For I Am Costanza…Lord of the Idiots

Posted on by davidwfelts

My best friend Terry and I shared a love for the television show Seinfeld. We spent many years quoting lines from this hilarious sitcom and even would call or text each other on every occasion we were able to live out a moment from the show. (Finding a Kenny Roger’s Roasters in Manila was a highlight for both of us.)

One of the more memorable and funny episodes is called The Apartment, and in it George Constanza is wearing a wedding ring in a social experiment to try and get dates with more women. Towards the end after having his plan backfire, he makes the statement, “For I am Constanza, lord of the idiots.” It makes me laugh even as I’m writing it now. I have picked up this line and use it whenever I’ve had an idiotic moment in my own life; something which happens more often than I actually care to admit.

In my fifty-three years of life on this planet, I have had plenty of opportunities to play the idiot, as I’m sure we all have. There are times however when I feel I’m actually setting the bar for idiots everywhere to be judged by. But during the times of my lunacy I don’t think this way, it’s usually after the fact. And once this realization hits me, I really feel dumb. Those are the times where I want to crawl under a rock and hide, it can be so embarrassing.

This past week at work I had a couple of extremely difficult days and a Constanza moment raised its ugly head. It was so bad one day I actually thought about fleeing; just going to my truck and leaving without saying a word to anyone. In my entire adult life I’ve never wanted to run away from anything and this shocked me. Thank God it did, because it was this shock which woke me up from my lunacy and got me to asking what was really going on my life.

These Constanza moments come to me whenever I perceive things are not going my way. It’s like my default button is to act like a fool whenever things are not going the way I want them to. Yes I realize this sounds horrible, but truth is truth, and as they say, the first step in fixing a problem is realizing you actually have one. The man who is not self-aware is the man who really has a problem. I realized the issues I’ve been having and have begun to rectify them, making the necessary changes towards becoming a better man, which will be another blog altogether.

What I want you to realize today is you’re not alone, there are millions of us out there. And just like in the Seinfeld episode as George is confessing his idiocy to Jerry, a lady in the background starts yelling out the window to the runners, “You’re all winners!” to which George says, “But suddenly a new contender has emerged.”

 

 

 

 

The Thanksgiving I Spent With Jason Alexander

Posted on by davidwfelts

This morning when I woke up I did my usual thing of reaching for my phone and checking in on social media. Lately I’ve been working to increase my presence there and part of this has been learning how to navigate the Twitter landscape. 

While surfing Twitter I came across this tweet from Jason Alexander (George Costanza from the hit show Seinfeld).

I’m a huge Seinfeld fan, made even larger because it’s Thanksgiving and I’ve eaten more than my share of tasty morsels today. This post rubbed me the wrong way, so I did what I usually do which gets me in trouble and posted about how I felt about it.


Now while I didn’t mean this to be a personal attack on Jason even though it was directed at him, it was more of a thought I feel is true and wanted to use my thought to be a part of the discussion. I was really surprised when I checked Twitter a few hours later and found many people were very agitated by what I had said; Jason Alexander being one of them.

Throughout the course of the day I checked Twitter to find many colorful ways of being described by a good number of angry people. And while a great number of the people vilified me, I will say Jason was gracious and articulate about his position throughout the entire experience.

In the spirit of goodwill, I did apologize and was answered back with the following tweet.


While we still don’t agree on the subject, I do feel the man is a class act and I’m glad I had the opportunity to spend part of my Thanksgiving day with one of my Seinfeld heroes.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Dave’s Gay Adventures (Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That)

Posted on by davidwfelts

Standing in line to get coffee and a snack at the Barnes & Noble bookstore with my friend Terry one day, the server asked, “Do you boys want two forks with that?”  Terry had ordered a carrot cake with his coffee, but the funny thing was we weren’t even standing next to each other in line; I was behind him waiting my turn.

I’m not always the brightest guy and in fact it took me a couple of moments to realize the implication of what she was asking us.  Just like George Costanza in the Seinfeld episode “The Outing”, I was ready to prove my heterosexualness to her right then and there.  I blamed Terry at the time because he was wearing a purple shirt and I was convinced this is what made her think we were a gay couple.

A few years later, I was in Las Vegas for a shoe convention where I had the opportunity to go to dinner with my friend and Oakley sales rep, Eric.  Entering one of the fancy restaurants in the hotel, these two Oklahoma rednecks sat down to enjoy an evening meal together. 

The waiter recited for us the appetizers; ending with lobster bisque.  We looked at each other and I said the bisque sounded pretty good.  Now in all honesty my only experience with lobster bisque came from another episode of Seinfeld.  Eric agreed and told the waiter we would split one.

Apparently neither one of us knew bisque was a type of soup and the server didn’t feel obliged to explain this to us; probably because we were in Vegas and whatever happens in Vegas supposedly stays there.  When he returned with the bisque and we realized what we had ordered, Eric embarrassedly asked, “Do you have a ladle?” The bisque was very tasty and I’m sure we looked a little silly dipping it from the bowl into our saucers, but we both learned a valuable lesson.

Telling my wife the story later it dawned on me I was the common denominator in both of these experiences.  In today’s society being homosexual or lesbian is more socially acceptable than at any other time in history, but I have to admit I may be a lot of things, but gay is not one of them.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)  In fact I’ve often said the only way I could be gay is if I was a woman; because then I could like women.

You might be asking where is he going with all of this; what’s his take on sexual orientation?  Truthfully, I thought it was a funny story and just wanted to share…I’ll leave to you what you want to believe, after all, this is probably what you’re going to do anyway, right?  My primary goal today was to see if I could get anyone’s attention with my writing.

Now you know what I think, what do you think?

Dave’s Daily Diatribe aka DDD

Posted on by davidwfelts

A diatribe by definition is an angry speech or piece of writing that strongly criticizes someone or something.  In the television shows I watch, men like George Costanza’s father on Seinfeld and Mike Baxter/Outdoor Man in Last Man Standing have been my mentors in diatribe training.

Whether it was George’s dad with the airing of grievances during the Festivus holiday episode or Mike ranting about the latest thing going on in his world, voicing our opinions is something we are all capable of doing, and if we were really honest, we do more often than we probably would want to admit.  I know I make my opinions known probably more often than people like.

I’m an opinionated man who has no fear about telling you what I think.  You may or may not agree with me, but I can promise you that at the end of the day you will not wonder what I think.  Join me as I discuss with you whatever happens to hit my brain at the time, I can assure you it will be interesting.

While these opinions of mine are just that; mine, please don’t hold what I say against my bride or kids.  My wife Cheryl did choose to marry me, but she rolls her eyes at the things I say frequently and does her best to keep me in check.  She’s the one who brings a calming factor to my life, and also tells me when I need to tone it down a bit. My kids are great, but they didn’t get the opportunity to choose to be my kids, and probably wonder often why I can get so worked up.

I think of my writing as therapy, something you may end up thinking I need a lot of as you read along. Plus I’m curious what you think about my thoughts and what yours are as well, so be sure and comment to let me know.  Okay, let’s buckle up baby; it could be a bumpy ride.