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.

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!

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.

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.”

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!

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.

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.)