The Many Sides of Garza

Garza is obviously beloved by all posters on this site. But let's be honest, the guy is mercurial. You don't know which Garz is going to show up one day after the next. I'll do my best and try and outline the major Garz personas for you so you'll be ready next time:


Matt Garza, Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Basically Garz knew that he was never going to make it back to the playoffs as an Astro, so he allowed himself to pitch for the Rays. They're one of those newly hyped teams that haven't been around too long. Pitchfork gave them a good review, Garz signed up. Garz practiced his pitching motions in our dorm in college by throwing Ram Jam and Cat Stevens vinyl records across the room at the wall.


Roberto Garza, Chicago Bears
Geez. Only Garz would put "#1 in Nutrition" on a package of frozen cinnamon buns. That's the kind of business savvy that he learned at the Wash U. B-School. And notice it doesn't say "Most Valuable Player," but "Most Valuable Person." Fits with everything I know about the guy. He does it all.

Aldo de la Garza, Former A&M Football Player
All I ever heard Garz talk about at school was how much he loved College Station. No wonder. This is the innocent look he will try to give you when you accuse him of eating all the oreos.

David Lee Garza, Musician
I remember the day Garz insisted on buying that darned cowboy hat.



Alana de la Garza, TV's "Law & Order"
Since she's on Law & Order maybe she'll come to law school to give a lecture, except instead of her walking through the door it will be Garz himself. He has that same outfit except it says "Jesuit P.E." across the front.

Ambassador Garza (Mexico)
This is Garz, ironing out all of our political issues south of the border. I knew this was in his future when he'd chat it up in Spanish with everyone on the St. Louis Metrolink coming back from Busch Stadium late at night.

Garza Theatre, (Post, TX)
Basically everything Garz stands for musically, memorialized in a building. (That was a nice touch, Garz, with the two little red white and blue buntings next to the sign). Seems the theatre caters to plays and stage productions. Currently they are featuring a show entitled "An Evening of Culture." It said the audience members get treated to pumpkin beer and Ritz crackers while watching Beavis and Butthead.

I hope this helps to explain Garz a bit better.

Don't Change a Thing For Me

I love finding beauty in unexpected places. For years I've written off INXS. Who knew they were capable of this piece of musical perfection?

What Did I Just Buy?

So I was killing some time at Best Buy the other day, but I'm not sure what my purpose was in being there. Little did I know it was my destiny playing out before my own eyes. I was just looking around, I suppose, and I came across a DVD display on the side of an aisle: a gargantuan He-Man cartoon treasure trove! Now, I stood debating these DVD's for the longest time, and at one point decided against them and walked around some more of the store. But sure enough, my heart came calling me back to the He-Man DVD display. "Man, it's He-Man!" I tells myself, and it's Vol. 1 which is 33 episodes for $20! What a deal, no wonder they're on display! I mean, my mental math tells me that's like .10 cents an episode, I'd be a fool not to buy it.

Thus I grabbed it and ran to the register, and the guy there is one of those guys with the stretchy loops in his ear lobes, and he's like "Nice choice, He-Man, and at a good price." This acclaim from the Best Buy employee made me feel better about myself and my purchase- kind of like getting complimented when you bring your Arcade Fire CD to the register instead of getting laughed out the door. So I said "Yeh, twenty bucks seemed fairly reasonable," and the guy says "No man, they're only $9.95, they're on sale. So if you want to go check them out again go ahead."

Now, this is where my mental prowess kicked in-- I'm no idiot. I go over the facts and decide that since two minutes ago I was standing there expecting to pay $20 bucks, then that extra $10 is basically one of those "sunk costs" that you can't retrieve regardless of what you do because it is already spent. I mean, this is one of those economic "prisoner's dilemmas" where I can go home with only one DVD set and $10 or two DVD sets with $0. Naturally, I went back to the He-Man aisle and picked up Vol. 2 and brought it back to the dude at the register and went home happy.

Garz knows that I can find ways to justify any purchase. I've spent his money in this fashion multiple times at Vintage Vinyl. But although I've only watched four episodes up to this point, let's just say I think I've already reaped the rewards of my decisions about 5 times over. You can't script stuff like this nowadays.




Bears: 1.2. Watching these proves to be quite the time killer-- the afternoon just disappears!

Anti-Bears: 4.3. I like this animation better than all the Toy Story type stuff anyways, and they have a moral/lesson revealed at the end of every show that should have been learned in the episode! Maybe they will teach some money management principles at some point in the collection.

Wrigley Wrevisited

I didn't go to Wrigley. But that Astros game tonight was so good. Hunter Pence almost hit for the cycle, those double plays were great, and more! I haven't watched baseball as religiously as I usually do this year because the Astros have been sucking. But I happened to see the game tonight and it was so good. I noticed: Jim Edmonds' old ass will kill the Astros until he retires, Cubs fans still suck...they're so fickle and they boo the Cubs too much. Ohhh shit, I remember watching WGN back in the day and just hating Steve Stone and Chip Caray so much. haha that's wack dude! Also, I remember when Aramis Ramirez was the worst fielder! He was on the Pirates and he was usually good for one error per game. Since he's been on the Cubs, he's improved a lot though...and that sucks! I seriously think the Cubs could win the World Series this year! As an Astros fan...I hate that! Carlos Marmol is the best set up man in baseball and the Cubs are too balanced. What's the world coming to? My Astros have won like 6 or 7 in a row and that's nuts! What if we actually won the wild card?!

I hate the Cubs...but it's like a different hate than the one employed by Cards fans. It's like a very personal hatred where I just wish Carlos Zambrano would break his arm or tear his rotator cuff or something...just to see the Cubbies fail! More about Jim Edmonds though...Lord I hate watching him play CF against the Astros! He catches everything! He should totally be a slow, old, white dude who misjudges fly balls and can't hit the cutoff man anymore...but no, man, he's still like Otis fuckin Nixon out there. I actually don't remember how good of a CF Otis Nixon was...but shit I remember HATING the Tomahawk Chop! Damn I hated the Braves...but now they don't matter too much anymore.

But if I moved to Chicago I'd wanna be a Sox fan I think I've decided. But NO No No! my most hated player is A.J. Pierzynski! He seems like such a douche bag! Jim Thome is just a damn hick too! I've lived in Texas toooo long and that shit is no longer cute!

Oh...does telling people "Alfonso Soriano swings the biggest bat in baseball" make anyone else laugh too??

People were cooler in the early 90s

Today I caught "Video Yearbook" on FUSE, which is a tv showcase of videos from a particular year. It's extremely refreshing to still be able to see music videos on tv, and even moreso to see the kinds of videos kids from my generation remember staying up late to see in the wee hours of the morning on the original MTV, way back before the reality show invasion sapped every ounce of credibility from their once legendary lineup. The year featured on this episode was 1994, though viewers should know that not one video I saw was actually from 1994! Instead was a smattering of vintage greats from 1991-1993ish (in the twenty minutes or so I watched), and those videos taught me a lot about music filmography, including the recipe for the perfect encapsulization of what I'd like to think the parts of the early 90s I don't really remember were all about:

• Neon
• Funky dance moves
• Big pants
• Floppy hats
• Giant sunglasses
• Squiggly shapes
• Cheap green-screen text

Example 1: TLC - "Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg"



In the second video, we take the scene to the beach! Not everything mentioned above is in there, but plenty of neon, bikinis, funky dance moves, wacky haircuts and general zaniness abound.

Example 2: Wreckx-N-Effect - "Rumpshaker"



The other videos I saw were all of the grunge/post-grunge movement (Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, etc) so they don't merit discussion and barely even the mention I gave them. Hip hop is where it's at, and if current indie rock/hipster styling weren't such a diluted pastiche of what's in those videos, I'd want it to come back full force. For now I guess I'll just have to except the ironic embodiment that Williamsburg's finest are delivering, and use it to remember the golden years of identity confusion.

Anti-Bears: 4.8. 4.7 of those A-Bs are expressly allocated to the sunglasses in the TLC video.

Bears: 2.9. Those fucking hi-tops and cheap neon sunglasses that I saw all over Pitchfork Festival need to fucking go. Also it was kind of a bear when Left-eye died a few years back.

M.I.A. - Paper Planes

Damn, this song is everywhere. And why not? It rules. It's so groovy and catchy then you get to the chorus and it's all "all I wanna do is *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* and *CH-CHING* and I take your money...". I mean those sound effects are fucking awesome. Gunshots and a cash register opening? Brilliant! It almost makes you want to go rob someone just so you have a reason to shoot a gun and open a cash register while you're singing along in your head. If you don't have a gun, and you do have a hand, you should form your hand into a gun and make shooting motions whenever that part comes up. If you don't have a gun and you don't have hands, I'm sorry because that really sucks. There's got to be something you can use, right? As for that cash register, you have to envision one of those older ones with the pull arm that opens it. Modern electronic registers are far from acceptable, even if they do make some sort of ch-ching noise. Just know that you're an idiot if this is what you think of.

Anyway, I'm getting to a point, I promise. Today I took a bus down to UT campus so that I could get an ACL pass for a friend from some dude from craigslist. While I was walking down Guadalupe I heard "Paper Planes" playing from a jeep at the stopped red light and I looked over to see what I can only assume is the biggest douchebag in the universe singing along to his cd with a stupid affected british accent and a terrible singing voice (and a slightly embarrassed girlfriend rode shotgun). It wouldn't have been so bad if the guy didn't have spiked blonde hair and if he wasn't wearing a tank top.

Now, my music taste almost automatically categorizes me as a snob, or at the least, an elitist. I try to not be judgemental when it comes to music tastes, but when people are talking about music and it's my turn and I mention a bunch of bands that the people I'm talking to haven't heard of, I can feel myself being silently labeled as "one of those people", the kind of individual who is liable to hate everyone who doesn't measure up taste-wise to their impossible standards. What's ironic about having the kind of mentality where you thinking everyone's an idiot for listening to the radio is that the feeling tends to go away as you listen to more and more music, but that's a topic for a different discussion.

What I'm ultimately getting at is this: that fuckwad in the jeep is the reason for such elitism and snobbery. I saw that idiot in the car and I immediately felt a small pang of defensiveness for M.I.A., and a little bit of selfishness in that I didn't want that idiot to have the capacity to listen to the same music as me. It kind of left this repugnant image in my mind that I'll probably think of every time I hear that song from now on. Thank you, asshole, you might have ruined a great song for me.

Bears: 4.5. It kind of sucks when a song you like is totally ruined. It's possible that it might not be completely ruined though, so there's that.

Anti-bears: 1.5. It's at least a little funny, right?

A Trip Back to the '90's, via eBay

A fond memory of my grade school days (starting around 4th grade) was coming home from school to watch television. We had a gargantuan snack drawer in the house that was overflowing with Oreos, Twinkies, and other Little Debbie goodies and I would raid it, head upstairs, and plop down on the couch for the weekday TBS excitement- one hour of Saved By the Bell, one hour of Full House (I think WGN even played their own hour of Saved by the Bell, so you could sit there forever if you wanted). Things change- there is no more afternoon tv with that sort of heavy-hitting lineup, and the snack drawer doesn't seem as big to me anymore. At any rate, for some reason I was on hold with the insurance company today and I found some true gems of memorabilia on eBay that commemorated these special memories in my heart.

What Would Danny Tanner Do?

You couldn't fault anyone wearing this shirt. If I saw someone walking around in it you would have to think that they were logical, smart-decision making people, and that never hurt anyone. I would like someone to get on the ball and make up some "What Would Charz Do" t-shirts. It could be like a Taco Bell marketing campaign.

3.5 anti-bears: quite the conversation piece

4.0 bears: takes a lot of guts to wear, which Danny Tanner never had

Slater Tee

In the t-shirt spirit still, I actually like this one. It is pink though, and suggests that the thought of AC Slater alone is enough to make one dizzy with infatuation, so the only people who could wear this one would be 14 year old girls (or Charz).

4.0 anti-bears: good for a legitimate laugh (maybe)

4.5 bears: as a guy, I am excluded from being able to bid on this

Trading Cards

Are you kidding me? Who buys these? "I'll trade you my Johnny Dakota and Mr. Tuttle for your Belding." "Nah, man, that's a rip-off, throw in Mr. Dewey and we'll call it a deal." "Is it autographed?"

o.o anti-bears: no use whatsoever

2.5 bears: looks like they may have been only 25 cents. i'd have probably suckered myself into buying a pack

AC Slater Doll

This may come off as just another shot at Charz, but it's not. He truly has one of these.

3.7 anti-bears: comes with a "stamper" of Mario's authentic autograph that you can use on your yearbooks

3.3 bears: doesn't look like the plastic mullet blows in the wind

Uncle Jesse Doll

If I had any courage at all, I would put this on my desk at work. I mean, think of all the comments it would produce! Jesse, of "Jesse and the Rippers"! It's an indie rock artifact.

4.2 anti-bears: if you look closely, you can see that "Jesse's guitar holds family photos."

o.o bears: this is totally redeemed because Jesse's guitar holds family photos.

Mr. Belding Autograph.

5.0 bears: Obviously the seller of this notecard with Dennis Haskins' autograph just pulled out an index card from the drawer and signed it. Couldn't he have at least found Mr. Belding's baseball card in one of the packs above? I bet Belding can't even walk to the store without 1,000 people digging out index cards for him to sign, poor guy.

I left out the Saved by the Bell sheet music that was up for auction.