Required Reading: “John Cole is Space Awesome” Edition

There are a lot of reasons I love reading Balloon Juice’s John Cole.

He has a passionate zeal about him, which is not so uncommon in a political blogger. But unlike most other political bloggers, he never tries to hide who he is as a person; he is unafraid to let you see the man behind the words, even when he himself doesn’t love what he sees.  His musings on his appearance (to which I can relate far too easily) are refreshingly human and honest for any blog. The lexicon he has written for Balloon Juice is so entertaining it’s worth a read even if you have no interest in the rest of the site.  And his love for his animals is infectious.  (This is even true for his cat Tunch, despite the fact that Tunch is so unnaturally gargantuan that I suspect he is either photo-shopped, or is actually an over-stuffed taxidermy project that John pulls out and poses for random posts.)

But mostly I love reading John Cole for moments like this:

As many of you know, I live in a small college town, about a block from the bar and a block from a big frat house. Tonight, apparently the frat boys were having a party, so after the bar closed there was a stream of drunken idiots yelling and hollering and throwing bottles and the like on their trip from the bar, so I did what I normally do- I sat on my porch with my high powered flashlight and shined that bitch on the loudmouths until they became quiet. I have a lot of elderly neighbors.

Then a bunch of real meatheads came by, I asked them to be quiet, and they told me to go fuck myself and to “shut up fat man I will fuck your fat wife, this is a college town.” So I did what most reasonable people would do- I told them to come over to me (“Come here, tough guy…”). They did, I asked them their names, and then I asked them if they were hungry and thirsty, invited them in, fed them some lasagna and a bunch of water, and we watched some tube and I talked to them for a while. I explained to them that I have one neighbor who is 65+, another who is in her 80’s, and that yes, this is a college town, but there is just no reason to be loud and a douchebag just because you are young. I also had it noted on the record that I, myself, had had 3 vodkas and a couple glasses of wine, but I felt no reason to be in the middle of the street yelling. Why? Because people who can handle their drink actually act like, well, adults. Not to mention no college girl wants to deal with a sloppy, violent and out of control drunk.

We ate, we watched a little Dumb and Dumber, we shook hands, they left, and they were quiet on their way home. All in all, I think this was more productive than getting in a fight or calling the cops. Maybe they even learned something.

This is how this dude rolls. Of course, it helps being bigger than most of the young punks, but it still helps being patient with idiots. I used to be one.