Yahoo Fantasy Football Servers Are Down?

You’ve got to be kidding me.  30 minutes before 1pm Kickoff and the server that hosts 8 of my 10 teams is down?

The internet is collectively shitting their pants right now, at least the people in the Mix are.

The Last Time I Saw My First

She and I had been broken up about three months, and I was spending a week of my summer vacation at Rider University with 900 16-year-old boys.

 It was weird, don’t ask. I accidentally called her (or at least I remember claiming so)from my cell phone. I immediately hung up, but she called back later (Damn you CALLER ID) and we talked. She said that if I was ever in the area I should stop by sometime. After a week of little to no sleep, I should have driven straight home from the camp, but my friend’s band was playing in Asbury Park. I went to the show, and when they all left to go home, I figured I’d drop into one of my old haunts in Neptune and have a few more with anyone who was around.

I proceeded to get plastered with a few of my old college friends, one of whom was a girl I’d always liked, Lisa. We post gamed back at her place with about ten people from the bar. Eventually the night wound down and most of them left. I was invited to crash there, in Lisa’s bed no less. We lay down, and she promptly passes right out, I however, do not. I lay there, smelling her hair and working my fingers between her elbow and her stomach. I may have felt her up, I honestly don’t remember. Either way, after about fifteen minutes of one way affection and cuddles, I get sufficiently dejected enough to leave.

The only catch being that I am still pretty drunk and I don’t know how to get back to my home from her place. I do know how to get back to Monmouth, and I know how to get home from Monmouth; so the operating vodka theory is that driving to Monmouth, I’ll be able to get home. I start the car and drive back to my alma mater with Shame as my only passenger. When I get to the university’s main drag it is just about 3am. At that moment it dawns on me, that technically I am IN my ex’s neighborhood, and she had said to stop by if’n ever I was there. I figure, even if she’s asleep, I can still piss by her house since her apartment is right on the West Long Branch Boardwalk.

As I drove by her house, I saw that her lights were on and her front door was open. How Fortunate! Perhaps I’d be able to use the bathroom indoors like a gentleman. I circled the block looking for a parking spot and found one about two blocks away. I walked up to her front steps as blasé as I could muster being three sheets to the wind and twenty seconds from wetting myself. As I looked into her apartment through the glass storm door, I saw her standing in her kitchen. She was exactly as I had remembered her; the disfiguring accident I’d been praying for since she broke my heart never occurred.

As I saw her, she saw me, and hurriedly waved me inside; probably assuming that I was in some sort of dire emergency that required me to insanely show up at her house at 3am like a Matchbox 20 song. I came in, started saying something about being in the neighborhood and my tongue completely seized as I noticed the dude sitting on her couch. It had never dawned on me that people aren’t up at 3am with all their lights on, ALONE. She introduced us and for the life of me, I cannot remember the guy’s name. I wish I could, finding that guy online could only enrich this story. Realizing that I’d either crashed a booty call or just cut one short, I started to sputter, stutter and stagger for the door.

I don’t remember what excuses I was offering or what explanations I could possibly concoct as to why her ex-boyfriend who lived 90 minutes away was at her front door at 3am, but I left the way I came no more than twenty seconds after entering. Homeboy closed her front door behind me, as if I might become deranged at any moment or only be the first in a string of drunken exes staggering in from the shore. Completely embarrassed and still having to urinate like crazy, I took a few seconds to reflect. Sure, she was doing someone else. Sure she might have been doing that someone minutes before my arrival. Sure we weren’t dating anymore, but I really had to pee.

With all the spite I could muster I walked back towards my car, past her side window, and down the sidewalk along her carport. I saw my opportunity for a quick,quiet and dirty revenge sitting alongside the curb. I fumbled at my buttons, unzipped my pants and began pissing in her recyclables. Once the stream started, there was no stopping it. 20 seconds went by. 30 seconds.

Her back porch light came on.

35 seconds.

Her back door opened (literally not figuratively).

40 seconds.

She and her dude are coming outside. The sound of the stream hitting the bottom of the can is becoming deafening. I can hear it over the sound of the nearby breaking waves.

43 seconds. She sees me.

45 seconds. He sees me.

46 seconds. I wave.

47 seconds. Still Pissing. I mutter some sheepish excuse about really having to go.

48 seconds, “I didn’t think you would have to see this, I really meant…”

52 seconds, “I thought you guys were going to…”

54 seconds, He starts across the lawn at me. I don’t know what his intentions are but he looks aggressive, so I stop aiming at the can, and point it at him.

60 seconds. I am keeping him at bay with a stream of piss like the world’s most homoerotic lion tamer.

64 seconds. She calls out to him from her car. (I REALLY WISH I COULD REMEMBER HIS NAME).

68 seconds. He walks back to her car watching me over his shoulder.

72 seconds. I begin pissing in the can once again.

75 seconds. They are both staring at me from the front seat of her car, the car I drove to Florida, a few months before.

80 seconds, they pull out of her drive way; I am still pissing in her recycling can.

85 seconds, she makes an illegal left onto a one way street to avoid driving past me.

89 seconds, I know I am never going to see her again*.

After finally finishing, I walked back to my car, and began my 90 minute drive home. The only CD I in the car is Dashboard Confessional. Shame screams for me to turn it up. Drunken tears of embarrassment and adrenaline are shed as I punch the roof of my shitty Nova whilst driving back to Monmouth, it’s cool though, I know the way home from here.

*We are now Facebook friends. She has two lovely daughters and is married to a gentleman who appears to make way more money than I do. I do not know if he is the gentleman in this story. I’d like to think so. I’d also like to think he was impressed by my penis, I doubt it; but one can always hope.

Sons of Anarchy, Season 5, Episode 3, “Laying Pipe”: Spoilers, Thoughts and Discussion.

RIP Opie. This episode definitely answered at least one of my questions from last week, how did Opie plan to get out of county after assaulting the sheriff’s officers. Answer: he was never getting out. It seems the character Opie had outlived his usefulness in the writers’ room. Over the course of the last four seasons pretty much every awful thing that could be done to Opie was. He lost his wife, to the mixed machinations of Agent Stahl and Clay. He sought her killer and was forced to buy his father’s life with his acceptance of the fact that a Son had killed Donna. His marriage failed. He lost his father to another Son’s gun. His best friend wanted to leave the club and leave him behind, a widowed half orphaned two time loser who was never even going to make the shortlist for father of the year. Jax change of heart only pushed him further away. When he took his shot at Clay and was stopped there was no way he could ever return to that table. Even in a position of leadership, Opie could not sit elbow to elbow with the architects of his misery. Opie did not care about Greg areas, he was raised by a code; a code most of his Brother Sons only pay lip service to. From the moment Jax clued Opie in to Pope’s demands it was pretty obvious Opie would volunteer somehow (despite having two kids currently under the watchful eye of his ersatz wife and porn star.)

From the writers point of view, I get it. There wasn’t really a way to keep him around that didn’t feel like a cheat. I did not enjoy the death scene though. I would have preferred a more violent scuffle with the guards that led to the lead guard shooting Opie dead in that closet (since when are C.O.s strapped inside the jail?) Also I don’t understand how that guard didn’t think there would be reprisal for Opie’s death.

Next week we say goodbye to Opie and hopefully focus more on the home invasions being committed by the Nomads. There were two things that popped out at me during the bust of Nero’s establishment: I think Jemma’s assault of the hooker prompted her to drop the dime on the brothel; despite all his faults I can’t see Clay ratting it out. Also they never really explained the gut shot gangbanger lying on the floor of the reception area, I can’t help but think the two new bad guys due this season Lupe and Fiasco won’t somehow come in because of that small detail.

As we move on from Episode 3, Tig is now Jax’s bitch as he was Clay’s, and Jax takes one more step towards becoming Clay just as Opie feared.There have been some serious watershed moments on this show: Donna’s death, Tig’s confession, Jemma’s Rape, Stahl’s framing of Jemma, Opie executing Stahl, Clay killing Piney and beating Jemma… I just wish Opie’s death carried the same resonance as his life. I’ll sure miss the bearded viking.

I liked Perrineau’s Pope a little more this episode but I still don’t buy him as a gangster even as a Nicky Barnes type. Even Frank Lucas had some menace to him. Pope lacks conviction and when he started spouting off about men and kings it just sounded like story. He is the least authentic character in a tapestry of hyperbolic archetypes, hopefully we see less of him as this season goes on, if there is one thing Sons is great at it is delayed gratification.

What did you think?

Another Free Flow Answer 11×11 Level 13

This is only the second one I had trouble with and I had solved it, but I couldn’t remember how so that I could get the ‘perfect’ score.  So I went to youtube.  I’ve already solved 3 packloads and am working on the last and hardest.  I really don’t know if I’m just this good at the game or if Juggles exaggerated its difficulty.

 

I told you so, Jess

I told Jess that this was Casey Novak from SVU as the mom.  She didn’t believe me.  Well according to the actress’s twitter feed, she DID do a Sprint Commercial.

So there.

Sons of Anarchy, Season 5, Episode Two: “Authority Vested” Spoilers, Theories and Discussion

 

I find it kind of odd that SAMCRO isn’t in the prostitution business given their past connection to porn through Luann, and the fact that Sonny Barger plays a character called Lenny the Pimp. That aside, I am enjoying the on-screen chemistry between Jax and Nero. Jimmy Smits is playing the former gangbanging hustler beautifully squirrelly. Every tic and sideways glance separates Nero from Jimmy Smits the heartthrob and former television cop, prosecutor, you name it. It seems the online speculation from last week about the peg leg was accurate and that the three newest members of the Sons Redwood Charter are behind the rash of home invasions and beatings affecting Charming residents connected to SAMCRO. What is driving me absolutely batshit is that no one who ‘recapped’ the show seems to have taken the time to note who actually was attacked besides Unser.

Since we now know that nobody expected Unser to be at Clay’s house, he just got on the wrong side of a robbery, a robbery that appears to have been targeting family documents. At the end of the episode we see Frankie Diamonds holding the birth certificate for Thomas Wayne Teller, Jax’s younger brother who died of the congenital heart defect, and the marriage certificate between Gemma and Clay. It seems one of the mechanics at Teller-Morrow’s garage was attacked, and I’m wondering if that mechanic was the same one whose father was murdered by Clay & Tig back in the 1990s, the murder that Piney hinted had something to do ultimately with the coverup of John Teller’s death.

It would seem that the Nomads are looking into John Teller’s death for whatever reason. They certainly blew in from nowhere, and being Nomads would have had to have left their previous charters at some point for some reason. I wasn’t a huge fan of Opie’s solution to “Staying Close” since he blatantly assaulted two officers. While the Sons might get the bullshit witnesses to go away, recant or disappear, I don’t see how Opie would skate on those charges. Who is going to protect Ope when the other Samcro Members make bail?

For the second week in a row, I cannot stand Harold Perrineau as Damon Pope. I don’t find him frightening, and I don’t see any charisma about his character. How does the Godfather of Oakland come off completely soft? Did the CIA put him into power? His #2, August Marks, seems like the real deal, but Damon Pope doesn’t come off as a Gangster trying to be Legit so much as a Legit Businessman trying to be a gangster. I don’t see any pain in him over the loss of his daughter. Nothing. But it’s not a scary nothing, it’s a ‘does this character even have a backstory’ nothing.

I can only hope that Unser’s detective work pays off as he seems to be the only one who actually recognizes the internal threat that the home invasions represent. I also wonder how far Unser’s involvement into covering up the death of John Teller goes. Old secrets always come back to bite someone’s ass on this show. Next week will probably be all about surviving inside, but I’m sure by October we’ll be back into why the Nomads are digging into the family affairs.

What did you think? Am I wrong about Perrineau as Pope?

Flow Free Help

This was the first board in Flow Free that I had a problem with…100 some boards in.  When I first saw this game my boys Juggles, Gonorrhea and RDP were playing it on their iPads.  Juggles was acting like rain man for being able to ‘perfect’ so many levels.  These were the first twenty levels or so.

Well, in an effort to blog about the things I googled, I’ll continue to post the walkthroughs for levels that I’m having trouble with.  Of course, I will only do that, after I’ve beaten level without the walkthrough.

My Nexus 7 won’t turn on

This is more of a Pro Tip than a complaint post, some of the most read articles on Halfninja are purely based on something f’ed up happening to me or some problem I’ve had that other people have too.  You’d be surprised how many people google particular issues just to know that they are not alone.

If you own a Nexus tablet and that son-of-a-bitch will not turn on, and you’ve plugged it in to charge, and it still won’t turn on, and you know it was working, and you know it’s brand new, and you know it’s charged, and it just won’t turn on.

HOLD THE POWER BUTTON DOWN.  Just hold it down, not for 2 seconds or 5, or 10, hold that sumbitch down for 30-60 seconds.  It will boot up, but it is ridiculously slow at turning on sometimes. Like call tech support slow.

So if you experience this problem, hold the power button down for as long as you can manage.  If you hold it down for more than 4 hours, seek medical advice.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 5: “Sovereign” – Thoughts, Spoilers and Discussion

The only fault I found with the entire episode was the casting of Harold Perrineau as Mr. Pope.  There’s something not right about him in the role.  I’ve loved him in the past as Michael on “Lost” and the Narrator on “Oz”, however, this time around the fit is not right.  I’ve learned to ignore the occasional break in “American” accent from Charlie Hunnam, but for the most part, of the entire cast, Perrineau is the only one who feels like he’s ‘acting’.  Granted, you can see the theatrical facepalms from Ron Perlman as the newly decrepit Clay Morrow, but I excuse that in one of two ways: 1) It’s very Shakespearean which is where the entire series draws its base from anyway, and 2) Clay is the kind of sloppy liar that he would try overly theatrical staging and woe’s me tactics to win Gemma back.

I just don’t buy Perrineau as a gangster let alone someone successful enough at it to have come from the 1-9er ranks.  He is not about that life.  Clay’s turnaround from the last season goes from the obvious “Clay has become the new Piney” to the subtle, in one scene, we can still see the indentation of the words and the lack of wear on Clay’s cut where the “President” patch used to be.

The Torching of Tig’s Daughter was great in terms of Sons’ willingness to go to the darker elements of the Story, but it doesn’t seem very smart in the long run.  Imagine the movie “Taken” if they had killed Liam Neeson’s daughter instead of kidnapped her, now take out most of the Kungfu and all of the conscience.  The episode doesn’t even end before Tig has choked a cop (dead or unconscious, I imagine dead) with his own chains and then fired multiple shots into the skull of a CSI tech on the scene.

As for the home invasion, online sources are pointing towards the new character of “Greg the Peg” played by Amputee actor, Kurt Yaeger.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but it does beg the question why the Sons even the Nomad Sons would have any interest in home invading and ass whooping Samcro related Charming residents.

Week 1 Worries

This Explains “Take Me Out”

It appears that after dissolving his 17 year marriage in 2010, George Lopez will be losing 50% of his AFTRA retirement funds due to the divorce agreement.  I wondered why someone who had had their own sitcom and talk show and successful stand up career would be hosting a crappy dating show with a crappier haircut in 2012.

This pretty much explains everything.

 

Remember When Being Republican Wasn’t a Stigma?

I was born during an election year.  I took my first steps under the Reagan regime.  I grew up an Alex P. Keaton Republican. I went to private school. I wore sweater vests and penny loafers. During my Sophomore year of high school a Civics class asked us to balance the budget; I cut the Head Start program. The first time I voted for Bush I did so because I didn’t like Al Gore and because I thought it would be cool if George HW and GW became the second father and son team to serve as President of this great nation.  I voted for GWB a second time because I didn’t trust John Kerry or his Ketchup Money.  When 2008 rolled around, I voted for Barack Hussein Obama. I did so largely in part because of how fucked our country had become after 8 years of Bush.  I wasn’t afraid of another Republican administration but for 8 years I’d heard how McCain was little more than a Republican In Name Only (it seems Arizona doesn’t elect Democrats); so I figured if I was going to vote for a Democrat it might as well be with one who had the balls to call himself a Democrat.  On the state level I voted for Chris Christie (R).  The older I get, the more liberal it seems I become.  A fact which is directly against the old adage, “IF you’re not a Democrat in your 20s, you have no heart, if you’re not a Republican in your 40s, you have no brain.”

It took me a long time to realize that growing up, we were pretty poor.  Thanks to my mother’s ability to stretch a dollar, I had no idea.  For a long time after college, I toiled in a dead end job making mediocre money. It was about the same that my mother had raised me on, so I didn’t need much more.  I have many successful friends from my childhood, I also have a few that ended up in prison. Most for drugs, one creep diddled a 14 year old girl for 2 years (never really liked him).  With every election cycle I find myself more and more disenfranchised from the political game.  I’ve got bigger problems.

It really doesn’t matter to me whether there is an R or a D after the name of the guy who is fucking me over. For the past 15 years, I have spent 1 week a year teaching rising high school seniors about the importance of government and civics.  Politics can affect your everyday life but truly only on the local level. Any possible argument you want to have will ultimately boil down to States Rights.  So there’s very little value in pushing any sort of policy on a National Level.

In reality the ‘Federal Government’ is a bloated mess with too many heads and no actual way of stopping it.  It’s a quandary to me, how is it that an immovable object can be an unstoppable force?  If I vote at all in this upcoming election, I’ll be voting for Obama.  Going back to the Republicans at this point would at least to me be tantamount to going back to an Abusive Husband who isn’t even promising that he’ll change. “C’mon back, Baby, and you’ll get more of the same.”

Obama hasn’t actually accomplished that much in his 4 years, and things aren’t any worse than they were in 2008. I say give the guy another 4 years to do very little, and let’s pick it up then.  Can we just table this until 2016?  Maybe the GOP can pick a candidate that doesn’t ooze the kind of repressed rage rarely seen outside of a Lifetime Movie of the Week?

The Walking Dead Social Game Review

After months of waiting for the release of The Walking Dead Social Game on Facebook, the end product is finally here, sort of.  The game is “open beta”. There are plenty of features that are ‘forthcoming’ but the game itself will take some time.  As with most facebook games, you can either work your way up and earn various ‘in game’ elements or you can buy them outright through terribly overpriced dollar to widget dollar exchange rates. You can ‘earn ammo’ by watching advertiser videos at the beginning of each gaming session.

The most valuable component of the game at this point seems to be Energy/Movement.  You start out with 25 ‘stamina’ points.  Each time you move about 6 spaces outside the game’s camp or about 20-30 inside the games’ camp you use up one of these points.  Pick something up, that’s a point.  Swap equipped weapons? That’s a point.  Take a swing at a Walker, you better believe that’s a point.

You can even use 10 of these points to refill your stamina if a walker chows down on you.  The game recharges energy points 1 per 5 minutes.  You will have to accomplish several ‘story’ and ‘camp’ missions to level up your character and advance throughout the game.  Weapons also break down over time.  It seems like a 3/3 weapon can be used to kill zombies 3 times in 3 separate missions and then it will require repair.  Repair is a time suck; a time suck you can speed up if you pay with their ‘premium’ dollars.

You will be encouraged to invite your friends to the game, unlike other games where you can ‘visit’ friends’ camps and obtain game materials or gift them objects once daily the game currently offers you the choice of sending them 1 energy point.  You read that correctly.  You will have to go out of your way to send a friend playing the game, 1 energy point.  A point that he can use to move 6 spaces.

I don’t know what is so ‘social’ about this game as I cannot ‘visit’ my friends also playing.  The closest ‘social’ aspect I found is that it takes people from your friends list and names Zombies after them.  So partway through your second or third mission you will have to bash in the brains of Uncle Ed the ZOMBIE. Oooh, fun.

The combat system itself is super lacking.  You click ‘strike’, and then you must time your next click for when the target is on a killzone on the target.  Miss and you wasted 1 energy point which is 5 minutes of your life.  The game offers an EXPERT mode after level 4 which just makes the timing of the killzone target faster and harder.  They also appear to list how many “expert” missions you have beaten on your profile when a friend adds you to their game.  You do get additional ‘characters’ in your group, that you then must ‘swap’ and level up, or add them to missions with your own main character. Warning if you Team UP, you will be using twice as much ‘energy’.

I’ll keep playing it to see if it gets any better, but that’s only because I’m a sucker for anything with levels or points.

Fantasy Football Rankings for Tight Ends in the 2012 Season

Well, I got bored so I started aggregating pre-draft lists and averaging out predictions.  In this case I took the input from Yahoo, ESPN and Fantasy Guru and averaged out their rankings, I then used Points Scored Last Season to break any ties.  Here’s what I came up with:

Tight End
1. Rob Gronkowski
2. Jimmy Graham
3. Antonio Gates
4. Vernon Davis
5. Aaron Hernandez
6. Jermichael Finley
7. Jason Witten
8. Fred Davis
9. Tony Gonzalez
10. Brandon Pettigrew
11. Jared Cook
12. Brent Celek
13. Jermaine Gresham
14. Jacob Tamme
15. Owen Daniels
16. Dustin Keller
17. Coby Fleener
18. Kyle Rudolph
19. Kellen Winslow
20. Greg Olsen
21. Martellus Bennett
22. Ed Dickson
23. Marcedes Lewis
24. Tony Moeaki
25. Scott Chandler
26. Robert Housler
27. Lance Kendricks
28. Todd Heap

Fat Muslim Girl Won’t Do Judo Unless She Can Hide Chins;Hair

The only Judo competitor from the Saudi Arabian contingent has stated to her father (at least that’s what he’s telling everyone) that she will not compete if she is not allowed to wear her hijab (headscarf). Wojdan Shaherkani is set to compete in the 78kg+ division.  According to google’s math that’s almost 172 lbs.  That’s what Georges St. Pierre fights at.  The International Judo Federation has stated that it is not allowing head scarves as that would go against the principle and spirit of Judo.  I’m not sure why Judo is against religious inclusivity, but hey, I’m not sure why they even have a division for 172 pound women.

Prior to these games, Saudi Arabia had never sent a female athlete, a fact that had many people crowing about excluding them, Qatar and a country I’ve never heard of Brunei from the games until they did.  As a concession it appears that Saudi Arabia has sent this behemoth and an 800m runner who is theoretically much lighter than the judoka.

How do you weight 172 lbs in the desert dressed all in black from head to toe every day?  YOU LIVE IN A SAUNA.  It’s Ramahdan you aren’t allowed to eat or drink while the sun’s up and it’s summer.  How are you still fat? Wojdan’s preliminary competition is set for August 3rd.  It will be interesting to see who caves first: the religious contingent or the chest of whoever is trapped underneath Wojdan.

Unfortunate National Abbreviation for Nigeria in the Olympics

Seriously, this is what you let them put on your back?  You’ve got way more national pride than sense, sir.

 

 

One of my Readers became a Bank Robber

Some months ago, it came to my attention that a man I thought I knew fairly well.  A guy I would see at comedy shows, who sometimes drove with the headliner, a man who called in to the same radio show that would feature me, a man who was almost invited to our wedding was apparently also the ‘Bandage Bandit’ being sought for Bank Robberies in Delaware and South Jersey.

I forgot to tell you guys about it and was only reminded because as I perused the stats for Halfninja, I noticed that he was the 13th all time Commenter on the website.  His last comment was back in April of 2009 on this post.

He never did anything to me, and was always a nice guy.  Here he is partying with porn star, Mary Carey.

I guess it just goes to show that you never really know anyone.

 

Contemplating the Destruction of my Comedy Website

In 2005, my friends Josh Kaulius and Brandon Griffiths created a pretty fucking sweet personal website for me to help with my ‘comedy‘.  I am still on my original Linux hosting plan from 7 years ago. I pay $5.50 a month for it. I don’t even have a GB of storage and I don’t come anywhere near my transfer data rate as outdated as it is.  In the past 7 years this site has received less than 25000 visits.  To give you an idea of the contrast, halfninja.com (which is hosted by wordpress and costs me nothing) has had over half a million pageviews.  One of my youtube videos (the only one not featured on chris-mcdevitt.com) has had almost 200,000 views (it’s a heckler video and apparently they’re wildly popular).

So, I did the math and it seems that each visitor to www.chris-mcdevitt.com has cost me about .018 cents.  That’s not a terrible return on investment.  But really, with the prevalence of tumblrs, etc, who pays for hosting anymore?  About the only thing I need is my email address, which I own anyway, since I own the domain.

Any reason why I shouldn’t completely pull the website, aside from the fact that two men worked very hard for free almost a decade ago on it?

Halfninja Caption Contest

Winner gets Jack Shit.

“Whatcha doin? Pooping? Who you gonna throw it at?”

I Met Sherman Hemsley One Time…

I used to work room service in a Holiday Inn Select.  From time to time, celebrities would stay with us.  Not because we were the Hard Rock but there’s a lot of money in Hunterdon County, NJ so once in a while someone famous with some ties to that money would visit.  On this particular occasion, I delivered to the room, and a young light skinned black man opened the door.  He motioned me into the room, I pushed my silly little cart inside, all set up with the Mozzarella and Balsamic Vinaigrette concoction that the room had ordered, and sitting on the bed (one bed), with his widdle legs dangling off the side was Sherman Hemsley.  I didn’t feel like gushing as I couldn’t remember a single thing he had done between The Jeffersons and Old Navy ads, and I didn’t think he’d like to talk about his monkey co-stars (this was before the Old Navy Monkey ripped that lady’s face off).

There was no big exchange, he didn’t call me a honkey.  He signed the check tipping me $4 on his $11 bill, which was on top of the 18% already added.  All in all, he was a good shit, and I didn’t think of it again really until he died.  Then I read one of my gay comedian friends questioning Sherman’s lifestyle.  In Sherman’s defense gay comedians think EVERYONE is gay.  George Washington, gay.  Abraham Lincoln. gay.  Julius Caesar, guy’s got a salad named after him, Gay Gay Gay.

In this case, however, it wouldn’t shock me.  I’ve replayed that scene again and again in my head today, and I gotta say, I had always assumed the other guy was either a grandson or an assistant.  Now I’m not so sure.  I definitely understand why someone in his position would have to stay in the closet.  You can’t be the TV epitome of the angry black man and be gay, especially with how both the regular and black communities of the time treated gays.  It would have been career suicide (not that Old Navy wasn’t).  Just something to think about. Either way, thanks for tipping over 50%, you’re the man, Sherm.  Rest In Peace.