Last night, my buddy Chase came by to pick me up for a little get together. Chase lives his life by several mottos, as near as I can tell. For the most part, they are all good mottos (things like: there's no reason to lie to a woman; and you can't have a good time if you're not feeling good). But one of his more well practiced mottos is actually a big pain in the ass. That motto: always be at least ninety minutes late.
I mean, if being late were a punishable offense, Chase would be serving two life sentences upstate right now.
Now, Chase promised to pick me up at 9 PM. He arrived at 11:45 PM. That means, for those of you that have problems telling time, Chase was almost three hours late. When he arrived, we had the following exchange:
Me: You ever fuck a Swiss chick?
Chase: Fuck you.
Me: Man, you blocked a good punch line.
Chase: Fuck you.
Anyway, I would have been real pissed off at Chase if not for the fact that Monday Night Football was bringing me a nationally televised look at the worst collapse of the season (being an Arizona Cardinals' fan must feel like raising a mentally retarded son?you just cling to the little moments and try not to think about how messed up your team is compared to all the others).
(By the way, I feel this needs to be mentioned here. The following MNF exchange had me in stitches.
Joe Theisman: The Arizona offense has been much maligned all season.
Tony Kornheiser: Maligned? I wouldn't call them maligned. I'd call them awful.
Charles Barkley: That means pretty much the same thing.
First off, I love Chuck Barkley's post-basketball work. He's by far and away my favorite basketball analyst. And second off, he was right. Maligned simply means bad. Which begs the question, is Barkley smarter than I thought or is Kornheiser dumber than I thought? I'm going with door number two, there.
Anyway, back to today's entry. I'm inching towards a point here.)
Even though Chase was almost three hours late, I wasn't slightly mad at him because I had a chance to catch that awesome display of self-destruction courtesy of ESPN. And that got me thinking. I mean, obviously there are many moments in life where something goes wrong but, because of the way things transpire, something else goes right and as a result, life is still enjoyable.
Here are some of those moments:
Getting laid in a strange city during a way-too-long-layover; getting drunk at a friend of a friend's house for free while you wait for his tardy ass; waiting way too long for your food only to be told by the wait staff that, because of their tardiness, the food is on the house; covering a friend's shift at work and accidentally witnessing or being involved in something totally cool that usually never happens at work (like a chick flashing you or a robbery); wrecking your car only to discover that the guy you hit is both wealthy and drunk?
I could probably go on for a while.
Anyway, I've decided to name this sensation that arises when something cool happens as direct result of something sucking.
And I'm calling that feeling the chasemotion.
And I'm gonna take my sweet time telling Chase about it.