Alejandro's Anti-Amazing Athletic Adventures No. 2: Bodgedall!

Like most American students in the nineties and early two-thousands, I was subjugated to the humiliation factory that was dubbed “P.E.” which we all know stands for Philistine Experimentation. In actuality it stands for “physical education,” though it wasn’t particularly educational, it was required as some way of combating the ever-looming threat of becoming a human sausage that wears ill fitting shorts. So, once a day we would be herded into the gym where we would be given some kind of activity that might get the blood pumping and minds focused on our learning of how “simile” is spelled.

Anyhow, the children of my generation were still subject to torture by way of the child killing blood sport known to the world as “dodge ball.” This “sport” has been deemed so vile and savage that, many states now ban it’s use as a way to break children, and train them to become future soldiers in the war against the non-existent flying elephants. The version of the sport I played was fairly standard in it’s rules. The class was divided into two nearly equal teams, now by equal I mean equal in numbers, not in ability. Why it wasn’t uncommon for the gym teachers to place the athletic kids across from the geeky kids and band nerds, just to see them get pummeled into dust just for their own sick entertainment.

Dodging the balls reached it’s zenith during my sixth grade year, which I spent at Oak Run state penitentiary. My three gym teachers would usually find some kind of activity for the class to perform some kind of activity that included some kind of running around. The two most popular activities were indoor base ball (which featured 30 outfielders) and of course dodge ball. So, we would play the now banned sport an average of two times a week, I’m not sure how any of us children survived the horrid onslaught which was known to emotionally ravage most of middle-America.

Unlike in the olden days when the balls used were composed of a thick rubber material which pronounced a rather loud “ffuthummmm!” whenever they made contact with a surface, whether it be a brick wall or a child’s face. Yet, when it came time for me to come of age and step into the arena of death, they had been replaced with a much softer counterpart. The balls we used were comprised of foam, and a rather thin pleather covering, which came in two colors red, and blue. After about a week of use the foam balls were very likely to be skinned through many impacts with young children’s faces and kneecaps, so they became shapeless masses of foam flying about the gymnasium.

Seeing as I wasn’t the most athletic of students, it was more often than not that I wasn’t the most effective player of the game. The foam balls were apparently manufactured in a way that only children who played baseball professionally could throw them with any accuracy or strength. Try as I might, my noodley arms were unable to project the ball in a straight line, or at a speed faster than a moseying panda bear. The rules of the game state that if a ball is thrown and caught by an opposing player before it hits the ground, the person who through the ball is out. Following this guideline, I found it much more productive to leave the throwing to the fit kids. Where as I would go on to become the world’s fifth most important Star Wars fan, they would just become regional sales managers. Chumps.

Over the course of the school year, we were bound to play dodge ball more often than a southern state feels the need succeed, the coaches felt the need to spice things up a bit. So, there would be variations of the game, where the allotted lines of moment for players was changed up, or we were all required to wear Tibetan hats while playing. The main name I remember for a variation on the game was called “Queen Bee,” wherein we would have the standard separation, but one kid on each side would be required to wear a florescent vest. As if the vest wasn’t punishment enough, it was a rule that the opposing side could only win if they hit that person with the ball.

As a whole I usually lasted fairly far into the game, as I didn’t usually throw the balls, and rarely attempted to catch them. This came to become a fairly interesting point when in that particular sixth grade class it came time to play a game of Queen Bee, where Danielle (the girl of my interest) was the queen and I was on her side of the court. The game went underway and slowly the rest of the team was eliminated and only I and Danielle were left, any twelve year olds dream come true.

The coaches decided to try and finish the game quicker by allowing the opposing side to move up to a distance were she and I were only a meter away. As we moved around trying to catch the balls being hurled at us, I had to stand in front of her so that I would absorb any accurate throw. Yet, alas! After months of being quite clumsy, I at long last was able to have a proper reflex reaction to an object being thrust at me. So I heroically dodge a ball, which whizzed past me and smacked Danielle right in the face. Super-smooth wasn’t I?

Tips For Being Wonderful

Over the years people have often come up to me and said “Alejandro, I need your help!” these people are often quickly carted away to their appropriate mental institutes, or a local Arby’s. What I have been able to ascertain from their loud bursts of noise emitting from their mouths was that they wanted to know how they could somehow become more like me. They want to be more like me? Perhaps I hit my head too hard the last time I dove into that shallow pool, but perhaps I heard them correctly. So, despite the voices in my head arguing against it, I am going to give you all a few tips on how to become more fantastically wonderful. By my standards anyways.
1. Drive A Vintage Non-Muscle Car
Old cars are cool, but you don’t want to be some kind of brock-jock, jammin’ around in his 1972 Charger. Who wants to be cool when you can be a geek? Perhaps you shouldn’t answer that question. Anyways, simply pick an old car to drive around in. When you are driving, you should act like you just exited a time portal, and you just arrived from the year in which your car was popular. My choice is the Datsun Sunny 120Y. A cool little car with about 80 horsepower, not that really matters. It’s look just shouts “dork” and that’s the exact look I go for, because I don’t like being hip, or someone’s bro, it’s just weirdness that fits who I am. Also, when driving your car of choice, you are only allotted to listen to two musicians from that era. With my car, I am only allowed to listen to 8-Tracks by T-Rex and Roxy Music. You’ve got to have boundaries.

2. Have a Mustache For Every Day Of The Week.
All powerful men have had mustaches, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussien, Adolf Hitler, Burt Renyolds, the list goes on. But why settle for just one stache’ when you could have one every day of the week? I propose a new system of days of the week. Instead of Monday, you refer to it as “Handlebar,” and Thursday would be “John Waters,” just think of all the fun you could have with seven constantly morphing mustaches. Why I can think of two things off of the top of my head, and both include pomade.

3. Box A Bear
Don’t question it, just do it. Is there better way to impress the ladies? If there is I haven’t heard it. Set up an exhibition match against any local bears, and everyone from miles around will gather and see the two of you duke it out in a fashion that will put great big patches hair on your chest. Now, you might be afraid that Mr. Bear will maul you, leaving you a pile of incomprehensible bits of meat. There is a way around this though. If you get some of your goons to go ‘round to the bear’s house while he is at work, and kidnap his family, and have them leave a note saying he should take a dive, otherwise they will be called the Bloodstain bears. If successful the bear will have no other choice but to lose to you, thus giving you a fantastic sense of dominance over all God’s creatures.

Alejandro’s Awe-Inspiring Album of Snapshots

As I putter around life, I often go equipped with my photo-apparatus, or failing that, I will have my camera telephone. I decided that I should put them on display for all to see.

“Mind Over Matter”
I found this poor fellow in the parking lot next to the garden center at Denton’s super Wal-Mart. One can only imagine how this package of cheese met it’s demise. Perhaps it had a hit placed on it by some cottage cheese, we may never know. Yet, we do know that it is magnificent.


“Four Letter Word”
One night I attended my chum Ricky’s house for a heated game of Scabble. With the first draw of the bag, I was able to spell the word Stove, leaving the letters of L, D, & K still within my possession. I eagerly reached into the velveteen bag and drew out four new letters to add to my collection. The bag gave unto me F, U, C, & I. With my new letters I was at long last able to spell out the swear word that always runs through my mind while I play Scabble, as I am as good at it as a sloth is good at being quick.


“Chilly Swede”
Even action stars need a scarf from time to time.


“A Grand Spectacle”
Located in the restroom near J.C. Penney’s at the golden Triangle, I dub this the brave man’s toilet. As only a man who has neither fear, nor shame will be able to use it in all its glory. I myself was not worthy of even standing near it’s magnificence.

“Fun Time Box”
Oh the joy of joys that lay within this magical box that was on sale at A Half Price Books in Austin, TX. I dared not buy it as I do not know how I would respond to finding a used copy of Gili, Kazaam, or Chairman of the Board. I decided to leave Pandora’s video box unopened.

“Dumpster Wally”
Found ‘em!

Cinema Customer Scoop #2: Green Liquid Serenade

The day of September seventeenth in the year of our lord Two-thousand and Ten, was a Friday. And like most Fridays of 2010, I was working at my job in a local movie theater. Being a Friday, it is likely to be the most busy day of the week, and the day which attracts the most kind of people, those who dub themselves to be known as “customers” though in reality they are more like the Morlocks or possibly even the Mole People. Though perhaps it might be insulting to the Morlocks, as they are far better behaved than most customers, and they practice better grooming habits. For the first Friday in many months, I was assigned to be an usher, where I was responsible for both tearing tickets then telling people where to go, and also cleaning up theaters in between showings of films.



You would believe it would be a simple job of taking a set of tickets, ripping them in twain and telling a person what direction their theater is without them getting hopelessly lost in the process. A couple in their mid-fourties came up to me and handed me some tickets for Resident Evil: Afterlife (a mistake in itself), effortlessly I took the tickets, tore them properly, and pointed with my thumb to the theater located directly behind me, and said “it’s in theater number seven, right behind me.” So they took their drink and popcorn, then began walking towards the direction of the theater, then they continued onward far past the theater, and wandered another two hundred yards, to the end of the hallway. After a few moments of studying the extremely complex, and overly interesting design of the exit sign, they slowly turned around and puttered back on down the hall. I know people are lazy, but is it really that difficult to turn your eyes and read a single digit in a rather large and readable font? Then again they are likely not educated enough to read an entire number in one go.



Though it’s not particularly an untouched subject, but the state in which patrons leave the theater once they finish a movie is so deplorable, it would make Hitler blush. Apparently patrons feel the need to pay upwards of twenty dollars on popp-ed corn, and fizzly beverages, only to take them to their movie and toss the about in a hillbilly hoe-down like frenzy. They then reload by going to the concession stand and redeeming their complementary refill for their large popcorn. Once returning to their seats, they celebrate the occasion with a hardy bellow and promptly upturning their newly received kernels unto the floor from which they don’t belong. Oh the bliss that must fill them as they sloth themselves down the hall and into their needlessly large car, as I am left to deal with the carnage they created. The horror.

On that particular Friday, one of the men’s restrooms contained a rather pungent and potent smell, which largely resembled the scent of rat urine. Because of this smell, I refrained from using that particular restroom, seeing as I’m not one to go in search of the source of a rather offensive smell. Eventually I ventured back into that lavatory, only to find the smell still present, and there was a puddle of an undeterminable liquid, so I assumed it was the source of the smell. Following the standard Alejandro protocol, I applied the use of water to alleviate the situation. Putting water on things always makes everything better, whether it be on fires, hysterical people, Kool-Aid mix, or large piles of sulfur, it’s always a good idea.



Anyhow, I later returned to the restroom at a later point in my shift, only to find the smell still present, like a house guest that won’t leave. I thought that perhaps the origin of the smell was in the air ducts, until I noticed something different about the room, a change the occurred since my last visit. This particular room contains two urinals, one of which has been broken for many a moon, and had been promptly covered with a trash bag, to let customers know that it was not in working condition. Yet, someone apparently felt it had been a gift for them to unwrap, so they took the bag off and placed it upon the shorter urinal. People need to understand that simply removing a bag from a toilet does not mean it’s fixed, and the stagnant yellowy-green opaque liquid in the bowl should be a sign of that. Perhaps it’s not humans who come to see movies at my theater, rather a series of weasels who pile inside a human suit and wander around.

New Braunfels Lacks Talent

Once a year, American students are often herded into whatever passes as their gathering place, wither it be an auditorium, gym, or cafeteria. As soon as all of the students are students are inside the gathering place, they are soon culled, so that none of the deadly secrets of the interworkings of the school district would leak out into the world. Then again, I might be wrong about that. Anyways, usually there would be an annual “talent” show, and I use the world “talent” extremely loosely. To give you an idea of how loose I mean, imagine of an old pair of underpants you had in high-school, that you still have several years after losing a decent amount of weight. When you try and wear those old under-things, they have been stretched out, and the elastic yields about the same tensile strength as the rubber bands you get on the back of cheap Halloween masks. So, technically they work, but it’s also like wearing a grocery bag with leg holes cut out the bottom.

Getting away from underpants, despite how intensely intriguing they are, they are not the subject of my essay. Once a year students would have to suffer though talent shows, where in all actuality no talent was to be found in a twenty mile radius, especially in the New Braunfels Independent School District. The worst of these were in middle school, when kids would form bands, simply for the prestige of performing at the talent show, in front of the entire student body, so that they could be singled out and preyed upon by the talentless people watching them perform. We piled upon the rickety bleachers that were held together with gaffer tape, and the tears of many a janitor, so we could watch people have muscle spasms while holding a guitar, then meekly putter off stage.

The main performance I remember from the two middle school shows I was forced to attend (and purchase a ticket for), was a “rocking” cover of Lynard Skynard’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” It was fine enough just to hear some students performing the song, as they were actually decent musicians and could hold a tune well enough. Though the whole experience became rather uncomfortable and stupid when the faculty forced the entire student body to stand up, clap, and sing along with the song in a giant sign of patriotism. I was annoyed at this, seeing I am likely one of the least patriotic citizens of the south, sure I have a sense of American pride when watching Saving Private Ryan, but that’s pretty fleeting. And second, didn’t anyone besides me know that we weren’t residents of Alabama? I know there is this whole “the south is going to do it again” mentality, but I’m fairly sure that Texas has its own brand of fanatics and their own set of nutty customs and songs. So, there I was, the only one not clapping or singing along, it was as though I had been teleported into a Nickleback concert, and was unable to find an exit from the sea of poor taste.



As a young child, I too preformed in a “talent” show. I was about seven or eight, and I preformed a stunt dubbed “the Human Tornado,” where in I (the human) believed I spun about so fast after uncoiling my limbs which I had wrapped around myself, I would look like a miniature tornado. I suppose I didn’t find this feat nearly interesting enough to enthrall my audience, so I stuffed a pair of shorts with various stuffed animals that wound up flying about the stage as I twirled. Man, I was a weird kid. Why couldn’t I just had played Chop Sticks on the piano like all of the other kids? And wasn’t my feat more about the talent of the elastic of my shorts, rather than my ability to spin around? Perhaps a loose pair of old underwear could have made me the star of the show (callback).

Musing On Being Alejandro

During my fifth of a century of life, it has become rather apparent that I am a beta male. This ranking has led me to a series of personality quirks and various physical reactions to external stimuli. The life of a beta male is most dangerous while in middle school, where the hormones leave their training academy and head for the front lines. This is the time in which the alpha and beta males begin their great schism, the alphas went on to bulk their muscles and reigned over the females of the school, and the betas retreated to their caves and began to whine.
I being a fairly low ranking beta male did not exit my pupal stage until after my teen years, which is not the most fortunate of times to leave metamorphosis as a rather large and unseemly moth. Before you go about saying “that’s not true!” and all of that other clap-trap, you need to stop taking me so seriously and continue reading. Now, where was I? De Nang?
As expressed in my previous blog, I apparently lack the proper combination of pheromones to attract any females that don’t spend four hours a day watching reruns of Oprah from 1992, and eating tubs of processed cheese. So, I’ve began to try and rely on my outright witticisms to attain the eyes of the ladies, but unfortunately for me they are quite tightly stuck inside their sockets. Though in recent years since emerging from my cocoon I have done my best to make myself less garish and unsightly to look upon it’s seems not enough to make women take interest in me. So instead I have built a device from a used toaster oven and a series of misused Christmas lights to make myself more interesting, but it only left me unevenly cooked and half-lit.

The only time in recent memory that anyone took an interest in me after hearing my voice was during my adventures with my compatriots Laura, Linzie, and Nicole last week. Upon Laura, Linzie, and I’s return from the utterly unspicy food of a local Thai restaurant to Nicole speaking with her mother on the phone. When we got settled in our seats Laura and Linzie got to talking about something while I stared off into space (one of my greatest skills), yet at some point I said a handful of sounds that may have been formed into a fractured sentence. For description sake, I will say that I was having an internal discussion with my brain over what my favorite middle-eastern fruit was.
Apparently the few syllables that escaped my larynx was able to move across the apartment to the kitchen and into Nicole’s phone. As my nasally whines were sent by satellite to another part of the country it apparently registered as “man” in the mind of the mother on the phone, a common mistake to be made. She then inquired her daughter; “is there a boy there?” with some anti-hesitance as apparently it was assumed that I was someone who resembled a young Clive Owen, as opposed to being a modern day Ed Grimley.
Now, you might wonder what the point of all that was? Well to tell you the truth I don't know either, but you still bothered to read it, maybe I just felt the need to waste your time by making you read some inane gibberish in run-on sentences. Anyways, despite all of the weirdness that I exhume, and lack of testosterone I am becoming mildly well adjusted with the moth I have turned into. And thinking about it, even if I don’t always enjoy who I am, I don’t think I would rather be anyone else. Except for maybe this kid.