On Favre

It is no secret I love older athletes. While some people see it as sad when an athlete goes into the twilight years of their career I find those times the most interesting. Seeing how they deal with their bodies not being able to perform at quite their peak and their willingness to adapt and change fascinates me. On that note, Brett Favre is ridiculous.


Not ridiculously good looking, but whatever, I do have a man-crush. I just mean that the amount of insane accomplishments he has pulled off is astounding. He's a fucking country hick from Mississippi gunslinging throws that have no business existing and playing with a boyish enthusiasm for the game, even at 40. Throwing for 400 yards the day after his dad died, playing 100's of games in a row in a sport that is insanely violent, getting addicted to painkillers. He is like the modern hero, flaws and all. And unfortunately the hero had to ride in to SF with my beloved 49ers 2 seconds (literally!) away from going to 3-0, Favre had been outplayed all day and yet somehow makes this play to drive a dagger through my soul. I knew it though. You can't give a lion, no matter how old and grizzled that many shots at a limping wildabeast and not expect to become dinner. The lion roared again.

Kiss the Midwest: Boise Briefly Baby

I met a few bike tourers last week at the Michael Franti concert and they hit me up for a ride out to Mountain Home, ID so they didn't have to ride their bikes along the busy and abysmally boring I-84. I threw their bikes onto the roof rack of my car, packed them in like sardines, and proceeded to have a 50-minute long conversation that revolved around concerts at The Gorge, Idaho skinheads, and the modern overuse of the word "fag."

Needless to say, I loved the conversation and am now following their blogs.

new formation- "Sawed off shotgun"

the announcer in the Indiana-Michigan game just referred to Indiana's offensive spread as a "sawed off shotgun" which got me thinking we need to get a little more creative about naming formations.

Wildcat could easily be the fucking saber toothed tiger, that would be way more intimidating

the run and shoot (r.i.p) should have been called explosive diarrhea, for a few reasons.

the I-formation should be too much meat diet forcing huge dry blocks of shit out your ass, cuz, well, you know

Goal Line should be Mutually Assured Destruction

Spread formation should just be spread Eagle, except if you are in Philly when it would just hokey so they could go with like "dog races" or something if Vick is QB

me 'ead 'urts, badly.

Oh, God No...

This Wired.com article highlights some new advancements in brain scanning technology that allows scientists to read your mind. Not that I have...anything to hide...or anything...but I just like my privacy.

I am reminded of a chapter from Chuck Klosterman's book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs when he highlights a list of questions that he would ask anyone he might potentially marry. One of the questions is something along the lines of "if you had the ability to record your dreams every night and watch them when you were awake, would you do so under the one condition that your family and closest friends had to be present during the screening?"

I always had a hard time answering that question. Mainly because I have no friends, and my family is two cats. Sad.

VG's!

Sam knows us way too well.

The utility rag

At my office there is a small kitchen with a fridge, microwave and sink where we store our lunches or heat up water for coffee or tea. There is also a small washcloth/rag/towel thing hanging over the sink on a rack where paper towels would go. It has been hanging there for many months and is slowly changing colors. I recently realized that no one is quite sure what this fabric's purpose is. This was evidenced by the following series of events involving a use of the cloth:

1. dries off a clean plate
2. cleans up a small food spill
3. dries hands after washing in sink
4. wipes mouth dry after someone brushes their teeth
5. nose blow

Let's hear it for the utility player!

My trouble with socks

I love socks. I'm not like some of my fellow nature loving and politically left-leaning friends and think that they are satan on earth. The problem is, I am a size 8.5 shoe, maybe even an 8 on some brands. This means that I can never find socks that fit me. Most socks are made for sizes 4-6 or 9/10-13, leaving me....fucked. Every sock I buy ends up having the heel halfway up my leg and me in a pile of sadness.

Football

Last Saturday I got to go to the Cal-Eastern Washington game which started 7-7 and then ended 59-7. Cal is going to be awesome this year and will take USC down on October 3, but enough about that.

Football is a crazy game.

I say this because I went to the Cal game with four Israelis and before the game I was trying to explain how the game works, the rules, the different positions, etc etc and I had no idea how fucking hard it would be. It's kind of like speaking English I guess or the inch system or maybe even Cricket, it's easy if you know it but it makes no goddam sense otherwise.

The fact that there are different players for different times in the game, "downs" and first downs, the limited use of kicking the ball and penalties were all pretty beyond these otherwise perfectly intelligent people.

When we got to the game they yelled and cheered with everyone else but they were pretty much baffled, although they really enjoyed the culture of walking through Berkeley on a gameday and seeing sorority girls blacked out hanging out their windows screaming at 11am.

The other thing that confused them was how much starting and then stopping there is which I had never really considered, making it hard for them to get into the flow of the game.

It's an interesting thing, football is a sport I love and think I understand pretty well, along with Baseball and other fairly American things, to me they seem basic but this made me consider how crazy they really might be.

Boxer Blasphemy

I went to pee and tried to reach down and pull my PYTHON out and realized I put my boxers on backwards, the slit was in the back, this begs the question of when I take my after lunch atomic bomb, do I need to drop my boxers? Only time will tell.

Wine is not badass.

As I sit at my hourly wage job doing a particularly fine job at earning every single penny, I have the opportunity to contemplate my surroundings rather thoroughly. I work at a wine shop, so often when I contemplate, I contemplate wine. Today I am sitting and swirling some warm, boozy swill around the glass and I realized that most people are very snobby about this rather placid form of alcohol. I call wine "placid" because while it is elegant, sophisticated, and complex, it lacks the punch of reeling intoxication that other forms of fermented beverage produce.

Alcohol makes people do stupid, questionable, and sometimes dangerous things. Truth, spoken by me and experienced by anyone who has ever woken up on ceramic tile. Now I love wine, don't get me wrong, but there isn't a present danger with wine intoxication like there is with other forms of booze. You never see a man being beaten to shit by the cops and have someone lean in and tell you "he had too much Merlot tonight." Even if you WANTED to drink enough Merlot to make you want to fight the cops, you couldn't physically accomplish it. You would start drinking, get loud, get drunk, then if you drank too much you would throw up. That is all that happens with wine. You don't beat in your TV with a bat, you don't try to have sex with a couch, you don't call ex-girlfriends and scream at them on the phone. With wine, you either drink enough to have fun, or you drink too much and spit up like a baby.

Can you imagine if Slash from Guns N' Roses spit Zinfandel all over the crowd at a concert instead of Jack Daniels? Can you imagine if at a tailgate party they served a Riesling instead of Bud Light? Can you imagine if Neil Armstrong landed on the moon drunk on wine instead of gin? Not me, and I don't want to imagine it. Wine is many things, but wine will never be badass or dangerous. Wine is served in a glass with a stem, and this is why it is weak.

People Behaving Badly + other amazingness

My cousin Jonah posted something similar on Facebook and made me think that lately there has been a rash of public outbursts.

Oregon's RB sucker punched a dude after a game! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgCVZxzcZ1s

Congressman Joe Wilson had a tourette's attack and shouted down PRESIDENT Obama during an address to congress.

Serena Williams threatens to shove a ball down the throat of a line judge and then loses the match (slightly less epic than this earlier tennis post OR THIS ONE)

Kanye West took a shit on Taylor Swift's award the other night.

I think it's hilarious, as anyone who knows me, knows I love a good outburst so I think it's about time people show their true colors and act like babies and spoiled children, it's amazing and freeing to the soul.

And now, the promised amazingness:



and good ol' College Humor, never letting me down.

This happened!

I'm about to make a longer post about football, my dear love of the fall, but I have to show you all this, Federer is good, but also lucky, this unreal shot sets up match point and puts him into the finals at the US Open!

Morning comfort

After a long hiatus I found my bathrobe and I'm nothing short of thrilled. I really enjoy putting it on in the morning so I don't feel like anything too important has started, except another day in comfort.

On Leaving and Coming Back

I'm not sure I'm going to say anything unique here, but I think maybe it's a different wrinkle on a classic We have all taken trips in our lives. Whether they are short or long or local or far-away they have an effect on us and we return at least slightly changed or feeling differently about things. Whether it was a hike to the coast or in the woods, a week long trip to the desert or a months-long journey to another country, these experiences powerfully impact us, and most importantly change us.

It's common for people people returning from a journey to get asked if everything seems different when they come back to home, wherever that is. It's also common to get asked "so, how was it?" but that is another infuriating rant on its own, I will attempt to stay focused. The thing is, the reasoning is flawed, it's not that the shock is that everything seems different. It is precisely the opposite. Everything is brutally, painfully similar. I remember after coming back from 3.5 months in SE Asia I arrived home, greeted my parents, drove home and watched them go about their same routine, put my stuff back in my same room, went over to my friends house and was kicking it just like old times. People wanted to know "so, how was it?" but no one seemed to understand my shock that life was going on despite the fact that I'd been seeing elephants and monkeys and transvestite hoookers for months on end. That is the hardest reality about traveling anywhere, it is an inherently selfish act where it becomes hard to believe the whole world hasn't been on a similar journey. Our shock is not at how different everything seems but at how similar and unaffected everything is.

people weirder than me

after some indecision and swine flu I'm pumped to be off to Burning Man in a few short hours where I will cavort with topless old women and watch dorky techies take drugs and drive around cars they thought up on their breaks at work. I bought my two trusty disposable cameras so expect some pictures in about three weeks or whenever my brain restarts.

meow goes the cougar

This is pretty priceless. Although photo number 10 really leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

things that crash the internet

1. Michael Jackson dying.

2. Gmail being down.

What the fuck is wrong with our society? I'm seriously disturbed.