Manly Cards

Voicemail from Ryan

Another drunken masterpiece!

Play Voicemail from Ryan

Awkward Injuries

Everyone's gotten an injury in a less than heroic situation at some point in their lives. Here the Manly Cards partners share their stories.

Chris "The Stew" Stewart
Stew man starting the day just like any other day. Roll out of bed, grab a PBR tall boy and do some calisthenics for 22 minutes (no more, no less).  After my raucous workout, I set off to hit the shower and scrub my junk. Hop out of the shower and to my surprise there is a jaguar (my wife’s cat) sitting on the floor. I pick up the jaguar and make it purr like a motorboat. If you don’t know anything about jaguars, when you drop them, their claws come out instinctively. I wish I would have known this myself before making this fatal error. I dropped the jaguar and the claws came out like switchblades. One of the claws nicked my nutsack on the way down leaving me in hysteria. My nuts were bleeding all over the place and I had to get dressed to go to work. I couldn’t put on clothes because I didn’t want it to look like I was menstruating so I had no other option than to use a shaving styptic pencil to stop the bleeding. After singeing the wound on my nutsack, I continued my day as if nothing happened. I flexed in the mirror for 88 minutes then drove to work.

  

Ryan Ehrlich
When I was playing high school football, I dislocated my shoulder a couple times and as a result, had to get shoulder surgery. The hospital kept me overnight and after not peeing for about 18 hours, my bladder was bursting at the seams the next morning. With very limited mobility and only one good arm, I called the nurse to ask how I should go about relieving myself. Fully expecting old lady Edna from the night before, I am shocked when a hot twenty something coed walks in the door. I am further shocked when instead of helping me to the bathroom, she suggests she can just hold a container while I stand bedside and pee in it. Well, at this point I had two options, be a wuss and ask for the bathroom instead, or whip out that donger in front of her and make it happen. With one arm I clumsily undid my hospital scrub pants (hoping like hell they wouldn't fall to my ankles), whipped it out, and...suffered from a major case of stage fright.  After what seemed like 20 minutes, I finally got the urine flowing and escaped one of the most awkward moments of my life.

John Fontana Fong Fitchwell

2006 when I just started driving a lot of hours in the car for work coupled with my weight lifting gave me a mild case of internal hemorhroids. So, when I reported the irritation I had to the doc, they sent a stool sample kit to use and send in to make sure I didn’t have some sort of cancer or something. Then came the real fun. I visited the doctor and was told to strip down into one of those gowns. The doc comes in and has me lie sideways on the table and now I’m feeling very awkward and nervous about what is about to take place...which, as you can guess, was a little finger up the pooper. Initially it wasn’t very painful, and then he basically curled the finger inward and I let out an “Oh Shit!" Well, there wasn’t anything major and I just had to use some of that cream for a month or so and was right as rain.

Jerry "50" Sabatini
Mine must be the toe.. I think thats probably the winner.  The circumstances are pretty kick ass, though not necessarily awkward. I was trying to give John a swirly, which is why we were wrestling in the bathroom. Wait, I think that clears it up -- the wrestling in the bathroom part is pretty awkward, right?  Do you want a more descriptive passage?

Scott Frye
The Chevette parked, I flung open the door and leapt out with excitement. I rounded the car and set my sights on the prize…a Hills shopping store. The wonders within Hills called to me...soft pretzels, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Icees, the rocket quarter ride. Shoelace untied, Damn! Once finished, I noticed my mom and brother had gotten a little ahead of me so I dashed to catch up. Once I caught up to them I kept on truckin’ and turned to give my brother the business for burning past him.

 

I wake up in an ambulance and have no clue as to what’s going on. So I ask, “What’s going on?”. “You were hit by a car,” the paramedic tells me, “and we’re taking you to the hospital to be checked out.” I let this sink in for a second and then asked, “What kind of car?” “A Gremlin,” the paramedic responded, “green”. Damn! I had been cheated out of a soft pretzel and Icee by a green Gremlin! The smirk on the paramedic’s face as he told me of my assailant confirmed my fears: he too thought I was a wuss for getting dominated by a Gremlin. I closed my eyes and began to cry.

Adam Vagley
I have a story very similar to Ryan's, but I haven't copied anyone since I wore that keyboard tie in 5th grade after I saw Jeremy Bukowski wearing one, so I'll go with an original: when I was in college, I decided to sled off a landing that had a 10 foot drop and then turned into a steep slope. My theory was that momentum would carry me over the drop so I would hit the slope sailing. I had to go head first because there was a railing around the landing and if I went feet first I would have clotheslined myself with cold steel.

So I got a running start, dove onto my sled, went over the edge and promptly nose dived into the ground. I ended up impacting two bones in my left wrist (that's when the bone smashes in on itself, which feels delightful). Man everyone who saw that sure thought I was cool. And I got to wear a cast during track season.

Going Big Time

By: Adam Vagley

 

"They keep time very well." So said my dad to me about a number of military-style watches he had bought on eBay from some guy in Japan. "How many did you buy?" I asked. "Oh, just a few," he responded.

 

For most people, this might be an atypical conversation, but it's fairly standard for me when the conversation involves my dad, better known as Big Time. Why is he known as Big Time? Because no other human operates on his level.

Communications tend to be typed and snail mailed to me on his company letterhead. He finishes each letter off by typing "Dad" but also signs "Dad" just above the typed version. I receive several of these letters every week, usually containing articles from the Wall Street Journal and advice to keep my resume updated. Recently, he sent me an envelope full of Tylenol with directions on what to use it for, since obviously after a lifetime of branding I don't know what to do with those little white tablets. If you don't believe me, you can view the letter here.

For my sister's college graduation years ago, he had a picture of her freshman year dorm building sent to a cake company on the west coast, which made an enormous cake in the shape of her dorm. To actully transport the cake back to the east coast for the party, he had to buy an airplane ticket for the cake, which got its own seat so it wouldn't be smashed.

 

Two years ago, my dad found a guy in England who did scale models of buildings, using the actual architectural blueprints and the same materials. Since he loves New York, he decided he wanted models of the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building for his office. They would have been roughly 7 feet tall and cost several thousand dollars each. The guy had blueprints of the Chrysler Building but not of the Empire State Building. My dad wanted the pair or none at all, so he asked two of my roommates, both architects, to find the blueprints for him so he could complete his quest. Luckily, they were far too busy to look and he eventually forgot about it.

 

Back around Halloween, Big Time sent me a giant pumpkin hat, and a few months ago he sent me the pillowcases shown below. I am 28.

Most recently, for my birthday, I received a giant snow globe of New York. I offered to return it but my dad just told me to put it on my shelf. He is a master deflector. When he got me buttons featuring the seal of my alma mater for a blazer (I don't actually own a blazer) and I tried to give them back, he told me to keep them for my kids someday. 

I have a collection of cuff links even though I don't wear french cuff shirts. They sit next to my collection of business cards embedded in lucite. I have a letter, on my dad's letterhead, several pages long detailing the difficulty of embedding my first business card, which kept fading because of the heat of the embedding process.

I have successfully avoided taking possession of chairs featuring the seals of my high school and college, as well as a giant red Cornell rug. Big Time gets pissed at me when I tell him I don't have space, telling me he's "not going to hold on to them forever."

 

As I get older, I'm realizing that I am in many ways just like him. A couple years ago I planned on dropping $1,000 for a 10 foot long fiberglass marlin to hang on the wall. Only a lack of cash prevented that from happening. I later looked into purchasing 3,000 lanterns, the minimum order size, from some guy in India just so I could get the dozen or so I wanted for my roof deck. Being relatively poor also dissuaded me from that adventure. And one of my main goals in life is to build a pirate ship with paintball cannons and attack cruise ships, something most people would say is ridiculous but I think is a great idea...I mean, the advertising would take care of itself. I can only hope my bank account catches up to my good taste.

Served

By: Chris “The Stew” Stewart

 

Twenty seven years, five months, and 8 days have brought me to this point in my life. A point on which I will someday reflect and say that it was my greatest accomplishment or I will wallow in despair due my overlooked hubris. One thing is for certain though: this day is bound to live in infamy.

 

I picked up my silver watch and bound it to my wrist like a prison shackle. While tying my laces to my new Puma sneakers, I couldn’t get over the uneasy calm that I felt all over my body. It was as if my veins pumped novacaine from my core to my extremities, rushing dull soothing relief to the anxiety that I earlier experienced. My head felt as if in a fog and detached from both my body and reality. Never before have I been so on edge and so at ease at the same time. I took my coat off the brushed nickel rack as the door closed behind me.

 

Twenty minutes later I found myself at my predisposed destination. Passersby went about their business as if this day was trivial and without consequence. Maybe to them that was the truth, but with so much at stake it seemed unnerving that they lived life in that manner. The other members of this monumental occasion collected together and started performing ritualistic, almost mechanical, practices that led way to what was about to transpire. The ground was covered in a soft smooth brown material that was necessary for a successful venture. The stage was set, the event to come.

 

The other group involved in this affair began to set a gauntlet that many would believe to be impossible to overcome. Moving fast and smooth they brought out thunderous hoops and hollers with their break dancing skillz. Popping, locking, head spinning twists, and a crass attitude, they brought what they could to the table. They had made the argument that they owned the rights to these streets; however it was now our chance for rebuttal. 

 

As my crew descended to the predetermined arena, we scorched the earth with our moves. Hips were moving, bodies were flying, and jaws were dropping as far as the eye could see. We struck the arena like cannons and ravaged the battleground till the rivers ran red with the blood of the innocent. Never before has there been such a slaughter. Our crew showed once and for all who the best break dancers are in this town, and the losers held their heads in lowly shame. Uproars from the crowd deafened the street noise as we reigned supreme. Echos of the word “Served, Served, Served, Served” were shouted as we walked triumphantly passed our thwarted counterparts. As I passed the leader of their group I entered his personal space and quietly yet poignantly stated, “You got served” thus ending a bitter and drawn out feud between us. I then ate a power bar and went to work.