Touchdown Jeebus Wins Fantasy Week 3

I'm not trying to brag or anything but I totally killed my fantasy football league this week (OK, I'm bragging just a bit), and the Dallas Cowboys finally put one in the win column. This is me smiling.

Home Again, Home Again...

I flew back in from Vegas late Sunday night and then spent most of Monday nursing one of the most dehydrating hangovers I've ever endured. One of the problems with getting together with my buddies from college is that we always drink and party as if we're still twenty years old, and I certainly felt it this time. On the plus side however I actually broke even at the tables, which is quite a rarity for me as I totally stink at cards (plus the Texas/Texas Tech game was easy money).

I had a couple of revelations as it concerns my blogging on this trip that I'll go more into later but for now I'm just going to get myself some Gatorade. So, what'd I miss while I was gone?

This Post Now Has A Title

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, a lot of things have been piling up. I'm happy to say that my NFL fantasy draft went fairly well this morning (even got a few Dallas Cowboys on my team) and my book club meeting earlier this evening was all fundamentalist Mormonism, sushi and martinis; good times and a great combination. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

OK, it was only the first preseason game and it wasn't even that exciting but it was football! Real live American football, with pads and helmets and shit! It's been a long five months, I don't mind telling you...

Football Player Celebrates By Playing Soccer

I have a buddy from Croatia who always says, "You call it 'football' but you carry it in your hands the whole time". Maybe this will appease him (even if it's Canadian):


(hat tip: one L bill)

Bienvenidos a Miami, Lebron...

Finally. OK ESPN, could you please find something else to talk about now? This entire process has been epically boring and the salaries these guys are pulling in are just ridiculous. When does NFL training camp start already?

On Lawrence Taylor And Age Of Consent Laws

Yesterday regular commenter and family member one L bill wrote the following in the comment section of my breakfast post:

All this LT stuff has got me wondering about your thoughts on sexual consent age limits.

For all those not in the know:

Lawrence Taylor, the former Giants linebacker, was arrested early Thursday morning and has been charged with third-degree rape and soliciting prostitution in a case involving a 16-year-old girl at a hotel in Rockland County, according to the authorities.

Taylor was taken into custody after the police were told that the girl had been brought to Taylor’s hotel room by aman who also faces charges in the case, said Christopher P. St. Lawrence, the town supervisor of Ramapo. He said the Ramapo police went to Taylor’s room at the Holiday Inn Suffern, in Montebello, and arrested him without incident just before 4 a.m. St. Lawrence said at a news conference that Taylor paid $300 for the encounter.

Taylor’s lawyer, Arthur L. Aidala, said Taylor denied having sex with the girl, who was referred to in court only by her initials because she was a minor. She was reported missing from her home in the Bronx in March.

Taylor faces a maximum of one year in prison on the solicitation charge, a misdemeanor. The maximum sentence for third-degree rape, a felony, is four years.

As far as LT is concerned he claims that he had never met the guy before who sent the girl to his room (I tend to believe this), he claims that she told him that she was nineteen (she has admitted that she was told to do so by this same guy) and that he paid the money to the girl herself rather than the guy (I'm assuming that he's making this point as some type of legal maneuvering on advice from his attorney). I was actually watching said attorney talking about the case yesterday and when asked if his client had sex with the girl he also made a point of stating that LT definitely didn't have sexual intercourse with her as it's defined by blah, blah, lawyer-speak, blah.

Now whenever I hear a lawyer rhetorically dancing around a straight-forward question like "Did he have sex with her?" in this manner my shyster-sense starts tingling like crazy (this particular superpower is slightly underdeveloped in my case since I only completed one year of law school before I regained sanity at some point). What that says to me is that there probably was no strict vaginal intercourse but I think it's safe to assume that there was some level of touching and eventual fluid transfer involving LT's penis at some point. It's entirely feasible to assume that he didn't have actual sex with her and that he's making that very clear to the authorities in order to escape a third-degree felony rape charge but he paid her that $300 for something and I doubt it was just to hold hands and exchange whispered sweet nothings.

To address one L's question as to my views on age of consent limits, my personal philosophy concerning sex has always been that some people are physically and emotionally ready to have sex and some people are not, with age being mostly a secondary concern. If I were to answer on an evolutionary basis (in which I received my formal college training) I would state that the beginning of menstruation in a female marks her readiness for sexual intercourse and subsequent child bearing but one obviously has to factor in cultural and societal mores and the much longer lifespan and thus delayed emotional development of modern humans versus other primates. I have no doubt that there are some thirteen-year-old girls out there who are quite ready to have sex while on the obverse side I also have no doubt that there are thirty-year-old women out there who are not (and perhaps never will be).

As far as the law goes though there obviously has to be a baseline legal limit that society adheres to on this matter and as with so many other rights and privileges of adulthood I believe that limit should be a person's eighteenth birthday, for the sake of consistency if nothing else. Now of course that's not to say that I believe that minors should not be having sex with each other and there are extenuating circumstances in some cases that any fair judge or jury should take into account: if a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl has consensual sex with her eighteen or nineteen-year-old boyfriend that should usually be legal and acceptable in the eyes of the law. And there will be other extenuating circumstances on a case by case basis of course but that's why I believe that there should not be any bullshit mandatory sentencing laws tying the hands of the deliberating body or individual deciding those cases.

In short, I believe that anyone who is considered a legal adult should be able to have consensual sexual intercourse with any other legal adult (the topic of incest on this count takes us to a weird grey area that I personally would rather not think about) but I also believe that minors should be free to have consensual sex with each other and the occasional legal adult on a case by case basis to be determined by a judge or jury on the occasion that said interlocution is warranted. Sex is a sticky and beautiful enterprise and one of the best things we can do with our short time on this planet. My advice is to make up some excuse to look at his/her drivers licence at some point before you both get busy, i.e. "I always take bad licence photos: how about you?" This policy has saved (and also pleasantly surprised) my ass on more than one occasion.

Tracy Porter's Tecmo Bowl XLIV Interception

A highlight from last Sunday's Super Bowl reimagined as a video game blast from the past:

Picture Of The Day II

Someone finally has President Obama's back:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican member of the Cabinet, feigns being a blocking back for President Barack Obama as he arrives backstage to meet with GOP House leaders before speaking to their issues conference at the Renaissance Baltimore Harbor Place Hotel in Baltimore, Md., Jan. 29, 2010.

I'd rather have Rahmbo blocking for me; he's small but he's scrappy.

If Famous Filmmakers "Directed" The Super Bowl

Apparently I don't watch enough pretentious art films because a few of these didn't really impress me (and I'm pretty sure that I could make a pretty decent Wes Anderson parody at this point) but do I liked the combination of the footage in the Tarantino trailer:

(via)

I'm 36 Today...

...but I don't feel a day over 35 ½ . I'd recommend having your birthday on Super Bowl Sunday if you have the means; any day you're drinking beers and watching football is a good day, regardless of which milestone you're passing on the inexorable march towards death. My only complaint is that everyone tries to give you those combination birthday/Super Bowl presents. Cheap bastards.

NFL AFC/NFC Championships Today

No time for blogging today (yes, yes, I know, I didn't blog yesterday either but I was busy and I've been trying really hard to write more lately so sue me), the AFC and NFC championships are on. I'm calling the New Orleans Saints as the 2010 Super Bowl champs right now; we'll see if history agrees with me.

Dallas Cowboys Playing The Minnesota Vikings

No time for blogging today! My beloved Dallas Cowboys are playing the Minnesota Vikings for the right to go to the NFC championship game against the New Orleans Saints next week. Admittedly I'm a little worried since the Vikes are one of the best teams in the NFL with one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game at their helm but if there was any time during this somewhat shaky season that I felt confident in the Boys it's right now. They're coming off of back to back spankings of their division rivals the Philadelphia Eagles and they're looking better than they have all season.

So since I don't believe in jinxing I'll say that I'm actually feeling good about their chances today but talk to me around 1 pm Pacific time just in case. Depending on my mood by then I might put up some posts later today but only after the second game. True, the Boys won't be playing in that one but even though I'm an atheist I'm also a Texan, which means that watching NFL football on Sundays is my equivalent of going to church. All hail Saint Romo and go Cowboys! Hallelujah!

[Update: That was sad and pathetic (and I really hate that fucking Viking victory horn they kept blowing). Minnesota's defense is a ravenous beast that totally enveloped Romo and his offense for the majority of that game. Good luck New Orleans, you're gonna need it.]

"Wine Is Bottled Poetry." - R.L. Stevenson

No time for blogging today, I have a wine party with many friends to attend. So much for curtailing my gluttonous holiday ways. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

I Don't Think God Likes Colt McCoy...

I just got finished watching the Texas Longhorns and the Alabama Crimson Tide play for the BCS college football national championship. It was a great game between the top two teams in the country (I took the day off from work to watch it and yes, as a graduate of Texas A&M I might have been rooting against Texas just a bit) and although Alabama ultimately won the night I thought that both teams put forth a valiant effort.

So I was watching the obligatory post-game interviews of coaches and players when Texas' starting quarterback Colt McCoy (yes, people in Texas give their kids names like "Colt"; have you met my twins: Smith and Wesson?), who got injured on the fifth play of the Longhorns' first offensive drive of the first quarter and had to sit out pretty much the entire game, was asked, "What was it like for you to watch this game, your last game in a Longhorn uniform, from the sideline?" As he tried multiple times to answer this obvious yet pointless question, choking up more than once in the process, after one of the most devastating disappointments of his life on national television I was really feeling bad for the kid. He finally squeezed out some words about loving the game of football, wishing he could have played tonight and gave praise to his backup quarterback and the skills displayed by the other team. Classy. And then he said something that made me feel a little more sorry for him:

I always give God the glory. I never question why things happen the way they do. God is in control of my life, and I know if nothing else I'm standing on the rock.

Really? So let me get this straight: You've been playing football pretty much your entire life. You obviously love the game and it is among your great passions. You spent every summer you can remember running through two-a-day practices in the brutal Texas heat. You won all kinds of awards and distinctions as one of the best high school quarterbacks in the state, and you went on to do the same in college. After your team won a national championship when you were red-shirted your freshman year, you led them to four winning regular seasons leading up to this: the last game of your college career and it's for the national championship. This game was the culmination of everything you've fought and worked for your entire life... and five plays in, God decided He didn't want to let you play. And you're cool with that?

This is one of many reasons why not only can I not believe in a god, but also why I don't want to. I fail to understand the satisfaction or comfort derived from believing that there is an all-powerful being out there who has the ability to take something this important away from a person, without any apparent reason and seemingly on a whim. And yes, I've heard: "He works in mysterious ways". So do ninjas, but I would never willingly cede them control of my life. Of course, McCoy is going to move on to a career in the NFL where he'll make tens of millions of dollars and have his pick from a Tiger Woods-sized bevy of hot chicks so perhaps there is something to his faith but personally, I'd still need more proof than that. But I'm a cynic, so there you go.

NFL To Fine Players For Getting Concussions

I guess it was only a matter of time:

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced a stricter league concussion policy at a press conference Sunday, finalizing a provision that would automatically charge a fine of $10,000 to any player who suffers a concussion. "Concussions have become a serious problem in the lives of current and former NFL players, and the only way to nip this thing in the bud is to make the players accountable," Goodell said. "Ten thousand dollars for the first concussion, $30,000 for the second, and $70,000 for the third. Hopefully these fines will make our players think twice before they have their brains jostled against the insides of their skulls." Goodell later added that the league is also considering harsher punishments for more serious injury-related behavior, saying that players who sever their spinal cords would face indefinite suspension and, in most cases, be stripped of their pensions.

Serves them right for risking their physical and mental health just so we can be entertained on Sundays. Selfish jerks.

Goin' Back To Cali...

I returned to California last night after spending a great Thanksgiving holiday with the family in Texas. The food was incredible (thanks, Momma!) and the football was exciting (the Cowboys won while the Aggies put up a valiant yet ultimately losing fight against UT, one of the best teams in the country). I drank too much wine and ate so much crawfish etouffee before I boarded the plane that I thought I was gonna burst. Nonetheless, it's good to be back. Hope everyone else had a good one as well. So, what's been going on?

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone has a good one today. Go Aggies and go Cowboys!

An Idea: Bad Boy Kickers

I just watched the Oakland Raiders come back to win against the Cincinnati Bengals by a last minute field goal and I had a thought: I'd love to see a bad boy kicker in the NFL, a real arrogant asshole kinda like Terrell Owens. He'd be constantly bragging about what an incredible kicker he was and trash talking other kickers when he was off the field, like calling them Ray Finkle. He'd do stupid show boat shit like run through the end zone after a kick, grab the ball, pull a Sharpie from his sock, sign the ball and then drop kick it into the stands. He could even wear a different right shoe every week decorated with war paint. I think a guy like that would be hilarious.

NFL Commishioner Disses Limbaugh Ownership

How can anyone not like this lovable pudgy pill-popper?:

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell failed to offer support of Rush Limbaugh's bid to buy the Rams on Tuesday and said the talk-show host's "divisive comments" would not be welcome in the league.

"I've said many times before, we're all held to a high standard here," Goodell told reporters, via the New York Times.

"I would not want to see those comments coming from people who are in a responsible position in the NFL –- absolutely not."

Limbaugh said last week he's part of a group trying to buy the Rams. Colts owner Jim Irsay was the latest to express disapproval for Limbaugh's bid when he said he would not vote to approve such a deal. (NFL owners must vote to approve new owners of teams.)

Held to a high standard like murderers and serial dog abusers? I'm just as disgusted by the horrible things that Limbaugh says as anyone else and I have no problem seeing his ownership plans getting blocked by the NFL's owners but don't pretend that you're doing it out of adherence to some high and mighty ethical code. NFL football is as much a business as it is a sport. If they thought that adding Limbaugh to the league would make them more money make no mistake, they would.

(via)