Sex Bad, Guns Good

And one more, just for the heck of it.

2008-04-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

James Carville:

The Cryptkeeper:

That's right boys and girls, it's time for Political Look-alike Theatre!

2008-04-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

Cindy McCain:

Praying Mantis:

John McCain better watch out. He doesn't have Buffy and the Scoobies to save him if this thing decides to lay some eggs inside of him.

Look Inside My Junk Drawer

2008-04-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

Every first Saturday of every month, my friend Chris Aubrey puts on a sort of open-mic night for DJs. I guess you'd call it "open-turntable." Anyway, it can be a lot of fun. The idea is that a bunch of record geeks bring in a ton of vinyl (vinyl only) and just take a stab at being a DJ for about twenty or so minutes. Each month there are usually one or two guys that could pass for professionals, if they aren't pros already, and it can get a little frustrating listening to them mash up various songs that, usually, don't even contain instruments. But those guys are talented and it can be fun just to watch them work, and typically, everybody has a great time.

Last night I was last to go on, which was kind of a bummer considering how long I had to wait. There weren't a whole lot of people left by the time I got to spin, but my friends stuck around and danced, so I did at least have a small audience. I wish more people had been there to see it though, considering it was the best set I've done so far. See, me and machines, we don't mix, so it's taken me a while to get used to using the mixer. Plus, I grew up pretty much with nothing but CDs, so messing with turntables was not a huge part of my childhood. Last night, all my effort paid off though, and I rocked the anemic crowd as hard as I could. After a couple of hours of hip hop and electronica, it was nice to hear a little Waylon and a little George Jones. It was the Waylon and the Possum though that caused what was almost another problem with my set.

Sometime after White Lightnin' and before the end of Washing Machine by Orion, this older guy who'd been hanging around the bar all night wandered up to the stage. I'd seen him around, noticed that he'd been drinking hand grenades (Mickey's malt liquor) all night, and I took a deep breath and vowed not to let this joker mess up my good thing. Here's how our conversation went;

OLD GUY:
Hey man, why don't you play unintelligible by Black Oak Arkansas.

ME:
Oh man, I'm sorry, but I don't have any of that with me tonight.

OLD GUY:
Hey, does that microphone work?

ME:
I don't think it does. It hasn't been working tonight. (It worked fine.)

OLD GUY:
How would you like to play unintelligible by Grand Funk Railroad and have the guy who wrote it up here singin'?!

ME:
Oh yeah man, that would be great. Maybe we could do that next month. I've already got all the stuff I'm going to play tonight laid out.

Then he hovered for a moment, staring at me as if I were going to relent and suddenly produce some Grand Funk Railroad from out of nowhere, then he walked off.

That's right people, DJ Red Beard, loved citywide by weird old rednecks who drink too much malt liquor!

Bicycle, Bicycle!

2008-03-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

Want to know something about me that, well, most of you probably don't already know? Come on, sure you do. Everybody loves secrets, even if they're not that big or impressive. Actually, this one's just kind of, well, sad. At least I think it is. It makes me quite the self-conscious twenty-something.

Oh, take your minds out of the gutter. This is obviously about bicycles!

Okay, here goes.

I never learned to ride a bicycle.

You heard me...read me...correctly. Riding a bike, that rite of passage for so many kids, is something that I never managed to accomplish. Seems kind of strange, right? I mean, how many kids with complete use of all their limbs never learn to ride a bike? I'm sure it happens more often than any of us think, but still, it can't be that common. Perhaps there's a support group for it out there. There's a support group for just about everything these days, so I don't think it's out of the question that those of us burdened with the shame of being incomplete in this fundamentally adolescent way would have a group to help us deal with our problem.

Most of you are probably wondering how learning this important means of preteen transportation managed to escape me. I'll tell you, I don't mind. After all, that's the point of this whole thing. Full (sort of) disclosure.

My parents both worked when I was a kid. Each of them started their own business. Dad started a welding supply business with his brothers Jim and Gary, and a high school friend, John. Jim and Dad both worked for this business in my hometown as route salesmen, another welding supply company, called Harris Welding Supply. They had pool parties and I can remember never feeling comfortable at them as a kid. The kids of the people my dad and uncle worked for reeked of money, and I didn't like it. Apparently my pop didn't like it much either, because he and Jim decided that they could just start their own business and do the same thing they were doing, be their own bosses, and maybe give Harris some competition. They did more than that, they put them out of business, and their business, Midstate Welding Supply, went on to be folded into the company Air Products, which was folded into the company Air Gas. My dad and my uncle make a lot more money now than they ever did before, and Harris is an afterthought. We don't have a pool, but damnit we have our dignity.

Mom's business didn't do as well unfortunately. She had a clothing store where she sold a few different brands. Every year, she and the lady who owned the jewelry boutique next to her shop, Angela, would go to Atlanta for the huge textile market they hold there every year. A few years she would take Dad and I with her, and I always enjoyed it. Going to Atlanta meant Braves games, and even though I never really liked the Braves that much (I'm a Red Sox fan, as most of you know), I did love going to baseball games. To this day, I'll watch anyone play baseball. I'd go down and watch the little leaguers if I didn't think a bearded stranger watching their kids would creep the parents out something fierce. Market also meant hanging out with both my parents (something I still enjoy doing a great deal), eating out every night, and staying in a nice hotel in a HUGE city. Just the highway alone in Atlanta baffled me. How could anything be so vast and so rapid? Why would people even need that much road? I still think about that sometimes and I marvel at how, now that I'm on the road every day, there never seems to be enough of it, and you never seem to get anywhere as fast as you need to.

So we'd go to Market with Mom and hang out, and I enjoyed it. Oh, I probably whined and complained about how boring it could be half the time, but I look back on it fondly. For example, I didn't give a damn that the year we actually went to the concert put on for the various market participants that I was seeing Smokey Robinson. I didn't even know who Smokey Robinson was. Hell, at that time I was probably still listening to the New Kids On the Block. But my mom impressed on me how cool it was to see someone like Smokey Robinson live, that he was a living legend, so I sat attentively and I soaked it in. And she was right. I look back now and I'm proud to say that I have a mother who knew how important it was for her son to see Smokey Robinson when he had the chance, even if he didn't appreciate it then. She could see the man I'd grow into.

So mom's business was a good idea, but our small town just wasn't geared toward it. After a clip, it went under, and she started into glorified secretarial work, which eventually led to her being an HR rep for her current company, a steel company that's a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 corporation. She's doing well too.

So yeah, my folks both worked. By the time I was ten, they trusted me enough to let me stay by myself in the afternoons, just till they got off. I was very advanced for my age, and they thought I'd be okay for just a few hours in the afternoons. They were right, but in those years before I was ten, I was subject to afternoon babysitters within the family. For the majority of that time, it was my Aunt Jenny Griffin, who had three daughters around my age; Mandy, Mary, and Melissa.

Mandy, the oldest, who is now a teacher, was most certainly the ringleader. Even at an early age, she had the clarity of vision and authoritarian manner that help her wrangle a large group of small children on a daily basis. After all, she practiced on me and her two younger sisters for years.

I loved my family growing up. I had no serious problems with any of the Griffin girls, but being subjected to the whim of three girls and their mother every day after school did start to take its toll. For instance, I wasn't allowed to watch G.I. Joe or Transformers. They were too violent, my aunt would say, and besides what would girls want with G.I. Joe or Transformers? So every day, complete with the knowledge that just a couple of stations over they were showing back to back episodes of G.I. Joe and Transformers, I had to sit quietly and watch Little House on the Prairie and then the Brady Bunch. To this day, the sight of Michael Landis sends me into a sort of Pavlovian rage. The Griffins were also the first people in our family to get a VCR, so If it wasn't the Ingalls-Wilders and the Bradys, it was Mary Poppins, the Shaggy Dog, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, or the Parent Trap, over, and over, and over again. Being let outside was a merciful reprieve.

Outside I could shoot basketball, or run around in the yard playing tag, or hide and seek, but even the outside could be a frighteningly feminine space. They would play jacks, or hopscotch, or even hula hoop, all of which I would try myself but would eventually give up for fear that I was compromising my masculinity before I'd even become a teenager. Mandy would say she didn't want to play with me anyway, and her two sisters would recoil, cowed by the older sister's playground marm presence.

I would get frustrated with their games, sometimes spouting off a Dang it! or a God darn it!. The three girls would gasp with fear and then explain to me that our grandfather, Dody, my mother's father, would never give me a quarter. When I asked about this, they informed me that Dody had been giving them each a quarter every time they didn't curse or take the Lord's holy name in vain. I was hurt by this, though I remained defiant. It appeared that this was an offer only extended to the Griffin family. Apparently my grandfather could sense that my father's family's influence on me had already shaped me into a lost cause, at least when it came to cursing. I never did get a quarter, god damnit!

This back and forth between Mandy and I was most evident when she attempted to teach me how to ride a bicycle. When I was younger, I'd had a He-Man bicycle with training wheels. I loved to tool around the driveway on it, but when it came time to take the training wheels off, I lost interest. I guess at the time I thought, This thing works just fine with four wheels. Why would you want to take two of them off? So I never learned to ride a bike the traditional way. Mandy, Mary, and Melissa, on the other hand, were all quite adept bike riders. They could ride circles around you on pavement or on grass, and they were all very proud of this skill. They had bikes cast in various pastel shades, all pistachio green and bubblegum pink, with streamers off the handlebars that would blow triumphantly in the wind, mocking you with a declaration of sheer velocity as the girls whipped by.

So finally, in the time that I was staying with them, Mandy decided she'd had enough of me not participating in the bike riding and she took it upon herself to teach me. I secretly wanted to be on a bike. To feel the wind whipping through my hair, to bring the tires to a screeching halt, to jump it off ramps and ride it recklessly down hills. So when she dreamed up this little scheme, I played along. So they put me on one of their bikes colored like grandma's rock candy and then told me to just take off down the giant hill in their backyard.

What?

Just do it. It's how we learned!

Yeah, it's how we learned.

Yeah, it's how we learned.

Just ride down the hill? But I don't know how to ride. Shouldn't we start on the pavement?

No, because then you'll fall and hurt yourself.

Yeah, you'll fall and hurt yourself.

Yeah, you'll fall and hurt yourself.

So here I am, looking down the hill at these giant trees jutting up from the ground, and the row of hedge at the bottom of the hill that hides their house from the alley beyond, and I'm terrified. I'm thinking that I'll just take off down this thing, and if I'm lucky enough to keep my balance, I'll either die a bloody mess on the trunk of one of those trees or I'll be twisted and broken inside of that hedgerow with the girls alternating between gasps of horror and chittering laughter. I'll never live to know the touch of a woman if I take off down this crazy damn hill.

Come on Brett, this is how our dad taught us!

Yeah, this is how daddy taught us.

Yeah, this is how daddy taught us.

Okay, what do I do?

We'll push you to give you a headstart, then we'll let go and you just start peddling.

What if I fall over?

Then you get back on and try it again.

Her logic was infallible and I hated her for it.

Alright, alright. I'll do it.

This is going to be so much fun!

Yeah, so much fun!

Yeah, so much fun!

Uh huh, sure, fun.

They must have sent me down that hill ten times, and each time I was a gangly, awkward mess of legs and arms and gears. Each time, I failed. Eventually I was so sick of the humiliation I felt, so sick of the, Why can't you do it? and the We never had a problem. that I stopped trying altogether.

To this day, I still don't know how to ride a bike, but I do remember having the last word on the subject. Mandy's best argument, the thing she liked to hold over me when she realized how hopeless a case I was, was the college argument. The college argument went like this:

What are you going to do when you get to college and all the kids want to ride bikes and you can't because you don't know how?

I'll be in college, Mandy! I'll have a car!

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the last word. Maybe I did pay $46.50 for a full tank of gas yesterday and maybe my girlfriend would like to go bike riding with me. That doesn't mean anything, right?

At least I was right about the G.I. Joe.

The photographic equivalent of meat and potatoes

2008-03-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

"The Wrath of God is the only way I can describe it."

2008-02-21T17:02:00.000-08:00

When a politician in Tennessee describes something as "the wrath of God," you can usually lay the smart money down on that politician being Bill Frist. Indeed, it's not difficult to imagine an image of the good doctor (and I use the term lightly, the way that one might use it in reference to an eight year old playing Operation )sitting around his house thinking of all the various ways God inflicts his wrath on the sinful masses with a sort of perverse glee. But this particular quote, "The Wrath of God is the only way I can describe it," was uttered not by the brightest rhinestone on the buckle of the Bible belt, but by our intrepid Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen.

Now, let's get one thing out of the way. Democrats can say dumb shit. Democrats can in fact say dumb shit in regards to religion. I know that may come as a shock, considering the ruling party likes to give the public the impression that anyone not registered as a conservative might as well be an idolatrous, AIDS-ridden, homo-lovin' heathen, but Democrats can be just as reckless in their language as the Republicans at times. So it shouldn't surprise us that, in response to his survey of Tornado damage across this state, our Democratic governor Phil Bredesen uttered something so irresponsible as the phrase above, but it should anger us.

Now, I'm not a Christian. I was raised Catholic, which is a lot like travelling 100 mph down the highway toward atheism, stopping only once for gas at that nice little town called Agnostic. I like my religion to stay as far away from my politics as possible, so you can imagine what living in the American South must be like. When I read that Bredesen, a man that I don't necessarily trust but that I at least rank lower on the Political Dirtbag scale than say, John Ashcroft, described the damage done by the storm that ripped through the South earlier this month as the "wrath of God," I was a bit ruffled in the feathers.

What, exactly, Mister Governor, did the state of Tennessee do to deserve the wrath of the ineffable bearded dude in the clouds? What did your loyal constituents do, what great sin did these voters commit, that your God felt the need to reign down death and destruction upon them? Was it God who ripped their houses from the foundations or who threw their children into the fields?

Or was it, just maybe, the weather?

You know, that random, difficult to predict, eons old thing we call weather? Maybe the conditions were just right across the South that day for a string of bad weather, including tornadoes, to rip some shit up. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with "God" after all.

Maybe we're all just people, trying to survive in a world that can throw anything at us at any time. Maybe that something is tornadoes, and maybe we don't need our governor entertaining the notion that we're being punished by some angry, abusive father figure in the sky, even if he is just using the parlance of our times.

"You are the new prototypes!"

2008-02-21T16:53:00.000-08:00

Alright, what have we learned from this commercial?

We've learned that unless you have Indiana Jones or Captain America on your speed dial, you should run the other direction when you see someone wearing Under Armour clothing.

I don't know if this threat will hold up, but damnit, I'm pissed!

2008-02-17T15:27:00.000-08:00

The Super Bowl was a couple of weeks ago now. I think. The game is always such a disappointment when you consider the two week long media blitz leading up to it, so it’s hard to remember when it actually occurs, or if it occurred at all, and if it did, did it actually matter? It mattered to a lot of people in New York City, who in the past had scoffed at Giants super bowl victories simply because the team played in New Jersey, not NYC. As far as New Yawkers were concerned, the Giants were as much bridge and tunnel as tracksuits and teased hair. Now it’s different, now they care. Maybe they’re just so tired of the Yankees and the Mets not bringing home a title that they have to glom onto the Giants in order to get their jollies, maybe there’s something deeper behind it. Maybe a city still reeling from 9/11 just takes any opportunity it can get to rally around itself. Whatever the reason, Rudy Giuliani will probably take credit for the victory, one way or another. Oh wait, he’s a Red Sox fan though, right? Yeah, right. He was a Red Sox fan when he still thought he had a chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination and thus thought he needed the support of Massachusetts, a state he would no doubt lose to rival Mitt Romney. Not that any of that stuff matters, since McCain, much like the Red Sox in ’04, proved to be the comeback kid. Anyway, this isn’t about people who aren’t really Red Sox fans. In fact, it’s not so much about one person being a Red Sox fan, either, although that certainly helped the ball start rolling.

I am a Red Sox fan. For years, I wasn’t much of a sports fan at all. I was raised on the stuff, baseball and college football to be exact, but I rebelled pretty hard against all that stuff in my late teens and early twenties. In that time I spent away from sports I never quite quit following University of Tennessee football (Go Vols!), although I didn’t follow it as closely as I did when I was a child. I never would again, though I do pay a fair amount of attention now. Most of my rebellion was directed against the Holy Mother Church of Baseball though, and I rebelled hard.

As a kid, I’d been an avid baseball fan. I played the damn sport from the time I was five till the time I was twelve, and I was terrible every, single, year. You see, I’d begun playing baseball the same year I started wearing glasses. So there, on my face, was glaring proof that I had utterly worthless depth perception, which, even with glasses on, made for rather poor hand/eye coordination. Long story short, I couldn’t hit the fucking ball. No matter, since I was able to console myself with the knowledge that I was far and away the smartest kid on the field. I knew all about Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Brooks Robinson, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and all the great pitchers you’ve ever heard of and a few you’ve probably never heard of. I knew that Roger Maris hit 61 homeruns in a single season to beat Babe Ruth’s previous record of 60, and that, as far as my father was concerned, it was the greatest record in baseball. I knew about the Bronx Bombers and the Big Red Machine, the LA Dodgers AND the Brooklyn Dodgers, and, most importantly, I knew all the rules. I was a fucking rules phenom! I couldn’t hit a damn ball, but by the age of ten I could have umped, hell, I could have coached, any little league team in my town. Alas, the longer I failed as a player, and the older I got, the less interest I took in the game, or in my father’s interest in it. College football was somewhat safe in my mind, as it was inexorably connected to Saturday afternoons in the fall at my grandparents’ house, with all my aunts, uncles, and, best of all, cousins. It was family, it was heritage, it was tradition, it was, well, my childhood. But baseball, it was something far different. It was my religion, and every kid questions their faith after a while.

Skip forward a few years to a more patient, less angry version of myself, who recognizes the hypocrisies and dangers inherent in the professional sports system, but who also remembers the sheer joy of sitting on the edge of your seat, biting your nails to the skin, begging the Holy Spirit, Krom, and John Wayne to please let your favorite of all teams get that last out, that last run, that last, gut wrenching, heart stopping, game winning play. So I was back, but older, wiser, more discerning. And what did I notice when I came back? My beloved baseball had been playing host to an 800 lb. gorilla named Steroids that everybody pretended not to see. Just like Catholicism, baseball had failed me. So I did what any red blooded American male in his mid twenties would do when presented with the issue of choosing a new sport to follow. I chose professional football.

Professional football wasn’t something I ever gave a damn about growing up. I was aware of the great 49ers teams, because Joe Montana had gone to Notre Dame, and any Catholic family worth its salt cheers for a kid from Notre Dame when he’s winning Super Bowls. It wouldn’t surprise me, actually, if during the 80s, certain Catholics said, “the Father, the Son, and Joe Montana,” when they crossed themselves before bed. Joe had that affect on people. And then there were the Cowboys in the 90s, who I simply knew were evil the way I knew that Nazis, Pat Sajak, and the Yankees were evil. But here I was in a new decade, a new millennium even, and I was presented with the choice of finding an NFL team to support. All signs pointed to the Titans, but in my mind they were (and still are) the Houston Oilers. Besides, nobody really cared about pro football in the South, not even after the expansions into smaller markets like Carolina, Nashville, and Jacksonville. For years, all we had down here were the Falcons and the Saints. Well, most people outside of Atlanta couldn’t tell you one thing about the Falcons except that they’re the team that had Michael Vick, and the Saints, well, they were nicknamed the “Ain’ts” by people in their own city. You do the math. No, the South was (still is) college football territory. So when I went to pick a team to cheer for, I just chose the Patriots because, hey, they were like the NFL’s equivalent of the Red Sox, and I’d liked the Red Sox when I was a kid.

I feel like I should explain that. Mostly, when people ask me now how a kid who lived his whole life (minus three months in Chicago) in Tennessee could become a Red Sox fan, I tell them, “Well, I was raised Irish Catholic.” That seems to be an appropriate response, and I like it because it fits with the fact that I am still very culturally, if not religiously, Catholic. But it’s not entirely true. Sure, I suppose being Irish Catholic gave me some affinity for all things Boston, but I can’t remember anyone in my family cheering for the Sox when I was a kid. No, almost everyone on my mom’s side of the family, which was the Catholic side, was a Braves fan. Ugh! Everybody on my dad’s side of the family were Cardinals fans, which was much better, since the Cardinals were at least, historically, one of baseball’s greatest teams. I can remember the people on my mom’s side of the family cheering for the Celtics during the NBA playoffs, but that was to be expected. First of all, they’re called the Celtics! Second, they had Larry Bird, arguably the whitest man ever to play the game, a power forward whose last name was McHale, and a black man (the only one from the team anyone ever remembers) whose last name was Parrish. It doesn’t get much more Irish Catholic than that. But, to my knowledge, nobody ever threw their support behind the BoSox. So how did I get into the Sox? It was Ted Williams.

I mentioned earlier how I loved baseball history, and I loved Ted Williams more than any ballplayer ever. And Ted Williams, in case you hadn’t figured it out, played for the Red Sox. As a kid, despite what my elders may have claimed, I believed that Ted Williams’s single season batting average record was the greatest record in baseball history. Better than Ripken, Jr.’s consecutive games streak, better than Hammerin’ Hank’s homerun crown, better even than Dimaggio’s hitting streak. I still believe it to this day. I was a closet Red Sox fan, and it was all because of Ted Williams. So, when I went to choose an NFL team to support, the Patriots seemed the obvious choice. Little did I know I was choosing the best team of the salary cap era.

So there I was, cheering on the Patriots, getting called a fair-weather fan by almost everyone I knew who cared about football, and loving every minute of it. I even started playing Fantasy Football, which was the ultimate combination of my life as a sports fan and my years spent as an avid tabletop roleplayer. D&D meets Football? Sure, I can get behind that. I did, and I still do. But something happened to upset the whole balance. The Red Sox came back and beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, making history, and then went on to break the drought, kill the Curse of the Bambino, and win the World Series.

I was, officially, a baseball fan again.

Hey, I thought, this ain’t so bad. I got something I wanted so badly as a child, a Red Sox World Series victory, and to top it off, I’m now supporting the best team in the NFL because, well, because I love the Red Sox. It was a good time to be a New England sports fan.

Fast forward to 2007, and things are even better. The Sox take another series, this time against the only MLB team to declare it’s unyielding allegiance to evangelical Christianity (the Catholic in me rejoiced, even though I told it to shut up)(No I didn’t.), and the Patriots are undefeated. Oh, and what’s this? Baseball is taking a serious shot at dealing with the steroid problem? Great! What’s that, the Yankees had the most players implicated in the Mitchell report, and Roger (Benedict Arnold) Clemens was one of the names on that list? Fucking awesome! Oh, and the Pats are still undefeated? Jaysis, Mary and Joseph it feels good to be Irish! Okay, so steroids are hardly the problem anymore, since Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is so prevalent now, but still, it’s a start. Alright, so maybe HGH isn’t even that bad for you, and maybe if any American sport was serious about dealing with steroid abuse they would adopt the practices of many European sports, most notably soccer and cycling, but hey, the Pats are still undefeated! Brilliant!

Yes, I know to be a sports fan and an intellectual in America is, at times, like walking a tightrope. But the good thing about being an intellectual is that you almost always feel superior, so you don’t feel the need to explain yourself. So…plllbt!!!

So baseball’s over, I’m bummed, but in the meantime I’ve been named an honorary Bostonian by my friends from Beantown (and surrounding) and, hey, man, can you believe it, the freakin’ Pats are still undefeated. So I settle in and seriously get behind my Patriots. Yeah, that’s right, my Patriots. They’re mine, right? I mean, as much as the Red Sox are mine, the Patriots are. There’s a feeling in my gut saying that isn’t right though, telling me that maybe I’m being led astray. I push it aside and get on with my fandom.

Cue the playoffs. The Patriots are playing well, keeping their undefeated record alive, but that feeling in my gut that I’m doing something wrong just keeps nagging me. Do I just miss baseball? Sure I do, but that’s not it. Am I just thrown out of whack still by the move back home to Tennessee? Well, yes, I am, but that isn’t it either. Then, as I’m watching the playoffs, I realize what it is.

Rodney Harrison.

Rodney Harrison is what’s wrong with me.

Who is Rodney Harrison? Well, he’s the Patriots’ star safety, a titan in the middle of the defensive backfield, the scourge of wide receivers on crossing routes all across the league. He is, in a word, Grendel. Twice he has been voted the dirtiest player in the business, not by a bunch of fans who have never met the guy, much less been hit by him, but by a group of his peers. That’s right; the guys who play against him think he’s a headhunter. Does that bother him? Quite the contrary. The man revels in it. He jaws constantly with the refs, picks fights with other players, and tries to get away with as many cheap and downright illegal hits as he can. And if he doesn’t get away with a dirty hit, all he gets is a fifteen yard penalty and maybe, on the rare occasion they even take note, a slap on the wrist from the NFL. What is it that makes Rodney so angry, so prone to acts of extreme violence, so blatantly incapable of playing by a set of rules meant to protect his fellow competitors? I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s not those steroids he’s been taking.

That’s right, steroids, the bane of professional sports, the drug of choice by athletes across the world looking for a competitive advantage, the one thing that can turn a hero into a zero in no time flat. In every sport but professional football, that is. Harrison tested positive for steroid use at the beginning of the season, an offense which netted him a whopping four game suspension. The same offense in baseball would have landed him with a fifty game suspension. People would argue that a four game suspension in football is on par with a fifty game suspension, since the baseball season is so long, and the football season so short, but that’s not an entirely fair comparison. The severity of the punishments and how they are or are not on par with one another isn’t the issue. The issue is the difference between the two cultures. Baseball saw that rampant steroid use not only called into question the validity of the games being played, but put the entire history of the game itself at risk. Major League Baseball (MLB) may have lagged behind the stricter NFL policy for years, but now it has finally caught up, and in my opinion, surpassed it.

If you test positive for steroids, you lose fifty games. Second strike, one hundred games, which, if you’re a star player, could seriously cripple your team’s season. If you get a third strike, then, in true baseball fashion, you are out. A lifetime ban from the sport is your punishment for testing positive for steroids a third time. Many detractors have said that the policy isn’t harsh enough and that one positive test should result in a lifetime ban, which would bring it on par with the regulations laid down by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the agency which governs sports such as cycling. But let’s be honest, it’s at least a step in the right direction for a sport that, for a long time, was happy to nurse a viper in its boot.

In the NFL, if you test positive once, as I stated before, it’s four games, or a quarter of your season. A second positive test earns you an eight game, or half a season, suspension. The third time you test positive, they eliminate you from competing for twelve months. Rodney Harrison tested positive for steroids at the beginning of this season and played in the Super Bowl at the end of it. Roger Clemens hasn’t even technically tested positive for steroids yet and we’ve as much as crucified him. Why the double standard? As America has allowed itself to slip further into the miasma of poor education, we have, as a nation, turned away from the more intellectual game, the game with the rich, storied, sometimes dark, but always hopeful past. We have turned away from baseball, a game that is, at its heart, American.

Football isn’t American. It’s an over-complicated, commercialized version of rugby, a sport which other nations around the world happily engage in without the aid of full plate kevlar armor. At least, at its base, it isn’t American, but it does serve as a barometer for America. As education has slipped, as the world has grown more difficult to understand, more difficult to accept, we have turned to the simpler game, the dumber game, the game that appeals to our more base instincts. Violence, anger, greed, not poetry, or history, or grace, these are the things represented by the NFL. And just as so many Americans are guilty of a deadly apathy about our government and our world, so are we guilty of a deadly apathy about our sport. I, for a time, was guilty too.

But I will state now, for the record, that I am through with NFL football, just like I’m through with George W. Bush, I’m through with conservative Christians in the oval office, I’m through with Iraq, I’m through with not being able to afford to go to the doctor, I’m through with overpriced education, and I’m through with just accepting America as it is. Of course this means I’ll have to give up fantasy football, but somehow I’ll manage to cope.

So in closing, what I have to say is this; Go Sox, fuck the NFL, Obama ’08!

Now where did I put that bag of dice?

Why founder of and frontman for the Gories, Blacktop, and the Dirtbombs Mick Collins would have made a better president than George W. Bush.

2007-12-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

He's Mick fucking Collins, that's why!

Why singer-songwriter and all around badass Kris Kristofferson would have made a better president than George W. Bush.

2007-12-01T08:31:00.001-08:00

Kris Kristofferson...was born in Texas too, and he didn't turn out to be a complete mouth breather.

Kris Kristofferson...was not only a prolific writer, but was also a star athlete in track & field, football, and the sport created inside the testicles of the All-God Odin himself, rugby.

Kris Kristofferson...earned his way into college and graduated with a degree in English literature, without, mind you, any help whatsoever from his dad.

Kris Kristofferson...knows how to fly a fucking helicopter.

Kris Kristofferson...wrote songs that were recorded by such epic performers as Johnny Cash, Faron Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, Ray Price, Janis Joplin, Bobby Bare, Patti Page, and god's gift to country music, women, and beards, Waylon Jennings.

Kris Kristofferson...is a cross-over success.

Kris Kristofferson...looks good with a beard or without.

Kris Kristofferson...is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Kris Kristofferson...doesn't ever have to open up the paper on Sunday morning and see his kids flashing their asses and acting like a couple of superdinks.

Kris Kristofferson...is a member of the organization Veterans For Peace and has protested America's seemingly ceaseless involvement in the Iraq war.

Kris Kristofferson...believes in America.

Kris Kristofferson...has never spent seven plus years of his life completely raping the separation of church and state.

Why american songwriter Bruce Springsteen would have made a better president than George W. Bush

2007-11-24T12:27:00.001-08:00

The Boss...was once the frontman for a band called Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom.

The Boss...never forgot his roots. You could argue that Bush the second didn't either, but Springsteen's roots weren't fertilized with oil and Saudi money, just solid blue collar ethics and good ol' American gumption!

The Boss...wrote the lyrics "Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend I want to guard your dreams and visions Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims And strap your hands across my engines."

The Boss...campaigned against nuclear proliferation.

The Boss...appeals to a large cross-section of Americans.

The Boss...understood an unjust war when he saw one and wrote protest songs about it, regardless of the fact that the war itself was over.

The Boss...turned down money from the Chrysler Corporation for use of his song "Born in the USA" in car commercials.

The Boss...headlined the Human Rights Now Tour!

The Boss...has not only won Grammy Awards, but is also an Oscar winner.

The Boss...has played Madison Square Garden.

The Boss...is actually loved in Europe.

The Boss...despite his celebrity status, still gives back to his hometown of Asbury Park in various ways.

The Boss...actually played shows to benefit MoveOn.org in an attempt to get people to vote against George W. Bush.

The Boss...is The Boss.

The Boss...never allowed his most trusted advisors to cover up the deplorable actions of a child molestor.

Why actor Randy Quaid would have made a better president than George W. Bush

2007-11-24T12:26:00.001-08:00

Randy Quaid...is tied for the title of "Tallest SNL Cast Member" with such revered actors as Chevy Chase and god's gift to foreheads, Kevin Nealon.

Randy Quaid...has been nominated for an Oscar.

Randy Quaid...has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Randy Quaid...is a family man.

Randy Quaid...is not afraid of being in a movie about homosexuality, and by default it would seem, is not afraid of homosexuals.

Randy Quaid...never mishandled a world-changing national crisis.