010 my dad turned 50 and our tradition is that on a family birthday we go to a certain resturant. We go there, I drive. From the second we sit down, he leans over and says “Im gonna get you drunk tonight boy.” I laughed it off but he was dead serious. We were going in on some sangria for a minute, im talking like 4 pitchers of this shit it was BANANAS! Every pitcher hes askin me how I feel so some of yall that kno me kno that i get it poppin lol. I drink this alcohol like its a Goya Malta and shit. Im like cmon man gimmie those keys we bout to haveta carry u to the car. Once i said that he started going in he got 2 shots of Grand Duqué de Alba (good shit) each! Okay thats just the g-check im groovin but im good. Before we leave we hit the bar area, he orders 2 double shots of Cardinal Mendoza (this man was tryna close strong) but i took that shit. As a matter of fact i drank his 2nd shot like if this was weight lifting i had to spot him. I was okay to drive home so i did. Wen we all get home he sits in the kitchen on some www. Slumped .com shit lmao. We tried to wake him up and he was OUT. so we all go to bed and like 20 minutes later we hear a loud BAM!!! followed by a groan like “ummmmmmmm” wen we get to the kitchen hes knocked the fuck out still asleep after falling off the chair. Im lookin at him like “pass thd belt old man”

“Move quickly and quietly” May 2011 me an my dad are under my moms van doingthe motor mounts. Lol everytime i think of this one i laugh. We have the van on jack stands all the way around with NO tires on the car so we can manuver underneath without the tires being in the way. While fussing with one of the bolts for the motor mount on the passenger side (‘mind you, we are BOTH laying down with our whole bodies under the car) the jack on the drivers side gives out one notch so it dropped about 2 inches. The tires werent on to hold the van if it came off the jack so basically we both wouldve been squashed. My dad looks over at me and whispers “Holy Shit! The jack is gonna give out” i said yea man we gotta get out to which he replies (on some mission impossible shit) “move quickly and quietly to get the other jack so we can re-position the jack stands. I moved as quickly as i could but it ate at me all day. “Quickly and Quietly?” i asked him later over a few ‘Ronas (Coronas) why did I have to move “quickly and quietly?” like i understand the quick part but would the situation have gotten more dangerous if i moved loudly? Would i have made the jack stands nervous? He looked me dead in the eye and said “it sounded good at the time” lol

“Fuck him Mike, I hope you foul one straight back” Back in the day wen I was a lil one, i used to play little league ball (all hispanic boys do i think it may be like a rite of passage). I remember thinking I was Sammy Sosa or some shit. I was nasty tho, ill tell u that as a FACT!! so i remember i played for the A’s and we were playing the Whitesox. This one kid was throwing the ball like mid-60s/ early 70s and we were only like 11. My dad was an assistant coach on my team and he was like this kid is a fuckin ringer. He was the 1st one to say it. At one point of the game, we were gettin our ass kicked and there was a close call at 2nd where our HEAD coachs son was called out. He fuckin blew up on the Ump. He was ejected from the little league field but since the fences were chain linked he was still able to watch. Wen he left, my dad became our coach fr the rest of the game. Im up at bat and theres a pick off play at third right in front of our dugout where our guy was called out but there was NO tag. My dad starts with the Ump “seriously ump ur killing us”. The Ump kicks my dad out for that calm comment which starts a HUGE argument between my dad and the Ump. Some toe-to-toe shit. As my dad walks out hes telling me “just swing mike, hes calling everything a strike out there” so im batting and my dad is barking at the Ump from OUTSIDE the fence. The Ump gets pissed and tells my dad he cannot be around the field or we’ll forfeit the game. At that point everybody at the game was rowdy as hell. So my dad crosses the street and things get real quiet as we get back to the game. Like 5 min later my dad pops up from behind a car on the opposite side of the street to give his final parting shot “fuck him Mike, I hope you foul one straight back”….. And the crowd went wild Lmao

Earth Day Tree Not much of a back drop to this one. It was maybe 2 years ago and my dad decided to get drunk off that dark (Hennessy to be exact) and chop down a tree on Earth day lol. There was a tree planted there before that he got removed but the city planted another one. He chopped it down on Earth Day (check the irony) in the middle of the nite and we fuckin hid that tree in our backyard til we found a place to dump it. We packed it in the van and dumped it in a empty lot in the middle of the night. We were on some “Goodfellas” shit.

Theres the first 5, I’m gonna hit yall with the next 5 soon, I already made this entry dumb long. STAY TUNED

-TAP

I try to hold out til the weekend but damn i had to get this one out. I got a problem, im sure it happens to everybody but i havent seen anybody blog about it yet. How annoying is it when somebody keeps tryna keep in contact after u fade them? Like at what point do u just say “listen man, we had a cool run. Really, we had fun. But u gotta stop this shit cuz we arent cool anymore.” How do you even say that? What is the polite way of saying “I no longer want to converse or see you ever again” i get this problem when i “lose” somebody’s phone number or my “phone deletes it” and then I see them again. Theres always that akward moment towards the end when they say something like “y didnt u call or txt me? U got my number right?” then u end up pulling out ur phone even tho you KNOW you never really took the number to begin with. Shit, at that point u have just about 3 options: “i got a new phone and didnt have ur # saved” “i lost the paper i wrote it on (if ur living in the 90’s still)” or just wearing that stupid look on ur face like ur tryna decipher chinese while looking thru ur contacts in hopes that the person goes “here just take it down again”

Im not gonna lie, ive tried all 3 but the BEST one is “i lost all my contacts (insert a random reason HOW here).” if u try the confused chinese deciphering look i guarentee that you end up laughing if it takes too long for them to notice. My particular issue is with this one kid that I knew in high school. I would feel terrible writing this about somebody i was really cool with but on the real? We were NEVER that close. In high school he was a friend of a friend and thats why we hung out but it was one of those things like if i saw him without that 3rd party friend i would blow by him. This isnt a cool kid/ nerdy kid thing either, hes just not the type of person i associate with on a regular.

Either way, this kid requested me as a friend on facebook once wen i 1st went to college and i denied him. At that point facebook was still a baby with endless potential and most of my friends werent on it yet. We may have had like 6 friends in common. After a few months he requested me again. Again i rejected his friendship (lmao). During that following summer i saw him when the guys all got back from school and were playing basketball. Of course he brought up his failed attempt at cyber friendship. I hit him with the “oh that was you?!?!? I didnt recognize the face” line. So the next time he sends a request we have like 20 friends in common and i reject him again. The next time he has like 60 friends in common, this time hes up to 70-something and im like damn dude, wen are u gonna catch the hint?

The crazy thing is that i saw him once downtown and he was like “Ohhhhhhh shit!!! My homie Tap!!!” then he turns to somebody who was with him and begins to introduce me as one of his closest friends. So as Im shaking his friends hand im thinking to myself “the ignored calls and txts? the ignored greetings when you yell them towards me on the street? the ignored friend requests on myspace (yes i had a myspace) and facebook? do you see them? did u even UNDERSTAND what i have been doing all this time?” its frustrating already that im here talking to you because you intercepted me on my way to get an italian chicken sandwich but now you are ignoring my attempts to ignore you?!? WHERE DO YOU GET OFF?!?

Maybe the kid is oblivious. Maybe he doesnt care. I dont kno for sure but what i can tell you is this: either hes gonna fold and stop sending me requests or im gonna fold and actually accept it. I do NOT give up, u can ask the people who ive been in month-long “poke wars” with. That being said, if ur reading this the ball is ur court….. Homie

-TAP

So im sitting around at the house after posting some shit on my Facebook and im having a quick laugh at the responses. I cant help but to think that these beautiful people that I keep in contact with thru these different social networks are getting me, the REAL me, but in like some weird abbreviated form. Nobody can really know anybody else through 160 character doses right? Right!

So, as I was saying, Im just laying there and the idea crosses my mind to blog. “Yea sure, why the hell not” I think to myself. So I ask around on the social networks what is a good site to blog on and this lovely lady tells me about Tumblr so im like this should be simple im just gonna do it why not. Then i download the app on my phone and it hits me, “this is really happening.” Like ive talked about blogging before but never made anything of it but now its really happening. This is just my intro blog so im not really looking to get into anything, just tell u guys (whomever is reading) who I am and what im into. Feel free to comment, as a matter of fact id much rather u comment on anything. If u disagree with something i say, voice ur opinion this is America. I cant kill u for ur opinions no matter how bad i may want to. One thing tho, i spell words differently on purpose. Dont correct my spelling. If ur the type of douche who corrects apostrophe use u have bigger problems in life.

The URL (TheBlogAboutNothin.Tumblr.com) is a nod to the show Seinfeld and his “Show About Nothing” be forewarned tho im not the HUGEST Seinfeld fan. Hes a funny guy but the reason why I chose the name was because of the way his show takes these everyday events and makes them comical. Never watched an episode? Check it out please. The same kind of things go down in Larry David’s show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Theres something magical about taking the mundane and turning it into something worth watching- or in my case reading.

As for me, Im pretty random and I dabble in alot of different things. Im from a hispanic upbringing so theyll be some refrences sprinkled in lol. Those who know me close know i can listen to Jeezy and Aventura and Matt & Kim and Jimi Hendrix consecutively. Music is a language in itself. I try to be as open as possible. My facebook friends reading this: i listen to the music u post. It doesnt go up in vain. The same way I am with music is tbe same way i am witb sports. Thats actually a HUGE part of my life. bowling, golf, lacrosse, football, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, swimming, waterpolo, i have done it. I love camping and i plan on going quite a few times this summer. I can be a real nerd about a few things lol got some Godzilla movies tucked away for rainy days, some comic books that I collect on the low. Everybody has their obsessions, these are mine on the low low. I used to be into collecting Jordan sneakers but i lost track there, hopefully in the next year ill get that started too, who knows. I love retro fashion. I almost flipped wen i got my 1st pair of Cazal frames. Sometimes putting on something from another time is a great reminder of where u were. Im a big movie head too, Netflix has def supported that habit lol. The crazy thing- and i just thought about this- is that ive mentioned sports, music, movies, comic books, sneakers, fashion, and television. It seems like im talking about everything and still ive managed to name my blog The Blog About Nothing.

Without letting this drag on any further, ill end the intro here. Many of the people reading this will most likely be friends of mine you guys kno who i am. If not, hopefully thru these posts u can connect the dots. If u still wanna kno anything else just hit me up. Im gonna try to keep it to a minimum of one post a week, mostly on weekends so theyll be a good length. If something crazy happens like we survive ANOTHER rapture ill post more often to avoid posts that are waaaaaayyy too long. Hopefully Ill put up my 1st REAL blog post sometime this weekend. Til next time, stay classy San Diego……..

-TAP