We had a pretty decent idea. Well, I had a pretty decent idea. My barrel-assed business partner (pictured to the right) just happened to be the guy crashing on my couch when I had the decent idea.

Me being the dependable one with the decent ideas and Booth being the quasi-homeless one who lacks vision are the first of many reasons why I’m the CEO and he’s the guy who gets my coffee.

Actually, ‘Guy Who Gets the CEO’s Coffee’ is a tentative title. We’re working on something that sounds a bit more official. My current favorite is: ‘CEO’s Personal Barista’. Little more succinct, sophisticated, something chicks could mistake for important. But more on this later. For now, back to the decent idea.

Like just about everything else in our lives, the back story to the decent idea starts with our college buddies. Booth and I have a lot of friends from college. Not casual acquaintances, I’m talking a group of dudes whose frequency of communication has only slipped ever so slightly over the seven years we’ve been removed from the fraternity house. I’m positive all their names will surface soon enough, so to keep things efficient we’re just going to collectively refer to them as Team Cool & Tough going forward on the site.

We (I) had the decent idea shortly after Team C&T’s annual March Vegas trip. The timing of the decent idea is pretty remarkable considering the prospect of any original thought the days following Vegas is in and of its self a triumph. (This is the trip that leaves me terrified, buried under my comforter, fetal position, all ten digits to the rehab center hotline entered in my cell, my thumb hovering anxiously over the ‘send’ button for four straight days, debating whether the hotline receptionist would take me seriously when I claim I need help because my buddies make me party too hard.)

This year Vegas was tremendous—as always. But it wasn’t the memory of my late night craps rebound, or flashbacks to the newly opened Scores club, or even the Adderall that was still pumping through my veins that led to the decent idea. It was the dread of returning to work the next day. It was once again pondering how I still had a job when fifty percent of my Outlook Inbox was dedicated to the profane and often mind numbing slew of mass emails Team C&T sends back in forth the weeks before the trip.

Needless to say, the Vegas trip is highly anticipated by a rag tag clan of twenty-something guys who openly talk about building a time machine so we can go back and relive college. We manage to crank up the mass email action a full five months in advance.

The last few years the emails have gone something like this:

1. Toast gets the ball rolling with a mass email touting a decent casino rate he found online, usually somewhere like the Hard Rock.

2. T-Bone ‘replies to all’ and bashes whichever casino Chump suggests. Something along the lines of how the Hard Rock coke crowd sucks and so do the bozo cabbies you have to get to shuttle you to the strip.

3. Booth—my java-fetching business partner—attempts to coax everyone to stay at the Monte Carlo citing its prime location and affordability.

4. Proto calls out Booth for only wanting to stay at theMonte Carlo because Booth likes to over tip the crusty old poker room dealers there so they’ll treat him like he’s Mike McD.

Side note: Booth would literally commit suicide if he thought he would reincarnate as Matt Damon in “Rounders”.

5. JB jumps into the mass emails, sending us on a quasi-economic tangent centering on the cost effectiveness of having strippers come to our rooms rather than all of us “sausaging up” a strip club. (His logic, not mine.)

6. STEVE IRONY OVERCOMPENSATES.

Long side note: Steve Irony is that one dude every group has. He’s the guy who made a collegiate career of being ludicrously careless and irresponsible only to see this way of life tragically backfire on him. He’s the guy whose collegiate motto was “Condoms are for virgins” yet right this second there’s a good chance he’s behind the wheel of a minivan with a ‘Wiggles’ CD playing.

S.I. starts his email off with eff this and eff that as he attempts to remind Team C&T how cool and tough he still is. He then goes into graphic detail about his late night experience with the “deceptively hot trannie” last year. Moral of that story: EFF GOING TO THE MIRAGE SOLO. And for good measure he caps off his email with a venomous rant aimed primarily toward his in-laws but peppered with just enough off-color racial remarks to make Michael Richards blush.

7. Etc., etc., etc…

Of course every since we started conducting our Vegas planning over email our logistics have been ridiculously half-assed. We get too caught up in breaking balls and telling stories to make any real decisions about the trip.

Worst of all, this year my company has beefed up internet security. I now have the added pleasure of reading every single one of these emails from the “Monitored Junk Email” folder of my work account while simultaneously a) praying no minority coworkers are in reading distance of my monitor, and b) estimating how long until my boss calls me to his office to inquire how an email where my friend JB states he’d “Decimate Hillary Duff with her family watching,” is work related.

So after Vegas this year, I started pondering a more efficient method. Eventually it hit me. And when it did it was a George McFly haymaker to the face. NextRound.net.

Since Booth was crashing on my couch, I ran the idea by him. It took a minute, but he agreed the idea was pretty decent. He immediately conceded that he’d rather try to run a website than practice law. Yeah, you read that right. Any chance you’re attorney is a sub par belly-flopper who provides lukewarm approval to your pretty decent ideas? Didn’t think so.

So roughly nine months later, we’ve got a website. It’s amazing which decent ideas actually materialize. Of course, just in case this decent idea becomes a tremendous success and there is even the slightest chance we might be taken seriously in the business world, we named it NextRound.net. It’s what I like to call preventative self-sabotage. The respect of others is an overrated commodity anyway.

With NextRound.net, Boothy and I are attempting to undercut all the lame crap on internet. Goal Numero Uno is to accommodate the communication/internet needs of twelve to fifteen marginally intelligent twentysomething guys who just want to be unproductive at work and plan the next time they all get to hang out, drink beers, and try to go home with marginally attractive chicks. I know. We’re oozing with ambition.

NextRound.net is an alternative to mass emails and social networking. It’s a site where groups of friends can go about their standard communication without the concerns of overflowing email inboxes or corporate filters flagging profanity. It’s a site where you can avoid conceding your self-worth like you would on sites like LoserSpace or LoserBook. No perfecting your personal profile for the world to see. No requesting the attention others. No being censored from bagging on chicks. No setting up blind dates with fifty-year old copy machine salesmen posing as Pilates instructors.

If you’re into the sorts of things we’re an alternative to, then we’re not the site for you.

And that’s a brief introduction to the site and its creators. Hopefully you have an adequate idea of who we are, what we’re shooting for, and the kind of people we hang out with. We have a lot more content on the way, so check out StillAwesome.com with regularity.

You’ll hear from Booth (who I’ve just appointed as ‘Director of Keeping the Fridge Stocked with Beer for the CEO’) and the rest of Team C&T in the near future.

Email This