Revelations and Doorknobs

For this page, I have selected certain pieces that I wrote for my blog of the same name, which was featured on the website for The Only Podcast That Matters. For four years, along with my friends Chris, Andrew and Jack, as well as many guests, I discussed many aspects of life in a humorous and often irreverent manner, wrote blogs, acted in video sketches, and had an amazing and unforgettable time. I wrote over 100 blogs for the site, and the ones that will be presented here have some special meaning to me. The name for the blog came to me when I began to notice a phenomenon pertaining to modern rock bands, who would throw together two completely incongruous words or objects together for their song titles. To poke fun at that trend, Revelations and Doorknobs was born. I will continue to use the name on this blog, and will write additional pieces as they come to me.

Give Us Dirty Laundry

August 1, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

I make my living off the evening news/Just give me something- something I can use/People love it when you lose/They love dirty laundry

Every once in a while, I hear Don Henley’s hit song “Dirty Laundry” in my travels, and it makes me wonder how he feels about the state of the world these days. The song was released in 1982 on Henley’s first solo album I Can’t Stand Still, and it laments sensationalism in the news and everybody’s abject obsession with the misery of other people. Things have certainly gotten worse in that respect over the past three decades, what with the Internet and 24-hour “news” networks that project disaster and despair on an endless loop. Continue reading →

On Fat Shaming

July 29, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

The Internet can be a brutal place. While I think that people who choose to have a presence on the Web typically have an unrealistic and unreasonable expectation of privacy and approval, there is still no other place where a person can feel so naked, so alone, and so unprepared to deal with a cruel and constant onslaught of insults from faceless strangers. The relatively recent phenomenon of “fat shaming” has taken root across social media and viral content websites alike, and has left many victims in tears, or worse, and has hoards of others crying foul. Fat shaming takes place when a woman (most of the time, as it has become clear in our society that men are not held up to the same scrutiny and standards when it comes to body type and overall physical appearance) who has more than 0% body fat posts a picture of herself revealing something other than the perfect vision of the female form that we have adopted. When and if said picture makes it somewhere beyond the eyes of friends, it becomes subject to a barrage of comments and insults that can leave the victim more or less defenseless. Now, what’s pleasing to the eye surely differs from person to person, as does everyone’s definition of “fat” when it comes to body mass. It takes a special kind of abandon to blindly insult a stranger from behind a keyboard. Maybe the perpetrator is just mean-spirited. Continue reading →

A Case of the Sundays

July 27, 2015September 2, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

By now, everyone should have seen the movie Office Space, and as a result should be familiar with the phrase “a case of the Mondays” that was made unfortunately popular by the film. If you have a Monday-to-Friday gig, you know the phenomenon all too well. Every Monday, you’re engulfed by an overwhelming sense of dread, anger, gut-wrenching boredom, and a practiced apathy. You lament the fact that the weekend seemed to pass by faster than an hour at work, and as you shift your car into drive to head to your own personal hell, you entertain a thought of driving across the country and never returning. That thought quickly dissipates, along with the pained smile that it subconsciously wrought. Your mood deteriorates even further on your way in. You have a headache by the time you arrive, before you even turn on the computer you’re about to stare at for the next eight hours. If you’re less than thrilled with your job (which I would imagine most people are, whether or not they’ll publicly admit it), then work is the one place where you’ll actually sit and wish hours of your life away. Continue reading →

Kids These Days (And The Overprotective, Overbearing Parents That Made Them This Way)

July 23, 2015September 2, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / 1 Comment

Today’s population of new-age parents has given birth to a doomed generation. Kids are now tumbling out of the womb with connected devices in tow, and are then hovered over and doused with hand sanitizer by their obsessive “helicopter mommies”. They’re coddled and reassured that they’re special (they’re not) and entitled (also not), and most obnoxiously of all, are taught to be victims, and to be offended by everything. They’re given increasingly stupid names, and are not taught to think or stand up for themselves. They’re taught that winning is not important (it is), and as a result, everyone is given a participation trophy just for showing up and breathing. They have access to a multitude of screens that present them with a virtual reality that precludes them from ever having to go outside. Kids that are inclined to defend themselves are afraid to fight back in battles that they didn’t even initiate, for fear of getting suspended or expelled by schools that harbor overzealous “zero tolerance” policies. When I was in grade school, a bully was the kid who physically beat you up on the playground. He (or she) was the punk who made you fear for your well-being in a very tangible way. Continue reading →

Book Review: Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life In Rock by Stephen Pearcy

July 22, 2015September 2, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

Everybody has heard about the excess and debauchery for which the 80’s were known, myself included, but never before have I seen it presented in such gritty, shocking, and honest detail. Stephen Pearcy, the former lead singer of the hair metal giants Ratt, puts forth his memoir, Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life In Rock, which chronicles the span of his life thus far. He tells of everything from his humble beginnings in Southern California, to dealing with an abusive, drug-addicted father, to developing his love for music, to the drive and persistence that led him to build a band that nearly took over the world, to spiraling downward into his own addiction, and beyond. Anyone who lived through the 80’s, or is a fan of the rock music of the time, is undoubtedly aware of the wanton sex and drug use that went on within the scene’s biggest bands, and Stephen Pearcy is here to tell you that every last bit of it is true.

Continue reading →

The Soda Struggle

July 20, 2015September 10, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

My torrid love affair with bubbly, sugary soft drinks started early on during my formative years. I don’t have an addictive personality- I never became a smoker, my days of getting carried away with alcohol were mostly left behind after I graduated from college, and I never got bit by the gambling bug. However, soda is one thing that has always had a strong and unreasoning psychological grip on me. My parents, bless their hearts, tried to keep it under control. Once my two younger brothers and I started resisting milk, our parents would allow us to have soda at dinner time, and they tried to limit it to that, particularly our weekly Friday night pizza dinners. Before you question their parenting abilities, remember that it wasn’t their fault. Back in the 60’s, it seemed like just about everyone smoked cigarettes. They surely knew that smoking wasn’t good for them, but they obviously didn’t know just how bad it really was. The same can be said for soda back in the early 90’s. Any adult knew it wasn’t the best thing for their kids, but they couldn’t possibly imagine it would turn out to be the silent killer that is has been recently revealed to be. Soft drinks were easy to come by when I was a kid. My mom would buy 2-liter bottles for just 69 cents. My brothers and I would easily polish off one of those bottles during dinner. Continue reading →

Hello, Pluto

July 15, 2015July 15, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

On Tuesday, the New Horizons spacecraft flew close by Pluto, a whopping nine years after it left Earth. As a kid, I was obsessed with the planets, stars, and the solar system at large, so my inner 9-year-old is beyond excited about this. I think I’m in good company when I say that when just after the New Horizons mission launched in 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto was no longer a major planet, but rather a dwarf, my childhood was rocked. The decision was made based on Pluto’s size and mass, which was more accurately calculated upon discovery of the former planet’s moon Charon, as well as that of Eris, another far more massive object found beyond Pluto’s orbit. Continue reading →

All Roads Lead To Insanity

July 3, 2015September 10, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

Welcome to New Jersey, a magical place where you have to pay to drive on the roads, so that they may be eternally under construction. A place where the police circle mall parking lots, scanning license plates at random just to see what they can dig up. One night, you might come out to your car after work at one of those malls to a $130 ticket on your windshield because your registration was expired by three days. New Jersey is the most densely-populated state in the nation, and that mere fact makes the task of driving here one not for the faint-of-heart. Continue reading →

Death and Taxes: Part II

July 1, 2015September 2, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

Originally published on 7/12/11 at The Only Podcast That Matters (theonlypodcast.com)

Change is an unstoppable force that shifts our thoughts, actions, priorities, and traditions. Sometimes it energizes us, while other times, it inhibits us. Sometimes we can prepare for it, yet other times we cannot. One things we can always do is question it. People will always be curious as to why things evolve the way they do, on every level, from individual to mankind at large. Continue reading →

The Great Debate

July 1, 2015September 10, 2015 / The No Seatbelt Blog / Leave a comment

With last week’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states, the nation was torn between celebration and revulsion, each to varying degrees. For something that much of the country believes should be a given, and has been a long time coming, there are many more who feel that this decree by the highest of courts in our land is an affront to the Constitution, to morality, to state’s rights, and to deep-seated religious convictions. The decision has even been met with brazen rebellion by the governors of certain states, who have ordered municipal clerks not to obey the ruling by the Supreme Court, as it is said to encroach upon the religious freedom of the faithful. One of those state leaders, Greg Abbott of Texas said, Continue reading →