When I was called in for jury duty last fall, I developed the unshakable opinion that the most entertaining setting in which to watch other humans behave is during jury selection. It's probably the only time that you can ever find one room containing a television producer, a retarded record store clerk, a sidewalk repairman, and a lesbian pet cremator all at the same time. I loved listening to the litigators interview each person; it's an amazing study in human nature because everyone (except me) claims that they would rather be anywhere, anywhere else, but none of them want to actually be rejected as jurors, so they really try to make themselves sound like they'd be super awesome at making fair-minded decisions about whether or not an old lady who tripped over a kiddie ride in a mall should get any money from the mall (correct answer: she should not).
A close second on the entertaining observational scale is going to a company event with your significant other, and I am referring specifically to your SO's place of business, not your own. There's just something very bizarre and interesting about watching a group of people interact who all know each other well, but none of whom know you. The best is when they hand out fakey awards: Office Flirt, Best Decorated Desk, Most Likely to Break the Copy Machine. Everything is based on inside jokes that you can't even hope to get. If you're like me, this is awesome for about an hour before it becomes infuriatingly dull. If you're not like me, it seems to take about five minutes.
I have been paying attention to the NFL draft, a bit—I mean, I feel that if I'm writing a whole blog about nothing but football, I should at least feign interest—but it all just feels like the husband's office party to me. In the two and a half months that I've been writing about the NFL, it feels like I've moved to a new town and sort of gotten a feel for the streets, so I know where to buy groceries and get a cup of coffee, but I haven't had a chance to get to know anybody—excepting the one guy who always gets drunk and tries to fuck the new girl, because everybody I've talked to has warned me about him, twice.
This is a metaphor-heavy entry but what it all boils down to is that I'm feeling uncomfortably out of my element. Which is the entire point, of course. I mean, it's really easy to just learn a list of the 32 NFL teams, and it isn't much harder to learn their quarterbacks, or their general managers, although I haven't done either of those last two. But it takes time to really get to know 32 teams with more than 50 guys on each of their rosters, let alone the rookies that they're pulling from the college leagues, and so I really can't even hope to understand why Sam Bradford was the number one draft pick overall even though he has a chronic shoulder injury and didn't even play for most of the 2009 season. HOW IS THIS GUY THE BEST CHOICE?? According to nfl.com he did well in the combine (for you non-fans, that's a sort of crazy steeplechase track meet that they make the draft prospects run because checking their teeth doesn't give a very good idea of their athletic ability), he's a quarterback and they're always valuable, and he was picked by the Rams, who apparently looked at their roster right before the draft and realized that they haven't been winning because they've forgotten to put a quarterback on the field since (as far as I can tell)
former owner Georgia Frontiere murdered quarterback Jim Everett by putting arsenic in his tea 
(she then immediately moved the team from Los Angeles to her home town of St. Louis as part of a massive cover up and traded Everett's dead body to the New Orleans Saints for a stack of tea cozies and some bourbon).So, yeah. I hope Sam Bradford's arm doesn't fall off and that the St Louis Rams end up feeling good about their decision.
Obviously I'm not going to go through the whole draft like this; it would take much too long for you to bother with, assuming you haven't given up already. But getting to know football means getting to know the players, so I'm going to work harder at that—and if any of you know more than I do, I'd be happy to buy you lunch and pick your brain, so hit me up for a free meal.
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