Friday, November 26, 2010

I promised a Childress write-up, here it is.


So, I've been chewing on this Brad Childress thing for a few days now, trying to come up with an angle, and while I have come to the conclusion that the man looks disturbingly like Gerald McRaney, that's not an opinion--that's just a fact.

I find the disintegration of the Vikings interesting in the same way I find ant farms interesting. I don't mind watching, and when they're on the active side I'm even sort of curious about what's going to happen next, but I don't actually care much about what happens to any of them. But as I've searched the internet in a quest for a stance regarding Brad Childress' new unemployed status, all I've really seen is how big the anthill really is, and by “anthill,” I mean “group of people who go crazy when you poke their colony in the middle.”

There are people who are happy. There are people who are sad. There are people who are blaming Favre, and people who are trying to predict what Leslie Frazier is going to do, and people who are wondering what other coaches might be behind the eight ball. One standout opinion has been offered by Darren “Doogie” Wolfson, who avers that the Vikings should have kept Childress in a master plan to lose for the rest of the season in order to set themselves up for better draft picks next year. This is a fantastic Moebius strip of an idea; I can't tell what's wrong with it but I just know that it's completely retarded somehow.

Since I can't find it in me to care about Childress within the context of the NFL, the only thing left was to look outside of said context. From what I can tell, he seems like a thoroughly unpleasant person and somebody who really deserved a good firing. But no man is an island, so I started wondering about how Childress' getting fired would affect his family. This meant I had to figure out whether he had a family. It occurred to me that he might not; some people don't, after all, and he is a belligerent 54 year old man who up until recently was working an 80-hour a week job and alienating everyone who had the misfortune to work with him. I was more or less expecting to find out that he had two or three successively younger ex-wives, and maybe an estranged kid or two.

So I was mildly surprised to find that Childress has been married to his high school sweetheart for the last thirty years (and still is). Her name is Dru-Ann, but apparently they come from a part of the country where people think that's okay. They have four children, at least one of whom has kids of their own, and according to this “article,” which was written to make Brad Childress seem cuddly and endearing, they all get along just fine. Of course, that “article” was published in July of 2009, at which time Dru-Ann was speaking optimistically about her husband's contract with the Vikings being extended. I guess I could make a joke about that, but it seems like a cheap shot to mock somebody when you're in the future and they're not.

Anyway, I could care less whether Brad Childress ever works again or not, but there are people in the world who have a vested interest, and one of them is named Dru-Ann. I don't know how much money Childress made because I don't care enough to look it up (because I'm sure that information is easily available), but I know that it's enough to pay alimony. So, Dru-Ann, here's my advice to you. Maybe you actually like your husband and maybe you don't but either way, you should leave him. You'll be guaranteed a good living and you'll probably get to stay in your house.

As for Brad, it's all up to him, but you'll be giving him a lot of really great options that won't open up unless you leave him. You guys could get together and have a reality show on Bravo, documenting your divorce proceedings. If he does ever get another coaching job, you'd have to move again, and that's a hassle, so breaking it off now will save you a lot of headaches as far as that's concerned. And if you make him unhappy enough and he doesn't get a new job, I'm sure they'd be happy to include him on Celebrity Rehab in a couple, three years.

As far as the Vikings are concerned, I feel that their best shot at this point would be to get themselves set up for a good position in next year's draft.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Back on the...Horse? Field? ....Sports metaphor...?


Despite the fact that one time I posted a new Ok Go video to Facebook before any of my friends did, I would generally describe myself as the opposite of an early adopter. Due mainly to the fact that I have extremely bad credit, I have learned to let other people waste their time and money finding out what things are going to catch on, and then jumping on board once they already have. There are drawbacks to this:

“Holy cow, I just started watching the greatest new show. It's called the Simpsons. Have you heard of this thing? Hilarious!”

And now I'm the dweebiest dweeb. On the other hand, timing is everything:

“Oh my god. Have you seen Golden Girls? No, but like, recently? As an adult? That shit is really funny!” The important thing to remember in this case is to always add, “I mean ironically, of course.”

God gave us irony so that we would never have to reveal what dorks we all truly are.

-------

Anyway, due to my long-standing “late adoption” policy towards trends, I constantly find myself sampling things that other people have been loving their entire lives, which for one reason or another have remained outside my purview. In the last year alone, I have discovered that I like lobster, Nethack, Kurt Vonnegut novels, Jordan Jesse Go, Frontierville*, and iced tea.

You know what isn't on that list? Football. I stopped writing after week three of the season because I just didn't care. Roethlisberger back on the field? Sure. Michael Vick playing well, then suddenly injured? Them's the breaks. My fantasy team keeps losing because I can't remember to bench my players when they're on a bye week? No surprises there.

I had to stop writing because I felt like I was living a lie.

So why am I back? Why am I giving it one last shot? I'll tell you why. Because every week, Facebook sends me an email, and tells me about activity related to Writing the Bench. And for some reason, people keep checking on it to see if I've done anything new. And I remember the time that my sixth grade class flew all the way across the country to Washington DC, and we stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and my principal—the principal of the whole school—chose me to lead a hundred and twenty other sixth graders in reciting the Gettysburg Address, and I had to whisper to him that I hadn't bothered to learn it. And when I looked in his eyes, I saw his disgust. Not only at me for being lazy and not doing my homework, but at himself, for thinking that I was good enough to be the star of his Lincoln Memorial show. He didn't say anything, but he still let me know that I was a failure. That is the shame I feel when I see that someone has actually checked the Writing the Bench Facebook page and I know I haven't written anything for two months.

I may be exaggerating.

What I'm saying is, expect a post about Brad Childress in the next couple of days, but I'm not saying I'm going to like it.




*Seriously, you guys. Be my friend on Frontierville on Facebook. I'm only like, twenty percent joking about this.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Listen, you guys. I have writer's block.

I'm sorry. I wrote nothing after week three and in the last 48 hours I've started like, four different essays that have gone nowhere.

But I feel like it's important to say that Michael Vick's recent injury is strong evidence for the existence of a loving God, because Ben Roethlisberger is going to be playing again next week and if the two of them were both playing it would create an excessive amount of active evil in the state of Pennsylvania.

Friday, September 24, 2010

He's not just the Quarterback...


One of the luxuries we are afforded, living in a first world country in the twenty-oneth century, is the leisure to care way too much about non-issues, and I for one would like to express my gratitude that I live in a nation where we are all free to take time away from making sure that our nation is fed and housed to worry hard about how strangers are dressing, and whether celebrities get rehabbed. It is in that spirit that this past week, our nation has come together to marvel over and pray about Tom Brady's hair.

Tom Brady's hair definitely looks stupid right now, everybody agrees. And searching on the internet you can find lots of pictures, plenty of mockery, and a quote from Brady himself in which he states, “You'll have to ask my wife [about the hairstyle].” But no one seems to be going to the root of the problem—why is Brady sporting the bowl cut? Faced with a dearth of information, I am here to speculate with you. Here are some possible reasons for the hair, that I came up with:

One: Popular wisdom tells us that the simplest answer is the most likely to be true, and there are millions of people who have reached the obvious conclusion that Brady is suffering from Bieber Fever. This would also explain the comment about his wife. Not many people know this, but Giselle Bundchen is a practicing Christian Scientist, and if Brady were to take antibiotics to cure his Bieber Fever, she would divorce him. Some are denouncing her as a hypocrite for this; there are unsubstantiated rumors that she herself used a topical cream two years ago to treat her Timberlake Shingles.

Two: Brady's forward-swept bangs totally conceal his forehead. Could this be because he has something to hide? Possibly. My favorite possibilities so far are the Mark of the Beast, or a lobotomy scar.

Three: This may be just a transition phase. Hair takes a while to grow, you know. Maybe the mop top is just a coincidence, and what Brady is actually trying to do is grow his hair all the way out like Clay Matthews, to see if it will give him the same superhuman strength (for the record, the long hair will give him superhuman strength, but it won't be the same superhuman strength as Clay Matthews).

Four: It's a fake meltdown. You know, like Joaquin Phoenix had to make us all hate him, and then revealed that it was all a put on to make us hate him more. Like that. No big. Let's all laugh about it!

Five: It's a silent protest. Remember in Ender's Game, how he thinks he's playing a video game the whole time but at the very end of the book he finds out that all of the spaceships were (spoiler alert) a real army and he was sending real people out to completely destroy an alien race that hadn't ever shown any signs of aggression? That's how Tom Brady felt when he found out about the illegal taping. So he was like, “All right, Bill. I'll sign this new contract for $48.5 million dollars, but I won't cut my hair until you stop cheating.”

You know, the more I think about it, that's got to be it. I bet Bill Belichick is throwing away all his cameras right now, crushing them with golf clubs so he won't be tempted to use them anymore. So expect Tom Brady to get his hair cut any day. Also, expect the Patriots not to win anything this season.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Week Two Status Update

So, Week Two of the season has ended and people are actually asking me for a status report, which is very flattering.

Let me first say that the season began just in time for this blog to survive. I had a very rough summer; if it had been rough and interesting in a way that was funny, I might take up the space to regale you with hilarious tales. As it is, it was rough in a way that my husband has been able to make funny. As for me, have you ever seen a cat that has been systematically tormented by children for so long that it twitches all the time and it starts trying to eat its own tail and all of its fur falls out in strange ways? That's how I feel when I look back on this past July and August, and I've spent the last three weeks just trying to smooth out my metaphorical fur, so I'd rather not write about it. In a year, maybe, I'll tell about the terrible play I was in with an asshole costar, and the sixty-hour work weeks, and it will be delightfully amusing because it won't be actually happening.

So lately thinking about football, which does not come naturally to me, has not been as high on my list of priorities as taking naps and enjoying days when I don't have to go to work (in the month of August I only had two days off, and they were because I was forced to call in sick due to injury). Nobody discovered my brilliantly hilarious early entries and offered me a book deal, so I was ready to just quietly let it go. But football season was just starting, and fortunately I had enough real football fans around me (read: boys) to keep the dream alive, though admittedly anemic and feeble.

So here's how we're doing: I love my fantasy football team. I love it. I am proving to my husband's friends week by week that you can put together a team of guys with silly names, and refuse to draft any player with a girlfriend you don't like, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a complete embarrassment when it comes to the scores. You will almost certainly not win, I certainly haven't, but Chad Ochocinco and Knowshon Moreno are doing very well so far, and Golden Tate is making a nice showing as well, whereas Reggie Bush (who used to date Kim Kardashian), was not only shamed into returning his Heisman Trophy this past week, but was also injured in the Monday Night Game and will be out for at least six weeks, so maybe Lousaka Polite wasn't such a bad pick after all. Manners are never overrated. I will have to drop Chris Cooper, though. He's been so busy giving a powerhouse performance in The Town that he hasn't even been playing. I should have learned by now that people named Cooper don't ever really play.

I like watching football more than I used to, but I like it more with other people. I think this might prove that I'm not a real fan yet—I know more than one guy who has to watch his team play without anyone else around, so that he won't be distracted from thinking as hard as he can at the television to help his team win. I still watch the game like I'm at a baby race—I don't care about the score so much, I just get really happy whenever I see someone running the direction they're supposed to go.

I didn't get to watch a lot of football this weekend, but here are some things that I learned just from Week Two: Peyton Manning can beat Eli Manning, even though Eli is the one with the most recent Super Bowl ring. In the fight of brother against brother, the South has triumphed against the North. Randy Moss can catch a football with one hand. And the Denver Broncos have an attractive retro argyle pattern in their end zone, so if they ever make an episode of Mad Men where somebody needs to go to a football game, they could totally do it in Denver.

Monday, September 13, 2010

After Week One, a Domestic Interlude

Now that football season has officially started, my husband is thrilled to have somebody in the house to talk about the game with. I was having trouble thinking about how to write about this first weekend of the season, and he was trying to help me out. Here's how it went:

Husband: Well, what do you think you learned this weekend, from watching?

Me: Um, I learned that football is much more interesting to watch if you either care which team wins, or if you're watching Red Zone.

(I usually do not care which team wins, having no home team loyalties. Red Zone, for those of you who may know, is a channel which shows nothing but football all day Sunday with no commercials, and switches between all games that are playing at once. Whenever a team gets close to scoring they switch to that game to see what will happen, and whenever a particularly exciting play happens anywhere, they switch to that game to replay the moment and cover the aftermath. If you have no vested interest in any particular game, it's the perfect way to watch football, because it's never not interesting and the football never goes away. I have been trying hard to watch the evening games so far, but if anything else grabs my attention, I'm gone. It's an uphill battle. I'm not saying that Frontierville on Facebook is fun, exactly, I'm just saying that when I play it I forget that I'm supposed to be paying attention to the Chiefs kicking the Chargers' ass.)

Husband: What else?

Me: Um....I think that's it, actually.

Husband: How about that Michael Vick is still one of the best players in the league, despite having spent all that time in jail?

Me: Well, Vick was good yesterday, but I didn't really know how good he was before.

Husband:
Okay, that's fair. What about this—you learned Drew Brees is dreamy.

Me: Oh, I've known that since he won the Super Bowl in February. He's super dreamy.

Husband:
Fine then. How did your fantasy team do?

Me: Okay, not great. The Ravens defense did a good job. How about you?

Husband: I'm worst place in the league. The Chargers are still playing, you know. You should pay attention.

Me: Hang on, I have to chop down this tree.

Husband: You know those games are stupid.

Me: I know, but if I get one more neighbor I can build a barn! Please be my Frontier Neighbor!

Husband:
No.

Me: I hate you.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Game One Report, a Little Late

There is a sequence in To Kill A Mockingbird in which Atticus tells Jem and Scout they have to go over to some old lady's house and read to her every day, which they do. However, after Jem has been reading for only a short time, the lady is no longer able to pay attention to him, and then she goes into convulsions for no reason that the children are able to see.

While watching the Saints/Vikings game on Thursday night, I felt a lot like that old woman. The first quarter was interesting, I could actually follow what was going on, Drew Brees was playing well and it was easy for me to watch. I felt like a really good student, and as I saw what Brees was doing, it made me want to see Favre get the ball to see what he would do with it, to compare and contrast. Would their styles be noticeably different? Would I be able to tell whether Brees was doing well on his own or depending on his offensive line, by watching how the Vikings offense compared?

As it turns out, I ended up with no idea. I don't know if my attention span needs to be built up, or if the commercials took me too for out of the game, or if Brett Favre has just aged into the least compelling quarterback alive, but I couldn't keep my eyes on the screen after the first quarter. I take heart from the fact that most actual fans only keep one eye on a game while they're doing something else, but still, I'm a little disappointed in myself.

I work on Sunday but I plan to watch the night game, and some of the guys who are on my fantasy team will be playing, so maybe I'll feel more of a personal stake in what's going on. And maybe it won't be boring. That would be nice, I think.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Fantasy Football, just in time!

I hate Dungeons and Dragons. There, I said it. Can't stand it. Never could. Tried hard in college to like it. Failed. Lost the ability to be friends with people who played it.

You'd think that Dungeons and Dragons would have been tailor made for me, especially during my late teen years. I was a fantasy geek. I was a drama geek! What could be more appealing than sitting around with my geek friends pretending to be wizards? I did really like the idea. I had a brief flirtation with the SCA when I was about sixteen that probably would have blossomed into love if the Association Chapter had actually been in the same state where I lived.

Anyway. It turns out that D&D is less whimsy and creative teamwork than it is thinking of ways to magically fuck your friends (both figuratively and...well...figuratively, I guess) and then argue about whether it's legal in the “universe” of the “game.” Oh, and don't get me started on dice. I don't care how long ago it was or how young you were, if you have ever been excited to own a new set of dice, we have nothing more to say to each other.

I realize that fantasy sports is a whole different sort of game for a whole different sort of person. But it still involves using complicated math to determine a reality that does not exist, and for that reason I do not trust it. However, in the spirit of getting into the spirit of things, I went ahead and joined my husband's fantasy football league/ Here is my team:

Quarterback – I'm not a complete idiot, and I decided that if I was going to do this fantasy thing I was going to be in it not to lose it, so my first pick for quarterback was Drew Brees. Unfortunately, I picked sixth in my league's live draft and he got taken before that (no surprise). So I went with Matt Ryan. Ryan's a solid pick; as a matter of fact, he's so good I can't make a joke about him. It's like Meryl Streep and TMZ. They don't bother following her because there's no dirt there. But if there were, it still wouldn't hurt her career at all--she's that damn good. As a backup QB I picked Tyler Thigpen, because he's my favorite.

Wide Receiver – Since Drew Brees got snapped up immediately, I used my first pick to go with Chad Ochocinco, who my husband has dubbed the patron saint of this blog. I don't care what anybody says, I like Ochocinco. He's a little bit dumb, he's a lotta bit crazy, and he's really, really good at football. So there. I went with several backup wide receivers, which seemed like a wise choice because there are more receiver slots on the fantasy team than any other position, and craziness in a celebrity is delightful to me, but may lead to a professional athlete getting suspended from play. So I backed up the Och with Dez Bryant (also delightfully crazy and probably risking some kind of suspension in the upcoming season), Golden Tate (normally well behaved unless there are donuts nearby), and I picked Pierre Garcon and Mohamed Masssaquoi as a package deal in honor of the memory of the French and Indian war.

Running Backs – My running backs are Ricky William, Knowshon Moreno, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Lousaka Polite. I don't know anything about any of them. I hope they're good.

Rest of the Team – I picked Chris Cooper as my single defensive player because he was fantastic in Seabiscuit. I mean, I love that guy. He's a chameleon! You practically can't recognize him from one movie to the next. Boo Robinson is everybody's favorite character from To Kill a Mockingbird, so I was lucky he didn't get drafted before I could get to him. For my defensive line I went with Baltimore because (as I've mentioned before) they seem to have had more books written about them than any other NFL team, and I like that sort of intellectual initiative.

The only players left on my roster are Jason Witten as the tight end and Rob Bironas as kicker. I don't remember why I picked either of them, as I don't really remember doing it and I don't recognize either of their names. I think I just needed to fill those slots and they were the highest-rated players still left.

Anyway, there are no pictures or links with this post because I've procrastinated writing it for a good week and now I'm scrambling to get it up before the opening game tonight. And I'm missing Project Runway to watch it, so I hope Drew Brees is grateful.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Rookie Roundup!

English is a funny language. The rules of grammar and spelling are erratic and difficult to learn, and in many cases, what we think of as standard spellings now were just arbitrary choices selected from multiple spellings which would have been acceptable in the Middle Ages. For example, you would expect “one who is celebrated” to be a celebratee, just like “one who leases” is a lessee, and “one who is kidnapped” is a kidnappee. But instead, “one who is celebrated” is a celebrity. I am sure that the etymology of the word rookie is on the internet somewhere, too, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it means “one who is rooked.” Anyway, now that everybody's got a game under their belt, I thought we'd check back with some of the rookies who caught my eye a couple of months ago.


SAM BRADFORD –
Bradford was the number one draft pick this year. He went to the Rams, who unless something very unexpected happens, seem to be putting him right in the starting quarterback position. Now, far be it from me to tell anybody how to run their football team. But let me just say that when I worked at Pottery Barn in 2005 and half of our managers suddenly quit at the same time (one got married, one moved back to Oregon and one got a role in a movie, since I know you were wondering), they hired this woman named Rita to run the store, and I think they made her the manager because she had sort of nice clothes and she was about fifteen years older than anybody else who worked there. And I don't know what she did before Pottery Barn, I think she was somebody's secretary or something but I know it wasn't retail and anyway, she didn't know how to put together a schedule and we all hated her and what I'm saying is, you shouldn't put somebody in charge if they have no experience because the Beverly Hills Pottery Barn crew of 2005 probably wouldn't have beaten the Vikings either if Rita was calling all the plays.

But seriously, Sam Bradford is supposed to be pretty good.


ED WANG – Dude, I was so excited about Ed Wang. The first Chinese player on the NFL. And then he went and injured his hand—in practice; it wasn't even a game—and he had to have surgery, so he's on the injured reserve list indefinitely. Some overachiever he turned out to be.



TIM TEBOW – Tim Tebow is the Justin Bieber of football. A million people seem to be going nuts over him, but I never seem to meet any of these people one on one. I know what he theoretically does, but I've never seen him do it and I don't know if he's actually good at it. And he gets a lot of publicity revolving around his hairstyle, which doesn't look good anyway no matter what he does.

Tebow, like Bradford, played for a losing team this weekend, but at least Bradford was a starter. Tebow came in as a backup and didn't play until the end of the third quarter, but on the other hand, he did actually score a touchdown, so that's something. He's probably already in negotiations to star in a reality show on the Disney Channel during the off-season.


VICTOR CRUZ – I had never heard of this guy before. He's so unknown that nfl.com doesn't even have a picture of him. But one of my husband's friends (who has repeatedly declined to read WtB, by the way) is spooging all over Twitter about him so I thought I'd hit my Google button. Here's the story: He went undrafted this season and then got hired as a wide receiver by the New York Giants, who let him practice with them because they had a little extra room and were polite but distant when asked about how he was progressing. Then when they played their first preseason game against the Jets, he caught three touchdown receptions.

Let me say that again slowly, for the non-sports-fans: on three separate occasions, the quarterback (Eli Manning, and then Jim Sorgi, after Manning cut his head open and needed 12 stitches (true story)) threw the ball and Victor Cruz caught it, and then proceeded to run all the way to the end of the field and score a touchdown. According to The Internet, the last time that happened was in 1998, and the person who did it was Terrell Owens, who is now on the Cincinnati Bengals with Chad Ochocinco, and now they both have reality shows on Vh1 and they beat Sam Bradford's ass this weekend.

And so now I know a guy in Massachusetts who roots for the New York Giants and wants to have Victor Cruz's baby. It's pretty gross.


Oh, and also? Still no word on whether Brett Favre is staying retired or not.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

So, what's the deal with preseason?



Do you remember the first season of Seinfeld?

All right, smartypants. Would you remember the first season of Seinfeld if you didn't have all nine seasons on DVD?

Unless you were actually a cast member on Seinfeld, you probably don't. And that's okay. Very few people watched Seinfeld in its first season. It was on Wednesday, for Pete's sake! But that was back in the days when it was all right for a show to not have too much audience to start off with, as long as it didn't offend anyone too much, and the networks still felt like they were only competing with the other networks, and if a show was pretty good they knew that people would find it and then they'd put it on Thursday so people would watch it.

Unfortunately, those days are gone now. Either your show has vampires in it, or it's Mad Men, or it's canceled. Case closed. Nobody's got time for a loser, Arrested Development!

Now, if this blog were about baseball, we could Seinfeld around for a while, write some episodes that didn't make a lot of sense, lose a few games, and be fine. The baseball season has approximately nineteen hundred games a year! Who cares if you lose a couple dozen?

In football, there's no time for shenanigans. There are only sixteen games a season (contrast this with 22 episodes of Two and a Half Men, the most successful TV sitcom of all time). And with only sixteen games, there's no time for dicking around. If you're on that field, you better know what's up.

But the NFL commission is merciful. They realize that the pro game is different from college and their rookies might need a game or two to learn the ropes. They understand that a lot of veteran players are coming back from long vacations with their families, or short jail sentences with their families, or moderately paced reality TV shows with their families, and they need to readjust to not having their families around. They totally know how it is for the coaches to readjust the dosage on their prescription meds to deal with their new game-season schedule.

So this is what preseason is for: After everyone has had a couple of weeks to practice, but before the games start to actually matter, everybody plays four games that don't count. These games serve many purposes, but they all basically fall under the tent of “Yeah, but how do they actually play?” This is a chance for rookies to play pro for the first time, it's a chance for coaches to see who will freak out and need to be fired, it's a chance for Brett Favre to retire again, and it's an extra bonus chance for anyone and everyone to get injured right off the bat.

Most importantly, it gives everybody four chances to lose, and how often do you get to lose something before you even start?

I myself have been injured this past week and I thought it would be a great chance to watch some football after all this abstract research, but we can't afford the NFL network and ESPN was airing the Little League World Series, so no dice. But I have been keeping an eye on the scores and game results, and I was pleased to see that all four of my division favorites won their first preseason game. I was even more delighted to find out that the Miami Dolphins quarterback is named Tyler Thigpen. He's a backup quarterback and he didn't score any touchdowns, but that's my kind of name.

Keep it up, Thigpen! Let's make every irrelevant game count!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

It's PRESEASON!!!

They're finally playing! And I hope it's good because I still don't like sports.

Real post soon (probably).

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Favre-a-pa-looza


Most people, if asked, would probably say that it is difficult to define exactly what makes a legend. That's because most people are ignorant. The laws of legendhood have been very clearly defined since the beginning of time:

One, you must be extremely fierce, like Cleopatra, Napoleon, or Tyra Banks.

Two, you must spend a lot of time with the gays, like Cher, Bette Midler, or Alexander the Great.

And three, you must go on at least three farewell tours, like Barbra Streisand, Odysseus, or Kiss.

Brett Favre is halfway to being a legend, having achieved one and a half of the three requirements. To be fair, anyone can hang out with gays (although I'm pretty sure Favre is falling short on this one), and fierceitude is an inborn quality—like physical beauty, it should be thought of as a blessing rather than a virtue.

It's impossible to know when, if ever, Favre will be able to overcome the homophobia I am hereby attributing to him. Seriously? I heard he wears two pairs of underwear whenever he has to play against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, just in case. So while he's working on that with his therapist, he's throwing as much energy as he can at his remaining challenge, and upping his farewell tour count (here's the actual timeline, if you're interested):

Practice retirement, 2006: Favre asks the Green Bay Packers where they want to go to dinner. They respond that anywhere he picks is fine with them. He says he's hungry, but not in the mood for anything specific. The Packers say he should just pick anywhere but do it fast because they're getting hungry AND bored. They decide together that Favre will continue to play for the Packers in 2007.

First real retirement, 2008: Favre and the Packers visit the NFC Championship together, but the NFC spends the whole time making out with Tom Brady (who goes on to be humiliated at the Super Bowl), and Favre realizes that the magic is gone from his football career. He breaks up with football and tells the Packers not to call him anymore. But then he realizes he doesn't have anybody to go to the movies with and it sucks going alone, and now that the Packers aren't around all the time there's nobody to pop the zits on his back for him. Still, he can't stand to lose face by crawling back to the Packers, so he starts throwing the idea out that he might be willing to be like, maybe friends with benefits with some other team.

No dice. The Packers still hold Favre's contract and they're not going to release him. They're as sick of him as he is of them, but they'll be damned if they're going to see him happy with anybody else. So with the desperation of a true addict, Favre returns to Green Bay. The Packers laugh in triumph, spit in his face, and trade him to the New York Jets.

Rebound retirement, 2009:
Favre enters his relationship with the Jets with all the zeal and passion that any 38-year old man would have with a new, more attractive, and much younger partner. Unfortunately, once the sparkle fades and they get used to each other, Favre realizes that the Jets don't have a whole lot to talk about, and don't remember any of the same bands or TV shows from growing up as he does, due to the age difference. He just doesn't have the patience to listen to Lady Gaga anymore. It isn't working out. He calls it quits. Apparently the contempt is mutual, because the Jets grant him an unconditional release, no questions asked.

Triumphant Re-return, 2009: The Minnesota Vikings send Favre a folded-up note. He unfolds it to read, “DO U LIKE ME? CHECK YES/NO.” He stews. He sighs. He controversially announces that he has no wish to cause controversy. He skips training camp, instead working out with the local high school team in his home town. He realizes that sleeping with high school cheerleaders is a felony. He checks YES. And then he goes to the Vikings, surprising everyone by playing the best season of his football career. He is non-committal about returning for the 2010 season, because he just “doesn't want to feel tied down, man.”

Present-day, 2010: I'm not really sure whether Brett Favre retired at the end of 2009. I don't remember it being announced, but then, if it was, I wouldn't have been paying attention. What he has officially announced is that his ankle is hurt, but if it heals, he will come back to the Vikings. Personally, I think he just doesn't want to do training camp any more. But all signs point to him still being in good shape otherwise, so it probably won't be a bad move on the Vikings' part if they take him. And the Vikings won't even play the Buccaneers this year unless they both make it to the Super Bowl, so Favre won't have to worry about staying up all night before any of his games.


Also, there's this.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

What passes for interesting in Ohio these days.

O.M.G., as the kids say.


Have we talked about the Cincinnati Bengals? I don't believe that we have had a chance to discuss the Cincinnati Bengals. So, let me tell you about the Cincinnati Bengals. It's a pretty good story.

So, once upon a time there was a man named Paul Brown, who didn't want to do anything but win football games. Unfortunately, he wasn't a very good player. But he was smart and determined, and by working hard and sticking to his goals, he became a coach. He coached high school football, then college football, and finally, when Cleveland decided to field a professional football team in 1946, they not only asked Paul Brown to be the coach, they even named the team after him. The Cleveland Browns. It's awesome ideas like that that have made Cleveland the cultural Mecca we think of it as today.

Paul Brown won lots and lots and lots of football games in the 1940s and the 1950s. All of Ohio loved the Browns, and people in Cleveland were so happy they almost forgot about the “living in Cleveland” part of their lives. But as time passed, it turned out that Paul Brown was kind of a jerk. He was mean to the players on his team, and made them practice in the snow while he stayed in his car with the heat on. Other teams would call to offer his assistant coaches better jobs for lots more money, and he would burn the messages so they wouldn't find out. There were rumors that persist to this very day that he didn't like black people. Paul Brown wasn't smart enough to not bite the hand that fed him, so after a decade and a half of being an asshole and two solid years of regularly insulting his boss, Art Modell, Brown was told that his services would no longer be needed in Cleveland.

He was angry. Some stuff happened.

And in 1967, like a Phoenix rising from the Middle-American ashes, Paul Brown announced his return to football as the owner, general manager, and head coach of a new team, the Cincinnati Bengals. So from the very beginning, the Bengals have cherished a spirit of condescension and spite towards their fellow NFL teams. Blah blah blah forty years something something Boomer Esiason which brings us to today.

For the last nine years, the Bengals have fielded (that's right, isn't it? fielded?) a wide receiver who came to the team as Chad Johnson. In 2006, Johnson asked to be allowed to wear a jersey reading “Ocho Cinco” instead of 85, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. When this was ruled outside uniform regulations and thus unacceptable, Johnson, in the true Bengals “fuck you” spirit, had his name legally changed to Ochocinco, had the changes made to his jersey, and was fined $5000 by the league. During the 2010 off season, he starred in a reality show entitled Ochocinco: the Ultimate Catch, which has now aired three episodes in which nobody seems to truly imagine that any of the women on the show will ever be romantically involved with Ochocinco. Other than that, the show is pretty good. My current favorite is Ericka, who looks exactly the way that Jennifer Coolidge looked in Best In Show. You can tell she loves soup.

A great deal of Chad's time on the show seems to be devoted to gauging the deceitfulness of the individual women, and believe you me, these women are full of deceit. On the very first episode, Chad invited his good friends Terrell Owens and Some Other Football Player to a ball (yes, a ball, like, the dancing kind), where the three of them assessed Ocho's prospective mates and then convened to rank them. And while all of this was going on, Terrell Owens asked one of the girls for her phone number. He told Ocho he was pretty sure he would have gotten it if there hadn't been cameras everywhere, because the girl kept saying, “I can't give you my phone number because there are cameras everywhere.”

You see? Deceit! Trickery! Drama! And now----

Terrell Owens is joining the Cincinnati Bengals!!

So, that's pretty awesome. They're both wide receivers, they're both getting a little old for the game, and they're both famous drama queens (TO has his own reality show that comes on after Ochocinco's, but I don't watch it because it doesn't have weekly eliminations).

So we'll see how this goes. What I'm really hoping for is some kind of crossover with the Kardashians.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Holy Cats! Football!


All right, guys. It's starting for real. Football season. I can't pretend any more, and I can't slack off, no matter how much time I spend mincing around in plays that literally no one will come to see, no matter how hard my husband tries to convince me that he is worth paying attention to, no matter how many sleepless nights I suffer worrying about getting my word count up.

Training camp starts this coming week, and it's time to get down to business. Real news is starting to happen. Nfl.com (my main source; check it out) has begun speculating about each team individually, and suddenly the amount of information I've been ignoring for the past six weeks has multiplied exponentially. It's time to get on the stick and see what a few key teams are getting up to in order to prepare.

NEW ORLEANS SAINTS – It's vital that we take a look at the Saints because they won the Super Bowl last year, so they're currently the collective Kings of the Football Mountain. The main news story about the Saints is whether or not they will be able to win the Super Bowl again this year, and the consensus is: probably not, because it is very rare for a team to win two Super Bowls in a row. I just saved you a lot of non-actual-news reading. You're welcome.

MIAMI DOLPHINS – The Dolphins, as previously chosen, are “my” team (although I am seriously reconsidering this choice due to remembering how much I hate all things Floridian (also I still know basically nothing about the Miami Dolphins)). The thing to know about the Dolphins this year is that they have a new coach, and it is Mike Nolan. Nolan is famous for the “suit issue”-- Nolan's father was an NFL coach back in the days when looking classy was still a thing people did, so when Nolan Jr. was first appointed to be an NFL coach, he wanted to wear a suit on the sidelines as a tribute to his dad. This was not allowed, due to the fact that so few tailored suits bear NFL logos. They later decided to give Nolan a pass, and let him wear a suit on the sidelines twice a season. I have no idea whether or not he can coach.

BALTIMORE RAVENS – I thought I'd check up on the Ravens because of the books I've checked out of the library regarding the NFL, two of those books were coincidentally about the Ravens: The Blind Side (tangentially—the book is about Michael Oher's life previous to signing with the Ravens), and Next Man Up (entirely—John Feinstein Jr. followed the Ravens through their 2004 season). So I feel like I know a little bit about the Ravens. As it turns out, I do not. I think I know all of the individual words on their camp preview page, but together they make absolutely no sense to me. One thing I will says about the 2010 Ravens: Awesome, awesome names. Here are a few: Anquan Boldin, Lardarius Webb, Cam Cameron, Terrell Suggs. Full points for creativity, Raven moms!

DETROIT LIONS – The Detroit Lions are so well known for being consistently awful that even I know about it, so it's kind of fun to like them in an ironic, hipster kind of asshole way, but it's a tragedy for anyone who was like, born in Detroit and thus obligated to follow the Lions as their home team. The big question for the Lions this season is, will they stop sucking? My answer is that I certainly hope not, because comedy. The “experts” have written up an optimistic profile for the Lions on nfl.com, but it sounds like a company trying to convince its shareholders that their utter lack of profit is nothing to worry about. Oh wait. That's exactly what it is.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Ocho Cinco Ultimatum


One of the sweetest slash strangest compliments I have ever received was given to me by a ninth-grade girl when I myself was about twenty-three. She said, and I quote, “I love the way you talk because you always sound like somebody out of Shakespeare or something.” As delighted as I was to be told such a thing, I realize that it is far from true. And it's not that I don't ever speak in iambic pentameter (because I frequently do), but because I only have one bed and it's not that good.

But I still choose to boast about this years-old compliment now, because I think it helps to illustrate the impression I give to people who know me only slightly, even today. I use lots of big words. I listen to public radio. I read books—in public. Any or all of those things might be presented as a reason for why people are surprised to find out that I also enjoy watching reality television.

Now, I'm not an indiscriminate viewer; I won't watch just any unscripted television show. Most of them, I don't know if you know, are basically crap. BUT NOT ALL.

Allow me to present to you: Ochocinco: The Ultimate Catch.

To be fair, this show does violate my number two rule of reality series that I will watch, as normally I boycott television shows that offer people as prizes. It is not right to treat human beings as objects that can just be handed out willy-nilly to the skankiest rose holder. I care strongly about this issue and I had to do a lot of soul-searching before we set our DVR to record The Ultimate Catch, but since I have made a decision to watch the show, I want to allay the doubts of any of you out there with similar misgivings:

Nobody who has ever, ever won a romantically themed reality show is still with the person they competed against multiple other empty-souled fame whores to win. Not the winner of Rock of Love, not the winner of Flava of Love, not the winner of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, or the winner of I Love New York, or I Want to be Friends with Paris Hilton for Some Godawful Reason, or Sure, I'll Have Sex With Somebody Who Lost On a Different Show. None of them.

So I'm sure that as soon as they finished taping Ochocinco: The Ultimate Catch, he went right back to the open arms of his waiting girlfriend.

Five days after writing this, I realize that I have nothing to add just yet. I'm watching the first real competition episode right now (last one was the pilot), so expect more on this tomorrow.

Kiss the baby, as Ochocinco would say!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Warming up the Bench!

The best way to make something happen in your life is to make other plans.

Like, for example, maybe you get a fun idea for a really silly blog regarding a topic that you know next to nothing about. You set to with a will, going gangbusters for a good couple of months, impressing no one less than yourself with your sparkling wit and consistent work ethic. And then, just as your job gets busier for the tourist season, you get cast in not one but two plays (neither of which you will earn any money for doing, mind you) so you're never home to spend time with your husband and when you are you fight because the house is a mess and you start to suffer anxiety attacks because you haven't had a real day off in over ten weeks. Just as a for instance, you understand.

On the plus side, the children's play will sell out the theatre.

What I'm saying is, I've been busy. The timing was actually pretty good because it's still the preseason, so there hasn't been a lot to talk about in the football world. I have been spending lots of time on the bus, reading up on Pete Rozelle and Howard Cosell and Howie Mandel and the 2004 Ravens (except for Howie Mandel—I just threw that in for scansion), and I could have written book reports, I guess, but as much as I enjoy increasing my nerd factor I think I'm done with looking backwards here at the Bench. I don't regret the break; I needed it and the players needed it. I don't know anything about you, but I'm going to say you probably needed it too.

I hope you're all rested up because pretty soon things are going to get busy. The various teams are going to be starting training camp by the end of this month and kicking off the preseason on August 12, which gives me exactly one month to figure out how I'm going to afford an NFL cable package. But that doesn't mean that we, the fans, have a month to rest.

Our season begins tonight. And it's all thanks to Chad Ochocinco.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Mini-post: Yes. Yes it is.

I am waiting for the employee shuttle to take me to the train station at the end of my work day. As is my usual habit, I am reading a book, as a sign that I do not want to be engaged in conversation. As is equally usual, I am approached by one of my least favorite coworkers.

Coworker: “What are you reading?”

Me: “A book.”

Coworker: “You're funny. No, what's it about though?”

Me: “It's called Next Man Up. This writer followed a football team around for a year to see what it was like behind the scenes.”

Coworker: “Wow. So you must be like, really into football.”

Me: “Not really.”

Coworker: “?”

Me: “I'm trying to learn about football. It's for a blog that I'm writing.”

Coworker: “Oh cool. Well, that's one way to learn. Reading.”

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Football vs. Futbol: An Analysis


There are two sports I have always enjoyed watching on television: billiards and soccer. I find them both to be very relaxing to watch, in the same sort of way as a particularly interesting screen saver. It is one hundred percent unnecessary to know the rules, and I rather prefer not knowing, as I can set my own imaginary criteria for what the game objective ought to be and then be pleased or disappointed accordingly.

So this year, I have been greatly disappointed to not have had any time to watch any of the World Cup. I love the whole idea of the World Cup. It's a worldwide event, and it only happens every four years, so it still seems like a really big deal when it does (think about it, Olympic Committee). I think that that has a lot to do with why even people who usually don't care about sports, or at least don't pay any attention to soccer, can get really hyped up about the World Cup.

Watching all the excitement around me in a predominantly Latino area, I have spent the week pondering the differences between the world's “football” and American Football. There is no denying that soccer has cooler origins. First of all, ancient. It was developed hundreds if not thousands of years ago in South America. Second of all, as comparatively effete as it seems now, this game was originally extremely bad ass, as the “ball” would be provided by a conquered enemy, in the form of his severed head. The gore is a thing of the past, but modern players have replaced the warrior mentality with playing style filled with guile and trickery, strategically pretending to be injured more severely than they are or luring an opposing player close for a surprise head butt. As a spectator, I just like watching everybody run back and forth and making it look easy, without me having to know anything except where the ball is. It's easy. It's nice.

American Football, in comparison, doesn't necessarily look like a worse sport. It's just so...American. Football players are huge to begin with, and then made larger by all the insane padding they wear (people occasionally point to the soccer players' lack of padding as proof that they are tougher, but let me point out that soccer players are also allowed to dodge). American football can claim barely a century's worth of New World history, and professional football only a little over eighty years—less than baseball, or even volleyball, which was devised in 1895 as a game for pussies who didn't want to go outside.

One of the things I've noticed as I've been studying the game of football (American Version) is how whenever a player is mentioned, his position is mentioned as well, and not just as a quick point of reference, but as a complete description of a human being. If you tell a sports aficionado that a baseball player is a pitcher, they know he throws fast. If you mention a shortstop, they know he's got good reflexes. If you mention that a football player plays left tackle, they can reply back with a good approximation of his height, weight, and possibly shoe size. There's a rigidity to it—each player is a component of a larger whole, like a cog in an engine, or a single episode of LOST. It can't be a coincidence that both football and assembly lines were invented and perfected in the American Midwest—they were conceived by the same philosophy. An American philosophy.

I am intrigued by this assembly line/football analogy and I think I may return to it, perhaps in my next entry. For now I am pleased simply to have discovered in it the fundamental difference between what Americans call football and what Americans call soccer:

When I watch soccer, I see a group of individuals working together, but when I watch football, I see a team.

Soccer flows of its own accord, it is organic. Football requires the co-operative functioning of many parts; for lack of a better word, it is mechanical.

Soccer fans wear out their lungs blowing into vuvuzelas, but football fans bring air horns, which provide a far more obnoxious noise with a fraction of the effort.

And finally, American football almost never ends in a fucking tie.

Happy World Cup, Everybody!

Friday, June 11, 2010

A piece of fiction, inspired by true events.

BEFORE YOU READ, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION:

This post was inspired by the recent actions of Seattle Seahawks rookie Golden Tate, as well as the novels of Stieg Larsson, who would be a much, much better writer than I am if he were not dead. You should also know ahead of time that my husband did not think it was funny. And there will be another football history post in the next few days, so we'll be back to normal.


Agent Linquinetta Andrews* was enjoying her cover as a night baker at Top Pot Doughnuts. She had been there for more than a year, and she liked the job. She enjoyed the peace and quiet of the shop and kitchen in the nighttime hours, before the other employees showed up and the place was overrun by hungry morning customers. She liked the work of shaping the various doughnuts each morning and getting them fried. It was always fun getting them into the display case; watching the empty trays fill up with Top Pot's “hand forged” doughnuts, and thinking about how excited people were to come in and buy them. Linquinetta considered how many of her colleagues were working in Afghanistan and China, and thought that she could have been doing a lot worse for herself.

At 3am, she had just begun frying the morning's doughnuts. She set a batch of maple bars out to cool, and as she switched her now greasy pair of latex gloves for a fresher set, she realized that the garbage hadn't been taken out. Better to do it now, before she forgot and things got busy. She set a doorstop in the back door of the shop so she wouldn't get locked out; even though she would be away from the door for a few minutes, the shop was on the ground floor of a condominium complex and no one was able to get in from the street, so she wasn't concerned about vagrants or hoodlums sneaking into the store while her back was turned.

She realized her mistake when she came back, after only two or three minutes. As she started to open the door, she could hear voices from inside, and they were not voices she recognized. Linquinetta paused for a moment and listened, trying to decide what to do. There seemed to be two men, young. Probably drunk—they sounded like they were having a grand old time.

Her personal inclination was to go in and teach them a lesson. There were always plenty of potential weapons in a kitchen, and even without the butterfly knife and the taser she always kept on her for emergencies, Linquinetta's krav maga training made her more than a match for up to three opponents in a typical situation. But she maintained her discipline. If these guys hadn't been sent for her, violence on her part would only blow her cover. She crept closer and listened hard. The intruders were definitely not professionals; no one with any training would have ever made that much noise. For a moment she considered simply taking them out quickly and disposing of the bodies, just in case: a quick jab in the neck with her keys should do it. Then she remembered that she had left her keys in the kitchen. There was no way to get them without being seen.

“Aw, hell naw,” She breathed to herself. Now she was angry at herself, for getting so soft. A year ago, she would never have left her keys unprotected. If the boss found out about this, she would be disciplined. And she'd deserve it.

As humiliating as it was, she knew the best option was to let the local police force handle things. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911.

“Somebody just came in here and stole a bunch of shit,” was how she described her emergency to the 911 dispatcher. She couldn't help adding, “And now my keys are missing.”

“What did they steal?”

“They came in here and stole some donuts. And they stole my car keys, my keys to the building, and my house keys.” Not to mention one other key that she had better not lose, but she refrained from mentioning what that one would have opened.

“What do you need?”
Amateurs.

“I need you to send some cops here to make sure people don't steal shit.” Come on.

As it would turn out, the “criminals” were a local NFL rookie and a buddy, and they had just wandered in by following the smell. They hadn't taken anything more than a few doughnuts, and the whole thing turned into a bit of a joke. Linquinetta didn't see the humor.

On the other hand, she knew better than to dwell on something that wasn't worth it. She needed to go home and get some sleep. Her grandson's birthday party was that afternoon.

*Name invented.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Okay...almost defeated. Or, Madden 2009 Redux.


So I haven't been bothering anyone to read my blog for a while because I've had three big blocks to actually writing in it for the last three or four weeks:

One, a total dearth of football news. Lawrence Taylor did kidnap a girl in what I can only assume was an attempt to begin a slave auctioning service (like the one in Taken, where they sold teenage girls to rich men who should have been riding balloons around the world), but that was like a month ago and nothing really ended up happening and anyway, LT doesn't even play in the NFL anymore.

Two, totally broke. I really want to go to Hooters and interview the waitresses, but all my money seems to go to “rent” and “groceries” and then I went and took what I had left over and donated it to public radio or something equally supercilious, so as eager as I am to receive chicken wings from a girl in bright orange hot pants, that plan is still on the back burner until further notice. I just don't have the expendable income to ruck fules right now. I'm also getting nervous about carrying this plan out in the summer time, as the closest Hooters to my house is on Hollywood Boulevard and tourist season is officially upon us.

Finally, no time. I've been crazy super busy and when you actually have real things to do it is difficult to write entertaining essays about nothing happening in a field in which you have no knowledge.

But as little as I care about football, I do care about forcing myself to write on a regular basis, so I've taken the small boon of time that's been given to me as a Memorial Day gift to play some more Madden 2009 on the Xbox in an attempt to gain a more organic understanding of the game. How has it worked? I have no idea.

I gave up on any kind of tutorial nonsense this time around and just dove right into game play. One team against another—I initially chose to play as the Dolphins, since in theory, they're my team, but the version of Madden that I'm playing is from 2009, and as it turns out, the Dolphins were terrible in the 2009 season (which may have been last year, or may have been the year before that—like fiscal years and Oscar years, football years do not go from January to January and I'm still a bit iffy on how that works). So in addition to my own utter lack of skill, I'm playing with a weak team. I lost steadily. No surprise, but frustrating. I finally switched to the Patriots, who are rated as the most skilled team in the game, and chose to play against the Falcons, rated the worst. I managed to win this game, but it was a near thing.

I could marvel about how realistic the graphics and scenarios are in Madden, or I could complain about how you can only control one of your eleven players at a time and it's like, impossible to do anything at all when you're defending, so it's hardly an authentic football experience (then again, if I were on a football team for reals, I'd only be controlling myself, so that still just one player—god, we're spoiled in 21st century America), but this is not a video game review, it's a sports tutorial, so I will instead list some things I learned about the game itself that I feel are valuable.

1. Short passes are almost always the best way to go. Long passes often get dropped or intercepted and should only be used in times of desperation. On the other hand, if you try to run the ball, there are eight to twenty huge dudes in your way and you won't get anywhere. Also, fans hate running games because they like to see the ball fly through the air. And people.
2. Punt on the fourth down. This is one of those awesome things that every football fan knows whether they understand it or not, so if you can toss punting into a conversation, everyone will think you know what you're talking about. (Punting is a socially acceptable way to throw a tantrum about giving the ball to the other team by kicking it as far back away from their goal post as possible.)
3. Commentators are useless. I was hoping that listening to the commentary might teach me something, but all the pre-recorded virtual commentary did was rub it in when I did something stupid. And it usually wasn't even my fault. Seriously, how is a person supposed to learn in such a non-supportive environment? Turn those assholes off.
4. Finally, if you're defending the goal as opposed to running offensive plays, just don't touch your Xbox controller. You only have control of one guy and he's nowhere near the ball, and if you try to see if you can get anything done he'll just run across the line and you'll get a penalty. So when you're defending, make a sandwich or something—but make sure you give the controller to your husband first so he can pause the game when you get the ball back. Otherwise, you might accidentally run out of time and you get in big trouble for that. Avoid.

That's about all I've got right now. Hopefully one of the players will do something entertainingly criminal soon, or I'll get my act together for the pre-season. In the meantime, I highly recommend going back and reading my team rundowns from back in February. That's when I was on my A game.

(Also, if you're in LA, ask me on Facebook about the play I'm in right now so I can prove to you that I'm not a failure at all aspects of life.)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Distracted, but not defeated!

I have never pretended to not be boring. I love being boring. All of my favorite activities involve being quiet and sitting still, which was how I knew that I would enjoy blogging.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts sometimes even I lead a moderately interesting life, which is what happened to me this past month and is the main reason I have not been posting to WtB lately. I would feel guilty about this, but I'm sure that almost nobody noticed and that the couple of you who did are kind enough people not to have minded.

Very little of interest seems to be happening in the NFL right now, but that's no excuse. I could have actually put together that trip to Hooters I was talking about (except I couldn't have, because I'm broke and have no free time). I could have written another schticky entry about playing Madden on the Xbox and being bad at it (except again, I have no free time (but that will probably be my next blog entry, anyway)).

My personal life is busy but it's still boring, so I'll spare you. But so far, life hasn't thrown anything at me that's a big enough deal to let go of this silly made-up project that I made up for myself. Make no mistake; if something ever actually does come up that is awesome (or terrible (or both!)) enough for me to toss this blog by the wayside, I won't hesitate. But I'll at least check in first.

And I'll probably write about the XBox again in the next day or two.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Letters From Rookie Camp


Dear Mom,

How are you? I am fine. Camp is pretty fun, lots of work tho. We play football all day long, except for an hour in the afternoon where we can do arts and crafts, archery, or swimming. I chose swimming of course! Ha ha. And on Sundays we write letters, we can write as many letters as we want but I'm only going to write to you. The uniforms they gave us are really nice, they look really professional and they fit good. The only bad thing was when I wanted to wear number 21 like Ladii Lady Ladainian Tomlinson (I axed the coached to help me spell that) but they wouldent let me wear that number cause Ladin Ladainian Tomlinson already wore it so I'm wearing number 24 instead and that's cool because it looks the same. Well that's all for now because we have to practice again. Love you and see you soon.

Love from your son,

Ryan Mathews


Dear Mom and Dad,

Thank you for the package. It was very nice and all the other guys here are jealous of me for having such great parents. So far I like it a lot and I don't think that it is too hard except that we practice football so much that sometimes it is hard to make time for practicing the violin and writing computer programs. Other than that, things are just about perfect here except that I miss you and the dogs. Please write soon and let me know how they are. Also, if I help my team win the Super Bowl, can I have a girlfriend?

Your devoted son,

Ed Wang


Dear Baltimore,

I can't tell you how happy I am to be playing for your football team and I really hope to do a good job. But I want to let you know that when I was drafted and I said, “I'm going to be rookie of the year,” that was just because I was really excited. I didn't really think I'd be rookie of the year, and I would hate for anybody to expect me to be rookie of the year and then be disappointed, because what many people don't realize and what I didn't realize before I started training for the NFL, is how hard football really is on the professional level. You know only one guy a year can be rookie of the year and after your rookie year you are no longer eligible, so it is totally possible that somebody else might turn out to be rookie of the year this year, and well, then I never will be rookie of the year. So please ignore the fact that I said I was going to be rookie of the year and don't get your hopes up about me becoming rookie of the year.

Sincerely,

Sergio Kindle

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

This Week in Football: News Post

People often ask me about my process. By “often,” I mean “never,” because this blog attracts a phenomenal lack of interest, but I don't mind. I needed an opener.

So, going on the made-up premise that someone is interested in my “process,” it turns out that quite often I haven't really got anything to write about, especially since it's still the off-season. So when I feel like I really need to write a blog entry for the sake of personal betterment and hoping to finish something I've started, what I do is I go on espn.com and nfl.com and look at their news articles and see if any of them might be turned into comedy appropriate for Writing the Bench.

Sometimes I have to dig a little, but today I feel like I've hit a gold mine. So here for you, to save you the trouble of sifting through the internet yourself, a rundown of what's going on in football today:

BRYANT'S MOTHER NOT A HO – I thought about writing a whole “Better Know a Player” entry about Dez Bryant, but besides getting drafted pretty early on this year because he's really really good at football, the only interesting thing he's ever done is imply that his mother was a prostitute, and then get angry when somebody asked if his mother was a prostitute. Apologies were diplomatically extended to Bryant, but not his mother herself, who is still waiting. A little fact checking revealed to the world their major error: Mrs. Bryant was not a prostitute, she was a crack dealer.

PILL THEFT IN NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans Saints Security Director Geoffrey “Not to be Confused With 'the Great'” Santini has resigned his position and accused senior staff members of stealing and abusing a large quantity of Vicodin pills from the teams' headquarters. “Listen, I don't know why everyone keeps thinking I'm taking Vicodin from the team medical supplies just because I always complain about having a bad back and I think pharmacies are a rip-off. I would never, ever ask defense coach George Vitt to steal pills for me, and anyone who says I would has obviously never had sciatica, because that shit hurts and I would never hold anyone responsible for their actions when they were dealing with that amount of pain,” said Saints coach Sean Payton, who was not named in the initial newspaper articles.

NEW CONTENDER FOR SILLIEST NAME – All I heard all during the draft was about a dude named Golden Tate, followed by a lot of giggling. But nobody ever even mentioned to me that there was an NFL hopeful this year named Scott Sicko! Granted, I probably never heard about him because he ended up not actually getting drafted. And as silly names go, “Sicko” is a little bit on the nose. But even though he didn't get drafted, he was eventually offered a spot on the Dallas Cowboys, which he took, and that means he's going to get to hang out with Dez Bryant for at least a few weeks. Sicko has also been heard to say that he is excited to play off the field this season as Ben Roethlisberger's wing man, as he feels he possesses the perfect qualifications for that difficult and extremely specialized position.