Monthly Archives: May 2014

Why Men Look Up To Tony Montana

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Scarface

Tony Montana is one of those rare figures in popular culture who crosses racial boundaries. He’s played by Al Pacino, who is an Italian acting as a Cuban who would later inspire a generation of black and Hispanic guys to create hip-hop tributes that will be listened to by white suburban kids.

He is the kind of world-class criminal a lot of men would aspire to be if they were ambitious enough. They envision living the fast life of cocaine, killing cockroaches that cross them, and having scantily dressed women fucking them because they have tons of cocaine. Most give up those high ambitions and settle for mind-numbing office jobs with free snacks and synergy.

Yet Tony’s inspiration lives on. Single males across the country have a Scarface poster hanging on their bedroom walls this moment. So why does this ruthless criminal inspire so many of even the most upright of young men?

 

1. He’s Self-Made

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Take one look at a guy like Tony Montana and you know he didn’t grow up in the suburbs. His default facial expression consists of a scowl, and his trademark scar is an indicator of his street-thug roots. Like many people seeking to escape Castro’s grips, he headed to America to start a new life via banana boat to engage in free black-market capitalism.

“Me, I want what’s coming to me,” says Tony as he drives his Cadillac.

“Oh, well, what’s coming to you?” asks his right-hand man Manny.

“The world, chico, and everything in it.”

Tony is a man who is going places and is nearly delusional about his potential. He doesn’t let the fact that he is without education, power, money, or influence become roadblocks. Tony uses the tools he has—balls, decisiveness, and street smarts—to help him overcome every obstacle.

He’s shrewd and cunning, quickly moving up from a small-time crime syndicate’s foot soldier to running Miami’s most powerful criminal empire. He epitomizes a version of the American dream to which many downtrodden youths can relate: coming from absolutely nothing and transforming yourself into a total boss.

 

2. He’s A True Family Man

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Tony shows up at his mother and sister’s house one quiet night. It had been years since he had seen them. He had purposefully held off on seeing them until he was a success. He wants them to be proud of him and know that he has made it.

He proudly gives his mother $1,000. “Who did you kill for this, Antonio?” she inquires. She knows well what kind of man her son is. She rejects his blood money and ends up kicking Tony out of the house. Even after that, Tony has tremendous love toward his mother and tells his sister Gina to slip her some money a little at a time so she won’t notice.

He’s highly protective of his little sister, Gina. He constantly keeps his eye on her and attempts to prevent other men from getting close to her. This speaks volumes to men who feel extremely protective toward their little sisters or cousins. He may be overbearing in his protection of her, but it shows that his love for his blood is true and strong.

3. He Sets His Own Values

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“All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don’t break them for nobody, you understand?” It is an outlaw ethos that has been echoed for the last 30 years by many an inspired male. Tony lets you know that even though he is a criminal, he is the type of criminal who does crime the right way. He only fucks over those who deserve it. If you weren’t Tony, you know you’d want to be in his crew because you’d have one of the best bosses around.

“In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.” Tony knows business comes before bitches, that a man must focus on what is good for himself and his future. Figure out how to get yourself ahead of the game and not worry too much about random pussy. This is tougher to do for some men than others, as his his sidekick Manny is constantly giving in to la mamacitas.

Nowhere else does Tony exemplify his rock-solid values more than when he refuses to allow the killing of the wife and kids of a man he was supposed to assassinate. He feels that’s the coward’s way of conducting business and refuses to let the assassin detonate the bomb by placing a bullet through his skull. It was a fine case of hip-pocket executive decision-making.

 

4. He Got To Fuck The 1983 Version Of Michelle Pfeiffer

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While any version of Michelle Pfeiffer is sexy, feminine, and alluring, the 1983 model of her was a pristine example of female beauty.

“I say she’s a tiger. She belong to me,” Tony states to her. While Tony knew to put money before bitches, he also knew that if had the right one by his side, he could go to the top. When he saw the one he wanted, he went after her. He was not too shy or nervous. He didn’t wait for her to give him hints. He didn’t care that she wasn’t interested in him. He went for her for like the boss player he is.

No one intimidated Tony. He had a high sense of confidence in himself and displayed it again and again and thus winning over such a fine woman. He had mountains of coke and she was addicted to coke, so he kept her rolling in it. It was a coke dealer’s style of bringing your girlfriend flowers every day.

Maybe he wasn’t the good guy in the legal sense, but he was the best at what he did. He told off the true bad guys, the corporate thieves and corrupt politicians: “You need people like me so you can point your fuckin’ fingers and say, ‘That’s the bad guy.’ So what that make you? Good? You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don’t have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.”

He died in a hail of bullets, taking out as many motherfuckers as possible, his body center stage for all the carnage surrounding him. Most men would dream to go out with such style.

~Raul Felix

You can read more of my work at Thought Catalog

Images – Scarface

The Jack Off Line: How To Decide Whether It’s Better To Hook Up Or Jack Off

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In a man’s ignorant youth, when he is a horny boy who will fuck a pile of rags, he tends to be indiscriminate regarding pussy. All he knows is that hooking up with a subpar chick is better than jacking off.

It’s a fair system: Mediocre girls get to fuck around with guys who won’t settle for their likes once they grow and become more accomplished, while guys get some practical, hands-on experience with real chicks. These are glorious times for subpar chicks, because they get to ride a cock carousel of overeager young men who have yet to establish a set of standards. Even if he isn’t really into her, he’ll find a few features to focus on: big ass, big boobs, cute face, or a cool personality coupled with the ability to suck a mean cock. It’s a golden era of sexual exploration that is filled with grand victories and embarrassing hookups for the budding male.

Then there are the dredges of the female gene pool, the ghastly hags who scour the Earth in search of weak males. Their mere presence is enough to cause any self-respecting man’s dick to crawl up inside his body in self-defense lest he accidentally trip and fall into the fatal abyss that is her vagina…they lack any type of redeemable feature that could possibly give a man a chub…they are somehow able to weigh 300 pounds without having tits or ass…they are ugly as fuck, have a terrible personality, and no enthusiasm for sucking cock. These females fall below the Jack Off Line.

The Jack Off Line is a litmus test where a male has to ask himself one simple question: “Would I rather jack off than hook up with this girl?” It’s the bare minimum acceptable level of attractiveness a female must possess to make her worth a one-night stand.

Most of the time, the answer is obvious. Of course we would rather fuck a girl who looks like Halle Berry and has hint of wonderful Chanel perfume than jack off. Of course we would rather jack off than fuck a girl who is morbidly obese and whose breath reeks of McDonald’s, boxed wine, and Cheetos from two days ago.

Where a man’s Jack Off Line begins is subject to variables such as age, experience, personal tastes, degree of desperation, and the quality and quantity of his sexual prospects. While there is a small percentage of guys who are studs from the get-go and can secure some pretty hot chicks at an early age, most guys are not like that. In fact, when they’re first starting in the hook-up scene, most guys’ Jack Off Line lies somewhere between girls who are a 3 to 4, as I’ve illustrated in this handy chart:

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The Jack Off Line’s threshold is tricky and treacherous terrain for a young man to navigate. Alcohol and desperation play a critical role in transforming a chick that is horribly unfuckable into a valid candidate for a hogging mission. Alcohol lowers his initial inhibitions and standards enough to give this female monstrosity a fairer shot than she deserves. In long dry spells, desperation for a female’s warmth and contact override his common sense and sense of sight, smell, and taste.

The Jack Off Line is never 100% static. Only through many years of trial and error is a male able to finely calibrate where on the 1-10 rating spectrum his own personal Jack Off Line lies. He learns to not only focus on the orgasmic payoff of getting laid, but to also consider the cost—time, resources, reputation, or the chance to hook up with a more attractive female if he had only been more patient.

Those of us who are able to survive the early trials and tribulations of fucking fat chicks, butterfaces, and shady bitches without knocking them up or becoming trapped in their webs of deception become hardened and salty. We slowly develop a newer, higher set of standards for ourselves. As we grow and more women begin seeking our attention, our Jack Off Line likewise rises. Where before we would have fucked a 5 without giving it a second thought, she now is no longer even worth investing the amount of time needed to get her into bed for even the few minutes it takes to fuck her.

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Fucking a girl who is on the cusp of The Jack Off Line is not the goal of any man who actually gives a fuck about the quality of his life. When he’s out to get laid, of course he’s going to go for the big prizes, but there will be times where he fails to catch such chicks’ attention. Then he’ll look at that homely—but for some strange reason, slightly sexy—5.5 across the bar. He’ll know that he can snag her with minimal effort. Then he’ll ask himself: “Would I rather jack off than hook up with this girl?”

~Raul Felix

Keep reading my stuff on Thought Catalog

The Harsh Realities of Teaching English as a Foreign Language

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Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) has become an option for many disillusioned recent college grads when they realize their Humanities degree is not that high in demand. You can qualify to be a TEFL teacher with nearly any type of degree. You will fantasize about how you’re going to enlighten foreign minds, but like anything else, reality will set in. Luckily for you, English Teacher X is a salty-as-fuck veteran of this mysterious world. He has written several books and been blogging about it since 2005.

Raul: English Teacher X, you’ve been TEFL for 15+ years now. What’s the biggest difference you see now between new, cherry English teachers and when you were a newbie in the 90s?

ETXEnglish Teacher X: Of course, there are a lot more people doing it now in general, but surprisingly, I don’t see that much difference. Still plenty of middle-aged whoremongers/wife-hunters, plenty of young backpacker types, and plenty of clueless youngsters in search of a Real Authentic Cultural Experience. You’d think there’d be fewer clueless people with the Internet and all, but there are still plenty of wide-eyed innocents, many of whom end up ripped off but with a few interesting stories to tell the folks when they go back to working at the Cheesecake Factory. One thing you see a lot more of these days is middle-aged women getting into it for a midlife career change after a divorce or whatever. Eat, Pray, Love syndrome. My friend in Dubai says he sees a lot of them, and a friend in Peru says the same thing. They’re often also looking for romance—men are not the only ones unhappy with the dating situation back home.

Raul: What kind of “Authentic Cultural Experience” do most of the youngsters look for, and what is the harsh reality?

ETX

English Teacher X: Oh, you know, the usual—they think they’re going to learn the language and befriend the locals and such and go to traditional ceremonies and such, but they generally find that the only people who want to speak with them either just want to practice their English or rip them off somehow. Or have sex with them, maybe.

Raul: You spent nine years in Russia from 2000-2009 in an industrial wasteland you’ve named “Vodkaberg.” Russia changed quite a bit since those days. You mentioned that the same Vodkaberg doesn’t exist anymore. What changes have occurred?

ETXEnglish Teacher X: Oh, man, well, it’s pretty much a 180-degree shift. When I got there, they loved foreigners, especially Americans and Europeans, and everybody loved to drink and smoke and party, and people were very cynical about work and the government. Everybody was extremely sexed-up, and there was a lot of prostitution going on. People had very little hope for the future. There was very much an atmosphere of “Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Now, shit, it’s like the Reagan 80s. First there were a lot of rules limiting alcohol consumption—no more drinking on the streets, can’t buy alcohol after eleven, can’t drink on trains, etc. Then depictions of homosexuality in the media. With the Ukraine thing, Putin has stirred up the patriots and the nationalists, and even one of my slutty, foreigner-loving female friends there was lecturing me last night on Skype about how everything in the American media about Russia is a lie. People want to work hard to get the Toyota Corolla and the iPhone. People do take care of their health a lot more, though, I guess, which is a good thing. I read yesterday that Putin is banning some of the Russki mat—curse words—from movies, theater, and TV. He seems to be trying to create a Puritan republic in response to the excesses of the 90s and early 00s. Oh, and in addition to that, to show the attitude of Russians recently—a friend and I were trying to talk to some Russian girls in Dubai last week and one of them told us, “I don’t talk to Americans anymore because of the international situation.”

Raul: Damn, so Russia is losing its unique Russian ghetto charm; what a shame. Where could a young, hopeful, future TEFL type go to get the same crazy social atmosphere as was prevalent in Vodkaberg during your stint there?

ETXEnglish Teacher X: Of course, your social life is what you make of it and anybody going to Eastern Europe can probably find enough alcohol and sex and general wackiness to satisfy them. But the kind of blind worship of foreigners—that’s hard to find these days. You’d need to go someplace that has endured a long period of isolationism and protectionism. North Korea, Cuba, Belarus. Just in general, the kind of places that are experiencing the sort of rapid economic growth and social change that Russia experienced during the 00s are places in the Middle East, and I hear people talking about places like Turkey, Ethiopia, and Lebanon a lot. Recently somebody sent me an email asking where the best place to go to have that experience would be and I answered, “Just go anywhere that people tell you not to go because it’s too dangerous.” I remember buying the train ticket to Russia back in 2000, and the women at the train station in Prague told me I was crazy; they would kill me. They didn’t, although not for want of trying.

Raul: Any random advice for any aspiring TEFLers?

ETXEnglish Teacher X: Well, I was thinking today that while TEFL is not much of a career choice, it probably combines well with your various possibilities for “location independent” jobs like freelance writing or running an eBay store or an affiliate site or whatever. As a teacher you’ll probably have enough free time to work on something like that, but you’ll always have something to do to meet people or to fall back on if your Internet job punks out for some reason.

~Raul Felix

Check out more of my writing at Thought Catalog

3 Ways To Use Obstacles To Your Advantage

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Dreams and aspirations—we all have them, whether you want to be a world-famous writer, a doctor, a captain of industry, or an international playboy. You set off on a journey to fulfill your dreams because you’re a fucking Billy Badass and nothing is going to stand in your way.

Then reality decides to be a dick and stands in your way. Your submission to XoJane gets rejected because it wasn’t angry enough and only mentioned rape culture twice…or you fail your Intro to Biology class…or you can’t even work up the courage to talk to that cute Latina chick. You sit there deflated, wondering how the gods could be so cruel to little special snowflake you.

Luckily for you, Ryan Holiday’s new book The Obstacle Is the Way provides a time-tested formula inspired by the great Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It teaches you to not just overcome your obstacles, but to leverage them to your advantage. Drawing from historical examples of people who were way more important than you or I, he separates the book into a series of characteristics, philosophies, and values that a person must have to hopefully join their ranks or at least give it the good ol’ junior-college try. Here are three that stuck out to me.

1. Follow the Process

You’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize.

When we read an enriching novel or an article that makes us think and see things from a new perspective, we are experiencing the fruits of the writer’s extensive labor. We don’t see the process. We don’t see the writer as he reads book after book, learning from his mentors who may have long passed. We don’t see his first attempts of forming an original thought or sentence that is totally unreadable. We don’t see him as he learns the difference between the overreaching of vocabulary and using it in a seamless fashion. We don’t see him as he struggles, staring at the blank screen to formulate his next witty phrase.

By focusing on the little things, the fine details, the nitty-gritty aspects of what you’re trying to accomplish, you make the task much more manageable and feasible. Those little mundane parts—when done right and compounded together over the course of time and constant repetition—will create a road to the grand success of which you dream.

2. Do Your Job, Do It Right

Everything we do matters—whether it’s making smoothies while you save up money or studying for the bar—even after you already achieved that success you sought. Everything is a chance to do and be your best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.

When I was in 2nd Ranger Battalion, there was the Ranger standard that must always be met or you would be kicked out and sent to the big Army. It governed our lives: how we conducted and trained for combat, physical fitness, appearance, and acceptable behavior. In every aspect of being a Ranger, you were expected to do your job with a high level of motivation, competence, attention to detail, and eagerness to improve. It didn’t matter if you were going on a direct-action raid, doing a live-fire exercise, jumping out of an airplane, cleaning the barracks, policing up brass, mowing the quad’s lawn, fast-roping out of a helicopter, or doing your morning physical training session. Your ass better be giving it your all, or you were going to get your balls crushed.

I was a mediocre Ranger who barely survived being in battalion; nothing exceptional compared to some of the no-shit legendary men with whom I got to serve. But it instilled a strong work ethic in me. Taking pride in doing even the simplest jobs right—however trivial, mundane, and unglamorous they are—prepares you to take on the larger and more glamorous tasks when they are set before you.

3. Build Your Inner Citadel

No one is born a gladiator. No one is born with an Inner Citadel. If we’re going to succeed in achieving our goals despite the obstacles that may come, the strength in will must be built.

The world doesn’t give a fuck if you succeed or not. In fact, the world wants you to fail. If you want to attempt anything grand and not live a life of quiet desperation like so many poor souls, it will require you to be physically and mentally tough. Neither one of these attributes is built overnight.

Physical strength and toughness will better prepare you to deal with the obstacles life places in front of you than if you are scrawny or fat. Many “intellectual” douchebags who look down on the physically fit fail to see that the discipline needed to get to that point helps strengthen the mind and will.

Mental toughness will let you handle and overcome any obstacles that seek to wage psychological warfare on you. It gives you the capacity to think through them and find solutions. It gives you the ability to face down the naysayers, the haters, and the nonbelievers. It will help you say, “Fuck you” to them and drive on.

You need to change your mindset in how you view obstacles. They aren’t always negative; they can bring opportunity if you’re bright enough. This book will help you forge a mind that not only can power through them but can also squeeze out every drop of benefit from them.

~Raul Felix

You can read more of my articles on Thought Catalog