If you’re new to NextRound, last year I got fired from my job, which turned out to be an awesome story, but rather detrimental to my financial well being. After almost a year of unemployment I’ve finally landed a new gig.Let that sink in for a moment. Let it marinate. Let the shock subside…

Alright, now let’s continue.

While I wasn’t looking for a job I accomplished a lot.

1) I ate a ton of McDonald’s (because it’s cheap and delicious), which in turn made me pretty fat, like 230 lbs.

2) That’s about it…I wish I could say I did something productive over the last year, like learn a foreign language or something, but if you think I would put that kind of effort into anything useful you obviously haven’t been paying attention or you’re a new reader.

Everyone wants to know one thing: How did I survive financially?

Well, I haven’t made a nickel off this damn website (Maske won’t let me look at the books) and I haven’t seen any return on investment from Palace on a Lake (although I anticipate that changing very shortly). So I did what any red blood American would do: I lit up my credit card and scraped by on a couple good nights at the poker tables.

My lifestyle was pretty basic. I slept about 13 hours a day, ate fast food, and watched A LOT OF TiVO. I guess I could have exercised, but that thought never crossed my mind.

I did learn something useful during my unemployment though, I look way better on paper. When I actually show up in person I’m kind of a disappointment. I realized my academic accomplishments don’t exactly match my personality. Apparently I don’t “exude enthusiasm” in job interviews. That’s probably because I think work sucks balls, but whatever.

Eventually, I did land a job as an attorney. Now, I slave for the man. And it does, in fact, suck balls.

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I used to be cool. Now I’m married with kids and a mortgage payment. I run into a lot of awkward situations in the grown up world because of my former coolness. Old habits are hard to break.

Take this time of year for example. This is when all the newly legal talent comes home from college after spending two semesters being preyed on by frat guys, bouncers, athletes, and professors (great gig if you can get it). Since I used to be one of those frat guys my gut reaction is “YESSSSS!!!!”.

But I’ve learned from experience you have to be careful. Here are some Do’s and Dont’s if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

DON’T tell you your neighbor you noticed his daughter is back from freshman year.

This is a bad idea. There are only a few ways he can interpret this comment, all depending on how hot the daughter is. He’ll think you’re either saying:

A) “How many dudes do you think ran through her while she was away?”

B) “The idea of her hanging out by the pool just made my summer.”

C) “Man, she gained the Freshman 15 and then some. That’s a huge bitch.”

DON’T tell another neighbor you barely know that you noticed your neighbor’s daughter is back from freshman year.

I have gotten WAY too many weird looks from guys I thought were cool when I made this comment. Adding, “You know what I’m talking about, right?” with a wink and a shoulder nudge does not help matters.

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Cinco de Mayo falling on a Monday is brutal. Here are the Top 5 Groups of People Most Seriously Affected:

5) Mariachi Bands. Tips for playing La Bamba don’t make themselves. You need muy patrons and muy margarita pitchers to make some real coin.

4) Single Guys. The number of chicks willing to make bad decisions after a lot tequila dwindles when Cinco de Mayo falls on a Monday.

3) Irish Pubs. May 5th means tons of spillover revenue for pubs when the Mexican joints get packed and/or run out of tortilla chips. This year, just the usual Monday night drunks.

2) Fat Chicks. The number of dudes willing to make bad decisions after a lot tequila dwindles when Cinco de Mayo falls on a Monday.

1) Mexican Restaurant Owners. This group is hit hardest. If you can’t serve a packed house of privileged white kids on the day that celebrates your heritage, how are you ever going to turn a profit?

You’re at your desk, working your ass off — or you’re busy pretending to be working your ass off while reading something ludicrously entertaining on NextRound — when all of a sudden the sky blue rectangular Outlook preview box materializes in the bottom right corner of your screen. You see the sender’s name and your gut reaction is to toss your hard drive out the window. Luckily you manage some restraint, which is pretty incredible seeing that you fucking hate Long Winded Email Guy.

Long Winded Email Guy is an asshole. The problem is he doesn’t realize he’s an asshole. He thinks he’s conscientious. He thinks providing enough explanation via email text so that your Spanish-speaking janitor can fully grasp his objective is conscientious. He thinks electronic smiley faces are conscientious. He thinks his cursive email signature is conscientious. He thinks emphasizing his “thanks” with multiple explanation points is conscientious. And sometimes he even thinks stopping by your desk an hour after he sent his thesis of an email just to make sure you got it is conscientious.

You think he sucks.

One day after you received an email narrative from him outlining proper copy machine maintenance you spent a serious thirty seconds pondering ways you might murder him without getting caught. Then you remembered he has a kid.

Level of Mind-Numbing Annoyance: 7 out of 10.

Cool & Tough Retaliations:

• Hijack someone in accounting’s computer and send a succinct email to LWEG outlining what a crippling douchebag he is for using exclamation points.

• Photocopy your ass and leave the copy in his chair with a note asking whether he considers this proper maintenance.

• Sleep with his wife.

• Sign up for info on multiple condo time share opportunities using LWEG’s name and work number.

Email signatures are one of the few ways to define yourself in a homogeneous corporate environment. Here are some examples of what your email signature can say about you:

A) “I’m Here Because They Pay Me”.

Dick Masterson

Craptastic, Inc.

(888) 555-8517 Office

(888) 555-987 Fax

dmasterson@gmail.com

Our personal email signature recommendation. The Goal: to make it abundantly clear that you really don’t give a shit. No job title, whatever font Outlook defaults to, omit the last digit in your fax number (who wants to have to check the fucking fax machine?), substitute your personal email address for your work email in order to insinuate that you transmit copious amounts of porn on a daily basis. This signature lets the world know that italics are gay and you could use a beer.

B) “I Need You to Know I Drive a Jag”.

Dick Masterson | Vice President
The One REALLY Important Group in this REALLY Important Company
Really Important Company | Swinging Dick Division
Pimp Address, Baller Floor | New York, New York 10000
T: 888 555 2654 | F: 888 555 9745
dick.masterson@ric.com | www.ric.com/swingingdick

Nuanced. Refined. Uber professional. Hours of thought put into fonts, font sizes, where to bold, and when to work in a little color contrast (you went with a dash of green to remind people that you and money are never too far apart). Words = Importance. More the better. Chicks cream themselves after reading an email from you.

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Here’s to killer weekend.

[Note: Since we’re out of town through the weekend there will be no PITFF this morning. Instead, Booth would like to take a moment and give you a personal message. We’ll be back at full force on Monday.]

You know what we hate? (Besides being late for the lunch buffet at the strip club, of course.) We hate the loser strolling around the office on a Friday afternoon touting some lame excuse about why they aren’t going out this weekend.

We can’t stand when we hear some cream puff declaring their intentions to “take it easy” on their two days off. Some douchebag telling us that he needs to save up for next weekend. Save up? What does that even me? Save energy? C’mon. What are you, an 85 year-old man on a respirator? You need to save money? Please. Get a fucking credit card and drink yourself into insurmountable consumer debt like the rest of us.

Or, if you’re really hurting for cash, go buy a bottle of grain alcohol and smuggle a flask into your establishment of choice. Money is no excuse. You can get hammered for 5 bucks if you’re creative. Take a few tips from the homeless.

We loathe when some loser says they’re “past their prime.” Past your prime? Let’s be honest buddy. If you say things like “past your prime,” you never had a prime. Your prime consisted of dominating the library on Friday nights and occasionally grabbing pizza with the math club. Drop “past your prime” from your vocabulary.

We detest the comment “I feel like the creepy old guy at the bar.” Have you ever talked to the creepy old guy at the bar? Sure, he is super creepy, but that guy can party. He tells stories about being backstage at Def Leppard concerts. If you can’t tell stories about something awesome you did in the 80’s, you aren’t the creepy old guy. Nobody under 35 is the creepy old guy. Trust us. We spend our time in the best city in the world to party (Vegas) pretending we’re older so that unsuspecting chicks will think we have more than 400 bucks in our checking account.

Now that winter is over it’s time get out there and dominate the weekend. Go prove to the world that you  still party the hardest. When someone suggests a Jager Bomb, tell them you’re taking a Bear Fight (def: a Car Bomb followed by a Jager Bomb, aptly named Bear Fight because it feels like two bears battling in your stomach).

If you aren’t violently hungover on Sunday, you didn’t bring it this weekend. We expect you to be in the fetal position, shaking, next to some chubby chick with no pants on come Sunday morning. After you rent a fork lift to get the land monster you brought home back to the zoo, we expect you to lie in bed all day chugging water and swearing you will never drink again. Ordering a pizza should be the culmination of your activities. Lifting your head off your pillow or getting a glimpse of daylight should make you seriously consider putting yourself out of your own misery.

Now, get out there. Be Cool & Tough this weekend.

We’re out of town for another wedding the next few days. In honor of that, we’d like to share a few tips on how we get by during such an occasion…

Never. Stop. Drinking. If you didn’t see this one coming, you have ZERO shot at being awesome at your next wedding.

Set the tone early. From day one, make it clear to everyone that you party the hardest. One sure fire way is to stay up all night the first night and stumble into the next morning’s breakfast shirtless and disoriented (aka “pulling a JK”).   

Bring a hooker (literal or figurative) as your date. Whether you meet some skeez there or you bring some chick from back home known as “The Dumpster”, your invite said “and guest” so you need to take advantage. Bring a literal or figurative hooker and A) getting laid won’t be an issue, and B) you won’t give a shit what she thinks when you disappear for eight hours at a time or if you decide you don’t feel like driving her home.

Get to know the locals. Whether you’re in Canada, Mexico, or Boca Raton, make it a point to get a taste of that local flavor. Best place to start: hometown gentleman’s club.

Give a rehearsal dinner toast that’s truly awesome. Your speech should include some or all of the following: naming how many chicks the groom has banged; naming how many dudes the bride has banged; making it abundantly clear that one of the two “settled”; incorporate a racial slur; call the bride by the wrong name; discuss how everyone was pretty sure that (insert bride’s name here) would have almost certainly died an old maid if (insert groom’s name here) hadn’t come along.

Party with the one family alcoholic. Either the bride or the groom has one aunt or uncle with “the disease”. Sniff this person out and get them going. Make a game of how quickly you can get them to make a public scene (i.e. screaming match, furniture destruction, and/or whipping out his or her genitalia).

Talk your married friends into doing things against their better judgment. Hide their cell phones and convince them that some bar down the road has the best oysters in the universe. Get them drinking and time will pass at a rapid rate. Your end goal: their spouse hunting down their location and physically dragging them from the bar.

Ask old ladies to dance. Make your rounds, boogie with as many old broads as possible. They’ll eat up the attention and one or two is guaranteed to get their freak on. Nothing will make someone more uncomfortable than seeing their mom ride you like a donkey on the dance floor. And who knows? You might even hook up. 

Heckle the bride. Brides often need to develop a mental toughness during the festivities. Consider yourself the Earl Woods of this multiple day affair. Challenge her beauty, her use of vocabulary, and her fashion sense on a regular basis. She’ll be all the better for it when it’s time to strut down the aisle.

Admitting to your girlfriend you’re cheating on her. Especially unfunny when you’re trying to cover up the fact that you are actually cheating on her.

Quitting your job in the elaborate manner you’d actually like to quit your job. You can only tell so many coworkers to “go fuck themselves” before things are permanently weird.

Faking your best cop voice from a pay phone and informing a buddy that one of his immediate family members died. Why no one sees the humor in this is beyond us.

Any joking about pregnancy. Whether it’s you admitting you never “technically” pull out, or her admitting she was never “technically” on the pill, pregnancy jokes don’t play on April Fools Day.

Confessing to a friend you murdered someone. Whether you have or not, doesn’t go over as well as you think it might. Especially avoid the “just to watch them die” line.

Pretending to get caught masturbating. As funny as it seems–we know–people tend to think you’re disturbed.

Telling some chubby chick that you love her, then screaming “April Fools!” after you get done having sex with her.

Sending out a mass email informing your family and friends that you’re now a devout Scientologist. The number of phone calls trying to talk you out of it is just not worth it.

Coming out of closet. Even though you feel like you should be protected by the cloak of the holiday, some people will question your sexuality forever.

Telling your buddy you banged his wife. Simple rule of thumb: regardless of whether you did or you didn’t, he won’t find it funny.

Sometimes you try to do something really awesome and something really REALLY awesome happens. Other times you try to do something really awesome and Palace on a Lake happens.

If you don’t know the full Palace backstory, you can check it out here and here. If you don’t care that much, I’ll boil it down for you: I decided it would be ultra Cool & Tough if my buddies and I bought into a racehorse. I spread the word that for 500 bucks each we could be horse owners.

My friends wanted in, then friends of friends wanted in, then fathers of friends wanted a piece of the action. I had people I had never met before sending me checks for 500 dollars. The overall mindset was pretty consistent: most dudes think the idea of getting wasted at the track and betting on a horse they own is awesome.

In roughly a week’s time I was mailing a 12.5K payment to Westpoint Thoroughbreds for a 5% ownership interest in a horse called Palace on a Lake.

As you might have put together, things have not gone quite to plan. Here’s a timeline of how I managed to kick myself in the nuts:

June ‘07 - Cool & Tough Racing LLC forms with 26 members. For every 500 dollars invested you receive one voting share in the LLC (some investment savvy individuals decide to buy multiple shares).

July ‘07 - The average number of chicks in bars across the nation who have heard about some dude owning a racehorse begins to skyrocket. There are no documented reports of the racehorse line actually getting anyone laid.

July 7, ‘07 - I get fired from my job. In addition to breaking my balls for getting canned, the guys start to crack jokes that I masterminded a plan that would keep me knee deep in McNuggets for a decade despite not having an income (they were only half kidding).

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