Overall: 86-88-2
I'm coming off my strongest week of the year and hoping to nudge my way into the black by year's end. Fantasy wise, I'm in the playoff hunt in one league, Seattle deciding to split carries between Forsett and Jones is good for my real team (go Niners!) but probably means I sit Forsett for Jacobs, and that (along with the Roethlisberger/Flacco choice I have to make) puts me in a hard spot in a must win game.
Jets -3 Bills (win)
Broncos -5 KC (win)
Steelers -14 Raiders (loss)
Jags over Texans (win)
Niners over Seahawks (loss)
Dolphins +6.5 Patriots (win)
Carolina -6.5 TB (win)
Bears -9 Rams (win)
Colts -7 Titans (win)
Bengals -13 Lions (loss)
Saints -9.5 Redskins (loss)
Falcons +5.5 Eagles (loss)
Chargers -13 Browns (loss)
NYG +2.5 Dallas (win)
Minn -6.5 Arizona (loss)
Pack -3 Ravens (win)
9-7
95-95-2
Athlete of the Decade - Tiger Woods
Runners-Up (1) Barry Bonds (2) Roger Federer (3) Peyton Manning (4) Lance Armstrong
The public, says this piece by a "senior writer" from SI, "will never look at Tiger Woods quite the same way," because he's lost his "image as a good guy."
Tiger Woods is no worse than the second greatest golfer who ever lived; his level of dominance makes him (in a close call over all of the runners-up, a good argument could be made for any of them) the Athlete of the Decade. But apparently, that isn't enough accomplishment to maintain his image in the face of all that sex.
Unlike the chaste, one woman man who received SI's Sportsman of the Year Award just this week:
"It was that combination of on- and off-field achievement that helped make Jeter this year's Sportsman. Said Sports Illustrated Group Editor Terry McDonell, "Derek Jeter has always presented himself with class; he does numerous good works for the community with his Turn 2 Foundation, which is one of the most efficient, effective foundations of its kind; and he's extremely generous with not just his money but with his time, which in many cases is more valuable. He also had another signature year on the field."
Do a search for Derek Jeter's girlfriends. It's no wonder the guy is a hundred fifty fielding runs below position for his career, dude's got better things to do with his hands.
Other than Tiger's wife, it's unclear to me why a member of Sports Illustrated's "public" would view Tiger as no longer a "good guy" but Cap'n Jetes as "classy", but the things that bother others, I am aware, don't much concern me. Tiger Woods's marriage doesn't belong to me. The contours of his relationship with his wife are good gossipy entertainment; he gets sent through the same news cycle that spun Dave Letterman around earlier in the year, but the degree of their achievements dwarfs a momentary unflattering snapshot.
I'm pretty confident in that. Tiger has a lot of equity, and presumably, many more years on the stage; my assumption is that in most ways, this week becomes a footnote.
Not for his wife. But we aren't her.
I've never cheated in a relationship, but, as Chris Rock said about ten years ago "men are only as faithful as their options." And I don't have Tiger's options. You give me all the money in the world and make me Athlete of the Decade, I'd hope I'd be able to keep my promises, but the experience of being Tiger Woods, of having that be your life in no way bears any resemblance to the experience of living my life; to say I wouldn't be frantically leaving voicemails to women from Tool Academy is entirely wishcasting.
We used to understand this. Men who have the ability to do so enjoy sex with multiple women. If you don't know a married man who has had an affair you're being lied to. I'm not saying it covers men in glory that we are this way, not saying it should be celebrated; I'm just saying it's so.
One of my pet theories of longstanding is that Clinton was able to muster up so much visible anger in his finger pointing denial "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" because he was angry. Not angry that he was being falsely accused - but angry because he was being accused at all. My reading was that what he felt inside, what he could not say was "Wait...this is a thing? This? How many Presidents do you think didn't have sexual relations with some woman they weren't married to? Not just US Presidents...Bank Presidents. School Board Presidents. Presidents of charitable organizations. It ain't all - but it's more who do than don't."
I felt the same way about Barry Bonds, who grew up in clubhouses, who watched the legends of the 60s and 70s survive on all manner of amphetamine and pain killer and then joined the legends of the 80s, 90s, and this decade who added steroids to that diet. "Of course I take drugs. I've been taking drugs since junior high. That's how this works. You're children."
If you're bothered that Tiger Woods didn't live up to a vow he made to a person who is not you, you know, okay, I guess. But let's not pretend it makes him unique. In fact, I think it more likely that, if people are bothered, it's by the common quality of it all. It's not Tiger Woods and Marissa Miller; it's Tiger Woods and someone from the Rock of Love bus; it's Tiger Woods horny and stupid. He's just like us. He's Eldrick.
Because we don't want him to be just like us. We loathe us. He's one of the chosen people. The rich, the famous, the people who matter to us. Our royalty. Too good for our awful mortgages and crappy health care. Too good for our stifling dead end corporate jobs, for our scary, alcoholic racist neighbors, too good to be just another one of the lies we're sold - God - Country - Tiger. We know we're screwed. Just marking time in our little, inconsequential lives, eating our ice cream and watching CSI, working 7 days a week with no possible hope of escaping the fate of dropping dead one day at our desk. It's not that we live in a glass house and judge Tiger for his cheating in a way we never would - we hear that voicemail and read those texts and think of him bleeding, running away from his wife and think "shit - he ain't Tiger, he's me."
And being us ain't worth being for a man with as many options as Tiger Woods has.
Me, I don't care about any of that. Tiger's the Athlete of the Decade. Not a single text message he could ever send that would change that. He can run through the entire VH-1 stable of reality shows; he can bang Antonio Sabato's ex-wife and Lorenzo Lamas's daughter and the Kardaashian sister they keep doped up on thorazine and locked in the basement. Wouldn't change the way I thought about him at all. Tiger's not my husband or my babysitter. He's the Athlete of the Decade. That's plenty.
Quick Afghanistan Take -
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Tonight Obama, who I voted for and probably you did too, becomes LBJ without the Great Society.
There really was a political way out: "We can't afford it."
Somehow, Democrats never understand the "we can't afford it" objection resonates with the public whenever the Republicans make it about a social program. There shouldn't have been a single Democratic objection to either war over the past decade that didn't begin with the phrase, "Well, first of all, we can't afford it." And now, a year into an Administration that does not have an exit strategy for double digit unemployment, we're about to escalate by 30,000 US troop involvement in Afghanistan.
We can't afford it.
According to the Cato Institute, the 2010 Pentagon budget (which doesn't assume additional money for this escalation) means "every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on (defense) programs and agencies next year."
When you consider the escalation, that makes one year of the defense budget the equivalent of ten years of health care.
Why is that a good tradeoff?
We are, as I've written previously, in a period of rapidly unlearning what took generations to understand (that would be the title of my book: The Unlearning). The difference between Obama and LBJ is LBJ didn't have a Vietnam to look back upon. When Obama announces this troop escalation tonight, what I will see is the equivalent of that Republican Presidential debate when the candidates raised their hands to indicate they didn't believe in evolution.
A decade of trillion dollar wars and tax cuts for the wealthy - a quarter century of deregulation on banking and corporate America has left our cupboard bare. One out of every 8 Americans and 1 out of every 4 American children is currently on food stamps.
That's socialized food. Probably a Nazi/Muslim/Communist plot.
1 in 4 kids. Right now. Today.
And right now, today, we're about to escalate our involvement in an absolutely unwinnable Afghanistan.
We can't afford it.
There really was a political way out: "We can't afford it."
Somehow, Democrats never understand the "we can't afford it" objection resonates with the public whenever the Republicans make it about a social program. There shouldn't have been a single Democratic objection to either war over the past decade that didn't begin with the phrase, "Well, first of all, we can't afford it." And now, a year into an Administration that does not have an exit strategy for double digit unemployment, we're about to escalate by 30,000 US troop involvement in Afghanistan.
We can't afford it.
According to the Cato Institute, the 2010 Pentagon budget (which doesn't assume additional money for this escalation) means "every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on (defense) programs and agencies next year."
When you consider the escalation, that makes one year of the defense budget the equivalent of ten years of health care.
Why is that a good tradeoff?
We are, as I've written previously, in a period of rapidly unlearning what took generations to understand (that would be the title of my book: The Unlearning). The difference between Obama and LBJ is LBJ didn't have a Vietnam to look back upon. When Obama announces this troop escalation tonight, what I will see is the equivalent of that Republican Presidential debate when the candidates raised their hands to indicate they didn't believe in evolution.
A decade of trillion dollar wars and tax cuts for the wealthy - a quarter century of deregulation on banking and corporate America has left our cupboard bare. One out of every 8 Americans and 1 out of every 4 American children is currently on food stamps.
That's socialized food. Probably a Nazi/Muslim/Communist plot.
1 in 4 kids. Right now. Today.
And right now, today, we're about to escalate our involvement in an absolutely unwinnable Afghanistan.
We can't afford it.
1st and Ten - The Weekly Tendown - November 22-28 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Welcome to issue 3 of our newest feature here at TBOR; last week, you learned of my admiration for the giant balls of Larry David, Bill Belichick, and Will Phillips. Oh - and Publix has a secret liquid which kills all germs, so that's probably going to hit the scientific journals very soon.
Here's the best thing that happened this week:
First:
Adam Lambert Is Not Your Babysitter
My favorite part of Adam Lambert's AMA performance last Sunday night wasn't the actual performance (I like the song; it's top end on what is, frankly, a little disappointing first album; but my tolerance for camp is fairly low). My favorite part wasn't even the straight from the playbook reaction - a small but vocal conservative outrage (the best quote - "America's children are literally under siege!" which is probably hyperbole unless "America's Children" is the nickname Lambert has given to his testicles) leading to Lambert's de-booking from Good Morning America (nobody buys records anymore except for country music fans; that's why the real most interesting occurrence at the AMA's was Lady Gaga losing the Best New Artist fan text vote to a country group that not only didn't I know then, but I don't know now and I looked up the name a day and a half ago in preparation for this open - and because of that, it's not exactly a Tiger getting the hell beaten out of him by the hot Swedish wife Brenda Ritchie style and then frantically fleeing into a fire hydrant level of cover up to imagine some co-ordination between the two ABC shows to ratchet up some level of publicity for everyone). My favorite part wasn't even the rank hypocrisy by the CBS Morning Show hosted by.....Paula Zahn?...Ray Gandolf?...Ethan Frome?...how the hell is that show still on the air...when it, within the same story, showed the Madonna/Britney makeout from whichever MTV Awards that was, and then blurred the image of Lambert's boy on boy kiss from the night before.
That was pretty good though. Lambert correctly pointed out that it was an obvious double standard - earlier in the night, Janet Jackson grabbed a backup dancer's crotch (recreating a moment from a, what - 15 year old video?) which went without comment, and as the Britney kissing her grandmother moment illustrated, faux lesbianism has been incorporated into our collective sexualization. The engine which runs our cultural acceptance of sex is straight dude orgasm - that's why Viagra commercials run all Sunday afternoon.
My favorite part was Lambert's response to the "what about the children?" question by the predictably vapid morning host...Kathleen Sullivan?...Frank Reynolds?....Tammy Sytch?...
"I'm not your babysitter."
And then he sang another cut from the album - the seemingly prescient selection of Whataya Want From Me:
Just don’t give up I’m workin it out
Please don’t give in, I won’t let you down
It messed me up, need a second to breathe
Just keep coming around
Hey, whataya want from me
Whataya want from me
Whataya want from me
Because then I realized that it was entirely a playlet. Team Adam Lambert, with an album coming out, in his first significant public act since American Idol, scripted this entire event, from soup to America's Children. The decision was made to not play up to an assexual contest winner image ("Bet ya thought that I was soft and sweet" was a lyric from the song at the AMAs) but instead go full on gay - (there's a song on the album that uses a the masculine pronoun to refer to a love object - I don't know if I've heard that before from a male singer - we get a lot of non gender specifc references in songs - but not "there he goes, my baby walks so slow" which is a lyric from yet another of the songs on the album (It's not bad, just a little disappointing - the best song, by the way, and by a good margin, by the current crop of Idols is Allison's "Friday I'll Be Over You"). In a show filled with big hitters (Jay Z, Green Day, Gaga) it was Lambert who was the main event; he pressed the only button that can still get some mainstream traction (and did so in a slow news week) and didn't respond to the questions with "oh, gosh" apologies - instead he furthered the story by recognizing the political dimension to the coverage - even having a song at the ready to seemingly respond to the attacks.
And scene. Well done, Sir!
That's my favorite thing this week. After the jump - The Remaining Ten!
Here's the best thing that happened this week:
First:
Adam Lambert Is Not Your Babysitter
My favorite part of Adam Lambert's AMA performance last Sunday night wasn't the actual performance (I like the song; it's top end on what is, frankly, a little disappointing first album; but my tolerance for camp is fairly low). My favorite part wasn't even the straight from the playbook reaction - a small but vocal conservative outrage (the best quote - "America's children are literally under siege!" which is probably hyperbole unless "America's Children" is the nickname Lambert has given to his testicles) leading to Lambert's de-booking from Good Morning America (nobody buys records anymore except for country music fans; that's why the real most interesting occurrence at the AMA's was Lady Gaga losing the Best New Artist fan text vote to a country group that not only didn't I know then, but I don't know now and I looked up the name a day and a half ago in preparation for this open - and because of that, it's not exactly a Tiger getting the hell beaten out of him by the hot Swedish wife Brenda Ritchie style and then frantically fleeing into a fire hydrant level of cover up to imagine some co-ordination between the two ABC shows to ratchet up some level of publicity for everyone). My favorite part wasn't even the rank hypocrisy by the CBS Morning Show hosted by.....Paula Zahn?...Ray Gandolf?...Ethan Frome?...how the hell is that show still on the air...when it, within the same story, showed the Madonna/Britney makeout from whichever MTV Awards that was, and then blurred the image of Lambert's boy on boy kiss from the night before.
That was pretty good though. Lambert correctly pointed out that it was an obvious double standard - earlier in the night, Janet Jackson grabbed a backup dancer's crotch (recreating a moment from a, what - 15 year old video?) which went without comment, and as the Britney kissing her grandmother moment illustrated, faux lesbianism has been incorporated into our collective sexualization. The engine which runs our cultural acceptance of sex is straight dude orgasm - that's why Viagra commercials run all Sunday afternoon.
My favorite part was Lambert's response to the "what about the children?" question by the predictably vapid morning host...Kathleen Sullivan?...Frank Reynolds?....Tammy Sytch?...
"I'm not your babysitter."
And then he sang another cut from the album - the seemingly prescient selection of Whataya Want From Me:
Just don’t give up I’m workin it out
Please don’t give in, I won’t let you down
It messed me up, need a second to breathe
Just keep coming around
Hey, whataya want from me
Whataya want from me
Whataya want from me
Because then I realized that it was entirely a playlet. Team Adam Lambert, with an album coming out, in his first significant public act since American Idol, scripted this entire event, from soup to America's Children. The decision was made to not play up to an assexual contest winner image ("Bet ya thought that I was soft and sweet" was a lyric from the song at the AMAs) but instead go full on gay - (there's a song on the album that uses a the masculine pronoun to refer to a love object - I don't know if I've heard that before from a male singer - we get a lot of non gender specifc references in songs - but not "there he goes, my baby walks so slow" which is a lyric from yet another of the songs on the album (It's not bad, just a little disappointing - the best song, by the way, and by a good margin, by the current crop of Idols is Allison's "Friday I'll Be Over You"). In a show filled with big hitters (Jay Z, Green Day, Gaga) it was Lambert who was the main event; he pressed the only button that can still get some mainstream traction (and did so in a slow news week) and didn't respond to the questions with "oh, gosh" apologies - instead he furthered the story by recognizing the political dimension to the coverage - even having a song at the ready to seemingly respond to the attacks.
And scene. Well done, Sir!
That's my favorite thing this week. After the jump - The Remaining Ten!
The Weekly 10 - Week 13 College Football Picks
Thursday, November 26, 2009
72-47-1
9-3
Cincinnati -21 Illinois (loss)
Boise -14 Nevada (loss)
Boise v. Nevada under 70 (loss)
Clemson -3 SCarolina (loss)
NCarolina -6 NC St (loss)
Florida St. +24.5 Florida (loss)
Geo Tech -7 Georgia (loss)
Arizona -3 Ariz St. (push)
Miami -6.5 SFlorida (win)
Lock: Navy -9.5 Hawaii (loss)
1-8-1
73-55-2
9-4
But those early season winning works sure were fun.
9-3
Cincinnati -21 Illinois (loss)
Boise -14 Nevada (loss)
Boise v. Nevada under 70 (loss)
Clemson -3 SCarolina (loss)
NCarolina -6 NC St (loss)
Florida St. +24.5 Florida (loss)
Geo Tech -7 Georgia (loss)
Arizona -3 Ariz St. (push)
Miami -6.5 SFlorida (win)
Lock: Navy -9.5 Hawaii (loss)
1-8-1
73-55-2
9-4
But those early season winning works sure were fun.
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