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.

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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.

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