Night Terrors

// Worse Than The Happening

By Alex Aloise .
09.02.10 // Night Terrors

View Comments / Sep 02.10 / Night Terrors / by Alex Aloise

// Boo!

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.31.10 // Night Terrors

View Comments / Aug 31.10 / Night Terrors / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Inside the Mind of Gavin ep. 3

By Alex Aloise .
08.26.10 // After Hours

9:31 pm
Oh man, this place is great! It’s packed, cool wall art, great atmosphere, huge bar…
And they’re open till 12?!?!
I’m gonna come here every week.
They’ll have to change the name to TELL GAVIN It’s Friday’s.

10:27 pm
Well hello what’s this?
That girl at the bar is absolutely checking me out.
I knew this would be my night.
And Ross actually told me NOT to wear the tux.
Loser.

10:41 pm
Finally, she’s coming over here.
What took her so long?
Probably intimidated by the tux.

10:42 pm
“Hello Miss, I’m Gavin…”
“Great to meet you Qammie…”
“I’d love a shot, thank you so much…”
Oh no, she got some in her hair
“Oh no, you got some in your hair…”

11:09 pm
This is turning out really well.
She’s hilarious.
Uh oh. She’s about to spit up again.
Poor sweet angel.

11:34 pm
“You’re really cute too…”
“Seriously, I mean it…”
“Like a young Elena Kagan…”

11:55 pm
Shoot, almost closing time.
I need to seal the deal with Qammie.
She’s in no position to drive.
I’ll ask if she wants to stay at my place.

12:01 am
She wants to go to another bar?
It’s after midnight. Everything’s closed.
Did she say 2 am?
My God.

12:21 am
This bar is even more packed than the last.
Where did all of these people come from?
Don’t they have plans in the morning?
Yardwork? Brunch with mom? Anything?

12:31 am
“Qammie, this is great. I’ve never been out this late…”
“Wait till I tell Ross about this, oh wow…”
“I’m sorry, I don’t smoke. And are you British? You hide you’re accent very well…”
“Qammie?…”

1:04 am
“Another crantini please…”
Here’s to another one that got away.
Hurts so good.

1:47 am
This is wild.
I’m not even tired.
Too bad this place is closing soon.

1:56 am
W-w-w-w-w-w-wait.
There’s ANOTHER bar close by?!
And it’s open all night?!?!?!
Time for G-Spot to end this night with a bang

2:19 am
A lot of truckers in this place.
Weird.

2:37 am
I’m not exactly hungry, but that pie does look delicious.

2:58 am
Where are all the chicks?
It’s just trucker after trucker.
What a bologna-fest.

3:16 am
One more piece of pie, then I’ll go.

3:32 am
Definitely time to leave.
Those holes in the bathroom walls were a bit unsettling.
Plus, I feel a little over-dressed for this place.

3:33 am
We’ll get’em next time Gavin.
Next time.

Inside the Mind of Gavin ep. 1

Inside the Mind of Gavin ep. 2

View Comments / Aug 26.10 / After Hours / by Alex Aloise

// There Are Only 2 Rules For Taking Care of a Mogwai

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.23.10 // After Hours

View Comments / Aug 23.10 / After Hours / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Over Time…This Place Has Gone To Shit

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.22.10 // The Neighborhood

View Comments / Aug 22.10 / The Neighborhood / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Over Time…Seriously, Who Are These People?

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.21.10 // The Neighborhood

View Comments / Aug 21.10 / The Neighborhood / by Wheatstraw Worley

// You Play Ball Like A Girl

By Alex Aloise .
08.20.10 // The Neighborhood

My neighborhood didn’t have a Sandlot. The kids never got together on a daily basis to play baseball. There weren’t any mythical dogs of monstrous proportions that we ran from in terror. There was no other-worldly-level-hot lifeguard that we fantasized about. We never befriended the once-terrifying old man in the spooky house.

In the movie, The Sandlot, all of those things happened in the course of one summer. Growing up (and still to this day) I loved that movie. I wanted so badly to be one of the kids in that neighborhood. I would have fit in with them perfectly. I was a fat little kid (who has since blossomed into a wonderfully-husky adult). They could have given me a nickname to compliment the rest of theirs. They could have called me “Big Al,” and The Great Hambino and I would battle it out for gluttonous supremacy.

But like I said, none of that stuff ever happened in my neighborhood.

No Sandlot:

In the movie, the kids had a huge, empty lot with a baseball diamond built into it where they would spend every day of their summer. We had a basketball court down in the woods, but it was right outside of Cravenna Oaks – the apartment community that was home to all manner of creepy adult and bullying 6^th grader – so we stayed away from it. There were the fields at Fairview Elementary that we could have used as our Sandlot, but none of us wanted to be at school when we didn’t have to, and the Rec-Pac instructors would give us shit for being there anyway. Instead, we settled for my basement more often than not where we played copious amounts of Killer Instinct and Primal Rage, which naturally resulted in…

Never getting together for organized sports:

Baseball was life for the kids in the movie. We could never decide on just one game to play (that is, whenever we left the comfortable confines of my basement). We tried playing kickball in the cul de sac across the street, but playing that game on a downward incline was never much fun. After The Mighty Ducks came out we gave Hockey a shot. We all bought sticks and pucks, and after about a week and half we realized that A) we all sucked and B) the knucklepuck was a damn lie. Football was our next attempt. We’d play in the front yard of Hank and Shawn’s house. It was a tiny yard, and certainly not enough room for a football game. Not to mention, Hank and Shawn were dicks. After I scored a game winning touchdown only to be met with a punch in the gut by Shawn (who was on my team), I decided to go back to the basement.

No mythical dogs of monstrous proportions:

Nine out of every ten dogs in my neighborhood were Bichon Frises, including my own. To run from those would be akin to crying your way out of a tickle attack.

No Wendy Peffercorn:

The Sandlot kids’ lifeguard was a goddess. Wendy Peffercorn was every pubescent adolescent’s wet dream come true. The lifeguard at my neighborhood pool was a bitch, a horrid, soulless wretch of a teenage girl. One day, during break, my friends and I were sitting on the edge with our feet barely in the water. She blew the whistle and made us stand under her chair, and forced each of us to hit one of the “YMCA” poses for the remaining 12 minutes of break. I was the “C.” My friend’s sister came and picked us up. When we told her what happened she screamed at the lifeguard. We were all pretty sure we were going to see our first girl-on-girl brawl. We never got a straight answer from her as to why she was such an insufferable pain in the ass to us that day. I do remember, however, that she was a fatty and the ice cream man was waaay past his normal time of arrival.

No scary-but-misunderstood old neighbor:

James Earl Jones’ “Mr. Mertle” was the terrifying old man who lived behind the Sandlot. The neighborhood was filled with tales of horror that originated from his property. His dog “The Beast” was on par with the Kraken in terms of sheer brutality and menace. But, by the end of the movie, it was learned that Mr. Mertle was really just a harmless old blind man who kept to himself. Not in my neighborhood. We had Mr. Costello. He wasn’t misunderstood. He was just an asshole, plain and simple. Mr. Mertle invited the neighborhood kids into his home in order to retrieve their baseball and view his collection of memorabilia. Mr. Costello would threaten to call the cops on us if we rode our bikes down his pipestem (that was shared with 2 other houses) one more goddamned time. And then there was Lawrence. He lived in the house at the bottom of my friend Jenny’s court. He was a convicted sex-offender. If anything ever ended up in his yard it stayed there, lest we risk our innocence.

I really wish that my neighborhood had been more “Sandlotic.” It seems like a child’s paradise in the movie. But my neighborhood was what it was, and despite not living up to the lofty standards of Benny the Jet and YeahYeah’s stomping grounds, it was pretty damn good. Baseball bores the crap out of me, anyway.

View Comments / Aug 20.10 / The Neighborhood / by Alex Aloise

// Over Time…What Happened To My Home?

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.20.10 // The Neighborhood

View Comments / Aug 20.10 / The Neighborhood / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Over Time…Another Change?

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.19.10 // The Neighborhood

View Comments / Aug 19.10 / The Neighborhood / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Over Time, Everything Keeps Changing

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.18.10 // The Neighborhood

View Comments / Aug 18.10 / The Neighborhood / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Over Time, Everything Changes Again

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.17.10 // The Neighborhood

View Comments / Aug 17.10 / The Neighborhood / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Over Time, Everything Changes

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.16.10 // The Neighborhood

View Comments / Aug 16.10 / The Neighborhood / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Swing That Music

By Alex Aloise .
08.15.10 // Dance Off

Swing That Music from alex aloise on Vimeo.

View Comments / Aug 15.10 / Dance Off / by Alex Aloise

// The Giraffe Who Just Doesn’t Get It

By Wheatstraw Worley .
08.13.10 // Dance Off

View Comments / Aug 13.10 / Dance Off / by Wheatstraw Worley

// The Ultimate Battle Part Three

By Alex Aloise .
08.08.10 // Bears

View Comments / Aug 08.10 / Bears / by Alex Aloise

// The Ultimate Battle Part Two

By Alex Aloise .
08.07.10 // Bears

View Comments / Aug 07.10 / Bears / by Alex Aloise

// The Ultimate Battle Part One

By Alex Aloise .
08.06.10 // Bears

View Comments / Aug 06.10 / Bears / by Alex Aloise

// Preschool Politics

By Joey Camire .
08.01.10 // Office Politics

Preschool Politics from Blommit on Vimeo.

View Comments / Aug 01.10 / Office Politics / by Joey Camire

// Strap Yourselves In, Kids

By Alex Aloise .
07.22.10 // Summer Blockbusters

It’s always been a secret dream of mine to be a famous Screenwriter. A few years ago, I wrote my first film. I think it’s got the potential to do AVATAR-like business (without sucking, of course). And lucky for you, I’m giving you a free taste of my masterpiece right here on Blommit. Below are some select scenes from the screenplay. You can thank me later.

Wright & Wong

View Comments / Jul 22.10 / Summer Blockbusters / by Alex Aloise

// That’s Hilarious!

By Wheatstraw Worley .
07.18.10 // The Funniest Joke Ever

View Comments / Jul 18.10 / The Funniest Joke Ever / by Wheatstraw Worley

// You’ll Either Love Me or Hate Me…

By Alex Aloise .
07.12.10 // The Funniest Joke Ever

…but this is my all-time favorite joke

View Comments / Jul 12.10 / The Funniest Joke Ever / by Alex Aloise

// Some Things Should Never Become Competitive

By Wheatstraw Worley .
07.09.10 // Competition

View Comments / Jul 09.10 / Competition / by Wheatstraw Worley

// Here’s a Thought…

By Brad Hagen .
07.09.10 // Competition

One of the great American traditions went down last weekend, the Nathans International July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest. The contest is rumored to have started on July 4th 1916 when four immigrants wanted to find out who among them was the most patriotic. So, naturally, they decided a hot dog eating contest would settle it. This year American Joey “Jaws” Chestnut won the event, the coveted mustard yellow belt and the $20,000 prize. In a truly American show of gluttony Joey ate 54 Hot Dogs and Buns (or HDBs as they’re called on the eating scene) in ONLY TEN MINUTES!! That’s 5.9 hotdogs a minute!!! That is ridiculous, preposterous, and gross. It was also a great example of why so many people around the globe don’t like us. The fact that we celebrate and reward one man eating in ten minutes, enough food to feed an African village for a month is sad and disturbing. Which is why I think we should move the 2011 contest from Coney Island to the poorest nation in the world: Zimbabwe.

We can set up everything like it is on Coney Island. The stage, the Hot Dog mascot, the Giant score board and of course all those dogs. Zimbabweans will walk from miles around to see how the better half of the world lives. Not hungry and emaciated like themselves but with so much food that contests are held to see who can eat the most without puking. Zimbabweans wouldn’t know what they were seeing,. They came to see “competitive eating” which in their world and minds is one bag of rice fought over by 100 people and at the end the winners are those still alive and the losers die of mal nutrition. They would look in disbelief as beings they would have to believe to be super human scoff down hotdogs at a rate of almost six a minute. Showing them America’s awesomeness wouldn’t stop there though. We could also bring the latest super soakers filled with Smart Water. They would think these are used to quench peoples thirst from a distance or maybe even a nifty tool for watering crops. Won’t they be surprised when we show them that we use them to shoot perfectly potable water at each other in a sporting and sometimes annoying kind of way? Then just when they think they’ve seen it all we’ll show them a chocolate fountain, like the ones used for weddings, and their HEADS WILL EXPLODE!!!.

View Comments / Jul 09.10 / Competition / by Brad Hagen

// I Suggested This Ad…

By Alex Aloise .
07.08.10 // Competition

…they didn’t take it.

View Comments / Jul 08.10 / Competition / by Alex Aloise

// The Ballad of Jefferson Conley

By Alex Aloise .
06.28.10 // Missed Opportunity

Have you ever been “that close?” Were you ever within arm’s reach of that brass ring? Did you ever think to yourself, “If only I’d done that, I wouldn’t be doing this?”

The saying goes that opportunity knocks but only once. Sometimes lives are dramatically altered by one split-second decision. Turn right or turn left? Yes or no? It’s all about the choices we make and the actions we take.

Take Pete Best, for example. He’s the infamous “Fifth Beatle.” The original drummer for the band, it’s been theorized that Pete simply didn’t gel with John, Paul, and George. They ultimately replaced him with Ringo Starr, just a short time before their worldwide cultural explosion. If Best had just tried a little harder and been the slightest bit more social, he’d be an icon, and the world would have never known “Yellow Submarine.”

Ron Wayne is another example. Along with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Wayne helped to found Apple Computers in the 1970s. He was the elder statesman of the trio, the one with all of the business sense. In the official legal trademark documents, Wayne is listed as a 10% partner in the company. His keen business senses, though, told him that the venture would ultimately fail. Eleven days after signing the papers he backed out, taking his 10% share of the company at that time with him: $800. Had he stuck it out and taken the chance, Wayne’s 10% today would be worth an estimated $22 Billion.

Even the immortal Hulk Hogan is not invulnerable to a missed opportunity or two. He and George Foreman at one time shared the same manager. Said manager called Hulk up one day and left a voicemail asking if he’d be interested in putting his name on a new grill that was set to come out. Hogan never got the message until a few days later. By then, the manager had offered the same deal to Foreman, who happily accepted, and has since made an estimated $200+ Million off his decision. By the time Hulk got back to his manager, he was forced to accept an offer to promote a blender – The Hulk Hogan Thunder Mixer.

My point in all of this is that there’s another story of great opportunity missed, one that has yet to be told. It’s the story of this very page that you’re reading right now.

When Blommit officially got started in 2008 there were 7 weekly contributors. We would all meet to discuss the details of the site: how it would run, who would post when, the design, the identity, etc. It was (and still is) a full-time job. Posting gripping original content every week and maintaining the daily goings-on with the site AND trying to finish graduate school was a daunting task. That being the case, we brought on an 8th man to help us out. He was to be our silent partner. He never wanted to be responsible for creating and posting content, but he was more than happy to run the site for us. He was in charge of putting up the polls, archiving the older posts, fielding the comments, and any and all other aspects necessary to running the Blommit on a daily basis.

Jefferson “Jeffy” Conley was our saving grace in the early days. Without him, Blommit may never have even gotten off the ground. The way we met him was sort of serendipitous, to say the least, the 7 of us originals all went to grad school together in Richmond, VA. That’s where we all met and dreamt up the monster that would one day become Blommit. We used to spend a lot of time drinking together at a place called Bogart’s. We would always see this old man at the end of the bar, drinking by himself, night after night. He was definitely a townie, born and raised in Richmond’s city limits, and he didn’t appear to have any plans of ever venturing outside of his hometown.

One night, it was a Tuesday, we were at Bogart’s having our usual discussion about the current state of the site. Out of nowhere, the enigmatic old timer stumbled up to our booth and promptly took a seat. He didn’t’ say much at first. It was probably a good 30 minutes before he piped up. We were initially startled, but eventually we just figured he was old, drunk, and sick of sitting on a stool. After the confusion about our new tablemate wore off we continued on with our conversation. We were in the middle of talking about that week’s topic, “Documentaries.” Suddenly the old man chimed in, “Didja ever see The Horse With The Flying Tail? Now that’s a helluva picture!” and then promptly took another shot of his Wild Turkey.

For the next couple of weeks, whenever we went to Bogart’s, Jeffy would sit down with us and spout off some wisdom that was vaguely related to what we were talking about. When we were going over the posts for “Seven Deadly Sins,” Jeffy spouted, “Ya know who broke every sin in the book? CHURCHILL!” and then called him an English pussy. When we went in to talk about the topic “Business Cards” Jeffy said nothing. Instead he pulled out a crumpled old condom that had a piece of paper reading, “JEFFY – WHY NOT?” stapled to the middle of it and slammed it on the table. No explanation was needed.

The next day, we had an impromptu meeting back at the bar. As usual, Jeffy was there. By this point we were all fascinated by the somehow-still-mesmerizingly-lucid old man and asked him if he’d like to become a contributor to the site. We figured that if nothing else, we could simply film his one-liners and non-sequiturs, unleashing an unstoppable meme unto the internet masses. But Jeffy immediately shot down that idea with a “Nah” and a slow-creeping wet fart. Immediately thereafter, though, he shouted, “I’LL RUN IT FOR YA.” We were all skeptical at first, obviously, but something inside me said that behind the senile façade was a genius, waiting to be released. I convinced the other 6 to let me take Jeffy on as my pet-project-of-sorts. I’d run through everything he’d need to know with him and make sure that he was capable of performing the job. Somehow, they agreed.

I worked with Jeffy for about a week, showing him the ins and outs of running the site. Incredibly, he picked it up in no time. Here he was, a 60-something year old man, perpetually drunk off his ass, and he was teaching me how to maintain a website. The results were undeniable. After just three weeks we saw a spike in readership and Blommit was running smoother than ever. We made the decision to bring Jeffy on full-time. He became an equal partner in the site. It was now an 8-man operation. I think he was excited. When we told Jeffy the news he raised his glass and pissed his pants. That meant he was happy.

For the next year and half Jeffy worked tirelessly to keep the site up to speed. He helped us grow our audience and also put us into contact with a number of the people who eventually became regular contributors (though to be honest, the way he put us in contact with them was usually just another stapled-with-a-nametag-condom. He was like a dirty, drunken clairvoyant). Things were going great. The climb was a little slow but it was steady, and it was consistently going up.

By the Fall of 2010 the site was ready to explode. A few of the original 7 had fallen by the wayside a bit (after we graduated, we all moved off to different cities for work so maintaining the steady flow of communication we had had was near-impossible) but in their places were a growing number of talented and enthusiastic new writers, designers, and makers-of-cool-shit. With the expansion came greater success and more recognition than we’d ever had before. Blommit was a success.

Jeffy, though, never saw any of our newfound acclaim. I’d been trying to reach him for about a month, all with no response. I started to fear the worst: that the crazy old drunkard had finally succumbed to his demons. He never gave us his address or phone number, and he never mentioned any family. Our only mode of communication was through email and the now-occasional visit to Bogart’s whenever one of us was in Richmond. Despite all of my attempts, he’d vanished. The site was finally going to become profitable soon and he deserved a cut of it as much as anyone else. I made it my new job to track him down and get him back on board.

That actually turned out to be a lot easier than I’d anticipated. I was able to get down to Richmond for a weekend in May of 2011. I went straight to the bar. There he was, in the same spot as always. I sat down next to him and asked him why he’d dropped out of sight. Didn’t he want to be a part of things just as they were finally taking off? I told him about all of the incredible things that were happening and made it clear to him that he was still an equal partner. In typical Jeffy fashion, he didn’t say much. He just handed me an old condom with a piece of paper stapled to to the middle of it. All it said was, “Go nuts.” Then he got up and left the bar.

In the 10 years since then, none of us have seen or heard from Jefferson Conley. I know he’s still in Richmond. Friends of mine have seen him at his same spot in the bar. I don’t know why he opted out of being a part of things. We’ve got the production company, the show, the books, and all of the other pieces of the Blommit Universe. Jeffy could have been, and should have been, in on it all with us.

This is the last picture I’ve ever seen of him. I took it that last day. So Jeffy, if you’re reading this. Give me a call, or send a stapled condom.

Originally printed in WIRED magazine, July 2021

View Comments / Jun 28.10 / Missed Opportunity / by Alex Aloise