Photo Wednesdays

So I'm gonna start something new here, every Wednesday I'm just gonna post a picture. It might be one of my own (hopefully they will mostly be my own) or one from the internet. Enjoy?

Summer Love

I have awesome news people. After two summers, I finally found her. A summer love I want to be with for the remainder of my life until it all fades to black and i go six feet under, kick the bucket, push daisies, pay the piper, and ya know, die.

Her name is Anne DeMarini. Size fourteen, right handed, and most important, just getting to that point where she's perfectly broken in.

I really hope this freaked some people out "Sam's dating a girl named Anne? She's "broken in"? Wait till I tell you something else, she's not white. She has a fine grey and black skin that feels leathery to the touch. Oh yeah. I'm talking about my new baseball glove but if I just said "I love my new baseball glove" that wouldn't be like me, gotta spin it as a giant joke like I do with much of my life. It's why girls shoot me dirty looks and punch me when I talk.

Actually, you should have known when her last name was "DeMarini" I was lying. I'd never fall for an Italian...

So yeah, I named the glove Anne, the brand is DeMarini, the model line is Diablo (I originally put "Diablo DeMarini" but that didn't' sound like a girl's name at all), and I love it. I haven't bought a new one in years and I had never owned a softball/outfielders glove (bigger pocket) so I rolled into Sports Authority and put down the cash for a new one. And I love it. It re-awakened my love for baseball.

I've been playing catch a lot with my friends and brother and a weekly (well, kind of) game with Jose and his amigos down in Riverdale Park. It's got me going back to the batting cages (The only place I bat is at Rocky Gorge Four Seasons Batting Cages, Driving Range, and Mini Golf. Family owned and operated since 1968." I have an endorsement deal.)

I was sitting on Facebook and a friend messages me with a question, I obviously know everything so I happily agreed to make her day and answer said question. She was fielding a softball team and wanted to know if I was interested.

Hell. Yes. I've been digging around for a team to play on for months now. I didn't want to drive to NoVa and I couldn't find any closer, but luckily my friends always come through for me in the clutch as they always do.

So yeah, I'm pumped. I have a friend that's going to come play with me out there and we start training soon. Or if you're me, you're a BAMF and you start busting your ass as soon as you're done typing this blog post. Hitting, fielding, catching, throwing, and over all just being a freaking beast. We need a secret handshake like they have in the majors. And I wanna do a lot of "Forearm bumps" because I love them. Me and Jose Canseco used to do them all the time, when he returned my calls. Ass.

So yeah, I guess after our first game (Tuesday) I'll do a little update on training camp, meeting the team, batting practice, and of course game one. I hope there's an awesome legendary team name.

I'm extremely excited. If you couldn't tell by this post that was basically a very long Tweet, I mean, I coulda just said "I bought a new glove and joined a softball team. #beer". I end most of my Tweets with #beer. Like "Went to Sears #beer." Makes people think about how sober I am.

Billy-Bob the Caterpillar.

So as many of you know I love to write. On legal pads, notebooks, napkins, hands, or walls. In trains, cars, planes, bathrooms, beds, kitchens, and restaurants.

I like to write about beating the odds, I like writing about sports, a lot of sports. Hell, I even wrote a few songs, speeches, and the occasional random eulogy (They're not all about people I know, most of them are just random characters I come up with in my brain piece). I just love writing. Always have and hopefully I always will.

I dunno how this fascination started for me, I guess I know pretty quick that math and science weren't really my thing at all. I didn't like them but I did love history, english, and sports. And I've always bean a talker, so I guess writing was my way of talking when everyone around me wanted me to just shut the, uh, well, let's say they wanted me to shut the "front door".

Hopefully one day I'll get paid to do this, how awesome would that be? I've always wanted to write a column like what Rick Reilly writes for ESPN.com and the one he used to write for "Sports Illustrated". He would go behind the stories of the really big name athletes and instead write about the quarterback at some random D-III college in "YourTown, YourState". It would be more about the human element behind sport, not so much the star athlete, the giant contract, the asshole head coach, or the off field problems for a primadonna wide receiver. It was about the college football and basketball team driving off campus to pick up a school booster who had been in a wheelchair since he was seven. The human condition. Stories that made you laugh, cry, smile, and gave you chills.

So I wanted to share with you all something that I think only three people have seen in my lifetime. It's the first ever short story I wrote, or at least it's the first one that's recorded and will go down in history one day. It was literally written on the day that I turned ten, March 14th, 2000.

I didn't edit it at all, this is the straight uncut dope. Best of the best, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I still do. I almost died I laughed so hard when I re-discovered it.

And now, without further delay, "The Caterpillar Story" by SamWow Carroll...

"One day there was a caterpillar named Billy-Bob who lived in a dump. He thought he was very ugly. Finally, more caterpillars moved in. One day someone came and dumped it out.

So he went out into the world. He had to cross the ocean. So he made a boat of sticks an went off. But he got sucked up in a waterspout. He landed in Europe. There he made a cocoon.

He emerged a butterfly. He flew to the United States but he got took under by a tidal wave. He flew over a battlefield. He got his wings blown off."

The picture is backwards, I'm sure you all can deal with it. It's just proof that this epicness exists. Ignore the stupid "Dove Prayer".

Summertime and The Livins Easy

So about two weeks ago I went to a wine (vomit) festival in a little old place I call "Three Hours From Home", Virginia with a friend and his co-workers. It was called Valley Fest, and they had a lot of wine, beer, and some awesome bar-b-que but I noticed something far more important there that I should have wrote about two weeks ago.

Girls. More specifically, girls in sundresses.

That's right, my Official Sign of Summer's Start. Screw Memorial Day, when pools open, the first day out of school, or any of that other crap. For me, summer starts with the first girl I see in a sundress. And flip-flops. And avaitors. And who has blonde hair, a Southern accent, brown eyes, stands about 5'5", and that has a rich father who will see me as the son he could never have and shower me with love and upon meeting me (A) writes me into his will, (B) allows me to marry his daughter, and (C) let's me choose which of the fine automobiles I would like to drive from his stable of fine automobiles.

This woman has been elusive to say the least and I hope every girl I've dated that wants me back (Haha, none of them want me back.) will read this and get on the ball.

I feel those jokes could have offended some people. Oh well, like Mike Birbiglia once said, "Some people laughed, some people didn't, so I was one for one."

Now, back on topic (for a brief time until I go off on another random tangent). Summer is finally here. I spent all of Memorial Day hanging out with my boys Dave, Josh, and James (aka "Cheeks") in "America's Largest Whites Only Country Club" also known as Anne Arundel County.

We had a "blasty-blast bitch tits Ninja!" to put it as Dave would. He doesn't really talk like that, but he does talk in catch phrases and those are some of them so I guess that counts. By the way, the random tangent counter for this post in up to #2. Lifetime counter for this blog is probably in the low seventies, it's like this blog is just my brain on the internet; random crap until I find a point and try like hell to stick with it. That was #3.

So yeah, summer is finally here. Time for shorts, flip flops, tank tops, bathing suits, sunglasses, convertibles, and, ya know, stuff.

It's a time to hit the beach with your friends and family. Which is awesome. Get that beach house, hotel room on the boardwalk, or tent on the beach. Whatever it is. Buy some sunscreen, a kite, ice, soda, water, towels, beach ball, beach umbrella, and a cooler. And beer. A ton of beer. Like, cases upon cases of Natty Boh (Gotta represent that Mura-land {Maryland}) and get blitzed and jump into something or drop the Atomic Elbow on a pool float.

It's a beautiful thing to be on the beach. My family rents a big ole house in the Outer Banks and just parties it up for a week. There's beer, card games, a pool table, movies, a poker table, a fooseball table, and most importantly, two hot tubs and a pool. And most years, there's a pretty banging fireworks show that the family puts on (Carroll's tend to be pyromaniacs) and we usually get a god bonfire going down there on the beach and spend a few hours sitting around it talking and drinking and just having a blast.

What else comes with summer? I guess going to the pool? I haven't had a pool membership since Glenn Dale Country Club closed down like, fifteen years ago but I'll always remember four things about that place. One, the water fountain tasted like copper. Two, the floor of the bathroom felt really weird on bare feet. Three, that one life guard was wayyy hot, even when I was six, I think she's the reason I have a thing for pierced belly buttons. Weird. Four, Coach PeeWee tried to teach me how to dive, still working on it Coach!

I like going to baseball games too in the summer. My friends and I went to a Baysox game well before "Summer Dress Day 2011" but I went to one after that so I'll write on it anyways. Baseball games are great whether you like baseball or not. It's you, your friends, beers, hot dogs, nice weather, and occasionally fireworks.

The first one we just kinda heckled, well, not just kinda. We heckled the crap out of the Richmond Flying Squirrels. We laughed, talked, ate, drank, and been merry (that's terrible english). And we took a ton of pictures, one of which is sitting next to me on my desk, and that picture will travel with me for years to come. I love this picture, it's got a lot of my favorite, most beloved people in it and soon I'll get one with all of those damn people in it. "That's Mahoney!"

That's really all I have for right now. It felt kinda random, but whatever. I'm confident and I liked it so it ain't nothing but a thang chicken wang (Proper people would say "Nothing but a thing, chicken wing" but I roll fresh outta "A Livable Community" aka "Gawjus" Prince George's so I say it different. Tangent #4.)

I've really slacked hard on updating this stuff, I'm gonna fix that. I need more ideas though, please please please if there's a story, opinion, or something you want to read about or that you want to write about, let me know.