I think I hate Fantasy Football

Pavement - Spit on a Stranger
Pavement - Spit on a Stranger

Right now, I'm at The Pour House in Union Square, a typical sports bar showing most of the NFL games. I just want some cold beer, a decent burger and the Pats-Raiders game.

I sit next to a dude, mid 20s, He's loud but it's okay, he's cheering for the Pats. Welker has caught two straight passes and the dude is going bonkers. I'm about to ask who won the Dolphins game when Kevin Faulk hauls in a touchdown. I give a quiet fist pump (my subdued style) and the dude is surprisingly silent.

The Pats get the ball back and the dude starts up again, "Come on 83!", every time Cassel steps back in the pocket, "Come on Wes!" and my stomach slowly turns.

The thing is, all signs point to me loving fantasy. It's all stats and predictions, trade offers and trash talking...wait, they are showing a commercial for the Mentalist and I want to mention that I kind of love that show.



Non sexual crush is a thing, right?

Back to the game, Jamarcus Russell throws a touchdown for the Raiders and the dude throws his hands up, "Yes! That'll keep the Pats throwing". I seethe a little bit and order another beer.

Fantasy sports is a little like being 10 years old, just before realizing the merits of being a homer. Maybe I had a Christian Okoye (the Nigerian Nightmare) poster on my wall,



but I soon realized that you don't just root for certain players, you root for the team that plays just a car ride away. You see can (in theory) see all the games, you can strike up a conversation with any local about a recent trade and you always have something to discuss with your father.

The proof will play out when the current ten and twelve year olds, firmly entrenched in the world of fantasy, become parents. Will they bundle up their kids and head to the stadium? Or will they stay home with the NFL package, constantly flipping and cheering the running back du jour. Team victories begin to have no meaning and team losses don't leave a scar. Fandom takes on a new face as it doesn't matter if the Jets beat your Pats as long as you started Farve and he threw for 3 touchdowns.

To be fair, it is hard to defend the NFL, I mean it is just a heartless business. Like Seinfeld said, you're basically rooting for laundry. The Patriots don't care about dropping Willie McGinest or Asante Samuel. Welker may soon play for the highest bidder, but screw it, I love football, it's all part of the game.

Of course, I am known for being stubborn to a fault. Johnny, any thoughts on Fantasy?

Worse Jobs Volume 1

Most of the time when I mention to someone that I work in television, I get a sneer and a "oh...I don't watch tv," remark. And while it is not the greatest job in the world, I would like to start keeping track of worse jobs. Maybe it will make someone feel a little better about their life.

Here is the first installment:

Ghostwriter - DesignWrite


Recently it was discovered the pharmaceutical company Wyeth hired ghostwriters from DesignWrite to manufacture favorably fictitious articles for their female hormone replacement therapy, Prempro, despite the fact that a federal study had found that the drug raised the risk of breast cancer.

Seriously? This is the path you've chosen in life? Writing false medical articles so someone else can make money off a drug that heightens the risk of breast cancer? I hope this job pays enough to buy some intense downers so you can sleep at night.


Transmission Engineer - Deep Space Communications Network



20th Century Fox just announced they teamed up with DSCN to transmit "The Day The Earth Stood Still" into space. But that's not all, for just 299 dollars, a Transmission Engineer over at the DSCN will send your message of "up to five digital pictures OR up to 2 minutes of audio and/or video and a text message of up to 50 words" into deep space.

Seriously? These guys are hoping that right now you've got 300 extra bucks kicking around to send your crappy video into nothing...literally NOTHING.

Here's my favorite FAQ from thier website:

Q: What type of confirmation will I get?
A: Well the ultimate confirmation might be a message back from deep space, but we provide a certificate guaranteeing your message was sent...



Congratulations DSCN Engineer, you will be personally responsible when Earth is attacked and destroyed. Great work.


Custodian - Metropolitan Transit Authority




Subway custodians have to deal with all forms of human evacuations, but that is not why it makes the list. One Sunday morning, I saw a custodian showing a young ruffian how to sweep and it quickly dawned on me that this was form of legal punishment.

Seriously? A judge decided that the worst thing this kid could do on his weekend was this guy's day to day job? I can't imagine sitting in my office with a delinquent and it is simply my existence that is supposed to scare him straight. How degrading.

Prop Manager - Vienna's Burgtheater



Last Saturday, during a performance at the Burgtheater of Mary Stuart, actor Daniel Hoevels takes a knife to his throat in his character's desperate attempt at suicide. The problem? The prop manager forgot to dull the new prop knife. Chaos ensues. Hoevels staggers across the stage, blood spilling everywhere before being rushed to a nearby hospital. The actor suffered a relatively minor flesh wound, but the prop manager is under criminal investigation.

Seriously, if I was a prop manager, my attention to detail would have killed an entire troupe of actors by now.

Midseason TV Roundup: Part II

Or should I call it "Part 2"? Yes, I put my question mark outside of the quotation marks because the question mark did not appear in the original text that I am quoting. I'll save the issue of quotation punctuation for a later post, as the real tangent I want to fly off on right now is this: What if the NFL lasts for a thousand more years? Will Super Bowls still be numbered with Roman numerals? What is the longest possible Roman numeral under 1000? DCCCLXXXVIII? Am I asking you, or am I telling you? Telling? Super Bowl 888.

When will the NFL convert to Arabic numerals? As early as Super Bowl LXXXVIII (88)? That will be the next big one from a Roman numeral standpoint. The longest one thus far has been Super Bowl XXXVIII [38 (The final was New England 32, Carolina 29. The Pats are 1-0 in Super Bowls ending in VIII)]. I'm glad I wasn't in charge of the logo design for that one, although I must say it was pretty ingenious of the designer to incorporate the numerals as abstract ball stitching:


Sure, it wasn't the art deco masterpiece logo of Super Bowl XXXIII . . .

. . . or even the timeless logo of the local bowling alley/roller rink franchise down the street . . .

. . . but it solved the long Roman numeral problem quite nicely.

So, if you have The Holiday Blues, just imagine the teen-aged clerk from The Simpsons saying, "Don't kill yourself! You always have the logo of Super Bowl Eighty-eight to look forward to in 2054."



Alright, let's get back into orbit. Let's talk about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. First, let's refer to it by a less cumbersome handle. How 'bout, The Cameron Show, or TCS, for short, as Cameron is the only consistently interesting character on the progrum (sic).

Yes, that's Sarah Connor's dialogue bubble, and, you guessed it, that's Cameron on the right.

I'm not saying that TCS isn't consistently decent television. It's not consistently great television, but it has managed to take a priority spot on my DVR's "scheduled recordings."

The episodes "Goodbye To All That" and "Self Made Man" were excellent. The former gave insight into Derek's military experience, and indicated John's potential as a military leader. The latter, though, maximized the potential of the show as a sci-fi, time-travel, cybernetic organism-laden classic. While the B-plot wasn't anything of consequence, the A-plot reminded me of The Twilight Zone. It answered the question, "What does Cameron, a terminator, do at night if she never sleeps?"

Surprisingly, she's a total nerd, and geeks out on History at the local university library. And, her best "friend" is a disabled librarian. I love the detail that she relates best with a man in a wheelchair: a man merged with a technological device. Cameron's mission is to protect John at all costs, but her hobby is to become as human as possible. How possible is it for a technological entity encased in flesh to become human? Possibly as possible as it is for a human entity encased in technology to become technological . . . and we humans are getting more technologically advanced all the time.

Post-Red, Post-Race

Daedelus - Obama 2008
Daedelus - Obama 2008

Glad you enjoyed the episode, Johnny, and for your amusement, here's a fun fact:

I don't see in color...and I definitely don't see in black and white.

In fact, I make my way through this life (and my judgments of others) based mostly on echo location, some awkward pawing and occasionally taste. And I am legally bound to assume the judges on Throwdown with Bobby Flay do the same...at least the taste part.

Could Bobby have taken more risk in this episode? Of course. Could he have steeped his cake in cabbage juice, could he have made a beet reduction mixture to color his cake? Yes, but don't be fooled, NOBODY wants a cake that tastes like cabbage, and Bobby truly wants to win. So using just a tablespoon of red food coloring (new school) and the chemical reaction between the red wine vinegar and the cocoa powder (old school), Bobby aimed for an organic red cake with a focus on flavor. This tactic created quite a contrast to his competitor's scorching fire engine cake, so what more do you want?

Let's not mince words, it would have been historically important had Raven won. If two white culinary experts could have possibly looked past race and judged the cakes on the predetermined criteria, it would have been monumental. But I just don't think this nation is ready for a black man to beat Bobby F'n Flay in a head to head showdown.

We must remember Tupac's epic song Changes:

We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we EAT, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other...

The top priorty is the way we EAT! I think the judges decided that Cake Man couldn't shoulder that burden for a society obviously not ready for change. It's just basic rap mathematics.

I love this country...I think.

Red vs. Red vs. Red vs. Red: Midseason TV Roundup

It's hibernation time again, fellow Nor'easters: the time of year when I fantasize about being a bear: cuddling up with my mate in a cozy, dry cave; sleeping through the long, cold winter; waking up intermittently to watch the snow fall outside the cave entrance; falling back asleep; maybe sneaking a paw-full of honey every now and then; ambushing the occasional hunter; making bear-love; eating my asshole-neighbor-bear's cubs. Springtime comes, and it's time for a fresh salmon feeding frenzy. What a life! Go Bears!

In lieu of all that, I have my couch, my TV, my wife, and my dog (Holy crap, I'm Denis Leary's "Asshole"). Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the programming that The Channels have offered this Fall season. Here's a list of the shows I watch regularly (in order of priority):

Mythbusters, 30 Rock, The Sarah Silverman Program, The Office, Survivor, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Boston Legal, The Simpsons, South Park

Last night, I broadened my scope a bit and tuned in to Throwdown with Bobby Flay. It was compelling, and it made me slightly uncomfortable: just what I like in my TV programming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Adam edited the episode: "Red Velvet Cake."

Red Velvet Cake is a treat that, on the highest commercial level, resembles the left-most picture above. How is such a vivid, red color achieved? By adding 1 ounce (yes, the entire, small bottle that you would find at your local grocery store) of red food coloring. Now, if you've ever tasted straight food coloring, you'd know that it has a bitter, semi-toxic flavor. To counter-act the flavor of all that red food coloring, the master of the commercial red velvet cake, Cake Man Raven, adds cocoa to his cake mix . . . not enough cocoa to make the cake taste chocolaty, but only a teaspoon.

My question is: why does velvet cake need to be unnaturally red? As Bobby Flay said, using artificial coloring is "cheating" (Flay added artificial coloring to his Throwdown Red Velvet Cake regardless).

I really wanted to see how one might make a Red Velvet Cake using strictly naturally red ingredients (beets or red cabbage, as Flay indicated), but no, Flay needed to at least attempt to make his Red Velvet Cake compete with Raven's "on color" (more on that in a moment), so he added "a drop" of red food coloring. Jeers. If you're going to take a different approach, take a DIFFERENT approach. Use the beets or red cabbage to make the cake batter red. Artificial coloring just makes the whole thing a glorified Twinkie. For the record, Flay's cake looked more like the second cake from the left (above).

Beyond the artificial coloring, I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable with the racial overtones of the final segment of the Throwdown episode. Before the judging segment, Flay said something like, "(Raven) might beat me on color, but I'm going to beat him on flavor." Based on the context, (Flay, a white man, competing against the commercial king of Red Velvet Cake, Cake Man Raven, a black man, at a venue filled predominantly with African-Americans) I couldn't help but feel the air suck out of the venue as soon as Flay said that. Am I projecting?

Furthermore, my white guilt boiled at full force when the judges, a white man and a white woman, declared Bobby Flay the winner of the Throwdown. It felt wrong. It felt like Elvis walking into the Apollo uninvited with Simon Cowell and Antonin Scalia, performing, and then having Cowell and Scalia crown him the King of Rock n' Roll instead of, and in front of, Chuck Berry. Flay's subsequent promise to serve Raven's cakes in Flay's restaurant just sounded condescending.

"Not in my store, you don't!"

I don't know. Adam, what did you think of that finale?