What are you doing in a month? Figure it out pronto.

// August 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Scott Wolf, opening weekend foreplay, wob

I am a terrible planner. I would go so far as to say that I take measures to avoid planning. Thanks to Inside USC with Scott Wolf, I am getting my September 3-7 squared away {Thank you Swedish scheduling gods. A lot of things don’t make sense [See a month long break in the middle of the season because the entire country is on holiday.] but an open date on the first weekend of college football does.}. Keep in mind that all times for me are 6 hours later than the listed {Eastern} times.

Take a couple minutes and rough out your viewing plan. Here are the games I’m excited about watching after a quick perusal of the master list {Rooting interests in caps and bold.}:

Thurs, Sept 3
- 7:00 PM South Carolina at North Carolina State, ESPN
- 10:15 PM Oregon at Boise State, ESPN

Sat, Sept 5
- 12:00 PM MINNESOTA at Syracuse, ESPN2
- 3:30 PM Georgia at Oklahoma State, ABC
- 7:00 PM NORTHERN ILLINOIS at Wisconsin, Big Ten Network - Go Huskies.
- 10:00 PM Maryland at California, ESPN2

And for the other Husky fans (UCONN, that is - not the portly clientel, we prefer big-boned.):
- 7:00 PM Connecticut at Ohio, ESPN 360

What’s on your visual menu? Only one game per time slot. We have to make this interesting.

The Blind Side, Michael Lewis/Oher, Left Tackle, Thailand

// August 5th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Michael Lewis, Michael Oher, The Blind Side, restaurant pimp, shoe carnage, wob

Ok, bear with me on this stream-of-consciousness bing-bang. It makes sense. {At least in my dome.}

Yesterday I saw the trailer for The Blind Side. We should all know by now that Hollywood butchers any book remakes. The books are always better. Always. Watch in horror and save your money come late November.

It has been panned with spot-on precision at Mr. Irrelivant, Hey Jenny Slater and Doc Saturday so I won’t pile on. But I’ll probably end up watching it at some point. I’d make a terrible revolutionary.

In The Blind Side, virtuoso Michael Lewis discussing the nuances of pro football that have led to left tackles transforming from interchangeable cog to freakishly talented athletic specimens that are paid accordingly.

Last night in practice I played some left tackle. If I was taller, stronger, faster, more athletic - I would be at least fighting for a practice squad spot. Who are we kidding. I’d just be a bigger awkward person. Anyway through a combination of ruthless technique, fat feet and old shoes, this came to pass:

A new innovation in adidas footwear. The ankle cleat. Nothing is impossible.

Without missing a beat, someone yells, “You get those in Thailand?”
“Nope, but they were probably made there.”

Which brings us to tonight’s dinner. My brother’s last meal out in Stockholm, at Koh Phangan. The building looks like a tiki hut and has a river running along the floorboards. The food was delicious, but it cannot hold a candle to the urinals.

You bet I used the far left one. Chang, yummy. Singha, even more so.

I told you I’d bring it full circle. If you’re still reading and thoroughly confused, I apologize profusely. But you’re probably used to that.

Linkage: Memorial to the Brickhouse

// July 27th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Minnesota, retro, wob

Walk On Boy back trying to get back in the blogging groove with some gratuitous Gopher retrophilia {HT: Brian Cook of The Sporting Blog and Smart Football.} celebrating the return to campus. Can we return to media guide photos like this please? I tried while I was in school, but the uptight photographers wouldn’t allow it. The fact that I wasn’t very good probably had something to do with it. Whatever.

Explore, enjoy and either be excited for the Gopher’s returning to campus and the great outdoors or thankful that your team is already outside. {Unless you’re a fan of Syracuse, Idaho or another team that plays in a dome.} However, I can already foresee people pining for the Metrodome during the first bad weather game at the Stadium-That Must-Not-Be-Named {And of course they didn’t allow liquor sales.}. Any suggestions for a nickname on par with The Brickhouse?

Out of the office…

// July 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I apologize for the lack of updates lately. I just returned from a coaching a youth football camp which is equal parts rewarding because of the excitement and the learning ability and comical because of the language, cultural differences and the fact that they are kids. An exchange:

- Nice job, but don’t backpedal.
- I wasn’t backpedaling, I was running backwards.
- (Stunned silence.)

And now I’m out for a two week holiday in Ireland while The Fat White Guy continues his romp around Europe with the ladyfriend. Follow him at twitter. I’m not that high tech. Nor do I possess the necessary discretion.

Happy Fourth ladies and gents. Eat, drink, and blow stuff up. Do it for America.

Lie to yourself to have fun

// June 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Lie to yourself.

Coach Mason said that more times than I can count at Minnesota. It’s one of countless coaching catchphrases that is etched on my brain no matter how hard I try to forget. In essence it’s a coachspeak plea to trick yourself into thinking that practice or lifting or running or whatever task was immediately in front of us that we had little particular interest in accomplishing and turn it into a productive session. Convince yourself it will be fun. And more often than not when the players just said, ‘Screw it, let’s act like little kids in the backyard’, the practice turned out to be more enjoyable. And usually more productive.

On Saturday Djurgården came up short again this weekend, 21-7. Again it’s the same refrain of missed opportunities and allowing big plays, but more than that we didn’t have fun in the first half. We were outscored 21-0. The second half was fun. The score that half was 7-0 and by putting ourselves in a hole we had to chase a bit. Football is a game of emotion and having fun at it’s primal level. Well, and violence. Lots and lots of {usually} controlled violence.

I only mention it because whatever we do, we do it either because we have to or we want to. If we want to do whatever activity, there’s probably a bit of fun inherent in it. If we have to, we must do it anyway, so may as well make it fun, right?

Either way it can’t hurt for you to lie to yourself in order to make it more fun, can it?

One more amusing thing about Sweden

// June 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

A psychotic feminine shriek from a neighboring apartment after Sweden scored it’s second goal against England in the under 21 soccer Championships. They have since equalized {Accompanied by frenzied dancing on the floor above.} after going down 3-0 in the first half.

For the 99% of people who don’t care, the Swedish word for nipple is bröstvårtan - which translates to ‘breast wart’. And the areola is ‘breast wart field’.

Enjoy your weekend and entertain your friends with your new Swedish vocabulary.

This reinforces why I should not have a Twitter account {Or maybe I should? I see it as a Frankensteinian conglomeration of texting, blogging and emailing. I could be spot on or way off. I’m also not real concerned about this ambiguity. And the 140 character limit seems so constricting.}.

Liquor sales at new Gopher stadium

// June 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

The Regents are scheduled to vote tomorrow on whether or not they are going to allow alcohol sales for the inaugural season of Not The Metrodome*. I don’t see what the big issue is with allowing liquor sales in the entire stadium. Arbitrarily placing restrictions on something that is legal is absurd straight away, but the enormous amount of revenue that is lost also seems a bit shortsighted. Underage students will imbibe and people will overindulge, but there is security and police present - wouldn’t it be easier to curtail unruly behavior inside the stadium confines rather than the pre- and post-game tailgate and house party expanse? And it’s a college freaking football game, not a kindergarten dance recital. There’s nothing more American than sitting on your ass eating and drinking body damaging substances while watching other people exert themselves.

However, if the Regents do want to shun ‘logic’ and ‘making money’ and do decide to ban sales, well then go ahead. I don’t necessarily think that because the vast majority of other collegiate on-campus stadiums ban alcohol sales then the U should blindly follow suit. I understand trying to avoid the potential liability and problems that may arise because of in-stadium alcohol sales. But is the message an institution of higher learning wants to send students {Because undeniably that is who the restrictions are primarily aimed at. And of course they won’t succeed in bringing in libations of their own, right? If all the brain power and effort that college students used engineering drinking supplies and games went to benefit humanity, we could wipe out hunger, disease, and be well on our way to living in a veritable utopia in two years. Alas.}: ‘You aren’t mature enough to handle this, so we’re going to take it away from you.’ I mean, the most famous drunken incident at the Metrodome last year had nothing to do with Minnesota students.

Why the State Legislature decided to make a new law because allowing liquor sales in premium seating areas “struck some lawmakers as elitist” is beyond me. Of course it is elitist. Any place of business that inflates prices to exclude a certain demographic is elitist. The elitism doesn’t bother me; people with money have greater access to more places and services. The state government stepping in doesn’t exactly bother me. The politicians are trying to come up with something tangible {beer sales at Gopher games} or the perceived effort of doing something for the greater good; they’re politicians - hell, too many of them are worried about a college football playoff or steroids in baseball than more pressing issues facing the country. What bothers me the most is the University high-ups wringing their collective hands rather than making a decision.

Give the thumbs up or thumbs down and let’s move on, shall we? {But you’d be a lot cooler if you went with the thumbs up.}

* I refuse to call it by its proper name because of a run-in with the omitted entity. I deposited a check, purchased about four/five things after the aforementioned transaction. After taking up issue with the overdraft fees, I was informed that it was company policy for all deposits to be processed the following business day and that there was no way they could reverse the charges incurred {about $150 for roughly $30 worth of purchases}. I know this to be blatantly untrue because a year or two earlier on a legitimate overdraft, I was prepared to pay the fee and was told by the teller that he would just erase the charge. He may have been gay and doing it to hit on me, but that’s not really the point. I hate you unnamed bank.

Work is Stupid

// June 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

It is time for me to pay up one half of my bargain that comes with whoring myself out for the sake of juvenile diabetes research. A lovely lady who shall remain unnamed {Because, well, you’ll find out shortly.} was the sole donor of a cool hundred bones. Which was way more than I was expecting. Also, you have just a bit over a week to enter Vince Wilfork’s raffle to win some Patriots tickets as well as a barbeque. And who doesn’t love a barbeque?

Without further ado, here’s the guest post. Do not be intimidated by the lack of Y chromosome, big words, logical thought process and presence of math. Enjoy.

Yeah, I said it! Work is totally stupid. Not only is it stupid, but the entire concept of working in general is absurdly mind boggling. Here’s Pulitzer Prize Winner Ellen Goodman to explain this a bit more eloquently.

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

Bam! There you have it — the epitome of absurdity. What’s worse is that we spend half our lives repeating this vicious cycle, setting the same bass-ackwards example that previous generations did before us.

You’ll have to forgive my rather jaded demeanor. Perhaps I’m having trouble transitioning from the college-induced Hedonistic lifestyle that seemed to suit me so well to the fun-sucking, mind-squandering, humanity-deficient, politically-charged wasteland that is “Corporate America.” It’s a bitch!

Nonetheless, I’m not completely oblivious to the fact that, were I to create a movement that resulted in much of the population opting to wander aimlessly through life like nomads rather than get a job, the earth, if not the entire Milky Way, would certainly implode. Employment is necessary to sustaining a workable society. Without employees how would I get my Nachos Bell Grande and a cab ride home from the bar? What’s even worse is I wouldn’t have a bar to stumble from or a home to stumble to. So yeah, I get it. Work is necessary. What gets me isn’t the idea of doing something productive to benefit society. It’s the fact that work isn’t supplemental to a happy life, instead its life-consuming nature forces people to sacrifice a greater portion of themselves than I’m prepared to part with. Quite the conundrum.

Let’s do the math. Eight hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year (I subtracted four weeks for vacations, sick leave, etc.) for 40 years equals approximately 65,600 hours of your life spent working.

If you’re going to spend 65,600 hours of your time doing something, you should love it. Right? Then again, I can’t think of a single thing that I love (outside of sleeping) that I would be willing to do with such frequency. I mean, who wants to take something they truly enjoy and twist it, exhaust it, extort it until the enjoyment has completely faded?

The older I get, the less I feel I understand about life. But one thing I know is true–work is stupid.

This post further reaffirms my quest to go through life without having anything resembling a ‘normal job’.

Glad Midsommar

// June 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Out of the office for the weekend due to going undercover with some Swedes to drink schnapps, eat herring and dance around a penis pole. Seriously. It’s supposedly an ancient Swedish celebration of male fertility.

That song is about how frogs don’t have ears or a tail. Ooo-wacaca, indeed. There’s another traditional ditty that roughly translated means you’re a momma’s boy and I’m a momma’s boy and everybody is a momma’s boy. Sometimes telling the truth is funny enough.

If you need an excuse for binge drinking this weekend, go ahead and celebrate the longest day of the year under the guise of celebrating Swedish culture.

Defending the tie

// June 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

They say a tie is like kissing your sister. Perhaps the axiom originated in West Virginia {Coach Stew apparently forgot to mention incest in the laundry list of natural resources abundant in the Mountain State.}, but I don’t mind kissing my sister, provided it’s a peck on the cheek. It could be because I haven’t seen her in about four months and even if I could she’s a teen - so she’d probably just punch me. Whatever, it’s not the best possible situation, but it’s not bad.

I know that endorsing the tie seems like an un-American thing viewpoint, but ties were a part of the college football landscape until just over a decade ago. The purpose of games are to accurately gauge the relative skill over roughly a three hour period on one day. As with anything, answers are not always black and white but shades of gray. Adding the tie as an option to win or loss makes a team record more accurate, no matter how unsatisfying a tie would be to fans, the media, coaches or players. Naturally there would be someone who would ‘win’ the tie and someone who would ‘lose’ it, but there’s sixty minutes of play and if there is nothing between the teams during the time, why should we artificially introduce a difference?

Without a doubt college overtime is incredibly exciting and entertaining. But introducing giving the ball to the offense at the +25 during the extra period is akin to starting extra inning baseball games with a man on second, or every possession of a basketball overtime with a three on two fast break. It completely disregards two phases of special teams {Kickoffs and punts}, which are integral facets of the game. We could go on about changes to make the overtime more palatable. A fifth quarter broken into seven and a half minute sections, with the teams switching ends between them. Three overtimes max, then end the game due to player safety {I saw this mentioned by another writer, but cannot remember where. Apologies to whomever came up with the idea.}. A team pushing the game to overtime awarded a half-win, while the team ultimately prevailing gets a full win, similar to the NHL’s current regular season overtime scenario. The list could go on and on, but the reality is all of them, like the structure of college football is flawed.

As frustrating as it is leaving a game at a tie {I’ve been to several soccer games that ended in scoreless draws. There is nothing more frustrating than feeling like two hours was completely wasted. And the two hours of build-up with no release may be one of the biggest reasons for hooligans. That and they’re freaking jacked in the head.} at the end of the year it may make the picture more clear. {Warning: extreme hypothetical forthcoming. And admittedly not the best of examples, but the best I can come up with.} If Texas and Texas Tech had finished their epic game in Lubbock last year in a tie, why should we arbitrarily determine a winner? If a tie is scored and kept, that breaks the three-way morass between Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech.

Play on the field under the regulation rules should be the measuring stick between two teams. If they stack up the same, what is the harm in calling a spade a spade and saying they were equal on one day instead of implementing new rules to declare a winner? Re-introducing ties could also jumble up the standings and national title picture further, but with a truer representation in the comparison category.

Now go and kiss your sister, the Mountaineers beg you {Post-smooch couch burning optional.}. See, it’s not so bad.