Jordan's Birthday: A Tighten-Up Slideshow

Mmmm, delicious cake! This will be delightful.
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Meanwhile, Becca hits the sauce.
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Let this be a lesson: never drink & cake.
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Jordan tightens the scene. Curtain.
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Pet Grooming Mishap

My parents recently adopted a 12 year-old Pomeranian. They're still in the process of finding the right groomer, and yesterday, they crossed another one off the list. My father asked for a "shorter" look; what the groomer produced, by contrast, was what I believe to be the first blonde Ewok. I'm not sure if it's the groomer or my dad that needs to tighten up, but lesson learned.

Road Warrior Edition: Excessive Use of Bullet Hole Decals

Tighten up, punk: you've got to earn those bullet holes, not affix them.

*taken on I-78 near Bethlehem, PA

Bjork, Volta: absolutely no tightening necessary

I got to dig Bjork at Red Rocks (Morrison, Colorado) last week. Rocky mountain high, icelandic punk vocals, flag raising, 10 of her beautiful countrywomen with French horns, and one rad Disc Jockey that would occasionally turn the show into something resembling a rave - these are the elements of which all concerts should be made. Nothing could have been tightened, save for when I locked the keys in the trunk at the end of the show. Declare independence! Bjork on!

REV3D-UP

Car owners registering vehicles with weird, awkward or dumb vanity plates, tighten up! Latest offender:

LACT8*

Is that a command? You, LACTATE! Now! Is it an expository statement? I just wanted to inform you that I am lactating. Whatever it is, cut that shit out. We don't want to read about it on I-81.
*Via phone call with Greg on his way back from Roanoke. Thanks for the TU-Alert.

Think Twice Before You Ink.

So, I don't know the story behind this tattoo. All I know is that this poor motherfucker not only had to go through the agony of losing his wife and the agony of getting a giant tattoo to commemorate her death, but he also has to endure a lifetime of looking at this repugnant vision on his arm.
Honestly, my reaction to this photo was "Is this supposed to be from before or after she died?" Look tattoo artist, if you're going to get paid a boatload of cash for this, draw a sketch first and ask yourself "Does this look like a regular bride, or like a corpse bride?" If the answer is "Corpse Bride" maybe you should go back to the sketch book and try again. And lay off the intoxicants before you pick up the tattoo gun. Then again, maybe this guy got his tattoo for free. And the laser removal for free.
Tattoo artist: Tighten Up buddy.

Not a sermon, just a thought.

Bowen knows

After surrendering an 11 point lead, at home, in game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals to the Phoenix Suns, Spurs forward Bruce Bowen offers a self-TU:

"We've been in this situation before. We did a good job to get the lead. Late in the game we didn't do a good job," Spurs guard Bruce Bowen said. "We have to do a better job of tightening up more than anything else."

In addition to holding leads on his home court, Bowen could tighten up by not making so many cheap plays like clipping Amare Stoudemire's achilles heel or kneeing Steve Nash in the groin.

Pepper, you know what I'm talking about, you sports maniac.

1/2 Photos: 100% Wrong.

This one goes out to all you social networkers who have profile pictures featuring fractional friends: dates who have left the scene, your buddy Todd who was drunk and looked like a fool, or Sylvia and her enormous mole.

These pictures are awkward because it's never clear who's there (or not there), why you're excluding them, and why you just don't have another decent picture of yourself you could use instead. If you have no other option than to use that picture where you totally looked like Stallone before he was about to kill 1,000 ninjas, at least photoshop it with the magnetic lasso tool so you don't disrespect Flo and Reggie, who had just bought you a mojito and drove your drunk ass home later that night.

Lay off the crop tool and tighten up.

Random Weekend Tightening

I attended a party thrown by one of my buddies this weekend at which their were copious amounts of both free booze and attractive women willing to dance with me. No, this tighten up does not go out to the cute girls that shouldn't be dancing with me, it's a reflective tighten I am placing on myself. On Monday morning, I ran into one of my other pals, Mary. She asked if I enjoyed myself at the party, to which I replied, "Yea, it was ok." She commented that I had appeared to be having a VERY good time. Astounded I said, "Mary, you were there!? Why didn't you come say hi?" She stared at me blankly for a few seconds and than said, "Pete, we danced together for like ten minutes... you gotta lay off the sauce." True story.

Now a lesser man might make excuses like I had been boozing since about 3:00 in the afternoon due to the derby, or I was wearing searsucker pants, a madras shirt, and a sweater vest and was just looking to stay in drunk wasp character, but I will do no such thing. I've got to tighten either my alcohol consumption or my tolerance up.

Poisoning the well.

At some point yesterday--probably seconds before I almost killed my pets--I realized that I was storing my fish food and my kosher salt next to one another on the counter. Better tighten that up.

Just a friendly reminder from Archie Bell & the Drells

Click for music

Recycling bins: Too tight for environment

As summer approaches, and that lingering sunlight hangs in the warm air, folks can't help but gather every Friday downtown for Fridays After Five, a long-standing tradition here in Charlottesville. There's good music, kettle corn and of course, beer. Everyone is smiling, kids are running around and everyone feels just a little bit more amicable than usual (perhaps a side-effect of the beer, but I'd like to think it's just a wave of good ol' fashioned well-being). Everything is just about perfect with this setup. Just about.

Enter, the Budweiser Recycling Bins. The beer vendors have been nice enough to distribute their beers in Solo No. 2 -- or maybe No. 1; I can't remember -- cups. Either way, both are recyclable here in Charlottesville, as the recycling center accepts both No. 1 and No. 2 plastics. Awesome!! Except these stupid lids they put on the bins have openings that are too small to actually accommodate the Solo Cups. You have to bend the cup in order to force it through. I mean, it seems like a no-brainer: leave the lids off, cut bigger holes or get different lids altogether. I understand the worry: drunk people like to put trash in recycling bins, but I guarantee that drunk folks, spurned by the square-peg-in-round-hole scenario, are just as likely to neglect recycling their Solo cups and will just trash them.

Come on, Charlottesville Pavillion, LLC! Get new, skinnier recyclable cups! Get new bins! Get new lids! Cut bigger holes for the cups! Whatever you do, tighten-up!

Banjo in need of routine maintenance.

I really need to tighten up the truss rod and head of my banjo. Both are a little loose, and it really effects the sound and playability of the instrument.