Musings

Sexism in Comics

· March 31, 2015 · Musings · , , , , , · 2 Comments

There’s been a lot of buzz recently about sexism in the comics industry. The comments tend to specifically attack two things: the lack of relatable female superheroes and the oversexualized manner in which the existing female superheroes are drawn.  As a lifelong comic geek, I can one hundred percent acknowledge and agree with both criticisms. That being said, it also feels like much of the criticism comes from people on the outside, and a number of their attacks and assumptions are more about making noise than change.

I’m not going to defend comic books. The overt sexualization of the female characters, which has always been around, has gotten worse. My friends and I used to joke that every female superhero had an additional power of gravity-defying bosoms. If a horny teenager that gets excited seeing a bra strap knows they are drawn over the top and unrealistic, there’s a problem.

Some of the defenders of the comic industry point to that socially-awkward, horny teenage boy as the poster child of the comic fan. They say that, since comic book companies need to make sales to those boys, they need to draw the women that way.  This is bullshit, because I was buying plenty of comics without any women in them. I never once remember buying a comic because of a nice rack on a superheroine. Nor did I ever put a comic back because the women were too plain.

This is borne out by comic sales. The most voluptuous women appear in Zenescope comics. These women aren’t just sexualized, they are straight-up fetish. Fairy tale characters wearing knee-high stockings and garters with panties visible under their Britney Spears-esque school-girl skirts. Little Red Riding Hood, Dorothy, and, hey look, Alice is giving you a glimpse of her very own Wonderland. Go ahead, look at their website.

So if sexy women drove comic sales, Zenescope should be a marketing force to deal with, right? Grimm’s Fairy Tales should regularly wresting the top spot from the various Animal-Related-Men. But nope. In January, their best-selling comic ranked #276, ranking right above Scooby Doo, Where Are You? And not far behind such modern-day powerhouses as Flash Gordon and Powerpuff Girls.

So if it’s not for the fans, why are the women drawn that way? I’m pointing the finger at the artists. Let’s be honest, many of them started as those very same awkward teenage boys. I was never able to draw worth a damn. Still can’t, which gives endless entertainment to my students when I try to draw a cow or a map of Europe on the white board. But most of the guys that I knew in high school who had the ability to draw tended to draw the same thing over and over: the hourglass shape from a woman’s armpit to her mid-thigh. Well, that and penises, but I’m guessing Marvel and DC frown upon overt phalluses in their comics. (I mean, come on, it’s not The Little Mermaid.) So when the guys that spent their teenage years drawing idealized female forms get hired to draw comics, we get controversies like the recent Spider-Woman cover.

So although the sexist drawings draw more ire from social activists, I don’t think they have much of an effect on comic’s fandom. Even if every woman (and man, I suppose)were drawn “normal,” I don’t see a lot of the people who are up in arms about this flocking to their local comic book store to drive up sales. The lack of bona fide female superheroes, though, might be more on topic.

Here again, the general argument is the overwhelming majority of male comic book readers. But we could be looking at a chicken-and-egg argument here. Do the lack of female readers equate to fewer female superheroes or do girls not flock to comics because they have no heroes to identify with?

Most of the female superheroes that exist today are derivative. Batgirl. Supergirl. Spider-woman. She-Hulk. Most of their stories are derivative, as well. And I can’t tell you how many times they need to team up with their male counterpart to truly accomplish anything.  She-Hulk might be the one that breaks the mold, seeing as she is a lawyer and she can keep her rage under control. Very rarely is there a Hulk/She-Hulk crossover.

Wonder Woman is one of the few well-known female superheroes that is not just a carbon copy of an already existing male superhero. And really, Wonder Woman only stands out as cool because she’s on the same team as Aquaman.

A lot of this, however, is endemic of another major problem in comics today – the lack of new creative characters.  Most of the characters I mentioned, both male and female, are over fifty years old now. There were a couple of golden ages of character creation – the DC characters in the late-1930s, the Marvel characters in the early-1960s. Most of the characters the average American has heard of (the possible exception being Wolverine, from 1974) came from one of those two eras.  And the comic book writers from that age were absolutely sexist. As was pretty much everyone in America. And the idea of gaining female readers would be laughable.

Since then, there have been concerted efforts to add more diversity in comics. Some have been successful, but most have not. Part of this is because they seemed to pander. But part of this is indicative of a larger lack of creativity, not just with female or minority heroes. None of the heroes created in the past forty years have gained much resonance with the public.  Exhibit A is Dazzler, a mutant created during the disco era who can turn sound into light. She wore roller skates and a silver disco-ball suit. Since then, she has lost the roller skates, but do we honestly wonder why no female readers today are identifying with her?

And lest you think Dazzler is weak because she’s female, bear in mind the male equivalent of Dazzler, the Hypno-Hustler, thankfully disappeared after disco died. The fact that Dazzler still around as a viable character speaks to both their attempt to diversify, as well as how sparse the landscape of “new” heroes is.

Comics have also gotten darker over the years, so sadly the one female character to stand out over at DC is Harley Quinn. But just because Kevin Smith named his daughter after her, one should not think she’s a hero. She’s borderline psychotic and is obsessed with the Joker. So instead of focusing on the halter tops she wears, we should maybe, I don’t know, be looking at her as the villain she is.

That being said, there are still a large number of very good female characters, especially in Marvel.  The problem is that they don’t have their own books. They are members of teams. I’ll put Kitty Pryde up as one of the most fully-realized characters out there. She has her strengths and weaknesses, she has grown from teenage rookie to effective leader. Storm was also the leader of the X-Men for quite a long time. Invisible Woman, despite being often portrayed as “mother first,” is clearly the glue and moral center of the Fantastic Four. Although the Phoenix force has been overdone and was ruined in X-Men: The Last Stand, in the original telling, Jean Grey proved to be one of the most grounded and tragic characters in the Marvel universe.

Recently, perhaps in response to a lot of that criticism, Marvel has been trying to put more female led comics out there. Carol Danvers is now Captain Marvel (she had been Ms. Marvel for years) and has her own comic and allegedly a movie coming, although the merging of Spider-Man into the Movie Universe has pushed back the release of this movie, as well as Black Panther, the first African-American superhero.  So once again, we see a desire to promote diversity, but only until we can jam another Spider-Man movie in.

The new Ms. Marvel, taking Carol Danvers’ place, is not only female but a teenage Muslim living in New Jersey. And as an added bonus, she’s drawn in an in-no-way-sexualized manner. Thor, as I’m sure you have heard, is now female. And this new female Thor ended up taking it from both sides: some complained that it was pandering and others complained that she was too hot.  Um, those people do know what the male Thor looks like, right? Most of the women I know thought Thor: The Dark World would have been much better if they had just extended the Chris Hemsworth shirtless scene for 120 minutes.

This is where it gets placed on the people purchasing the comics. The female-led comics don’t sell well. Thor has done okay, but I wonder if that will drop after they reveal who the new female Thor is. She-Hulk was canceled, Captain Marvel has trouble breaking the top 100. Storm currently stars in her own series, but in February it came in at #152, right behind Batman 66, a comic based on the old Adam West TV Show. Pow! Zap! Whomp!

There is an all-female X-Men title and it is usually the worst selling X-Men title. Fearless Defenders was another all-female group. One of the best issues of any comic book last year had all of the Fearless Defenders’ boyfriends whining and getting in fights at a bar, waiting for the ladies who were busy kicking asses, to show up for date night. This comic lasted a whopping 12 issues.

So at this point, you can’t overly blame Marvel or DC for looking at the sales and relative popularity of their comics. They might really want to give Kitty Pryde or Lana Lang (who is currently being written as an awesome non-powered character in Action Comics) their own series, but when they look at the numbers, they just decide to add another Batman title.

What the people that complain about sexism in comics ought to be doing is not maligning the entire industry. They ought to be finding the comics that do have strong, reasonably-drawn females, and encouraging people to buy them.  But what fun would that be if they can make more noise by NOT purchasing the comics, then complaining loudly to whatever media are near when they get canceled?

One Year of Curling

· March 23, 2015 · Musings · , , , · No Comments

About six months ago, I wrote about my baby-step foray into the fascinating sport of curling. (No really, it’s a sport. We are athletes. It doesn’t matter that it ends with the winner buying beer for the loser.) I’ve continued with it and just passed the one-year anniversary of my Learn-to-Curl workshop. In fact, there was another Learn-to-Curl in February of this year, and at this one, I had fully graduated from student to teacher. I’ve continued to learn about the sport (okay, fine, “activity”) as I’ve grown from fresh-faced newbie to… um, not grizzled old vet… pock-marked adolescent? Sure, let’s go with that.

When I last checked in, I had just finished my first bonspiel, a weekend-long tournament, where I had curled next to Olympians. We had won our first match in the loser’s bracket before losing the last two game, missing out on the coveted “Travolta Cup” by one win. The Travolta Cup is a Red Solo Cup atop a pedestal of four VHS boxes of Travolta movies that gets passed around the four California bonspiels every summer. Much like the Stanley Cup, the winning team gets to write their names on the Cup. This year: that Cup will be ours!

Since then, I suffered through a horrible fall season, causing me to put together my own team of noobs for the winter/spring season. All of these things, both on and off the ice, has inspired a few more a-ha’s, which leads me to:

What I’ve learned about curling in my second six months.

  1. You can always watch curling.

Much like all the writing websites and resources I discovered when I went down that particular rabbit hole, joining the curling community in this day of internet streaming made me realize how much competitive curling is online. Gone are the days of being relegated to NBC’s seventh network once every four years. Much to the chagrin of my wife.

For instance, the World Women’s Championships have been held in Japan over the past week. They are being broadcast on World Curling’s YouTube channel, except for when NBC’s Universal Sports Network is streaming it on their own website. Or TSN, Canada’s equivalent of ESPN, broadcasts the Canadian team, and a recent deal allows espn3.com to mirror any TSN Canadian curling broadcast, so I can choose which country’s team to watch. Spoiler Alert: Canadians are better. To get to the World Championships, both the United States and Canada had their own tournaments a few weeks ago.  All broadcast on espn3.com or usacurl.org. Prior to that, each Canadian province held its own tournament to determine who went to Nationals. Not all of these were streamed, a surprising number of them could still be found.  I’m not ashamed to say I watched the Nova Scotian semi-final.

The men have been going through a similar journey, so I can only assume the World Championships will be coming to an internet site near you soon.  Add in the Juniors, the colleges, the Seniors, and I can pretty much find live curling any day I want. And if I can’t, there’s always old matches on YouTube. It’s not like I already know who won the Scotties matchup between Val Sweeting and Rachel Homan in 2012.

But even when the professionals aren’t engaging in some world  tourney, it’s still not hard to find something streaming live. The Coyotes Curling club in Arizona (yes, Arizona) holds a number of bonspiels every yer, and they stream all of them. TESN.com appears to stream league matches from many eastern and Midwestern states.  All it takes is some dedicated ice and a webcam on their part, and a little bit of research on mine.

  1. Watching the professionals isn’t always a good thing.

I start out watching with the best of intentions. I want to see what sorts of shots the skips call, and I want to see how the very best deliver the rock. Plus when they call the sweepers on and off. One of the nice things about curling broadcasts is that you can often hear the curlers discuss their strategy. You never hear a Tom Brady monologue about progressing through his wide receivers. No catcher is miked up to say he thinks the batter will swing at a low-and-away curveball. But in curling, especially in the last two shots per team, they talk about what they’re going to try to do.

Me and my team? We don’t hit our shots with the 85% accuracy the pros do. Usually our strategy is “throw it in this general area and hope that you don’t knock the other team’s rocks closer to the button.” Whenever I start watching the good curlers, I keep that in mind. “Yeah, There’s no way anyone I know could reliably thread that needle, so I would’ve gone for the outside shot.” But after binge watching on Saturday, I show up to the sheet on Sunday and call ridiculous shots.

It happens to us all. I got in the hack a few weeks ago and my skip called for me to knock the opponent’s stone out then have my stone roll in the opposite direction just enough to go behind a guard stone. The pros do that shit all the time, but at my level we’re concerned with hitting the target, not the precise force and trajectory to influence what happens after it hits. All I could do was look at my sweepers and say, “Does he know there’s no way in hell I’m hitting that?”

  1. Many people don’t know how good they are.

And it’s not always because we’ve just been watching Mike McEwen do shit like this.

No, some people just think they can thread the needle on a whim. And it’s easy to see why. The game isn’t difficult. There are only three things you have to do: throw the rock the correct distance, in the correct direction, and with the correct spin. Anbody who has been curling for more than a month has done that at least once.

But that “correct distance” thing is a matter of hitting a four foot window from 140 feet away. And the right direction might only be an inch or two wider than the stone, to say nothing of the amount of the curl. Imagine how many field goal kickers would get the three points if the uprights were only two feet wide.

The team I was on in the fall league had two players that felt they could not miss. The lesser experienced of the two demanded to be vice-skip, shooting third, and swore she was best at take-outs (knocking the other team’s rocks out of play). She hit less than half of them. Could I do better? Maybe or maybe not. But I wouldn’t be bragging about this alleged ability unless I could at least get a D-. She also would only sweep from one side and chastised me whenever I swept closer to the stone than she. However, when the skip said to start sweeping, I would always have my broom in position, while she would take two or three steps before her broom was on the ice. Hence I would end up closer to the stone than her.

The skip was even more sure of himself. I constantly wondered why he was calling certain shots. Later in the season, after the vice-skip stopped showing up to games, I viced once. The vice acts as the target for the final two shots when the skip is throwing, so I was finally able to see some of his thought process. Sure enough, he assumed he could throw that correct weight and correct distance every single time. So when he had been calling certain shots from me earlier, it was because he assumed he could knock out two opponent stones or raise two of ours.

“Are you sure you want me to put the broom here?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s the right shot because it’ll knock theirs back and we’ll score three points.”

“But if we came in on the open side, we’d at least score one instead of giving them two,” I offered.

“I’m pretty sure I can hit it if you put the broom here.”

“That’s what you said the last time.”

“I’ll hit it this time,” he promised.

He didn’t. Did I mention we only had one win?

  1. The better you get, the more frustrating it becomes.

I’m now fully capable of hitting most shots laid before me. The right distance, direction, and spin? I can nail all three of them about a quarter of the time. And well over half the time, I can at least get close enough to do some damage.

A few weeks ago, taking my penultimate shot as skip, I went around two guards and knocked the opponent’s stone off of the button to sit one point.  The opponent used his final shot to block up the hole I had just gone through, but there was still a little opening. My vice and I decided to try to throw the same shot I did the time before, just at a smaller gap this time. And you know what? I hit it. Precisely. Nothing feels as good as watching my stone hit that gap and curl out of view headed for an extra point.

Then the next end came and I couldn’t hit shit. The first shot doesn’t even make it across the hog line and the next one hits one of our own stones out.  It was like following up a bowling turkey with a couple of gutter balls.

It’s not just me. I was vicing and our skip was hitting every obscure shot I was calling. Then we’re faced with one opponent rock inside a ring of four of ours. All we have to do is knock theirs out and we’ll score four or five. His first shot was too far to the left, so I adjusted the broom and wouldn’t you know, the next shot he’s too far to the right.

I’ve heard golf is similar to this. Although in theory you’re competing against the other people or teams, you’re really competing against yourself. Against the shot you know you can make. Sometimes I know as soon as I leave the hack that it’ll be a bad shot. Sometimes it leaves my hand and I think, “oh yeah, I nailed it.” Most of the time I sit there and watch it slide down the ice, wondering what in the hell it’s going to do.

  1. Chemistry matters as much as talent.

I started this journey at the same time as a friend of mine, and we have played on each other’s team ever since. Both of us loved the first team we were on (shocking, since we went undefeated) and were not fans of our second team. But it wasn’t just the losses. We never really felt on the same wavelength as the other two member of our team. In fact, when the two of them stopped showing up for the last three or four games, we weren’t all that upset. Except for the fact that we had to forfeit. In a forfeit, we still play the game, because there are always people willing to substitute. The first time it was just the two of us, we were playing against a team that also only had two players show up, so we thought the game would count. In that game, I decided to skip, my friend viced, and we had two subs. All of a sudden, it was like we were back in the undefeated season. I was calling a strategy that he understood. We were  paying attention to how both teams played and pulling points whenever we could. It went unspoken until the three-quarter mark, when we were up by one with a few ends left to play, just how much this game meant to the two of us.

“This feels good,” I said, as we watched the other team deliver its stone.

“Yeah,” he responded. “It’s nice not having the two know-it-alls calling stupid shots.”

“I really want to fucking win.”

“Let’s do it. To prove it wasn’t us sucking this whole season.”

We won, even if it didn’t count in the standings.  The beer we paid for tasted sweet.

That conversation cemented what we already knew. Playing with people we liked, and people that communicated throughout the game, was as important as winning. We formed a team with two others in a similar boat. We’re not supposed to form our own teams in the “B league,” but they allowed it since we’ve all been playing less than a year, so it’s not like we were creating an uber-team to screw the level of competition.

We even tried a crazy idea of switching what position we played every week. Eventually we’ll pick what we prefer or are best at. But in the meantime, we’ll learn each other’s tendencies and what the general team strategies. So if I’m lead, I’ll know what the skip is trying to accomplish with his call, and vice versa. Since we’re all still learning the game, we want to learn it all.

And the result? Three wins and three losses, in a tie for third place. Not bad. Are we going to Pyongyang? No. But there are a few 5-and-under tourneys that we might have a shot at in the next three years.

Even better, after every game, we split a pitcher of beer (half of them bought by us, half by our opponents), talk about how the game went and what strategies we’ll use next week when we have a different order. Something that never happened with my last team.

  1. Curlers are as friendly as they are competitive.

The post-match beer is only part of it. In a year of curling, I’ve only run into a handful of people that weren’t overly friendly. If you make a good shot, it’s likely to be the person on the other team who congratulates you first.  If I’m skipping against an experienced skip, I can ask advice, both before and after a shot. I’ve even had one or two say, “They need to sweep that,” then apologize afterward for “interrupting” me, even though their advice put their own team in a worse position. In a pick-up game, we didn’t have enough sweepers, so we swept for our opponents.

Little things make it feel like a family. When someone shows up with shoes for the first time, everybody stops to watch the first delivery with the new shoes. It is often hilarious because those shoes do NOT work the same way as the sliders. It’s like back to square one. Recently I was looking to buy my own broom, and everyone was perfectly willing to let me use theirs for an end, trading with me for the crappy broom-equivalent of bowling alley rental shoes.

None of this is to say we don’t want to win.  We do, but we want the overall level of competition to improve. We don’t want to beat a subpar team, we want that team to get better, then still beat them.

What we want is what we say at the beginning and end of every match: Good Curling.

Losing My Marbles

· March 16, 2015 · Musings · , , , , · 2 Comments

I just had a phone call that was either the most hilarious or cringe-inspiring in my life. In less than a five-minute conversation, I think I got whiplash from the number of times I oscillated between the extremes. Tennis match spectators had nothing on me. It should have come with one of those Hollywood preview voice-overs: “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll curl up into a fetal position.”

As much as my wife and I love our little peanut, we’ve decided she will be an only child. The complications my wife had with the delivery, combined with a desire to attend my child’s high school graduation sans a walker, made it more or less a foregone conclusion.  So, yay us, doing our part against global overpopulation. Or speeding up the arrival of Idiocracy.

Of course, the route to this particular outcome was still in debate until a few months ago when my wife was told she could never go back on the pill.  Something about blood clotting or blood thinners or whatever. So our choices were reduced to using condoms for the next ten years (gosh, how fun) or else I go in to lose my manhood. The snip-snip. The unkindest cut.

Hold on, let me go back and think about that condom option. I’ve also heard pulling out is fun.

Alright, fine. Vasectomy it is. But wait, there’s more. I can’t just walk into the hospital, find the closest scalpel, then drop trou. No, for this procedure, I need to officially don my serious hat. And sign papers with this serious hat. And do interviews to make sure I’ve thought this thing through. Because there seems to be a large contingent of guys who get vasectomies on a whim. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve woken up in the morning and thought, “Nothing on the agenda today? Maybe I should go get my nads chopped off.”

So a month ago I had to schedule a phone interview, and last week was the first time they were available to call me. Now that I’ve done that phone interview, I have to watch a video and sign a waiver. Then they will allow me to schedule an appointment at least two weeks out. To buy a gun only requires a 72-hour waiting period, but to shoot blanks, you’ve got to REALLY want it.

“Hi, I’m calling about your upcoming vasectomy,” came the way-to-chipper voice when I answered the phone.  “Do you have time to talk about the voluntary sterilization process?”

Look lady, I don’t mean to critique your bedside manner, but I hope you’ve never used that as a pick-up line.

“Okay, first question: Have you ever had surgery or any other medical procedure on or around your scrotum?”

I guess we’re done with the small talk.

Wait, is this a trick question? Are you trying to get me to admit that, yeah, I’ve already had multiple vasectomies because I get a rush off of sharp objects near my nether regions?  Yes, I know that testicular cancer is a thing, but is it so common a thing that the first question is about history of scrotal surgery?

I don’t know how many questions or comments went by while I think of all the different types of scrotal surgery. By the time I had recovered from that first doozy, we were already discussing how the day of the procedure would go.

“Okay, you’re going to need to shave your pubic hair that morning. The entire scrotum and base of the penis need to be completely bare.”

Don’t black out. Don’t go catatonic. There might be something in this conversation that will be important or useful. Or, failing that, might at least provide for a funny blog post.

                But I’ve met myself. I’ve seen myself handle sharp objects. I don’t care if it’s a safety razor, if I try for the upside-down shave of that particular body part, I might as well save my money and your time. Because the surgery will already be completed, in a less than sanitary manner, by the time I show up. And I know that hair might make it difficult to get through, but do you think a freshly scabbed-over coinpurse with gauze attached is going to be easier?

Maybe I can just find and olde-tyme barber with a straight-edge razor and give him an extra couple dollar tip. Okay, nurse practitioner, you were saying?

“Make sure you don’t take any blood thinners, including aspirin, for two weeks before the procedure, because we don’t want you to bleed excessively from your scrotum or testicles.”

Cringe. At this point, I’m guessing any male readers have given up on this article. Except for the ones who have had a vasectomy and are now nodding to themselves like the fraternity sophomore that finally gets to see someone else getting hazed.

“Eat normally the day of the surgery. Some people come in with an empty stomach, but that’s unnecessary.”

“Well, I didn’t assume you’d go in through my stomach,” I joked. The rest of my comments up to this point had been internal, accompanied by an “uh-huh” or “okay” out loud. But this one I said back to her.

Her response immediately made me decide to keep the rest of my comments internal.

“If we were going to put you under, you’d need an empty stomach, so I guess that’s what most patients are thinking. But you’ll be awake for the entire procedure.”

Oh, joy. At least when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, they had the decency to knock me out. I’m sure this procedure isn’t nearly as complicated, but isn’t there some sort of professional curtesy? Failing that, can I have some popcorn and a mirror, maybe? I mean, to quote Dr. Evil, there is nothing more breathtaking than a freshly-shorn scrotum.

Then it was time to discuss the post-procedure.

“Bring a jockstrap or biker shorts or some other garment to keep your scrotum close to your body and continue wearing it for a number of days.”

Nope, sorry. I’m a Gottfried Leibniz guy, therefore I hate Isaac Newton and refuse to believe in gravity. Much like the people who deny the moon landing and dinosaurs and vaccines. My boys’ll be fine in my boxers. Or maybe I’ll just walk around nude, because I also don’t believe in your silly decency laws.

Or maybe I need to go invest in a jockstrap.

“They will be enlarged. You will want to cool them with a pack of frozen vegetables.”

Rumor confirmed. Not sure how that works through the supporter cup, but I’ll figure it out. As an added bonus, I’ll have some thawed veggies. Hey Honey, guess what we’re having for dinner tonight?

“You’ll want to limit your movement for a few days.”

With the stitches and the enlarged testicles, to say nothing of the chafing from the re-growing hair, that shouldn’t be a problem.

“In two or three days you should be able to return to work and resume non-strenuous activity.”

Okay, reports back from those who have gone before me say that, while this is technically correct, the stitches will still snag on my underwear at inopportune times.  My daughter also likes to kick in that region, right after she’s done giving a tittie twister to momma, so that should be fun.

“It is important that you not engage in sexual activity or ejaculate until the stitches have dissolved, which is about seven to ten days.”

Is this really a problem? I know my libido is not what it was when I was eighteen, but I think even then, the whole “stitches and icepack” thing would have dampened the hormones. I can wait a week, I would have thought, that Cindy Crawford poster isn’t going anywhere.

“Sometimes the procedure doesn’t work, so you’re going to have to continue using some other form of birth control until we can test you.”

Can I get one of the procedures that works, please? Fine, fine. When will I have to jerk off into a cup?

“You’re going to have to wait until two months have passed and you’ve ejaculated at least twenty times.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Two months AND twenty ejaculations? Not or? I did mention that I was married, right? That I have a nine-month old at home? Seriously, who the hell has the time to ejaculate ten times a month? And that’s not even the correct ratio, because the first 7-10 days are a no-no. Let’s be conservative and give myself two full weeks before my wife wants to jump on what will look like Franken-wienie. That’s twenty ejaculations in six weeks, or once every two days.  Even when we were trying to conceive, that sort of schedule could only be maintained for a week or so at a time.

And did I mention all of this sex would be with a condom? Even the twenty-year old me would have found this to be a chore.

Now, sure, these ejaculations can be, um, “self-inflicted.” But even that takes five minutes of alone time. Hell, I can’t even post a blog entry in the same week that grades are due. How am I going to find the time to make a withdrawal from the spank bank?

“Oh, I forgot to mention,” she says as I’m processing the last bit of information. “When you’re icing it down, make sure you use those vegetables, not an ice pack. With an ice pack, your penis might catch frostbite.”

Um, yeah. That sounds important. You might want to write that little note into the permanent script. Because when you mentioned it, my brain had equated frozen vegetables with anything cold. And Frostbitten Penis, while a great name for a punk-rock band, would definitely put another wrinkle on that whole twenty times thing.

And just think, if the test comes back positive after the two months emulating Ron Jeremy, I get to do the whole thing again.

Is it too late to look into a decade of coitus interruptus?

Outdoor Hockey

· February 24, 2015 · Musings · , , , , , , · One Comment

I went to the outdoor hockey game between the Sharks and Kings this weekend. It was played at the new Levi’s Stadium, home of the 49ers.

I’m going to let that one seek in for a little bit. There was an outdoor hockey game in the Bay Area of California.

Evidently Phoenix in July was booked?

I know the weather in Northern California isn’t as warm as Southern California, but… wait, what? They had a game at Dodger Stadium last year?

Seriously, Phoenix Coyotes, what’s the hold up?

When rumors of the Sharks game came out last summer, the conventional wisdom was the game would be at SBC/PacBell/AT&T/NamelessConglomerate Park, where the San Francisco Giants play. It seemed a long shot that the Niners would allow their brand-spanking new stadium to be tainted by the taints of 70,000 hockey fans. But the mighty dollar sign won out. Especially that number 70,000, because the baseball stadium can only fit about 40,000.

I was going back and forth about whether I wanted to go to the game. One of my friends went to that game at Dodger Stadium last year. He told me that, as cool as the idea of outdoor hockey sounds, and as cool as it looks on TV, the structure of stadiums vs. arenas means you’re much farther away from the action. He said it was difficult to follow the puck at Dodger Stadium.

There really aren’t any bad seats at the SAP Center, where the Sharks play. There are only 17,000 seats and they pretty much go straight up from the ice. But a hockey rink is smaller than a football field (see below), so you’ve got a lot of real estate between the ice and the first seats. I would actually estimate that the best seat at Levi’s Stadium was farther away from the rink than the worst seat at SAP Center.

For this reason, I was hoping they would stick with AT&T Park. While I have issues with a number of things about seeing baseball games there, it is at least very cozy. If the action was far away at Dodger Stadium, how bad would it be at the monstrosity that is Levi’s Stadium?

But another issue had me interested in seeing the game. I mean, aside from the whole “I was there” aspect of seeing outdoor hockey.  I wanted to see Levi’s Stadium and didn’t have an extra $20,000 lying around to buy a Personal Seat License to see a 49ers game. I figured the price for a hockey game would be much more reasonable. Otherwise how would they get 70,000 hockey fans to come to the game?

To be assured of getting tickets, you had to sign up for a Sharks ticket package. Or Niners, because of that whole “Personal Seat License.” Or, surprisingly, the Los Angeles Kings. I opted for Sharks.

I’ve always enjoyed going to games, and every year when the schedule comes out, my wife and I “hmm and huh” about which games we should go to, and what does our schedule look like, and should we see if so-and-so wants to go to a game this year? Then March rolls around and we’re like, “Crap, we didn’t make it to a hockey game this year. Let’s see what stubhub wants for the playoffs. Um, yeah, no, let’s definitely hit a game next year.”

So with the added incentive of getting first crack at the outdoor game, I decided to bite the bullet on a 10-pack of games. Now I’ve gone through six months of “hmm’s and huh’s” about who is willing to schlepp all the way to San Jose with me, and can we secure a babysitter, and holy shit, what time will we finally get back home after that Wednesday night game? Turns out that while I love seeing hockey games, I really hate the ten-hour ordeal of getting to and from San Jose. My wife and friends fall into this boat even more. Maybe that’s why we were only making it to one game a year.

But after plunking down the $1,200 to buy two 10-packs, I was permitted to purchase tickets to the outdoor game. Only two, of course, unless I wanted to buy more 10-packs. This was also the point that I saw the prices for the first time. Holy crap. That whole “they’ll have to lower the price to sell 70,000” mentality was not shared by the front office. The cheapest tickets were $100. The entire lower deck of the stadium was running $400 a seat. Bear in mind these are as far away from the action as a $40 seat to a normal game.

Then we discovered what game time would be. All the outdoor games I had seen on TV were day games. Usually on New Year’s Day, opposite major college bowl games, but hey, if the NHL weren’t crappy at promoting its product, it wouldn’t be the NHL.

But I forgot most of those games were in winter locations. The very first Winter Classic, which started some of the mysticism, featured a light snow falling on the Buffalo Sabres. Majestic.

The Sharks game was at night. Understandable, since the high probably topped 70 degrees Saturday.  In fact, one of the hockey players being interviewed after the second period talked about how hot it was, a fact us Californians scoffed at as we bundled up in the 55-degree “frost.”

Being a night game meant another early morning return home. It also removed some of the public transportation options, which is important because Levi’s Stadium was built with virtually no parking. I f you opt to drive there, it’ll cost you $55 and it’ll take you an hour to get out of the parking lot.

But whatever. One time experience, right? So I ponied up the $200 to buy two tickets, then spent the next six months fully prepared to disapprove of the game.

The result? Not bad. Did the players look like ants? Certainly. But I was able to see the puck and follow most of the action. It was, as one might expect, similar to seeing an NFL game live. Then again, there’s a reason football is a made-for-TV sport. Here was the view from my seat:

Sharks Outside

Second row. Damn, those 10-packs paid off!

The thing that surprised me the most was the sound. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, because, again, nobody ever talks about the sounds of a football game unless a wide receiver is miked up on TV.  But hockey is usually a loud game. Not just the hits and the slapshots, but the actual skates cutting the ice make an ambient roar that’s missing at the outdoor game.

They put a few microphones around the rink, but coming over the loudspeakers sounded artificial. Depending on how far the action was from the mike, the time delay was almost comical. Plus some shots were very loud, while others sounded distant. Plus that sound of skates on ice didn’t come through.

It reminded me of a music video with the music taken out. I think this was the main reason that the crowd wasn’t that into it. Well, that and the fact that a number of Niner fans were at their first hockey game (I’m talking to you, lady next to me who kept stomping “DE-FENSE” when the Kings crossed the blue line). This might also account for the fact that only four of the fifteen outdoor games that the NHL has played over the past decade have been won by the home team.

The musical guests seemed a bit odd. Hockey intermissions are usually only twenty minutes, but these seemed to be extended by five or ten, so they could have ten-minute long mini-concerts from Bay Area musicians. Completely unnecessary, but whatever. The first intermission featured John Fogerty, who played nothing post-Credence Clearwater Revival. I thought nothing could be less suited for hockey than “Born on the Bayou.”

Then the second intermission came.

Melissa Etheridge came out with her acoustic 12-string guitar as if this was a 70,000-seat coffeehouse. I don’t think she was wearing an earpiece and it showed. It felt like she was screaming to hear herself in a cavernous stadium she’s not used to playing. Her rendition of “Come to My Window” wasn’t bad, but she finished with “Piece of My Heart,” a tribute to Janis Joplin. If by “tribute,” she meant “make people really wish the other person was here instead of you,” she nailed it. I’ve heard karaoke versions better

If you’re going to waste our time with musical guests,  I guess I understand the desire to find Bay Area people, but was this the best available? Was Green Day on tour? Couldn’t they have brought Steve Perry up to lip-sync “Don’t Stop Believin’” like he does at Giants games? I probably would have been more entertained by the corpse of Jerry Garcia.

But all in all it was a good night. The stadium was nice, the remaining public transportation options weren’t bad, and who else in the country can say they saw an outdoor hockey game in a light sweatshirt? I don’t know that I’d spend the $100 (or $400) if they tried it again next year, but I’m glad I’ve had the experience as a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Even if the ass-dragging that ensued Sunday pushed me beyond my Monday blog deadline. Meh, it’s hockey. Let’s just call this Tuesday post “overtime.”

Dishonest Abe

· February 16, 2015 · Musings · , , , · No Comments

In honor of President’s Day, here comes the Writing Wombat again to shatter everyone’s historical myths.

I’m just going to throw it out there early: Abraham Lincoln was not a very good president.

I know, I know. Then how did he get on the penny and the $5 bill? And a Memorial built to him?

Remember when we used to celebrate both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays this month? It used to be two days off, one for each. Then we fused two together to just make it President’s Day, and instead of putting it in the middle, we put it as close to Lincoln’s birthday as possible. Some schools still throw a second day off in there, either making it two 3-day weekends in a row, or taking Friday off to make it a 4-day weekend. They will often call the extra day off Washington’s Birthday (to distinguish from the REAL President),  even though it’s nowhere near poor George’s birthday. This year, if a school took the Friday off and pretended it was “Washington’s birthday,” it was actually on February 12, ten days before Washington’s birthday. One day after Lincoln’s.

To be fair, Washington wasn’t all that great of a President, either.  I don’t think he was bad, there just wasn’t a lot of political strife to deal with at the time. Shoot, nobody even ran against him for his second term.  It wasn’t until John Adams came along that most Americans even became aware you could dislike the President. Washington was a popular figurehead in charge of unifying the new country while the real stuff was being done by those policy wonks (Hamilton, Jefferson, and Randolph) behind the scenes .

So Washington wasn’t great, but he was fine. But Lincoln? Let me amend my earlier statement. It’s not just that he was not a very good president. Lincoln was a BAD president.

Historically, he is helped by the fact that, even as a bad president, the guys before and after him were worse. James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce were quite possibly the two worst Presidents we’ve ever had. Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, was the only President to ever be impeached before Newt Gingrich decided that Slick Willie’s mistress wasn’t as cool as his own. Then again, Lincoln dumped his first Vice President to give the job to Andrew Johnson, so if Johnson was a bad President, that’s still on Lincoln. Had Lincoln stuck with his first VP, we would’ve had President Hannibal Hamlin after Lincoln died. I don’t know if he would’ve been any good, but how cool would it be to have had President Hannibal? After Johnson, there were a slew of bad to mediocre presidents – Grant, Hayes, Garfield.

All you have to know about how bad these guys were is the fact that Grover Cleveland was President, lost the race for re-election, then beat the guy that replaced him four years later. Imagine if we brought back Carter or Bush, Sr. four years later. I know, I know – different party structure and nomination/campaigning process, and blah, blah, blah. But to have a President be so bad that you bring back the guy you couldn’t stand four years ago? Even Mitt Romney thinks that’s crazy.

So a large portion of the Abraham Lincoln myth might stem from this time period. An American in 1890 looking back over the ten presidents of the previous forty years would have fixated on Lincoln as the least shitty. Much like a stage-four cancer patient might wistfully recall that minor bout of syphilis he had in his twenties.

The other source of the myth comes from historians and laity wrongfully assigning actions and motives to Lincoln, in either an honest or calculated desire to create a hero. The biggest lie of them all, of course, is that Lincoln freed the slaves. Of course, slaves were a constitutional issue, so only a constitutional amendment could free them.  So the Emancipation Proclamation was just the first in a long line of executive actions that said, “Constitution? HAHAHA!” Had it actually freed some slaves, it certainly would have been thrown out by the Supreme Court.

Fortunately the Emancipation Proclamation had absolutely nothing to do with freeing any slaves. In fact, its purpose was the exact opposite: to allow states to keep their slaves. Issued in September, 1862, after the first major Union victory at Antietam, it stated that any slaves in any state that was still rebelling as of January 1, 1863, would be freed. In other words, if you stop fighting us before the new year, you can keep your slaves. But if you keep fighting us and we conquer you, we’re taking your slaves just like every invading army in history.

The slave states already in the Union, like Kentucky and Maryland? They got to keep their slaves. Lincoln’s hope in issuing the order was that states like Louisiana and Virginia would decide their slaves were more important than their namby-pamby Confederacy. It didn’t work, so when January, 1863, rolled around, the Civil War became about freeing the slaves. Or at least freeing some slaves.

Of course, the war was two years old by that point. But hey, making up the cause of the war as you go along is the stalwart of many a great wartime leader. Like George W. Bush. I’m sure they’re planning on carving his face into a mountain any day now, right?

The similarities don’t end there. In many ways, Abraham Lincoln was the George W. Bush of the nineteenth century. Almost losing a war where you had a 4-to-1 population advantage? Check. As well as being more advanced in technology and industry? Check. How about refusing constitutional protections to American citizens who may or may not be helping the enemy? Shoot, Lincoln wrote the book on that shit.

The wars themselves even had some similarities. In 2003, most of the Iraqis were just minding their own business, wanting to be left alone. But there was an American president with an ego and an army. Bush needed to outdo his father, who he felt  had let Hussein off the hook in the first Gulf War. Ironically, Bush, Sr. could have easily knocked off Hussein in 1991. But as a former CIA Director and a man who believed in silly ideas like diplomacy and allies, Daddy Bush realized that might be a bad idea. Too bad W. was coked out during all of those family dinner conversations about sectarian violence.

In Lincoln’s case, the metaphorical father he was chasing was a mild-mannered little English bloke named George III. Okay, maybe he wasn’t all that mild-mannered. But how nice would you be if you were known as the king that lost the American colonies? Nobody wants to be the guy in charge when half the country bolts. So when one Jefferson (Davis) evoked another Jefferson (Thomas), Lincoln dug deep within his inner tyrant and let out a grandiose, “Oh, HELL no!”

So he picked up what was left of the army after all the Southerners bolted and invaded those bastards who had the audacity to besmirch his place in history. Then he spent the next two years getting his ass kicked (“Whoa, Texans are better with guns than Vermonters?”) and stumbling about for a reason why the war was just. A reason the Northerners, many of whom had the “just let them go” mentality, could rally behind.

Visit most political blogs, on both sides of the aisle, today and you’ll find a similar sentiment.  How much better would my half of the country be if those [Rednecks/Hippes] were in another country?

Although it’s nice to not have to exchange money when we want to go look at Mardi Gras titties. Just as our forefathers dreamed.

And we have one man to thank for that. No wonder we get two days off for the guy. Abraham Lincoln saved the Mardi Gras titties!

Never mind, I’m back on board. Greatest President ever!

And I didn’t even have to go into his stellar vampire hunting skills.

The Dukes of NorCal

· February 9, 2015 · Musings · , , , · No Comments

Just the Good ol’ Boys
Never meanin’ no harm

Then maybe they should’ve used a little lube. Because after a few days of the Good Ol’ Boys tearing through my neighborhood, I’m a bit chaffed. To them, it’s just a little “straightenin’ the curves, flattenin’ the hills,” but I’m going to be walking funny for weeks.

My wife and I have been looking to upgrayedd (“upgrade” for you non-Idiocracy fans) our 1,400-square-foot, two-bedroom house ever since baby made three.  It was already tad small for two grown adults who waited until our mid-thirties to cohabitate, thereby accumulating two full sets of household appliances, furniture, and animals. When baby came along, I realized that not being able to park in the garage was one thing. When the man cave becomes the nursery, something’s gotta give.

Fortunately, there are some new developments being built nearby, so back in October, we decided to go check out the models the day after a phase was released. We weren’t sure we wanted to buy new, but as soon as we heard things like tankless water heater, solar lighting, and granite countertops, we stopped looking at the decade old hand-me-downs.

The kicker, when we returned the next day, was that we would be the first name on the priority list for the next phase, meaning we would have our choice of which lot we wanted. So on the list our name went. That was a rather whirlwind 36-hour period for the two of us, both of whom tend to be more methodical and analytical. Hell, we knew each other for five years before we finally decided to go out on a date. But when you see what you want, you’ve gotta grab it, right?

Silly Wombat, nothing ever falls in line that perfectly. That elation and ease of that 36-hour period found its equal-and-opposite reaction this past weekend.

In the four months since our name went first on that list, we’ve been up to the models countless times. Our daughter is a bit of a celebrity in the sales office, and I’m pretty sure she could give a tour herself. Sure, the tourers would have to pick her up off the ground continuously, and hold her pacifier when she spoke, but it could happen.

We walked the locations of the lots, too, and quickly knew which lot we wanted. An ample sized lot at the end of a cul-de-sac. We knew there would be a lot premium for it, but based on what similar lots had gone for in the previous releases, we felt we could budget for it. And being first on the priority list, the lot premium was really the only variable we were looking at. So the other three lots that our model would be on never truly entered the equation.

Can you good English students sense some foreshadowing here?

Last weekend, we again visited the models. Some of the foundations were starting to be laid. The next release seemed imminent.

“We’re still first on the priority list, right?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know what the lot premium for Lot 66 will be yet?”

“We can’t divulge.”

“Fine, fine. No biggie. As long as it’s under $<REDACTED>, that’s the one we’ll take.”

On Tuesday, three days later, we got the e-mail. The next phase was being released. Our lot premium was actually a couple thousand under what we were budgeting for. Woo-Hoo!

The e-mail had instructions: “If you are first on the priority list, send us your choice, if you are second, give us your top two choices, and so on. Send your requests to us before 2:00 this Saturday, then come in after 3:00 with your $<REDACTED> deposit check.“

We could not respond fast enough. “Give us Lot 66. Let us know if you want us there right at 3:00 or at a later time, depending on how busy things are likely to get.”

No response from them on Tuesday night or Wednesday. Thursday comes and goes, nothing back. No biggie,they’re busy. We’ll just show up at 3:00 Saturday with our check.

Wife wanted me to double-check. Fortunately, I was home from work on Friday because our tour-guide baby has Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease, which has to be one of the dumbest reasons to not be allowed to go to daycare. It is literally just a rash around the mouth and some blisters on the feet and hands, yet it requires the child to be out of daycare for a week and requires a doctor’s note to let them back. I understand that it’s highly contagious, but the symptoms are all cosmetic and temporary. Ugh.

In fact, the absurdity of Hand-Foot-and-Mouth disease might very well have been the topic of this week’s blog entry if the Good Ol’ Boys network hadn’t taken this time to spin the General Lee in donuts all over precious Lot 66.

“Yeah, so sorry about what happened,” the sales lady said as I stepped inside, before I could even pose question number one about how the next day would go.

“What do you mean?”

My face looked perplexed, and her face slowly changed from confusion to something approaching guilt-shame. As surprised as I was that there was bad news coming equaled her surprise that I was unaware of it.

“Didn’t you get the e-mail?”

She then goes into a convoluted explanation that her assistant was supposed to e-mail, nay telephone, nay deliver via teleportation device the news. And, of course, said assistant will receive a very stern talking to, nay hand slapping, nay crucifixion. I fully expected the sales lady to bust into a Monty Python-esque “Bad Zoot, bad, bad Zoot” and require a spanking.

It turns out we can’t have the lot for which we were first. Why? Well, you see, there’s a priority list and then there’s a list of people they really like. The denizens of this latter list include employees of the company and friends of the owner. And anyone on this super-secret list can jump to the front of the line at any time they wish, including between Tuesday, when the list of available lots was published, and Friday, when I walked in to a mock-mortified realtor.

So, unbeknownst to us, we should have been working on a back-up plan. Kind of like, I assume, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers should be preparing their number one draft pick with the assumption that both Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota are already off the board. Because the morning of the draft, the owners of the New York Jets might call up Roger Goodell and say they are better friends than the Tampa Bay owners. Or that they get better TV ratings. No, wait a second, giving the best draft picks to the more popular teams is the NBA’s strategy.

“So yeah, sorry,” the sales lady says, ”a friend of the owner decided to trump you some time in the last 48 hours, and my assistant was supposed to call you, but hey, now that you’re here, why don’t we take a look at these other wonderful lots you can choose from. And if you could please kinda hurry on this, because you’re now rudely holding up the line for the second and third people on the priority list, who now might have to settle for their third and fourth picks, respectively. And the fourth guy? Well, there are only three of this model available now, so fuck him.”

So here came my options. I could move across the cul-de-sac from our first choice. This would not only have the benefit of being on a lot about half the size of the house we wanted, but would also be right across the street from it, too! Oh joy!  So every day for the next twenty years, I can pull out of my postage-stamp sized lot and stare across at the house I actually wanted. At least I could flip off the assholes who stole it.

Option number two was on a larger lot. Eight feet of side yard instead of the five feet on option one. Back yard a little bit deeper as well. The drawback of this lot was its location right across from the models. Sure, the models are only likely to be there for the next couple of years, but who wants to have to put pants on every time he walks out of his house? The road was also the main entryway to the neighborhood, so the amount and speed of traffic would continue to be a drawback even after the models close. Two cats would be problem enough, but I also have a future toddler that might cause issues with the 50-MPH jackass tearing through the neighborhood.

The third option was on a triangle-shaped lot formed by the arcing of a side-street. The house would be placed at the corner of the short side and the hypotenuse, right at the front of the lot. This house would therefore have very little back yard, but a long, oddly-configured side yard. The main problems with this lot were not its size, though, but its location vis-à-vis the neighbors. First, that long-side of the triangle forms our back and side yard, and it touches no fewer than five other back yards. Second, this house is lower than all of those neighbors. Our current house is at the low-water mark on our street and every time there is rain, or if people are watering their lawns, we get a wonderful coagulation of stagnant water.  So we would be adding to that joy the fact that our many neighbors could look out of their bedroom windows right down into our backyard. Dammit, now I have to wear pants in the back yard, too?

The kicker of this final house is that the neighbor on the short side of the triangle is the house we wanted. So every day, they can look down on us, both literally and figuratively. Oh, and then maybe they can water their back yard and have it trickle down onto our porch. Awesome. And I can’t even throw burning feces over their fence. Too high. And they’d know which direction it’s coming from. I’d have to go all the way around the front and burn the feces on their front doorstep. Just as soon as I find some pants.

So the sales lady asks which one I want, right there on the spot, five minutes after I learned that I have to choose. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. First I have to inform my wife. Then I have to talk my wife off the ledge. Then we have to confer and spend a full night without sleeping at all. Plus find some time to slash the tires of every orange Dodge Charger I can find.

So I walked out the door with an admonishment that I have until 2:00 the following day to pick my second choice. Because darnit, the other people on the priority list are waiting to find out what lots are available to them. How rude of me to keep them waiting.

The next morning found the two of us trudging through the mud of each of these lots, working out the calculations and permutations of each. Which one could we get our minds around in the next six months as it’s being built? Was it just too raw right now, and would we get over it soon? Or would the bitterness grow to make us already hate the house by the time we moved in? I tried to determine which choice I would regret the most a year from now, but had trouble distancing myself from the emotion. I’m sure the owners were secretly hoping we’d walk away, because then the others in line would never know what happened. Maybe one small consolation is that if we picked right, and the second person now had to settle for their third choice, we’d have more neighbors to hate the company and those A-holes in Lot 66 when we moved in. Or maybe they’ll just hate us like we hate those Good Ol’ Boys.

In the end, we chose the triangular lot at the low point. We’ll just need to make sure we put some good drainage in and grow some trees to ward off nosy neighbors. I wonder if I can trim one particular tree in the shape of a middle finger.

But on further review, maybe we should’ve taken the one across the street from the models. I could forget those pants and just hang out in my front yard all day long in my holey boxers and a stained wife-beater, sunning myself on some plastic chaise lounge purchased from a Motel 6. That would do wonders for the company’s sales going forward.

Beside me would be my toddler, wearing only a saggy, very full diaper.

Does anyone know where I can get some diapers with a confederate flag on the butt?

The Horned Frog Dilemma

· January 12, 2015 · Musings · , , , , · One Comment

See, NCAA? Was that really so hard?

Tonight, we will have a legitimate National Championship Game, featuring Oregon, who trounced Florida State in the Rose Bowl, and Alabama, who easily dispatched… wait, what? Ohio State beat ‘Bama? That will teach me to start writing my blog entry early.

Regardless, we have two great teams, Oregon and Ohio State, who have just beat quality opponents on New Year’s Day, yet still get to play each other, with the winner being crowned national champions. Just imagine – a National Championship game not starting off with one or both teams shaking off six weeks of rust.

Yet there have been no biblical signs of the apocalypse. No players dropping out of college because they have to practice for another week. None of the things that we’ve been warned would happen happened. Except the TV ratings went through the roof.

Oregon beat last year’s champion, a team that had not lost a game in close to two years, and Ohio State beat last year’s runners-up, a perennial powerhouse, and the undisputed number one going into the playoff. This year, it will all be decided on the field, and nobody can claim they were unfairly voted out.

Except maybe TCU.

And, wow, did you see the way Michigan State came back against Baylor?

Wait, does Marshall really have the same record as the two teams in the Championship?

Okay, maybe there are still a few chinks in the armor.  But baby steps, people. Progress is progress. And before we look at how the current problems can easily be solved, let’s take a closer look at the stupid arguments the naysayers have been making for the past century or so as to why a playoff could not and should not exist in college football.

It’s extra workload for the students.

Really? How many classes are they going to be missing in the first half of January? This argument is so stupid that I hesitate to bring it up, but I’ve heard it made over the years by pundits on the Four-Letter Network (which shockingly stopped making this argument as soon as they signed the deal to carry the games).

To be clear, every other division of college football has playoffs. Hell, even high school football has playoffs. They happen in December, when finals are actually happening. They also feature schools with much smaller travel budgets. But I’m sure the Mount Union guys needing three stopovers to get to their Motel 6 are much more rested and capable of studying than the Ohio State players riding first class to the Four Seasons.

We can also look at that other major college sport. You know, the one with the most famous and successful playoff system in all of sports. When a school, like UCLA, is on the quarter system, guess when their Winter Quarter finals are? Smack dab in the first week of March Madness. Is UCLA discouraged from playing in March Madness in order to take their finals? Hardly. Sure, if they’re a one-seed facing Weber State in the first game, it’s effectively a bye, but they still have to show up. Edu-ma-cashun be damned!

But finals are one thing, we can’t have kids missing the pointless first day of class, where you get the syllabus and then leave, can we?

What about the integrity of the bowl season?

This was a huge argument during the BCS years, especially when, after years of moving it from bowl to bowl, they added a national championship game in addition to the “Big Four.” What is the point of being Sugar Bowl champs, people would argue, if there is another game that’s bigger than the Sugar Bowl? Well, you can still say you’re Sugar Bowl champs, right? And really, even before the BCS and then playoffs, the Sugar Bowl winner wasn’t necessarily the national champion, so Sugar Bowl champ really means the same thing now as it always did – you won a very major bowl game, most likely against a very quality opponent.

Heck, if they lose tonight, Ohio State can still call themselves the Sugar Bowl champions (and Oregon can call themselves the Rose Bowl champs), but I’m guessing they’ll opt for “National Runner Up.”

If there is any  drop in the integrity of the bowl season, it ain’t the extra game or two added at the end, it’s all those meaningless bowls in the middle of December. We have a GoDaddy Bowl, a Potato Bowl, and a Fosters Farms Bowl. Bowling Green at 8-6 and Pittsburgh at 7-6, can call themselves bowl champions. (Wait, Houston recovered how many onside kicks? C’mon, people, I’m trying to get ahead in my blogging!). Okay, so Houston, not Pittsburgh, is a bowl champ. Regardless, those teams are going to be more insulting to Michigan State victory than the fact that Oregon and Ohio State are advancing to a title game. I’m sure Michigan State is pissed that they aren’t the ones advancing, because they are competitors, but the phrase “Taxslayer Bowl Champion” belittles their Cotton Bowl victory more than a playoff system.

As an aside, Gaylord Hotels had their own bowl game for a number of years. I wonder how much the winners of that game tried to pump themselves up a “Gaylord Champs” when recruiting.

Hand-in-hand with the “integrity of the bowls” argument is the “traditional matchup” argument. This argument is always, always, always made by Pac-12 fans, and the only bowl they’re ever talking about is the Rose Bowl., which usually pairs the winners of the Pac-12 and Big Ten. I know west coast people. I am west coast people. What west coast people need to admit is that they don’t care who the Pac-12 plays against, as long as there is a Pac-12 team in the Rose Bowl. Then we can move on.

Want proof? Oregon played Florida State, an ACC team, this year and nobody complained.  Quite the opposite of 2011, when Oregon, heaven forbid, played in the national title game, so Wisconsin, the Big Ten winner, faced TCU. Nobody cared that the Big Ten was still being represented, but people bemoaned the missing Pac-12 team.  My father-in-law actually said the players would probably “rather be playing in the Rose Bowl than in the National Championship.”

Why is it always Rose Bowl people who make this argument? Because it’s the only bowl with a traditional matchup still intact. The Southwest Conference, whose champion always played in the Cotton Bowl, no longer exists. It merged with the Big Eight, whose champion used to play in the Orange Bowl, to become the Big-12, which has never been paired with a specific bowl. I think the Sugar Bowl used to showcase the SEC winner, and after the Big-12 merger, the Orange Bowl featured… anyone? Anyone? The ACC? The Big East? Saint Mary’s School for the Blind?

Even when one specific conference sends a team to one specific bowl, the teams they were playing weren’t tied to any specific conference. So it’s only the Rose Bowl that has a traditional match-up between two specific conferences, and again, nobody associate with the Rose Bowl really cares about the Big Ten. And as long as they can get out of January in Minnesota, I think the Big Ten fans would be happy to go anywhere warm. Just ask Ohio State fans today if they’re okay playing in Dallas.

And how ironic is it that we have a traditional Rose Bowl matchup for the national title? If this year had played out under the old BCS rules, neither of these teams would probably be in the championship game. Alabama would still have been number, and I have to think it would have been hard for voters to keep out the defending national champion and only undefeated team. So the BCS Title Game would have been the two teams who lost on New Year’s Day. Oops.

And guess who would have been playing in the Rose Bowl? Oregon and Ohio State. And what would they have been playing for? The right to be tied for third with about twenty other bowl winners. They would have been playing to be on equal footing with Navy, who also won a Bowl Game in Southern California. And we would have been back to the same-old, same-old, “well, neither of them probably could have beaten the national champs, anyway.” Double oops.

Unfortunately, that phrase is still being uttered this year. There are at least two, possibly up to four, other teams that we are hoping wouldn’t be able to beat whoever tonight’s champion is on a neutral field.

TCU had a legitimate gripe. The Big-12 doesn’t have a championship game because they only have ten teams (as opposed to the Big Ten, which has fourteen), meaning everyone plays each other in the season. So TCU was at home when Ohio State rolled over a very good Wisconsin team and leapfrogged the Big-12 champ into the fourth playoff spot. What if TCU had beaten Baylor on that same day? What if it had been as hellacious of a whomping as the 42-3 score they dropped on the former-number-one Ole Miss? Then who do you leave out? The undefeated, defending champion Seminoles?

Plus, the top four playoff system still doesn’t solve the old Boise State problem. When an upstart team from a non-power conference rises up and beats all comers, there still is little chance they’ll make the top four.  This year, that might have been Marshall. They only lost one game, and it was in overtime when Western Kentucky went for two points. What if they had won that game? Would they make it past any of the top five? No. But at least they would have no way of beating a top-flight team, right? Just like when Boise State finally got a chance against Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.  Oh, wait, they won that game. But, of course, they still would have been rolled by Florida that year, right? Anyone?

But isn’t that argument what the BCS and the playoff are supposed to do away with? Aren’t we trying to get past the guesswork of who might beat whom and actually get to the point where they can prove it on the field? And yet, this year, TCU has to deal with that argument. There are allegedly five power conferences (although how the ACC fits that description most years is beyond me), so if we allow only four in, every year at least one conference champion will be excluded. Some years, if a conference like the SEC puts two teams in, then two power conferences will be left out.  Throw in a good Notre Dame team and over half of the Power Five are left out of the playoff. And the non-power conferences can continue to go screw themselves.

But if we allowed eight in…

Then why not allow sixteen? Or thirty-two?

Stop! Nobody is making a case for the ninth team or the seventeenth team. If you lost three games, you don’t deserve to be in the title discussion. Beyond the top eight teams, you can legitimately start using the “you should have taken care of your own business” argument. Eight is the correct number.

With eight playoff teams, the power five champs would make it in (although I’d reclassify the ACC as a non-power conference), plus three (or four) at-large teams. Oh, and Big-12? You need a title game, even if everybody in your conference has already played each other.

This year, this would have added TCU to the mix. It probably also would have added Baylor and Michigan State. Hey, ironically, those two actually played each other in a bowl game this year, and it was an exciting bowl game with a playoff atmosphere.  Just fathom if the winner advanced. I assume Mississippi State would have made it over Marshall, although I still think it would be more fun to throw the one-year wonder in as the eight-seed every year.  They would have played Alabama, and I’m sure they would have lost. But before January 1, I would have also been sure that Ohio State would have lost to Alabama.

Here’s the best part of this plan. We could keep the Big Four bowl games and, even better, restore whatever tradition people are complaining about. The Rose Bowl can, every single year, feature the Pac-12 and Big-10 champs facing each other, with the winner advancing. The Sugar Bowl can feature the SEC Champ vs. an at-large. Similarly, the Orange Bowl can feature the ACC, if we want to still pretend they’re a legitimate football conference. And let’s bring back the Cotton Bowl, featuring the Big-12 champ, because I don’t know who the Fiesta Bowl slept with to be vaulted into “Elite Bowl” status.

All four of those games could be played on New Year’s Day, and they would be the only four to be played that day. Then the winners of those four games play the following week. Then those two winners play for the championship. We would be adding precisely one week, and two games, to the schedule in early January.

It is so logical, so obvious, that I can only think of one possible thing that the NCAA can do with it.

Tell TCU to shut the hell up and blindly stick with what they have for another ten years.

As Cool As

· January 5, 2015 · Musings · , , , · No Comments

I was most of the way through a blog entry about the college football playoffs when Stuart Scott died. So I’m shelving it until next week, when the championship will still be relevant. For those of you not interested in sports, sorry about the forthcoming back-to-back sports entries, and I’ll see you around MLK Day.

For about a decade starting in the mid-nineties,  the Entertainment and Sports  Programming Network was pretty much a constant on my television.  There was always something worth watching on ESPN, even if it ended up being the same overnight SportsCenter on continuous repeat. If live sports were on, so much the better, but that was hardly necessary.

Today, I refer to that channel as the Four-Letter Network, and it’s hard for me to remember the last time I purposely tuned in, except to watch live sports. If I turn on the TV and it’s still on that channel from the night before, I can hardly change away from the drivel quick enough. My sports gambling has probably worsened, but we all have to make sacrifices.

But back in the day, I couldn’t get enough. And, although I don’t know if I ever really put my finger on it before yesterday, looking back now, Start Scott was a main reason for that. Judging from the outpouring of sympathies on my Facebook feed, I might not be alone in that regard.

I was surprised at the cross-section of the people mentioning him. People who I assume have never voluntarily watched a sporting event in their life, people who have no idea what that guy in between second and third base is called, seemed to know who he was and have legitimate recollections of him. Part of this is certainly the “me-too” factor of social networks, but Joe Cocker only died a few weeks ago and didn’t make my news feed half as much as Stuart Scott.

He epitomized everything I liked about ESPN at the time, and everything that is now lacking at the Four-Letter. I know he wasn’t the first. Certainly Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick and yada, yada, Craig Kilborn. But whatever. Olbermann was always too smug and Patrick was too overshadowed by Olbermann. Sure, when I was seventeen, I loved Chris Berman and his funny names shtick, but eventually I matured. Now I cringe whenever I hear the phrase, “back, back, back.”

All of those guys were instrumental in ESPN’s rise. But the time I’m referring to was when it was established as the king of the mountain. It didn’t have to be kitschy or in-your-face like in the 1980s. And it hadn’t yet become the bloated self-referential monstrosity it is today. SportsCenter was confident in its own success and almost business-like in its efficiency.  Stuart Scott was not only the face of that franchise, but its personality as well. No nonsense, focused, and smooth.

I remember the first time I distinguished him from the slew of other sports anchors. It didn’t take long to go from “How does a guy with a glass eye get to be a sports anchor?” to “”Oh, cool, the glass eye guy is anchoring today.”

Nowadays, the Four-Letter is much more concerned with being the story than reporting the story. They only report on the sports that they are carrying and they try to drum up “controversies” that don’t exist. They create self-perpetuating cults-of-personality. They run an hour-long special devoted to where one basketball player will play the following year and they camp out at a Mississippi airport to see if a quarterback is going to un-retire. They got upset at Bill Belichick for not playing along with the “Tim Tebow might replace Tom Brady” storyline.

Yes, I realize those stories are five years old now. That just shows how little I’ve paid attention to the network. I got tired of the cycle of only reporting on a small number of players or teams, then saying the ratings proved that people were more interested in those players/teams. Yeah, nimrods, if ninety percent of your Baseball Tonight focuses on A-Rod and Jeter, then those are going to be the only players most people have heard of.

Then again, ESPN’s been trying to get rid of the albatross that is baseball for years, anyway. They keep hoping that if they stop talking about it, it’ll go the way of the NHL. But dammit, people keep following baseball.

On the opposite extreme is soccer. Soccer was reviled and primarily only brought up as the butt of jokes. Then the network got the rights to broadcast soccer games and all of a sudden they’re reporting on the “sudden emergence” of the “soccer subculture” and showing highlights whenever possible.

And don’t get me started on the “human interest” stories. They’re fine, but dammit, you’re a sports highlight show. Show some damned sports highlights!

I regret to say I didn’t even know Stuart Scott was sick until I got the alert on my phone Sunday (which I’m happy to say I got from Yahoo Sports, not ESPN). I only knew that when I saw SportsCenter on in the background at a restaurant, he was never on anymore. I assumed he had just retired or graduated to a specialty show or something. Now I have even one less reason to watch.

Nowadays when I see it, the anchors are prancing around, hamming for the camera. They seem much more concerned with getting their good side facing the camera than on telling me how many games out of first the New Orleans Hornets are.

What? They’re not the Hornets anymore? Then maybe I shouldn’t have put money on them in Reno.

Meanwhile, Chris Berman is seeing all the praises being hurled at Stuart Scott and wondering if he can fake his own death. Sorry, Chritiano Bergerman, you stopped being relevant thirty years ago. Time to go “back, back, back” to the drawing board on that one.

Stuart Scott was cool. He was professional. And now, sadly, he and the integrity of his network are now gone.

Rest in peace, brother. You were as cool as the other side of the pillow.

War on Saturn

· December 22, 2014 · Musings · , , , , · One Comment

Every December, I get annoyed by all of those cultural warriors that try to re-write history and put their own spin on what this holiday season is truly about. They’ve even gone so far as to change the name of the holiday itself, trying to force us all to use a different greeting than was originally used. Unfortunately, the holiday was named after a person, or a personified deity, so when they change the name, they’re taking it away from the true basis, the true meaning of the holiday season. It’s almost as if they’re trying to eradicate the poor person whose birthday falls on December 25.

Jesus? No, not that charlatan. He was probably born in early spring, by most interpretations.

The person I’m talking about is Saturn, the “Reason for the Season” of Saturnalia.

Oh, we could throw Yule in there, too, but I really don’t if that’s a person or a season or just some other random crazy thing the Krauts came up with.

Oh, you thought Yuletide was a Christian thing? Because Jesus didst spake unto the Rich Corinthian Leathers, “Bring unto me a chopped down tree that is in no way indigenous to the region. Oh, and a log that burns for a really, really long time, like maybe a Duraflame.”

No, Jesus wasn’t born in December and most of the things we associate with Christmas were around long before Christianity. Even if a specific birthdate existed, that date probably would correlate to our current calendar. December, based on its name, was the tenth month of the year. Ever noticed that? September, October, November, and December translate to seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth month. But then a couple of Caesars came by and wanted their own months plopped into the middle of the year, so the rest of the months got pushed back. While Julius had already been there by 1 AD, so maybe there was a July by then, Augustus had not shown up yet.  I don’t know if there were ten or eleven months on the calendar that year, but I do know that December 25, 1AD would not be the same as December 25. Except that December 25 would not be listed on the birth certificate, anyway.

That’s why Easter changes its date every year. It falls on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring. Had Jesus’s birthday ever been noted, it would have had one of those kooky always changing dates. If he was lucky, “Three Days after the Winter Solstice” would have sufficed. But it probably would’ve been based on the last full moon of autumn, which would’ve been hard for the Apostles to buy him presents.

Oh, and by the way, Easter is named after Ishtar, a goddess of fertility. Hence all the bunnies, eggs, and other fornication references. Wow, another holiday the Christians stole. I would chastise them for ignoring the 7th Commandment, but they stole those from the Jews, anyway.

So who was born on or around December 25? Saturn, the Roman god. But even Saturnalia’s date moved around a bit, as December shrank from 36 days down to 31. Because even Roman gods would have to move their birthdays around as the first day of winter changed.  After all, the Solstice is the REAL reason for the season.

Every primitive society had some sort of celebration around the Solstice, be it Yule or Saturnalia or Festivus.  I include Festivus because I can think of no better definition of “primitive” than standard def and having to sit through the commercial breaks.

Why the celebration of Solstice? It is the shortest day of the year. So the day after it, the sun begins its return. And if the sun is one of the things you pray to and define your life by, then you celebrate the fact that he/she/it is coming back. I know, it sounds so silly and pagan to say your god was born with the return of the sun. I mean, the son of God being born that day is totally logical. But an actual god? Don’t make me laugh.

Birthdays and gods aside, though, there was a much more practical reason for celebrating the first days of winter. The weather is about to get worse. Food is going to become scarcer. There will  barely be enough food for the humans to make it through the next three months, much less the animals.  So you keep a male and a female and slaughter all the rest. Then you enjoy them, maybe with some gravy, because it’s the last time you’ll by full before April.

In fact, the Agricultural Revolution was caused in large part by a dude named Turnip Townshend. In addition to playing the guitar with a distinctive windmill motion, he also discovered that turnips replenish the soil better than leaving it fallow. Even better, people now had a whole bunch of turnips that they could feed to the livestock through the winter. Livestock living through the winter equals a more stable food supply equals farmers being freed up (or forced) to move to the cities. Add coal and iron and, voila, instant industrialization.

But back to these solstice festivals. In addition to the culinary element, they were usually marked by gift giving and the upheaval of social conventions. Lords and peasants switching places. Getting drunk and making out with your co-worker. Secret Santas. No wait, that came later.

So early Christians were trying to get converts A Roman guy says, “Gosh, your religion sounds great, what with all the rising from the dead and the turning of other cheeks and whatnot, but it’s hard for me to give up the revelry of Saturn’s birthday.”

So the Christians didst respond, “Oh, hey, our guy was born that day, too. We just call it Christmas. But all the other shit’s the same.”

The Roman looked skeptical.

“Seriously. Just put up this nativity scene, and then you can do all of the pagan pipers piping you want.”

And, lo, Christmas was born.

Then it died.

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church frowned upon Christmas because it was too tied up with superstition and paganism. The Puritans then banned it, to the extent that December 25 was the only day of the year that British were not allowed to go to church. The Puritans were also the Pilgrims, so the alleged first American colonists didn’t celebrate Christmas. I say “alleged” because the Pilgrims actually showed up thirteen years after Jamestown was founded. But I’ll leave that for another day, because I can only destroy one misconception at a time.

But the next time a “War on Christmas” yahoo talks about the founding fathers being upset at what is happening to Christmas, be sure to tell them that the founding fathers didn’t celebrate Christmas. Even though most of them were Anglicans/Episcopalians, not Puritans, Christmas and its debauchery had fallen out of favor with many.

But like any good Christian, Zombie Christmas rose from the dead. Actually, better to call it a vampire, because it was much more intelligent and calculated than the randomness of a zombie.

What brought Christmas back from the dead? The very same thing that defines it still today. Love and joy? Ha ha, good one. No, I’m talking about money, money, money.

Our modern conception of Christmas comes from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. You know the one. Ebeneezer Scrooge is visited by some ghosts and learns the true meaning of Christmas and Kermit the Frog and blah, blah, blah. But Dickens wasn’t describing the actual Christmas spirit that he observed, he was making up what he thought it should be.

So think about that. The true “spirit of Christmas” is based on a borderline Marxist attack on wealth inequality. I’m pretty sure Fox News leaves that part out.

The rest of the things we associate with Christmas were mainly marketing ploys. Rudolph? Invented by Montgomery Ward. Santa Claus, the way we conceive him now, was more or less solidified by Coca-Cola ads. Interestingly, the reason Coca-Cola used Santa so much was because they were not allowed to make any ads that specifically targeted or showed children. So they used Santa to market to kids without getting in trouble. Ah, consumerism!

Then there’s eggnog. Honestly, I have no idea where eggnog came from. I only know where it’s going: directly into my belly.

So enjoy your holiday, whatever holiday that may be, because we’re all really just celebrating the same thing. Go ahead and sing along with me the perfect carol for this wondrous season:

“Here comes the sun, do do do do, here comes the sun, and I say…

“It’s all right!”

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