you’ve had it.

you had it bad.

yeah. you what i’m talking about.

whipped. sprung. gone. caught up. caught out there. stuck. hooked. thunderbolted

each word describes that same feeling, that same lustful and libidinous infatuation that gives you that same feeling down there everywhere every time you think about them. this isn’t love. not yet, at least. (although, everyones optimum long-term loving relationship does include these feelings) but it is random doodles and not so random flashbacks at work…the type of ish that’ll get you while you’re sitting at your desk, making you randomly shiver and exclaim “ooh shit!!” like someone just dropped a piece of ice down your shirt, and then nervously looking around to see if anyone noticed your aftershock.

it usually sneaks up on us. one day, you’re minding your own business, daydreaming about crocheting and pears and bowling night and sh*t and then, forty-eight hours later, your body has become a erogenous minefield, a walking, incoherently talking victim of ptfs (post-traumatic f*ck syndrome) and you’re wondering to yourself what the hell just happened and when the hell am i getting some again

thing is, although it sneaks up on us, there usually are subtle indicators that you’re on the sexual springboard, and, as a service from the champ, i’ve decided to give you 3 signs that you very well might be sprung

1. you become gilbert gottfried

i lived in a corner suite (two bedrooms separated by a common/living room type area) with three other roommates my freshman year of college, a somewhat unremarkable arrangement sans for an entertaining bi-weekly occurrence the entire second semester. you see, one of my roommates (jay) had a regular jump-off named kimmie, an extremely demure sophomore who would come through every other saturday afternoon (yes. afternoon!!!), chop it up with us in the living room for a few minutes while we were playing nba live, then head to the bedroom with jay. as you know, dormitory walls are notoriously thin, which makes afternoon sex a community affair, but this obviously didn’t phase kimmie at all.

without fail, within fifteen minutes, the barely audible moaning would began. nothing unusual there though, just your perfunctory garden variety sex moans. soon, though, the moans would then give way to the words. by “the words” i mean that when kimmie was kumming, she’d scream out some of the most bewildering, befuddling, and hilarious word combination’s known to man. from “you’re punching it papachulo” to something that sounded like “f*ckkkkk!! toaster!! f*ckkkkk!! toaster!! f*ckkkkk!! toaster!!”, she’d use horrifically awkward syntax, with word combination’s sounding similar to something you might overhear at in an esl classroom for asian toddlers with tourettes. then, afterwards, she’d come back out with us and play spades or tonk like nothing happened. in hindsight, i probably should have married kimmie.

my point is that there’s sex, good sex, very good sex, and sex that’ll have you doing and saying the most inane and unbelievable sh*t during and directly after the act. the type of sex that’ll make you jump up right afterward and iron clothes butt naked at 3 in the morning while whistling “ordinary people”. nothing you do during or directly after that time can be explained by any type of rational thought or reasoning. basically, you become gilbert gottfried

2. you schedule important sh*t around sex

“you know, even though i dont have any gas, and stopping for gas will insure i wont have any cash to buy lunch today, i need to drive to work instead of catching the bus, just to give me those extra 15 minutes i need this morning to, umm, yeah. f*ck this. i’m driving.”

these are the types of conversations you have with yourself everyday when you’re on the springboard.

3. you’re willing to overlook common sense deal-breakers

she still lives with her ma? so what. stop hating. she has the whole basement to herself anyway.

he has a different colored grill for each season? well…you can’t really tell in the dark.

her baby daddy is kimbo slice? whatever. dat bald n*gga can’t beat me

most of us have been there before, where you’re so into someone that you always find yourself making excuses for them and intentionally ignoring sh*t instead of actually wondering why you’re always making excuses and ignoring sh*t. this is easily the worse by-product of the springboard…the fact that your cognitive sense goes completely to sh*t, and, despite your intelligence, you’re prone to make more bad decisions than tavaris jackson

on a positive note, though, the antagonists in these types of situations have been the muses for some of the best music, movies, and art ever made, so maybe its not all bad.

damn. alot of memories in these paragraphs today.

i need my f*ckin toast

—the champ

letter to a young champ,

1. relax. between the ages of 16 to 23, the phrase “its really not that serious” is applicable for every chick you’re interested in, and, to be honest, vice versa. the sooner you realize this the better off you’ll be

2. that one chick from college (you know who)? get off her d*ck. keep doing you and don’t treat her like the be all end all of all black women. sh*t, you’re a freakin ballplayer and, in a decade or so, thousands of people across the country who’ve never even met you will refer to you as “the champ“. you don’t need to be sweating anyone that hard, dog. and, to be perfectly honest, you don’t really want to sleep with her. i mean, yeah you do…but your motivation to bone has gone from pure curiousness to pure ego. you dont even think she’s hot, and the only reason you want to fu*ck her is because you havent been able to yet.

3. sasha from caribana? do everything humanly possibly to get her the f*ck back to your hotel room, even if it means paying your man to step to and bag one of her hideous ass girls. you won’t be able to call her the day next because your phone is going to die as soon as you leave the club, subsequently erasing the numbers you just put in there (damn sprint!!). other than some carl thomas vid from 2005 that you’ll swear you saw her in, you will never see or hear from her again.

4. you’ll eventually find out that the chick from the bookstore is bipolar. not your typical garden variety chick bipolarness either, but she’s seriously been diagnosed as a manic-depressive. i not saying that you still shouldnt bag her because she is fine as frog hair and doesnt disprove that myth about crazy chicks in the sack, but it’s still good to know things like this.

5. that slight technical variation you incorporated into your boning style in 2002? good job. i’d admonish you for not thinking about doing that sooner, but, to be honest, college aged chicks aren’t ready for that, so it was probably for the better

6. dont wait another year. it’s not going to get any better, and the longer you wait, the more difficult it’s going to be to do it. end it as soon as the idea of ending it first gets into your head. yeah, its gonna hurt, but thats part of being a grown-up, and you’ll realize down the line that you definitely made the right decision.

this is it. sure, there’s a bit more i can tell you…especially at least 12 very good reasons not to put your lips anywhere near the vicinity of kim’s well-traveled mouth, but knowing everything would take the fun out of everything you’re eventually going to do. just follow you gut, cross your t’s and dot your i’s, and dont allow yourself to be seduced by tipsy snizzles your freshman year of college.

signing off,

the champ

(btw, i’ll explain the meaning of this new nickname in due time)

so, slutty mature folk of vsb.com, if you could hop into your personal relationship delorean and give advice to your former self, what the hell would you say?

—the champ

i experienced a bit of romance-related drama in the summer of 2006. i wont get too specific, but lets just say that technology can be a bitch. admittedly, i made some decisions that contributed to the situation, but nobody could argue that the actions that occurred in response to my decisions were justified. to make a scale analogy, what happened was akin to someones shoe getting stepped on, and that person responding by taking off the shoe and throwing it in the culprits face.

yet, despite my relative innocence...many would argue that I had it coming.

a decade ago, while the champ was still a college-aged “challenger”, i used technology to intentionally hurt and embarrass someone who i thought had disrespected me. it was mean, vindictive, short-sighted, and immature…easily the moment in my life i’m least proud of (just typing this sh*t made me cringe), and if you believe in romantic karma, a concrete precursor to what happened in 06.

romantic karma in itself is a bit of an enigma, especially when you combine the matrixesque “everything’s connected” mindset behind the concept of karma with the inherent subjectivity synonymous with romantic relationships. are we really eventual recipients of the energy we release? is that karma concept nothing but a self-fulfilling prophesy? is it all just a bunch of bullsh*t?

who knows.

i do know, though, that fully believing in romantic karma has a way of dismissing personal responsibility and accountability. i mean, the stuff that happened in 2006 had absolutely nothing to do with the stunt i pulled my sophomore year in college, and its lazy thinking to even suggest that. yeah, as i alluded to before, i helped to make my own bed, but the decisions that affected the situation were made in ‘06, not ‘98.

also, it seems as if many of us subscribe to this belief system to replace a missing moral compass. for instance, one of the themes repeatedly brought up in the comments here is the fact that the main reason why many people don’t do more relationship dirt is the fear that it’ll come back to bite them in the ass. forget about whether it’s right or wrong or the possibility of someone getting hurt in the process…a full subscription to the “karmic times” is all about us, or, more specifically, how it’s going to directly affect us.

moral ambivalence is part of being human though, and when you combine this with our desperate need to make things “fair”, believing in romantic karma has its place…for some.

just not me.

—the champ

***editors note*** before we get started, we’d like to let everyone know that vsb.com was featured in the philly, new york, and boston editions of the metro news, the “worlds largest global newspaper yesterday, and we’d like to thank all of you for helping us grow and allowing sh*t like this to happen. riley, springer, and the wart hogs would be proud.***

The Goggles

Without fail, everybody has worn them before at least once. We never know when we’re actually wearing them, and the realization that we possessed them doesn’t usually come until days afterwards, hitting us like a bag of bricks in the shower, making us voice the universal rhetoric question to ourselves, “WTF WAS I THINKING?????”

This deadly accessory, the opposite sex altering goggle, comes in many forms. We already know about “beer goggles”, so i’d like to introduce you to three others that are just as potent.

1. WORK GOGGLES

Work Goggles describes what happens when you’re in an office environment, and you start making arguments in your head for people you were never really attracted to to begin with. “You know, sometimes when she wears clear heels on spring Wednesdays, in the right light, her eyes seem mysterious and her breasts look pretty ripe. I should probably try to have sex with her”.

Also, if the “new” person (someone who’s recently been hired or a temp) has even a shred of attractiveness, they’ll automatically become that office’s version of Benny Bratt or Gabby Union for at least two months without fail. It’s just like 7th grade, when the new girl from Texas transferred in and everybody broke their necks to see who’d get her phone number first. As soon as the first number is handed out, she’s basically forgotten forever. If you hated junior high you’ll probably hate working in an office.

Work Goggle Plusses: Three words: copy room quickies. Also, there is the possibility that the constant close contact has allowed you to notice an attractive part of their personality that you may have overlooked in a different setting. And, you know, at least you know that the person has a job.

Work Goggle Minuses: Five words: don’t sh*t where you eat. If it (the relationship) does work, then you run the possibility of breaking up just because you’re tired of seeing them 24 hours a day everyday. If you have sex and the relationship doesn’t work, then you create the possibility of your office turning into the West Bank or Newark, New Jersey. There is no greater hell than a workplace divided by someone’s sexual activity or relationship status.

what to avoid

Verdict: Unless you’re convinced that they’re your Neo, try to shy away from this. 9 times out of 10, three months later you’ll be in your cubicle, reading and replying to some horrific Alex Forrest-esque email while shaking your head and asking yourself “Damn. What the hell was I thinking?”

2. COLLEGE GOGGLES

(Since college aged males disgust most women older than 22, “college goggles” is strictly a male phenomenon, and I suggest that all the ladies just move on to number 3.)

College goggles occur when you’re out of school, but you either work near a university or have college students working for or with you. This prolonged contact, along with the viewing of countless Maxim’s, SmoothMag’s and GirlsGoneWild infomercials, causes you to assume that all college aged women are easier than a G.E.D. test for dyslexic kittens. Every 19-22 year old women you see all of a sudden becomes a young Roxy Reynolds in your eyes, waiting to be turned-out by your studly, Hefneresque older-male wit.

College Goggle plusses: Remember this, “…causes you to assume that all college aged women are easier than a G.E.D. test for dyslexic kittens…”? Well, nowadays, that’s probably true. Plus, since most college aged people are broke and living off of cafeteria food and Ramen noodles, a date to the food court at the mall is their version of Spago, and will basically guarantee sex

all yours for a chick-fil-a combo meal

College Goggle minuses: If you’re over 30, it’s generally not a good idea to date people who aren’t old enough to legally drink. You never want to have to perform “old man duties” (Driving them places, buying beer for their roommates, etc) and having sex in a dorm room when you’re not college-aged is basically a sign of a complete loser.

Verdict: Since you’re basically guaranteed easy guilt-free sex, this isn’t a completely bad thing, especially if you could somehow rationalize to yourself and your God why the hell your 34 year old ass is having sex in the bottom bunk of some 6 by 8 foot dorm room after slithering past the R.A. If you’re okay with all of that, then knock yourself out, lil champ.

3. DROUGHT GOGGLES

you’re horny. he’s waiting

You’re going through a longer than usual (and “usual” in this case is relative. For some it could be two weeks. For others, two years) period of a lack of opposite sex contact. This decreases your usual standards tremendously, but, at this point, you could really care less. The mailman, your kids school-bus driver, your parole officer, DMX, your ex…right now, it doesn’t matter. You just need to get it done, quickly.

Drought Goggle plusses: There’s a chance that you’ll feel 100 times better after you “break your seal”. Once you break that seal, there’s a chance you’ll be happier, more efficient at work, nicer to pets, more prone to recycle and less prone to commit violent crimes.

Drought Goggle minuses: There a chance that you’ll feel 100 times worse after you “break your seal” because you compromised your integrity for something that wasn’t that good anyway.

Verdict: If you ever find yourself with these on, take them off as soon as possible. You’re in a drought for a reason, and wearing the goggles will just be a temporary fix to an increasingly permanent problem. Remember, even a Brussels sprouts and liver flavored milkshake would taste great if you were hungry enough.

A pair of goggles every now and then isn’t such a bad thing. Sure, they’re irresponsible, inherently misleading, and occasionally dangerous, but someone always has to be the butt of the jokes in your circle of friends, the “too old man” sneaking out the dorms, or the cause of World War III at work…why can’t it be you?

—the champ