We’re back with another edition of G.W.W.E. (Guys We Wanna Eff)!

Nothing beats a night of chillin’ with my boys (and girls), catching a b-ball game, and having a beer. Ok, I take that back. There is one thing that beats it and that is when the Denver Nuggets are playing and my eyes are trained on the moves of Carmelo Anthony.

This man could turn anyone into a basketball fan.

Right now, Melo‘s sitting pretty awaiting the start of the Western Conference NBA Semifinals, but he’s had an illustrious basketball career thus far. After leading the Syracuse Orangemen to an NCAA National Championship his freshman year in 2003, Melo went pro with the Nuggets. And though the small forward has helped Denver make the playoffs each year during his NBA career, this is the first season in which they’ve made it past the first round.

If things are heating up on the court, you know they will be in the bedroom…

Oh, and did I mention Melo is a two-time Olympic medalist?  He brought Team USA to the medal podium in Athens in 2004 (for a bronze) and last summer in Beijing when they won the gold. Are those Olympic medals in his pocket or his he just happy to see me?

It’s clear that Anthony has been really effin’ successful, so it’s no wonder he’s engaged to MTV VJ, La La. The two had a son in 2007, but they’ve apparently been engaged since 2004. After five years, what’s the wait? Maybe he’s sick of her courtside outbursts? Maybe he can ponder his options with a little road-game effing. Next time you’re playing the Knicks, Melo, give me a call!

[So, tell me. Who are some of the guys you wanna eff?]

So the time had come again at Syracuse for Alcohol Awareness Week. Basically this is a week where students, okay mainly Greeks, are supposed to be more “aware” of alcohol. This “awareness” is culminated in an event called “mocktails” on Friday night. Each sorority is paired up with a frat and then they have a sober party. Not like “let’s just take a little shot beforehand” kind of sober, not “just one joint” kind of sober, not “a bottle of wine with dinner” kind of sober, but actually sober (yeah, the frats were confused about it too and asked if the mocktail money could possibly go towards the purchase of a keg).

While I’m usually the first to hop on (and steer!) the Friday night drinking train, I coudn’t help but be a wee bit reluctant to get my ticket for the Friday night sober train. I mean, really, what could that possibly be like? Unfortunately (or fortunately if you like to look at your mocktail glass as being half full) the thing about the Friday night sober train was that it was mandatory and my ticket had been purchased for me.

So, you ask, what goes on at a completely sober party? And how do people party withut the aid of mind numbing alcohol? Below is a pro/con list of my sober Friday night experience. And let me tell you; getting ready for the party without playing 3 games of Kings was a very strange feeling…

Con: (Yes, I’m starting with a con, cause that’s how the night started.) Upon arrival, things look like a middle school dance: boys on one side, girls on the other. Socialization seems to be severely impaired by this new idea of sobriety.

Pro: The thing about drinking a mocktail is that they don’t make you want to vomit! Yay! Pro!

Con: Unfortunately, other thing about mocktails is that they turned out to be a pitcher of Kool-Aid…

Pro: As the night went on, my make-up stayed in place, my hair stayed where I put it, and I ended the night without looking like a clown!

Con: It turns out people are generally confused about what to do without alcohol. Without some sort of set activity or drinking game, people seem to not really know what to do with themselves, leading to much couch sitting.

Pro: Not spending money on alcohol led to some pretty sweet decorations: aka streamers

Con: Soberly, dancing consisted only of girls; I guess guys are not as interested in dancing if they don’t have alcohol to lend confidence to their moves

Pro: Alcohol-free parties apparently include snacks! Delicious snacks! Gotta replace those alcohol calories some way…

Con: Time seems to drag on when you were sober. You know how when you are drunk suddenly you look up and its 5 AM? That doesn’t happen when you are sober…It’s 9:15 and then what seems like an hour later…it is 9:18…

Pro: Okay I’m out of pros.

Call me an alcoholic if you will, but after a week of stressful classes I want a cocktail, not a mocktail. Sure, having to do this once didn’t ruin my life, but this Friday I’m gonna have to drink a few extra shots of Svedka to make up for it…

My roommate and I have an understanding: I leave the apartment when she watches the Eagles game and she leaves the apartment when I watch Grey’s Anatomy. We both find the others’ television viewing choice ridiculous and pointless. On the rare occasion I make the mistake of sticking around during a football game I am subjected to her ear-piercing screams that are so loud and so full of energy that people must mistake her cheers for domestic abuse. When they are winning she shouts; when they are losing she screams. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation for me.

However, she apparently isn’t the only one that enjoys the sport and over the years I’ve had to endure several games. By several, I mean two. I’ve learned a few things along the way:

1. The only slightly appealing thing about watching the games is the food. Things that I would never consider ordering in a restaurant are suddenly A-Ok when they are sitting on a table in front of you. It’s not until I go home and remove crusty nacho cheese from my hair, Dorito crumbs from my shirt, and a chicken wing bone stuck in between my teeth that I feel truly disgusted with myself.

2. Life isn’t a romantic comedy and men don’t find it endearing or cute when you ask them how the players make a touchdown. No one finds my naivety about the game charming and I’ve stopped asking about the difference between the quarterback and the quarter pounder.

3. The Super Bowl commercials are never worth watching the game. Ever. I can’t understand why people say they watch the game just for the commercials. Are some of the commercials clever? Yes. Are some of the commercials chuckle-worthy? On occasion. Are the commercials equivalent to an episode of The Office? No. Is it ever worth it to sit through an hours-long football game just to say to say that the new Snickers commercial that aired around hour ten was so funny that you smiled? No.

4. People expect you to know everything about your school team. I can’t count the number of times that relatives and neighbors and neighbors’ relatives have come up to me and asked me how the Syracuse team was doing this year. I would be more likely to tell you the average annual income for a Dutch family of four than I would be able to tell you how many games Syracuse has won during any particular season.

As I write this my roommates are comparing the schedules for their respective football teams and posting godforsaken game-day magnets on the fridge. It’s too bad that I’ll have to accidentally throw it out and replace it with my hand-crafted schedule that outlines every rerun of Full House on TV.

So who is this Mr. Gessen anyway? Who cares? Mr. Gessen is a M.F.A. drop out from Syracuse University, and the editor for N + 1. As a literary magazine N + 1 exposes all the hackneyed writers of the world. Yippee. Gawker.com mockingly describes it as the “most important literary magazine of our time.” N + 1 sees itself as such, i.e. “mind blowingly intellectual,” and Gawker simply can’t help but invert such a problematic claim. Gessen’s personality, as well as this literary magazine, is throwing a wrench into my earlier comments that relate to Mr. Neyfakh’s article about Ms. Crosley’s supposedly fresh presence in the New York literary scene.

Suffice to say, Gawker’s staff writers are not particularly fond of Mr. Gessen. They have written a series of rancorous pieces (see here, as well as here, here, and finally here) that shred Mr. Gessen’s self-fashioned identity as a leading American intellectual and novelist. Since I am a fan of Gawker, and identify (for the most part) with their snarky tone and “showing things for what they really are” type of journalism, these pieces against Gessen are insightful as well as depressing.

[There’s a romantic back story to the first piece I referenced. If you’re interested in learning more about it, go scout out the countless pieces on Gawker about Emily Gould, an alumna of Gawker, and her previous relationship to Gessen. I won’t go into that stuff here]

So what how does Mr. Gessen relate to a piece about Ms. Crosley? The answer is simple: Based upon the evidence I’ve culled from Gawker, Crosley is obviously cooler than Gessen. What are the most telling pieces of evidence? EXHIBIT A, which came from Mr. Gessen’s own mouth; he confessed to checking his Amazon.com sales obsessively, and expressed frustration when he found that most of the visitors weren’t buying his book, but Crosley’s book instead. That raises another question: why is this guy so (publicly) insecure? I mean, really. It’s not like his book has been shredded by all worthy critics.

If a literary giant such as Joyce Carol Oates gives your novel an outstanding review, why would you think of admitting this secret to anyone as a writer? I don’t care if you’re confiding in your most best-est friend, your beloved wife/husband, your most trusted lover(s), a writer with any sense of dignity would never admit something like that. Hell, for that matter, any self-respecting author wouldn’t check their numbers on Amazon against another author just to determine the worthiness of their book – that’s pretty sad if you ask me.

Gawker isn’t the only place where you’ll find that Mr. Gessen is unpopular. As I mentioned, he’s drawing fire from a lot of different sources. As one critic wrote, “Mr. Gessen’s novel is an extended dark joke on his literary career.” EXHIBIT B: Mr. Gessen thinks he’s cooler and smarter than everybody else. It seems that Mr. Gessen is bent on making a name for himself by ridiculing other writers. (Ms. Crosley wouldn’t dare do such a thing, as she’s obviously too cute and funny to bother). In an effort to reclaim intellectualism and literature, Mr. Gessen and all his sad literary pals at N + 1 have checked humor, and all those delightful things related to levity, at the door. Put simply: Mr. Gessen takes himself too seriously.

In so doing, he’s a vulnerable target, and it’s no fault but his own. (If I were having a coffee with Mr. Gessen, I’d let him know that a mixture of heaviness and levity are a good thing, and that it sounds like he’s gone off the deep end, taken Nietzsche’s Z too seriously, and is stuck in a abyss at the moment. Valleys AND peaks are a good thing, Mr. Gessen). This is yet another piece of evidence for why I think it’s patently obvious that Ms. Crosley is a cooler cat than Mr. Gessen.

The way Mr. Gessen is described by his critics (and apparently even some of his fans) brings me back to the inspiration of this piece – NYC’s self-important, stuck-up, exclusive literary circles. He exudes that snobbish ennui that I find most despicable about literary circles. When I see them in that light, I start to think that Mr. Neyfakh has a point, and then I begin to feel grim. When I feel grim, I turn inward, and ponder the varying levels of Loserdom in our universe. Who likes doing that, Mr. Gessen? Why must you prove what I wish to be untrue about the publishing world of NYC? Before I delve into why I’m loser and how it relates to Ms. Crosley and Mr. Gessen, I need to take another break.

TO BE CONTINUED…