Douchebag Exemption: All Aboard Amtrak

This past weekend, I found myself acting like a complete douchebag. After careful review of the evidence, I have decided that like all rules, the rules of douchedom must have exceptions as well. 

Therfore: One can act like a douchebag when dealing with Amtrak ticket window workers.

Here's what happened. I used points to book a ticket to San Diego, but when I showed up to collect my ticket, I was told that I was traveling on a "blackout date" and I should pay up. Well, since I had an email receipt with a reservation for a free ticket, I decided I shouldn't have to pay up. 

But since I booked my ticket through Amtrak Guest Rewards, you see, the agent at the counter couldn't help me. They have no way of communicating. I had to get on the phone and call the guest rewards people myself. And so, after being told that they made an uncorrectable mistake, and me, with a train to catch and a principle to stand on - I proceeded to yell and scream and generally act like a douchebag.

And thus, be it known, you are allowed to act like a douchebag in the face of municipal bureaucracy.

Clipping Things to Your Belt

Can someone please explain why grown men clip things to their belts - when they have pockets?

Clipping the easy glide blackberry holster on is not cool. Is it really that much easier than reaching into your pocket? And don't tell me you're concerned about having lumpy things in your pocket - because if you were concerned with things like fashion and how the lump looks in your pocket, then you wouldn't clip things to your belt, would you now?

The only people who should be clipping are doctors and carpenters. Doctors with all the pagers, and carpenters with the tools. Clipping anything else makes you a tool. 

Don't even get me started on fanny packs.

Alex Rodriguez

A-Rod, A-Fraud, A-Roid...

Douchebag.

The guy is a steroid injecting, prostitute frequenting, douchebag. He cheats at and on everything. His wife. The game of baseball, not once but twice. And when he cheats at baseball, it's not savvy cheating, it's schoolyard, girly-man cheating.

Forget the he's overpaid argument. Forget that I'm a Red Sox fan. He's so self-absorbed, so concerned with his image that he will never rise above himself. He creates conflict in the clubhouse and, so long as all he cares about is his numbers - both on the field and in his wallet - the Yankees, mark my words, will never win a World Series. Not so long as he's on the team. 

Bye bye Curse of the Bambino. Hello Curse of the Douche.

If You've Never Waited Tables, You Might be a Douchebag

If you're at a restaurant, and you've finished your dessert, and your coffee, and people are waiting for a table. Please leave.

It's a douchebag move not to. You can obviously continue your conversation elsewhere - another restaurant perhaps, your living room. By staying, you've decided that you are clearly more important than those who want to dine, as well as the restaurant, which needs to turn tables in order to make money.

Most importantly though, you're being a douchebag to the wait staff, who make money off tips. Every minute you linger, you're pulling money out of their pockets. Listen, I'm not talking about being rushed through your meal. I'm saying you're that movie that everyone in the audience thinks is over - and then suddenly launches into a random 4th act. Don't be that person.

And if you had ever waited tables, you would know that, and be thinking about that, and thus, not a douchebag.

You Don't Have to be RIch to be My Douche

John D. Arnold.

Founder, Centaurus Energy, a Hedge Fund (Douchey name. Centaur. A little too much Dungeons and Dragons methinks.)

First claim to Douchedom: Worked for Enron. Remember those awesome guys. Blacked out the state of California for a profit.

Recent Douchiness: Made 1.5 billion this year with his other centaurs. Yes, you are allowed to hate someone for getting rich while everyone else is losing their money. Because, more likely than not, they are profiting off of your hardship.

Updating Your Facebook Status ALL THE TIME

This is not only douchey, but annoying. First of all, stop telling me what you are up to every moment of the day. Save it for significant events. Facebook is like the Boy Who Cried Wolf - cry too often and no one cares.

People Who Try to Get on the Airplane First

We're all going to the same place, in the same plane, in assigned seats. Why exactly do you need to be on the plane first? Oh, you're carting the largest carry-on bag ever and want to guarantee space for it. It's called gate check. They put it under the plane and then take it off so you get it when you walk off.

Sit down and wait for your row to be announced. Stop crowding the boarding area, making me cart my wheely carry-on over your feet, muttering "douchebags" silently to myself as I try to board when called.

Driving like a Douche: Turning Left at an Intersection (part 2 of a zillion)

You're in a left turn lane. There's traffic coming from the other direction. There's a light - it just turned green. What do you do?

If you answered: I inch forward into the middle of the intersection, preparing for my left turn, and also making it possible for the car behind me to make a left turn before the light turns left - Congratulations! You are not driving like a douchebag.

If, however, you just sit there, with no regard for the fact that people behind you would like to make the turn before the light turns red, and won't be able to unless you inch forward into the intersection... Yes, you are driving like a douche.

Method Acting in Blockbuster Action Sequels is Douchey

This is Mickey Rourke, in a Russian Prison, preparing for his role in Ironman 2. Mickey Rourke, despite too many facial procedures, is not a douchebag. However, rubbing the sheets in Russian prison to play a villain in a superhero sequel? That's douchey. This isn't My Left Foot.

Driving like a Douche: LA Freeway Drivers (part 1 of a zillion)

I may not be the best driver, at least according to my fiance, but at least I don't drive like a douchebag.

There are many ways one can drive douchily, and in Los Angeles, you'd think people were trying to win a Driving like a Douche award or something. Today, I want to focus on the lanes of freeway travel.

Lanes on freeways were made both to accommodate more traffic and bring some order to the system. Thus, the far right lane is for slower drivers, and those entering and exiting the freeway, and the far left lane is for speeders. The in between lanes make gradual steps between the two - thus it might follow that the 2nd lane is for cautious speed limit drivers, the 3rd lane for over the limit but not 4th lane level drivers.

Now, it is your job to know these rules and abide by them. You are a douchebag if you are speeding in the far right lane - because I am trying to enter the freeway. It is your job to know that if I am entering, I am going to be going slower then you, and also, I have nowhere else to go but this lane. You, on the other hand, can change to any of the other three lanes. May I reccommend the speeding lane.

You are also a douchebag if you are going too slow in the speeding lane, because I want to get a move on. You have no business being here. You drive a piece of shit car and you should head for the number 2 lane, so you can exit soon.

The rest should be rather self explanatory. Now stop driving like a douche.

Guys Who Love Piven

This is a story about how any of us, even hard-working Chicago actors, can become douchebags.

Before Piven became Ari Gold, he was an actor's actor. He did his time on the Chicago stage, played those third guy from the left roles in movies, was energetic but rather harmless.

Then came Entourage, and Piven became the mascot for all things self-indulgent, masturbatory, and of course, douchey. It could have stopped there, at the mascot part, but Piven seemed to embrace his character, and soon playing a douchebag made him a douchebag.

Then came the crowning achievement - dropping out of a Broadway play. Unless you're bleeding from the eyes, that just isn't done. People would give Lance Armstrong's last nut to get on Broadway. And doing a Mamet play at that?

But poor, douchey little Piven is feeling sleepy from all the mercury in his sushi. Have a fucking Red Bull and get out there, dude. (Notice how you haven't heard any of his castmates from the show coming to his defense).

So yes. Sadly, Piven has become a douchebag. And he is spreading his douche-plague upon fedora wearing Hollywood hipster dudes from La Brea to La Cienega, all of whom want to be actors, all of whom want to bang the Lohan-of-the-month, all of whom want to be Piven.

Conclusion: Guys who love Piven are Douchebags.

How to Raise a Douchebag Child

Do whatever this kid's parents did.

He's Jonathan Krohn, conservative child-savant. He self-published at age 13. He described conservatism as kind of like a jelly donut: "it's the filling that counts."

The Subway Douche

In an effort to reach out to my east coast brethren, todays post warns of a common, yet easily corrected, Douchebag move. 

Not moving to the center of the subway car.

Listen - subway riding is the ultimate socialist experiment, and that means that once you step on the car, you're all in it together. And if there is breathing space to be had in the middle, even though you have to reach up to hold the pole and you're getting off in two stops, then you need to step on in.

The attitude of the Subway Douche goes to one of the key tenets of douchiness: thinking I'm better than you, and therefore, I can do whatever is most convenient for me, even if it's inconvenient for you. 

Along these lines, and it might warrant a separate post later, on an escalator... walk on the left, stand on the right. 

How to Break Up like a Douchebag

I almost titled this post, "Guilty Pleasure Douchebag," or "Crying like a Douche" because, omg, did you see The City last night, and did you see how Olivia tooootally blew her presentation, and then Jay --

But what would we learn from that. So instead, I want to focus on a lesson we can all learn from this episode. How to not break up with someone like a douchebag.

See, Jay has to go out of town for a few months to tour with his really bad Aussie band. And he wants to bang lots of chicks while he's gone, which kind of makes sense, if you're an Australian chick. Anyway, rockers going on the road is old news. Couldn't he just drop the old, "let's see other people line."

Nope. Jay (holding back tears) "It's not that I don't care about you and you don't mean everything to me, because you do, it's just that I just need to be by myself."

Yeah, by myself, with the exception of those chicks I'll be banging. They'll be with me too. So not really by myself. And you don't really mean everything to me. You mean a television career to me, and fifteen minutes of fleeting fame. Which is close to everything, for a douchebag, anyway. But not like, everything everything.

The Guy From Dateline's To Catch a Predator

His name is Chris Hansen. Total douchebag.

His claim to fame is ambushing child predators on television. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of child predators. But the lengths of the setup this guy goes to dangerously straddles the line of entrapment. All for television ratings. 

He sends the police in at these guys like they're mass murderers, tackles them, and then begins his smug on the spot interview. Now, is Chris Hansen actually doing anything meaningful on a grand scale to rid the world of child predators - say, helping stop the global sex trade from eastern europe and the south pacific? No. He's tackling guys from New Jersey and asking them, in smooth, dulcet tones, why they like little girls.

Plus, tell me that guy does not have date rape eyes. If only his fraternity walls could talk.

Driving like a Douche: Vanity License Plates

Vanity license plates are super-douchey. I feel like there's no need to say much more. But I don't want to leave any open questions on this one.

If you have vanity plates, you paid extra for them. You paid extra money for a license plate. It was important to you that your license plate make a statement, so you paid extra.

If you need to make a statement with a license plate, something else is not working out for you. You might want to see a shrink.

But not the SHRNK above. Honestly, would you trust your therapist if they told you they had vanity plates? No. You wouldn't. What's more, some other douchebag got the SHRINK plate with the "i" before this douche. So not only is this guy a douche, he's a slow douche. It's a whole 'nuther level of doucheyness.

As for TV CAT. Let's see - he's trying to tell us something. Ummmm, he works in television and drives a Jaguar? Ding, ding, ding. But I bet he doesn't work in television anymore, because he got fired for being too much of a douche.

Got it. No Vanity Plates. Unless they're about the Boston Red Sox. Then I make an exception. Because nothing about the Boston Red Sox can ever be douchey.

Douchebag Move: Keeping Your Bluetooth in Your Ear All the Time

It's a douchebag move. If you're not talking on the phone, would you keep a phone on your ear? No. So why's that thing still in your ear.

Don't pretend it's comfortable. It's not. I have one. It feels like a Q-tip is stuck there, but not far enough in to provide that Q-tippy, orgasmic pleasure. I take it out as soon as I'm off the phone.

And it reeks of laziness and self-importance. Ohhh. I get sooooo many calls. My phone is ringing off - the - hook. C'mon dude, when the phone rings, reach into your pocket, put the thing in your ear, and talk. When you say goodbye, put the thing back in your pocket. 

While we're at it, I'm adding a sub-category. If you're not listening to your iPod, put the headphones away. Don't keep them in your ear, or around your neck. We're all proud of you, you have an iPod. Okay. Are you happy now?

Douche of the Day

The Douche of the Day (DoD) is a quasi-regular feature of The Douchebag Blog (DbB), where we feature a known celebrity exhibiting an extreme level of doucheyness. Today's Douche - Rush Limbaugh.

Rush is the kind of douchebag who is easy to spot. He's usually found in a crowd of other douchebags, for starters. He's also a pill addict who talks down to drug addicts. He's a right-wing blowhard who has no qualms stirring up the waters for the sake of stirring up the waters, and does nothing but instigate contentious debate where there is no solution but his own. Most of all, when spotted, he inspires the cry "What a douchebag."

It is important to remember not to engage a douchebag of this magnitude, for it is when he is engaged that his doucheyness becomes an unstoppable force. Instead, isolate the douche, let him flourish in his small douche universe, and keep a watchful eye for the spreading contagion. Yes, doucheyness is contagious.