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.

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

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.

Better Know a Player: Tim Tebow

Just because somebody's an underdog, that doesn't automatically mean that you should root for them. I mean, sure it, was great when Mine That Bird won the Kentucky Derby, and everybody loves that one movie where a hobbit gets to play football one time for like five seconds as a reward for twenty years of hard work, but sometimes—and I'm not even saying that it's often—just sometimes, an underdog is also kind of a poozer.

Take Tim Tebow, for instance. I think he was literally born under a dog, which is customary in the Philippines when the native midwife suspects that a woman might be giving birth to a demon (if the baby is not a demon, the dog will try to eat it; if the baby is a demon, it will eat the dog, but then the midwife (who travels prepared) will shoot it in the eye with a dart made out of an eggshell and send it back to Hell (I am positive that I read that in National Geographic, but it might have been during a fever dream)).

You see, Tebow's parents were missionaries in the Philippines when his mother got pregnant with him, and while she was pregnant she contracted dysentery, opening the way for some wonderful jokes about pooping that I am way to classy to make. Even the so-called “first world doctors” thought that she ought to abort the fetus for the sake of her own life, which was why twenty years later Tim and his mom appeared in a pro-life Superbowl ad which made no mention of that story and instead chose to merely irritate the viewing public.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnyway. Little Timmy was born after all, and he escaped from the dogs and the midwives and like most children who are born in inauspicious circumstances, he fought hard against obstacles that didn't actually exist, excelling in general and making everyone around him look bad. His parents did not send him to public school; his mother homeschooled him and all of his siblings, which I have no problem with if she was actually a good teacher and I have no evidence to say that she wasn't. Tim Tebow has now become the poster child for homeschooling, although it is not clear to me how his representative skills are helping the cause. But the reason that the Tebows never actually come out and say for teaching their kids at home was that they wanted to make sure their kids were educated in the ultra-Christian environment that they felt no one else could properly provide. Which is also fine if that what you're into; I consider myself to be pretty pro-Jesus too, even though I don't walk around with bible verses painted on my face.

I decided to write an entry about Tim Tebow because I keep hearing his name and he only just barely got drafted to the NFL (by the Broncos, if you're curious), and his press crew is presenting him as an underdog—born against the odds, healthy against the odds, allowed to play football at a public school against the odds—but I'm not buying it. To me, he seems more like a football version of Dennis Rodman—but for Jesus. And like I said, I'm down with Jesus, but the showboating thing is not so cool, especially when you leave the coolest parts out. So, Mr. Tebow, I have a couple of requests for you, as (for lack of a better word) a fan:

One, just play football. I did all this research on you and I still don't know whether you're actually good. I'd like to know. I bet the Denver Broncos would also be pretty happy to find out.

And two, if you are pro-life, especially as a person without a vagina, and you don't have a story to back it up, you're like the white kid who majors in African American studies because they're really, really angry about injustice, even though they grew up in the suburbs and they were never really even picked on at school. Nobody's buying your manufactured passion. So if you are going to speak out about abortion, look back, face the memory of that Filipina midwife, and tell the world:

“I know about the evils of abortion. I am a survivor.”

Is it still a party if it's at the office?

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.

Yeah, Anything's Fun If You're Good At It

In true nerd tradition, I was always, always, always picked last for sports at school. I think the consensus on that is that it's supposed to scar you for life, but in hindsight, it really wasn't that bad. I mean, I'm not saying it was pleasant; it definitely sucks to be the last person standing there when everyone else has been deemed more valuable than you are, but it was never unexpected and it didn't ever last long. I was terrible at sports. Everyone knew me, and they knew that I was terrible at sports. I wouldn't have put myself on a team, either.

What actually was traumatizing was that our (female) gym teachers, in an effort to keep the nerdy kids from being so downtrodden, would pay attention to who consistently got picked last for teams, and then make them team captains, so that instead of not being chosen by others, we would get to do all the choosing. To an adolescent girl who hates physical exertion, this is like being put in front of an assortment of Hitler Youth and fellow Jews and being asked to choose which ones are going to accompany you to Auschwitz. I mean, the Jews are your friends and all, but they're already marked to go down. And if you pick the Nazis, thinking they'll protect you, you're looking at a lot of locker room wedgies and boogers in your food. In other words, we had the option of picking a friendly team that would never win or a winning team that would pretty much exclude you. I honestly don't remember what kind of team I put together, but even now I can close my eyes and see the disgust on the faces of girls who were regional soccer champions.

If you're reading this blog, you may or may not have put together the fact that the reason I'm taking this particular stroll down Suppressed Memory Lane is that the NFL Draft begins tomorrow. All the top college players (I have no idea whether graduation is actually a requirement, but it seems to be implied) will be sitting next to their phones in anticipation as the General Managers of all 32 NFL Teams gather together in a room that I can only imagine looks like the United Nations conference room from the original Adam West Batman Movie. Maybe darker. Anyway, these guys will spend three days going around in a circle choosing college players to pull for their teams until three days are up or someone tries to slip in a made-up player (it was ruled in 1978 that imaginary players have an unfair advantage and are ineligible for the draft).

There are loads of mock drafts all over the internet as everyone tries to guess who will actually be chosen and in what order, but I'm having a hard enough time following the guys who already play for the NFL, so as far as I'm concerned, one college player is as good as another, so I wish each and every one of them the vaguest of good luck.

Except for Golden Tate, who I feel can only ever truly be at home with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I really want his nickname to be “the Cabin Boy.”

Monster Chiller Horror Mini-Post!!

Hey, guys. Remember that old ghost story from elementary school about the girl who always wore a ribbon around her neck, and wouldn't ever let anybody touch it? And then she grew up and got married and lived to be super old and then one day, she asks her (also super old) husband to untie the ribbon from around her neck, and he does and her head falls off?

That girl's name is Myron Rolle.

(Thanks to Jesse Thorn for the link.)