theJEDMAN NATION-A New Wave Manifesto

Documenting the JED Experience

Monday, April 28, 2008

It is tough having a child and an ex-wife. Jennifer, my ex-wife is very difficult to deal with. Trapezoid, our son, lives with his mother and her new boyfriend in a big south Olathe mansion. By law, I'm required to send money to help pay for stuff for Trap. I don't mind doing this. I want to participate in Trap's life. However, I'm concerned about what my money is used to pay for. Jennifer has a French guy come over to speak French with Trap so that he is fluent for the Sorbonne when he gets older. That is fine, but I speak Spanish with Trap whoever I can and I think Jennifer is just doing that to spite me. Also, Jennifer pays over $100 an hour to have this guy named Cheese Puff come over to teach Trap the lost art of country line dancing as an effort to teach Trap about the culture of country music. This is great because when Trap comes to see me, he comes with no clothes or anything. Jennifer expects me to buy him necessities even though the money I send over is for necessities of daily life. Plus, the pick up and drop off times are always changing. I lose time and have to put in time always unexpected without notice. Also, I get tired of Jennifer calling me a no good loser who doesn't make any money in front of Trap. That woman will be the end of me.
*By the way, I've never been married. I have no children. I just get tired of people talking about their kids and spouses all the time at work, so I invented a fake ex-wife and son. Some people are actually buying it. theJEDMAN

.: posted by Jed 7:44 PM

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Hey, I went to the baseball game with some buddies last night, all men, all boys, being with the guys. I met them at the stadium. It was cold. They were giving away these replica jerseys that were semi-nice with medium quality. I had to wait for the guys outside the gate. They had to enter other side of the stadium. I couldn't get to because there is a lot of construction. Anyway, I waited and they were giving these jerseys away as you entered. I watched a woman with a trash bag outside the stadium. There were three guys going in on new tickets each time and exiting with a jersey to put in the trash bag. By the time they were done, they had about 30 jerseys in the bag. To their credit, they had a ticket for each one, but with the $9 tickets they probably bought, they are going to try to sell the jerseys for $20 a pop I would imagine. Then, they took off. They didn't even stay for the game. A lot of people walked out with jerseys and left appearing not to stay for the game. That defeats the spirit of the give away.
People were being jerks taking the jerseys. Some people got more the one. By the time I got in I didn't get one. They brought up some more boxes of jersey up to the gate as I was walking inside and people just converged on the guys carrying the boxes. I said the hell with it I don't need one that bad. I found my buddies and they had an extra one and I went to the table to get a small one for the guy's daughter. So, he traded me for it. I got one, but I was kind of disgusted at people because a lot of people got more than one. In my little group of four guys, one guy walked with two, but he got one for his daughter not to sell to someone on the outside.
I was disgusted by the display of greed. It defeated the spirit of the giveaway and I bet a lot of little kids that would die for one didn't get one because of the greed. It was cold. People can be jerks. When I got that small jersey from the table inside the and away from the gate. I got jostled and bumped. People were grabbing more than one of them. They were taking extras. That is bad.
I was outside for 5 hours. It was below 40 degrees. Baseball is not supposed to be cold. It is supposed to be just hot enough that you sweat and then the beer tastes really good. Football is supposed to be cold. It was a great football night, but they were playing baseball.

I watched the Jayhawks national championship game at Danny's Bar on College Boulevard. It was awesome. They Jayhawks came back and won playing awesome. I rarely get excited, but I jumped up and down when Chalmers hit that shot. After that, I knew we would take them in overtime. It reminded me of 20 years ago when I watched the game in my apartment on Tennessee Street in Lawrence with J-Bird, the K-man, imported beer and fireworks. My roommate, J-Bird, had a lot of fireworks. We shot them across the street to the frat house.

No one can listen. I have endured this for a long time. I get accused of not talking a lot sometimes. This is true. I don't talk a lot at times. I try to be polite and wait for an opening to say things when other people are talking. Often the opening never comes. The times when it does come, I find myself being interrupted a lot. No one listens. I can get very few people to listen to me. I understand that I may not say things clearly sometimes, but I wish people would just be quiet and let me talk and save questions until the end. Often, I can answer your question if you would just wait. No one listens in our post MTV world and I don't like it. I think I listen more than the average person.

I'm not good at much, but I'm good at cooking a lot of dead animal flesh on the grill for a lot of people. Other people are good as well, but they miss out on one technique that is very essential to good grilling. You have to take the food off the grill straight to the table. Many grillers make the mistake of cooking up a bunch of food for a big group. The food gets cooked all at once. Then there is a waiting period where they try to keep the food warm which essentially just drys it out, before the people eat it. The key is to cook a batch of whatever and put it on the buffet immediately and force people to go through the line. By the time, people go through the line and the first batch is almost gone the next batch is ready. When I cook, I operate this way. I just keep bringing in more as people serve themselves. This is effective cooking. Putting grilled stuff off to the side or in an oven to keep warm is no only ineffective, it is just plain unfortunate.

People should just eat their tomatoes and pickles when they order a sandwich and not offer them up to other people. Frankly they need the nutritional content. Not eating tomatoes is unfortunate.