I have a problem, I cannot think of anything to write about. Any perceived eloquence I had is more gone than Marissa at that party where Sandy found out the real dirt about the Heights and bought it from the Newport Group for a dollar. This is terrible and beyond frustrating. Any ideas for writer’s block breakers out there? I need a real life Brickles game for my mind. Help help help.
-John
Most of the time I feel like I am a fairly average looking person. I by no means think I’m ugly, and despite my penchant for making grandiose comparisons between Brad Pitt and I, I don’t find myself particularly attractive. I have no extremely memorable physical features, I’m about 6’1”, tall but not memorably so. I’m of average build. I have pretty normal hair. My teeth are white but not neon white (which I don’t think even exists, but you know what I’m talking about). Sometimes I have blue eyes, sometimes I have green eyes, but Conor Oberst certainly didn’t name his artistic career after me. I wear fitted clothes, but my jeans are still quite a few steps away from fitting on a Ramone. My right ear is oddly similar to that of an elf, but nobody ever notices it unless I point it out. Basically, when people think about how I look, I don’t think there is one distinguishing feature they think of.
It wasn’t always like this. Let’s take the way back machine to junior year of high school. I was 17, and the world was my oyster. (I don’t really know what exactly 
that saying means or where it comes from, but I like the sound of it.) I drove an obnoxiously loud 1971 VW bus. My hair was ridiculously huge. I wore a handful of rings, and a studded belt. My pants were beyond explanation, I don’t know what I was possibly thinking buying pants that big. Every day I wore a tie under my shirt, for no apparent reason. (This was pre-Avril Lavigne.) I occasionally painted my nails black. Best of all, every day I wore one black shoe and one white shoe.
Needless to say, people remembered how I looked. I get the feeling the image was seared into their brain. And that image has stayed seared in there. To this day people are shocked that I’m wearing pants that fit me, or that my shoes match. Wouldn’t it be a safe assumption that I’ve gotten new shoes by now? While sometimes annoying, simply because it brings up my cringe-worth fashion sense at 17, it’s always good for a laugh. If I had to choose, I would certainly pick my current, relatively anonymous, sense of fashion to the one I sported before. I’d hope people remember me as the kid that talks about dinosaurs and robots every time he gets drunk, or the kid who always tries to dance like 
Justin Timberlake but actually dances more like Herman Munster, rather than the kid with big pants and two different colored shoes, or the guy that wears a tie under his shirt and somehow, despite not having curly or full bodied hair, has a miraculously huge afro. Remember me by what I do, not what I look like. Substance over style.
I bring this up because currently I have quite the beard face going on. While I was at home, I mostly hibernated, seen by nobody but my family and that annoying neighbor kid. Rather than shaving, I let my facial follicles grow thick and manly. Now that I am back at school, I still have decided that that shaving time could be better used as further Mortal Kombat playing time. Thus, I’m the beard kid. Everybody I talk to comments on it. I get all kinds of responses, leading to a three part interaction with the beard commentator, me, and my inner monologue:
Beard commentator #1: Whoa, you have a beard.
Me: (Nonchalantly.) Oh yeah, you know, (insert something about being lazy here).
Me (inner monologue): What? I hadn’t noticed! Where did this thing come from? Thanks so much for pointing out to me that I have hair on my face.
Beard commentator #2: Hey cool beard!
Me: (Nonchalantly, always nonchalantly.) Oh hey thanks! (Insert something about representing Oregon properly here).
Me (Inner Monologue): If there was a past tense verb form of “beer” it couldn’t be “beered” because that would sound exactly like “beard” which would just lead to too much confusion.
Beard commentator #3: I like a man with a beard.
Me: (Again, nonchalantly, yet this time sounding appropriately mildly seductive.) Why thank you, (insert fierce eye contact here).
Me (Inner Monologue): In saying that you like men with beards, are you insinuating that you think all people look better with beards, including the fairer sex? And if so, would you grow one? Are you currently debating growing a beard? Would it even be possible, with the proper amount of testosterone injections, for you to grow a beard? Because, while I like to think I judge women more by their personalities than their appearance, I don’t think I could ever be attracted to a girl with a beard.
As you can see, it’s quite the conversation starter. Everyone gives me their 2 cents about it, its quite interesting. Of all the new people I have met since I have been back in southern California, I bet every single one, when they think back on me, thinks of my beard first. My beard face has become the black shoe/white shoe combo that made people remember 17 year old John Vieira.
I start my job anchoring next week, so I will have to lose the beard then, but even if I didn’t have to, I don’t think it would last all that much longer. Beards are awesome, but at some point this beard will become more memorable than I am. It will overtake me! My beard will become more powerful than the man that I am. As I previously stated, big pants and incorrectly worn ties took me down that road before. This time I choose to be remembered for my wit and wisdom, and not my physical add-ons.
-John
Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I don’t know why but my bright ideas have significantly dimmed of late. School starts again on Monday and I’m sure my brain will come out of this winter hibernation and I’ll get back on the figurative horse named Addicted to Words.
Anyway, in the true spirit of a lazy, uninspired blogger, here’s another video:
-John
The other day I came to an abrupt realization. I haven’t had a girlfriend in an entire year. That hasn’t happened since I started having girlfriends (which would be puberty, not some random date I decided to become heterosexual). I bring up this story not for an outcry of sympathy or in the hopes that swaths of attractive women show up on my doorstep tomorrow. (Or tonight ladies, it’s still early!) No, I bring this up because this realization led to another realization: it may be safe to revisit Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
When my ex-girlfriend and I called it quits last year I listened to the excellent Wilco record “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” approximately 80,000 times. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot became a veritable crutch for me, had I gotten my foot broken instead of my heart. Jeff Tweedy seemed to know what I was going through, he matched me mopey afternoon for mopey afternoon. Since then, I gradually picked myself back up and set coordinates for the righter direction. The Ex and I became friends once again, all was well, and my love life, while rather non-existent, is at least now no longer focused around a girl who didn’t return the favor.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot however, didn’t fare as well. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t listen to it. Which was tough, as Heavy Metal Drummer might be one of my top 10 favorite songs ever, and the entire album as a whole is in the top 25. Every time I tried to re-listen I went through the painful process of being transported right back to the mental state of last January. It was like Apparating without being properly taught how to at Hogwarts.
Once I arrived at school and the annual mark had been hit, I decided I would give Yankee Hotel Foxtrot another try. Rather than listen on the epic drive from my beloved Portland, to my (less beloved) Orange County, I decided to try the next day during my grocery shopping.* This seemed the obvious choice, as road trips tend to leave too much room for thinking and we don’t want those thoughts to dip a toe in the Lake of Mope.**
So I tried it… and failed miserably. Sure enough, while I loved the music, it put me in a sad mood that lingered all day. Even 27 samples of Philly Cheesesteak*** sandwiches at Costco couldn’t cheer me up. And it should have, I’m fairly certain I love sandwiches more so than I could ever love a girl. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t drink a fifth of Costco brand Kirkland Signature Vodka and drunkenly call up the Ex and beg her to come back. It was nothing like that, it’s been a year, I feel I deserve a bit more credit. No, rather than put me in a mood of lamenting, it more was just that this music got me through a sad time in my life and reminds me of that. And a YEAR later is still does. I effectively ruined one of the best albums of all time by using it as my breakup soundtrack.
I got to thinking, and I should have seen this coming. I did the exact same thing with the Red 
Hot Chili Pepper’s “Californication” some years back. That has regained some of it’s listenability, but nowhere near where it was before I used it as heartbreak fodder.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that I need to stop listening to good music any time I get my heart hurt. I’m worthless during those times anyway, I should listen to something worthless. I needn’t ruin good albums anymore!
So here is my grand plan for the next time I get involved with a girl and we part ways. I think it is pretty smart if I do say so myself, in fact I’m writing a self help book with this central concept as I type right now.**** Next breakup, I plan on listening to Kevin Federline’s “Playing With Fire”. It’ll work like gangbusters, I won’t ruin a good album, and K-Fed’s music will be so bad that I will snap out of my mope stupor as quickly as humanly possible just so I can listen to good music again.
Kevin Federline knows all about breaking up. He left his baby’s mother for Britney because she had all the money and then left Britney because she got too crazy. Federline knows about ex-girlfriends, one might even venture to call him Fed-Ex. The man just knows. More importantly though, now you know how not to ruin good music when you are sad.
-John
*Grocery shopping shouldn’t take a day, but for me it takes a solid chunk of time. I went to the Dollar Tree, Food4Less, and Costco, in that order. It afforded plenty of in car time for listening.
**This, of course, being a figurative lake.
***Which I would estimate amounts to 3 entire Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches. And I no longer question Costco’s decision to charge an annual membership fee.
****I’m not really doing this, but wouldn’t it be cool if A. I actually wrote a self help book, and B. I could type two things at once?
This is rather surprising. It’ll be interesting to hear the details as they surface.
Sewell Chan of the New York Times reports:
“The actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon in an apartment building at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, according to the New York City police. Mr. Ledger was 28.
At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of Mr. Ledger’s bedroom. When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger unconscious. They shook him, but he did not respond. They immediately called the authorities. The police said they did not suspect foul play and said they found pills near body.”
It’s so sad to see young people taken before their time. Ledger was turning out to be a pretty excellent actor too.
-John
Not mini in the sense that it is smaller than a normal Haiku, no Haiku’s do not allow that kind of flexibility. I mean mini in the sense that this Haiku is about a Mini Cooper. A Mini Cooper has recently been added to the Vieira family stable of chariots, so it’s been on my brain.
Haiku:
A Mini Cooper
Is Superior To A
Maximum Cooper
Let that sink in…a moment of zen. For the time being, the world is balanced. May my Haiku-etry help you find inner peace.
-John
The new Macbook Air is already inspiring unhealthy anorexic lifestyles among other laptops.
Two of my cousins threw a Mexican potluck last week. I gleefully attended knowing that the 25% of my blood that is from Mexico would help make this potluck all that much more Mexican. I really felt like I gave the party a sense of authenticity that tortilla chips and enchiladas alone just can’t provide. Anyway, while that hypothesis certainly has a sense of validity to it, it is not the subject of this story. (Four sentences in and I’m already wildly off track.)
Where this story takes us is on a different tangent all together. I was acquainted with most of the people at this party, a few I had even gone to high school with. That said, beyond my cousins, none of the other party attendees were people I would call up on the weekend to spend time with. Not because I didn’t like them, as they were all certainly wonderful people, simply because I didn’t know them all that well. Despite the fact that I don’t know any of these people well, I got no less than three compliments on my shoes. And not by girls either, all by the less-fair sex. Granted, my shoes were undeniably quite awesome, as they were Gryffindor colors, and I was reppin’ Potter, but this still seemed a strange occurrence to me. When did it become socially acceptable for men to compliment other men’s shoes? I feel like this never would have passed muster in 2006, it’s arguable even for how much of 2007 this was acceptable.
As this observation started to frolic through my brain I looked up and noticed that the most recent complimenteer* of my shoes was not drinking a beer, or a Coke, or even water but rather a DIET Coke.
A quick glance around the room and subsequent calculation gave me the admittedly rough percentage of 53% of the male attendees of this party were drinking diet soda. This observation possibly astonished me more than the manly shoe compliments I was getting. I’ve been a huge proponent of diet soda for years now, but I always got a few questionable looks or snickers when I went diet in public. I thanked my NBA sized hands countless times for their ability to cover the major surface area of my incriminating can. Let’s be honest though, who needs those extra calories? I know I don’t, aspartamine side effects be damned.
Don’t think for a minute that these two events were random occurrences. No no, dear reader, these seemingly random events point to a much larger sea change. One that I like to call the Feminification** of Men. This may not seem like a new idea, and it’s probably not. The whole “metrosexual” thing has been around for awhile now, but what I found interesting was that none (well, maybe one) of the guys at this party could be described as a “metrosexual”. They were all pretty manly men. I’m fairly confident 75% of these guys lift weights. There were no less than three beards present. There was even a Division 1 basketball player. This kind behavior was coming from people you wouldn’t ever expect it from, and nobody gave it a second thought.***
I know it’s a strong statement, but I think this Feminification of Men is a welcome thing. For one I quite like my shoes. I have a lot of pairs, mostly due to the bug I got while working for Nike, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t get complemented on them. And like I said before, all those calories in real cola are no different anything in a Sky Mall magazine, nobody needs them.
I know what you’re thinking: “John, even if you have these thoughts you should never admit them. Never admit your womanly qualities,” or maybe even “You are one step away from wearing makeup, fruit.” First of all, I’m comfortable enough in my sexuality to admit these things. (I’m probably too comfortable in my sexuality, I’m fairly certain I could comfortably wear a dress. And I have a penchant for planting one squarely on the lips of Har Rai while I’m drunk. Um, this isn’t coming off very well.) Second, I just can’t see the harm in men being a little more womanly. Maybe we’ll start taking a little better care of ourselves, maybe we’ll start paying attention to what colours match, maybe we’ll even stop seeing small children as things that would be fun to punt.
That day is certainly coming, as this essay states, I can tell it’s quite close. Until then though, all babies should beware of getting drop kicked.
-John
john@addictedtowords.com
*I made this word up.
**I made this word up too.
***This is untrue, as this essay proves that I gave it a second thought.
Beware the TV shows on DVD!
As a naive 18 year old starting my college career at Chapman University in Orange County, I was given a veritable encyclopedia of advice. It ranged from the comedic (“Fuck bad bitches!”) to the well meaning, possibly true, but ultimately extremely clichè (“College is the best years of your life, make sure to live it to it’s fullest.”), to the sublime (Those, I will take to my grave.). However, never was the advice overtly specific, it was always more of the meandering inner-peace type magniloquence. In retrospect what I needed was some specificity, specifically a little advice on the addictive nature of television shows on DVD.
That’s correct, if I were to give an incoming college freshman some advice it would be this: Beware the TV shows on DVD! Yet, I fear that this advice would be in vain. It’s inevitable that one will discover a new television show and end up spending an entire weekend (sometimes an entire WEEK) watching the show. This is the precise reason that TV shows are aired once a week, so people don’t sit down and accidentally watch them for 16 straight hours. Sometimes you don’t even notice until it’s dark outside and you realize that you haven’t moved
your legs at all today.
I may be the worst culprit of all here. People often talk about self control and how it relates to obese people. People say they have no sympathy for the obese because they should just stop eating, or eat healthy, or go exercise, or something, anything, just stop eating those bags of Chips Ahoy. Let me tell you, after discovering TV on DVD, I don’t agree with this at all. I have all the sympathy in the world for obese people. If television shows on DVD were food, I would be so fat. Grossly, disgustingly, fat. Fatter than pre-Trim Spa, but post-Playboy Anna Nicole Smith. Fatter (but with less of a weird accent) than John Travolta in Hairspray. Sales people would ignore me at stores, I would have to purchase two cinema tickets, I wouldn’t ever be able to travel by submarine, I would even have to shop at Mrs. Plus Size next to the Food4Less.* I simply have no self control whatsoever when it comes to a good TV show that I have unfettered access to. I always tell myself I will savor it, watch an episode every other day or something, but that never has happened and I fear it never will. Inevitably, I watch them all back to back to back to back. 
And then if there is another season, count me in for that too. I’m doomed to forever be a compulsive and obsessive watcher of television shows on DVD. There is no cure.
I bring this up because my affliction has recently struck again, this time in the form of the excellent science-fiction-Western** show: Firefly. I’ve started watching it, and much like some sort of Off The Wall era Michael Jackson, I won’t stop until I get enough. Right now Mal, Wash, Simon, and of course Kaylee and Inara are the only friends I need. If my blog isn’t updated with my usual witticism that you have come to expect much in the near future, you know why. If nobody sees or hears from me at all in the near future you know why. If my family actually calls you up, worried about me because they are concerned that my limbs might actually no longer function, tell them you know why.
And if you are currently languishing, with many hours to kill, might I recommend Firefly? Maybe you can be more responsible about it that I can.
-John
*Somehow in the process of getting really fat I became a cross-dresser, it’s a long story.
**Which is an admittedly niche genre.
***Disclaimer: In all honesty, I do not actually think that Mike Rice is senile. He is certainly smarter than I am, and may in fact be a genius for slipping such subtle innuendo completely uncensored into NBA broadcasts.***
Once again, this is probably lost on regular people, but those of us afflicted with Blazermania should know exactly what I’m talking about.
The Blazers beat the Warriors emphatically tonight. And when I say emphatically I mean it, Taurean Green actually got some playing time. Presumably, Stephen Jackson’s tattoo of praying hands holding a gun didn’t catch the ear of any almighty being, nor was it’s aim true. (If I were God, I’d ignore any prayers coming from hands holding a gun, despite the risk of getting shot but those very same hands.) 
Jackson could have at least done a little better, as he is on my fantasy team. 4 points isn’t cutting the mustard, I’m trading him tonight, but that’s another story.
Tonight’s gem by Mike Rice was particularly excellent, and was certainly helped by Mike Barrett, who sometimes seems to agree with me about Mike Rice’s possible senility and certain awesomeness. The exchange went like this:
MIKE RICE: “How do you like my sporty look?” (He points to his plaid shirt that consists of a variety of shades of brown.)
MIKE BARRETT: “It’s nice, I think you get a free bowl of soup with that.”
Unfortunately, the shot cut back to the game before it occurred to Mike Rice that Mike Barrett was saying that that shirt makes him look akin to a hobo, but that moment had to have strained their friendship. And then that’s where homelessness ends and professionalism begins.
As I never got around to writing Mike Rice’s Senile Comment of the Game last game, you get a bonus Senile Comment tonight. Senile Comment of the Game #2 came later after Mike Rice kept referring to some inside joke between him and whoever might be lucky enough to have inside jokes with Mike Rice and just kept taking it further and further, really where most men wouldn’t dare to go, before he had nothing left to say except:
“It looks like his elbow is sore, but does a camera guy need an elbow?”
The answer to that is yes, absolutely yes. I would argue that camera guys need elbows more so than anyone else, with the possible exception of surgeons.
Don’t change Mike Rice, don’t ever change.
-John
"It has come to my attention that your site and it's very existence is putting a strain on all that is good in our universe."
-Unspecified James
And when we inevitably break all that is good in the universe, sorry.
Pay the piper.
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