Thinking The Lions

Motivation? Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Mozart? [Analyzing the Playoffs, Day 2] (Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:49:00 +0000

Day one is here. Not a sports fan? Don't worry; there's only about 1% sports in this. And Mozart is mentioned!

Let's talk "motivation." This morning, in my local tiny newspaper, I read an article on how the Arizona Cardinals are using the two meaningless beatings the Packers gave them as "motivation" to win the playoff game between the two teams this week.

That article also suggested that the use of that motivation might itself be motivation for the Packers, who would be extra motivated to win by, I guess, the fact that the Cardinals were extra-motivated to win.

On my drive in to work, then, ESPN continued its ironclad policy of "Sucking Up To Bill Belicheat" by noting that the last-game, season-ending injury to the Patriots* number one wide receiver, Wes Welker, might not be very damaging to the Patriots*' postseason hopes. You might think that losing a star player on the eve of the playoffs would be a sign that maybe you're not the favorite, but if so, you would not be an ESPN "analyst" paid to promote Bill Belicheat's genius, because the ESPN "analysts" (played by Mike & Mike this morning) suggested that the injury to Wes Welker would motivate the Patriots* to prove that they could still win.

(That's what passes for sports "analysis" these days on ESPN; this blog has more actual sports thought than an entire day of ESPN radio, most of which is devoted to winning lifetime membership in the Bill Belicheat Fan Club by continuously claiming everything that happens to Belicheat is a good thing and part of his master plan. ESPN has [seriously] suggested, for example, that The Patriots* deliberately lost to the Saints in the regular season as part of a master plan to get the "right" seed in the playoffs.)

I don't get all the talk about motivation. Aren't football players already as motivated as they can be by the fact that they (presumably) want to win and by the fact that they make more than a quarter-million dollars even if they never get into the game? (That last part's true; the league minimum for players with zero experience this year is $310,000. For players with 10+ years' experience, it's $845,000.)

If a player needs extra motivation, if a player can be more motivated than he was for a playoff game, then doesn't that mean that the player wasn't playing to his full capacity?

So Cardinals, Packers, Patriots*, and your fans: why aren't you already motivated to win a playoff game and get to the championship? It's not enough to be paid thousands of dollars to play the game? (maybe not, according to one former Bills' player who suggested that some players have no interest in making the playoffs.) It's not enough to win a championship? Those aren't enough motivation -- you also need to have something personal to prove?

I don't get it. That's probably why I write this blog instead of spending my day at the ESPN corporate headquarters singing hosannas to a giant golden statue of Bill Belicheat. But the fact that I do write this blog means it's time for DAY TWO of the

NonSportsmanlike Conduct 100% Accurate, Never-Fail, Always-Right, Sure-Fire System For Picking The Playoff Winner.

Today, I'm going to go through four teams, quick, because there are ten teams left to review, and I've only got three days to do it; if these aren't done by Saturday morning, people will accuse me of rigging the picks to match what happens on Saturday night.

(The joke will be on those people -- I probably won't know what happens Saturday night in the NFL games until Sunday morning, because although I'll plan to watch a game or two Saturday night, I'm sure I'll be distracted by Sonic burgers and a rousing game of Hot Wheels with Mr Bunches, followed by Sonic Ice Cream and a rousing game of Lil' Einstein's Piano with Mr F, who likes it when his new piano plays Mozart's Symphony No. 40:

(The joke may also be on people who like Mozart. I heard a story the other day about Mozart that may or may not be true, but it's a good story. It does like this: A little boy approaches Mozart and asks him for help writing a symphony. Mozart says to the little boy: "Perhaps you should wait until you're older to work on a sympony."

The boy says "When you were my age, you wrote symphonies."

To Which Mozart says: "When I was your age, I didn't have to ask for help."

That story says something about someone. Probably about Mozart. It seems pretty arrogant, doesn't it? But it seems like if anyone could be arrogant, then it would be Mozart, but, then, it also seems that if someone is so talented that they can be arrogant, the better practice would be to still not be arrogant,wouldn't it, so that everyone thinks you're talented and nice? Like Tom Hanks, who's sort of the acting equivalent of a modern-day Mozart, except he didn't start young.

(Tom Hanks started at age 24, according to IMDB, playing Elliot in "He Knows You're Alone." Apparently that movie is entirely available, in segments, on Youtube. Here's part 1:

I've kind of lost track of my parentheses, here, so I'm moving on.

Today's teams are the Green Bay Packers, the Baltimore Ravens, Arizona Cardinals, and Cincinnati Bengals.

One correction: yesterday, I claimed that the Jets were a six seed; it turns out they're seeded fifth in the AFC. While I regret the error, I do need to point out that it is far more likely that the movie 2012 is a documentary than that the Jets will win this year's Superbowl, so don't get too excited either way, Jets fans.

Another correction: The Boy made the false claim yesterday that the 100% System didn't work on the World Series, using as "evidence" the fact that the World Series was not (as the System predicted) Cardinals vs. artist Christian Faur, but was the Yankees against Somebody. While The Boy is correct about who played in the World Series, he missed the point: The 100% System worked perfectly; it's Major League Baseball that made the error. I regret that they did so.

1. Team Mascots/Nicknames: We've got Packers, Bengals, Cardinals, and Ravens. The former Jake Plummer commercial notwithstanding, we can downgrade the Cardinals right away; not only are they a tiny bird frequently featured on collectible plates from the Franklin Mint (the kind of thing you buy your aunt when you get her in your family gift exchange), but they share that nickname with a baseball team. And, the "Arizona" Cardinals changed their name from the Phoenix Cardinals, presumably on the belief that fans who live in Arizona, but not in Phoenix, would not root for the Cardinals based on geography. Arizonans, are you really that way? If so, stop. Cardinals, you get 1.

Ravens is a good nickname, because they took their name from an Edgar Allen Poe poem (The Raven, not one of the other poems), and I like it that there's a literary allusion in the NFL, especially one that's not immediately obvious. Also, the Raven is a pretty tough-looking bird:

Also-er, the Raven is a superhero of some sort that was in the Teen Titans. I'm not sure if they're still the Teen Titans, or if they're just the Titans now, but I'm sure that Raven is still around and the Titans are still around, since nobody ever comes up with new superheroes anymore, as I've previously pointed out. I've read exactly four comic books in the past 20 years -- the first four Blackest Night episodes, and every single one of the superheroes is an old one. In twenty years nobody has come up with a single new superhero.

This is the other Raven:

So Ravens get a 4, but I'm going to minus 1 because I'm irritated about superheroes now, making it Ravens 3.

Bengals: Awesome nickname, cool helmets, and extra credit for going with Bengals instead of Tigers. I briefly wondered if there was some Cincinnati connection to Bengal Tigers, and it turns out that maybe there is -- prior to these Bengals, there was another Cincinnati team named the Bengals, and that team may have been named after a rare white Bengal tiger that used to be in the Cincinnati zoo. Which, in turn, led me to find out that apparently all of the white tigers you see nowadays originated from the white tigers in the Cincinnati zoo way back when, which in turn, raises this question:

If the Bengals in the zoo were white, why are the Bengals in the NFL orange and black? You'd probably guess that the orange-and-black colors were picked because they're tiger-y colors, and you'd be wrong. The colors were chosen on the same basis that all sound, rational decisions are made:

Spite.

Paul Brown, who owned the Bengals (not the Browns), chose the same orange as the Browns to spite Art Modell. That is sweet.

So, overall, the Bengals get 5.

And, lastly, the Packers. Everybody knows the story of how a Packing Company helped save the team and led to the nickname, but it seems to me that story is probably bunk. The Packers' own site suggests that two different companies, the Indian Packing Company and Acme Packing Company had a role in founding or owning the team, and notes that the Packers were also called the Indian Packers, the Indians, and, briefly, the Blues. (At one point, they were the Big Bay Blues, a very strange name for a team that plays in the city of Green Bay.) I'll give Packers a 5, though, on the basis of it's not a very hip or tough sounding nickname, and yet the Pack has stuck with it for nearly a century, not giving in to modern marketing pressures as to color scheme, name, or logo.

Scores:
Cardinals: 1
Ravens: 3
Bengals:5
Packers: 5

2. Craziest Fans: Off to Youtube we go, where stop one is Jarvis Cocker's single, "Angela," because Stanley Goodspeed got me into him today:

Stop two: Crazy Cardinals Fan:

That's titled "Red Zone crazed fan ARIZONA CARDINALS" and god dang it, Cardinals, can you do anything right? You cost me the Superbowl bet against The Boy last year, and now that's your crazy fan? Can't he at least wear a cape?

-1 point, Cardinals. -1.

Crazy Ravens fan:

That guy says "It's like this every week when they score a touchdown." I can't resist: When you score as few touchdowns as the Ravens do, that kind of celebration is warranted.

You set 'em up, I knock 'em out. That guy also needs to turn on the lights or open some curtains in that room. What are they, the Volturi?

(Having just gotten millions of 13-year-old girls and their lonely moms to find this site, let me take this opportunity to welcome you to my blog, and also to point out that Robert Pattinson is either too old or too young for you.)

Crazy Ravens fan, you get a 1. Anyone can jump up and down in a dark room. That's not crazy; that's aerobics for people who are part cave fish.

Crazy Bengals Fan: Here we go:

See what I mean about new superheroes, or the lack thereof? He's not Bengals man, or The Tiger, or something. He's just... Batman, who's been around for nearly a century.

My favorite part of that video? The part, beginning at 0:09, when Batman Bengal says "three years" but briefly holds up two fingers.

I checked; you can't, apparently, buy Batman Bengal masks, but you can buy Ringling Bros. Bengal Tiger pajamas. In case you wanted something to cover up your metal bikinis while you watch the game.

Batman Bengal, for at least having a cape, you get a 3.

The Crazy Packer Fan is one who was just at the meaningless (but still very motivation-y) game the Packers and Cardinals played on 1/3/10:

And he's not very crazy at all. A wig? A Packer jersey? You've just described the outfit I wore on my first date with Sweetie. Plus, he refuses to high-five the woman in the number-40 Cardinals' jersey, but then shakes her hand? Mixed messages, Crazy Packer Fan. You get a 1.

Running scores:

Cardinals: 0
Ravens: 4
Bengals:8
Packers: 6

4. Best Name On Team Roster.

I'm going to give a threefer to the Cardinals: They've got the high-falutin', hoity-toity, hoi polloi trio of cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, quarterback Brian St. Pierre, and running back LaRod Stephens-Howling. That's not a football roster; that's the British House of Lords.

Speaking of backup-to-the-backup quarterback, Brian St. Pierre, you've got to think there's a pretty good chance he'll play, given that Kurt Warner is 73 years old and Matt Leinart may at any point suffer an outbreak of stuff he caught from dating Paris Hilton.

But the Cards get 3 for names.

The Bengals, meanwhile, have very few really cool names (outside of Chad Ochocinco, that is), but do appear to be a family operation. There are five Johnsons on their team (ranging from Brandon to Tank), two Joneses, two Harrises, two Smiths (plus another on the practice squad), and the first and second string quarterbacks are actual real-life brothers: Carson & Jordan Palmer. You get the feeling that the Bengals were trying to save on jerseys: All you Johnsons, just share one jersey. Same with the Harrises.

I'll go ahead and give the Bengals a 5, because I encourage thriftiness.

The Ravens have two pop-culture names, by which I mean "they make me think of things other than football." In the Ravens' case, there's Willis McGahee:

And then there's Todd Heap, who always makes me think of Uriah Heep, for no reason other than that the last name sounds similar. I was never a fan of Uriah Heep, the 70s band. (They're still around, it seems, looking about like you'd expect.) I looked up the Best of Uriah Heep on CD, and didn't recognize any of the songs. But they do have a song called Bird of Prey:

Which should be used as a mascot for the Ravens, shouldn't it? Even if Ravens aren't birds of prey, which I think they're not. And that song is all right, for overly theatrical glam-rock excess Kiss knockoffs.

I was always more of a fan of Uriah Heep, the character in David Copperfield, which is to this day the only book that ever made me cry. So instead of watching Ravens' football, you should probably read David Copperfield. (I read it while I was in Morocco, during the times that I wasn't eating sheep eyeballs and being held at gunpoint.)

The Bengals get a 3, for making me like Uriah Heep music kind of.

The Packers Roster is the only one of the rosters I've looked at so far that puts the players' first names first, instead of the last names, and lists them by numbers instead of alphabetically. So if you're trying to find a player by last name, forget it. If you're looking to go by position, forget it. You've got to know their number, or just read the whole stupid list. That's typical of boneheaded Green Bay management.

The Packers do have "Atari Bigby." Atari's bio says that the name is Japanese for attack. Babel Fish says this:

攻撃

Is the Japanese word for attack, but that hardly proves anything. Babylon, for it's part, says all of these:

(動) 攻撃する; 非難する; 襲う

(名) 攻撃; 発病; 着手

Are Japanese for attack. That doesn't help much, either, but they look cool. On the other hand, why do the Japanese need so many words for attack? Now, I'm nervous.

The AtariAge website, though, says this:

Q: What does the word "atari" mean?

A: The word atari comes from the game of Go, perhaps the world oldest board game. Several early 80's magazine references define atari as "you are about to be engulfed," but the rec.games.go FAQ denotes that word in this way: atari : A group of stones is in atari if it has only one liberty left.

I think Glenn Beck said last night that we have only one liberty left.

Remember "Super Challenge Football" on the Atari 2600? It looked like this:

And this is how the earlier version of the game played:

What I'm trying to say is, you kids these days are super lucky.

You'll have 3d sports broadcasts soon, and you have your ultra-realistic Madden NFL games that I can't even understand when I'm just watching.

We had video football players who appeared to be spastic poltergeists, and Lynn Dickey.

Let's go ahead and give Atari Bigby and his Packers a nostalgic 5.

Updated scores:

Cardinals: 3
Ravens: 7
Bengals:13
Packers: 11

4. Craziest Thing In Their Team Shop: I'm going to skip ahead to the Packers to open, and I'm not going to go with their team shop. Instead, I'm going to go with the jerseys that were on sale at a discount department store last night at the World's Saddest Mall. I had to go to that mall to renew my driver's license -- raising again the question of what kind of mall has a DMV in it? I did renew my license, despite two very serious problems that came up during the process, those problems being:

1. I could not pass the right-eye vision test. Remember, I'm a former fat-kid-with-glasses-and-an-eye-patch. The eye patch & glasses were for lazy eye, or amblyopia, a condition best explained via Peanuts:

My lazy eye has stayed lazy over the years - -maybe it needs more motivation?-- and as a result, I couldn't read anything last night on the vision test in my right eye. The DMV guy wasn't phased, though; he said "You pass based on your left eye." I'd chosen to read only the top line, which was in huge letters. People who drive in my city should sleep fitfully from here on out.

More alarming, though, was number two: The drastic increase in the size of my head and chins in the past 8 years. I knew I was bigger and had less hair and more chin fat, but that was never so dramatically shown as when Sweetie, last night, held up my two driver's license photos, side by side, one from yesterday, and one from 8 years ago. The one from yesterday looked as though it had eaten the one from 8 years ago, and had part of the remnants stored in my chin and cheeks.

I skipped dessert last night. (Then had a larger-than-usual breakfast this morning.)

Anyway, on the way out of the World's Saddest Mall, I passed a discount department store that had a sale on blankets and sheets. I decided to pop in and get Sweetie's Tuesday present, a day late, and selected a plush, soft, blanket, one that is identical in softness and plushness to the two previous blankets Sweetie has gotten, one from Middle and one which she bought; both of those were swiped by Mr F, who loves them more than anything except maybe the toy cow he took on the ride with him today. Mr F also took the blanket Sweetie bought specifically for him, and Middle's plush, soft green blanket, so he has four.

I bought the fifth and presented it to Sweetie last night ("Happy Tuesday!" I said. "Belated!") and Mr F took that one, too. But it's the thought that counts.

Anyway, while I was at the discount store, I saw they had Brett Favre Packer jerseys, leftover from the good old days when the Packers were run well, and I wanted to buy one because they were only $12.99 -- but the sizes started at 2XL, and went all the way up to 5XL. That's XXXXXL.

Who, I wondered, would need a 5XL Packer Jersey?

Oh.

Anyway, a jersey made five times the maximum human size is pretty crazy, and I'm giving the Packers a 5 for that.

The Cardinals pro shop is disappointing, not just because there's not a lot of crazy or weird stuff, but because there's not a lot of stuff, period. No clearance items, no good novelty items. The best I could do was a pair of children's Crocs, priced at $29.99, but I can't copy a picture because it won't let me. It's just as well: They're just black Crocs, with an Arizona Cardinals strap. The team wouldn't even spring for red Crocs, for thirty bucks.

I'm giving them a zero.

The Bengals pro shop, on the other hand, is like a treasure trove. I couldn't make up my mind whether to go with the $12 Bengals calculator, or $12 Bengals screwdriver, or $12 Bengals tape measure. But then I saw that the Bengals would sell me a $400 Bengals-logoed executive-style leather desk chair, great if I wanted to watch the games at my desk, or I could buy a $5 photo of coach Marvin Lewis, except that the same five bucks would get me a set of Bengals Plastic Forks, or I could get a photo of ... um... Rey Maualuga, who may or may not be a Bengal:

Rey Maualuga 8x10

Our Price: $5.00

Photo seen may not be the one delivered. An 8x10 photo of the #2 2009 draft pick of the Cincinnati Bengals

And, judging by the part in bold, I may or may not get the photo I ordered.

But the absolute winner was the Wilson Leather Briefcase:

for only $200, it's a steal, and I loved it because, for real, I have that briefcase. My mother-in-law found one at a rummage sale and bought it for me. I had no idea it was worth $200. I'm a two-hundred-illionaire!

Five points, Bengals, plus one for making me feel cool. 6!

I then looked for the Ravens Pro Shop with one goal: find some Edgar Allen Poe stuff, or they get no points. Unfortunately, the Ravens don't even have a pro shop. WTH?

BUT, at the Edgar Allen Poe Museum online store, you can get a "Lil Edgar" action figure --

Or a Poe Action Figure with Detachable Raven. Still, you can't get a Raven t-shirt, even there. So I'll give the Ravens a one, on the basis of I still like Edgar Allen Poe.

Final tallies:

Cardinals: 3
Ravens: 8
Bengals:19
Packers: 16

Yesterday's totals were:
Jets: -3
Eagles: 12.5

So the frontrunners are the Packers in the NFC and the Bengals in the AFC -- but there's a lot of analysis yet to come.

_________________________________________________________________________

Got a headache from trying to follow my logic? Why not check out the nearest online pharmacy for some remedies?

But can you get a metal Jets thong? Analyzing the NFL Playoffs the NC! Way, Day 1. (A Special Weekday Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:27:00 +0000

Not a sports fan? Read this anyway -- there's very little actual sports in here.

It's the most wonderful time of the year -- the NFL Football playoffs, which this year have the good sense both to begin on my birthday and to include Brett Favre. That calls for a double-whammy Nonstop! Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! Weeklong Special Edition of the:

NonSportsmanlike Conduct 100% Accurate, Never-Fail, Always-Right, Sure-Fire System For Picking The Playoff Winner.

This system, you'll recall, is the one that totally, 100% accurately, predicted that the 2009 World Series would be the St. Louis Cardinals against artist Christian Faur, thereby proving that the system works, unlike such other notable systems that clearly do not work. (Windows, the U.S. Senate.)

The NFL Playoffs are a huge deal, being the only playoffs in the only sport that I really care about (and since it's the only sport I really care about, it's also the only good sport, really.) So huge that I can't limit them to just one day, and that's why my Nonsportsma nlike Conduct! feature is spilling over from its usual unread Sunday position to all this week! For the remainder of this week, each day (hopefully!) I'll be putting up the only analysis you can rely on to determine who's going to win the Superbowl.

I'll be using the patented system that has never once failed ever (results +/- 100%). To recap, that system ranks teams not on offense or defense or dumb stuff like that; what good is knowing, for example, that the Packers have the number one rated defense in the NFL and were 7-1 (by sheer luck, I'm assuming) over the last 8 games? How's that going to help me figure out who's going to win?

No, I rely on far more accurate but underused indicators to make my never fail, 100% accurate predictions. Those indicators are, again, Best Mascot/Nickname, Craziest Fan, Politicians' Bets, and Weirdest Thing For Sale In Their Shop.

Ordinarily, I award one point to the team that wins each category. I'm going to break from tradition, and make the 100% system more accurate and scientific, by instead, ranking each team in each category on a 1-5 scale, awarding five points for something truly great, and 1 point for something truly lame. At the end of the rankings, then, the AFC and NFC teams with the most points will be the Super Bowl teams, and whichever has the most points will be the winner of that matchup.

Simple. Scientific. 100% Accurate. AND, for the first time ever, also, low in cholesterol. So this is not only good, but good for you.

We'll begin with the two lowest-ranked teams in the playoffs. From the AFC, that's the New York Jets, coming in as a six seed wild card.

From the NFC, that's obviously the Packers, who barely made the playoffs and will be lucky if they're allowed to suit up for the game.

Let me just google that last sentence to make sure my assumptions are accurate... what? The Packers are not the lowest-ranked playoff team? How'd that happen?

Apparently, Soon-To-Be-Fired Packers GM Ted Thompson, and coach Mike "Mike" McCarthy are the standard bearers in the Even a Blind Squirrel Federation. Whatever. So the lowest ranked team in the NFC is the Philadelphia Eagles.

Let's apply the NC!100%AN-F,A-R, S-F SFPTPW to these two playoff hopefuls*

(*note: they have no chance of winning. Sorry, New York & Philadelphia.)

1. Best Nickname/Mascot: The Jets have a timely nickname that ties into pop culture -- Jets -- and will no doubt enjoy a boost from the feel-good movie of 2009, Up In The Air.

On that note, Sweetie and I saw Up In The Air on our date last Friday. Our date was one of the more romantic dates we've been on lately, which really says something about us, or romance, or dating, or about the way the Packers managed to somehow luck into a playoff spot. Or about all of those things.

We arranged the date by getting The Boy to babysit, in exchange for letting him have a 2 a.m. curfew on New Year's Eve. That, on reflection, only guaranteed we'd get babysitting by someone too tired to actually take care of the Babies!, so to be on the safe side, we also timed our date to take place mostly during the Babies!' nap time. Once Mr F and Mr Bunches were safely locked in their room (note that I don't say "sleeping," since they never sleep), we headed out. First stop: Panera, where The Boy works. We went there for lunch, and to use the Internet, a move that was made necessary by the death of our laptop the morning before. When our laptop died, we were left without a computer in our house, which posed serious problems because Sweetie couldn't check her email, and couldn't keep up with celebrity gossip. It also meant that we couldn't actually order a new computer, because we do that through Dell over the Internet, and our old Dell computer was down.

Middle has a laptop, though, and she has wireless internet access -- but not through our account. So we needed someplace with wifi, and we chose Panera, where The Boy works, because it not only has free wireless Internet but also offers french onion soup and free soda refills.

We whiled away most of two hours there, alternating between me reading my Kindle and Sweetie getting caught up on celebrity gossip, and Sweetie reading her book while I ordered our new tiny 'puter. With that done, we then headed off for our date, getting to the movie theater to see Up In The Air just as previews were starting -- so late that we had to sit way up front and look at the screen from just below it.

Towering, looming images of George Clooney notwithstanding, the movie was excellent -- but it was not, as it turns out, the "feel good" movie of the year, even though the ads made it seem like it would be. It also involved Omaha, Nebraska, a lot, which counts against it a little. Also, the movie involved jets, with a small j, because most of the characters fly on them all the time.

On that basis, I'm going to give the Jets a 3 for their nickname. Scientific, isn't it? And, because I've been rambling on, I'm not going to spend much time on the Eagles. Let's just give them a 2, because eagles are boring, but double it out of patriotism because eagles are our national symbol. But then let's take away a half-point because Pennsylvania has an "official state electric locomotive," and that's a dumb thing to make an official state symbol out of.

So, so far, it's:
Jets: 3
Eagles: 3.5

2. Craziest Fan: As always, we go to Youtube for this. Searching for crazy Jets fan gets us this guy:

That, I can only assume, is the world's ONLY out-of-shape anti-semitic dirty-joke telling superhero. Let's give it up for Jets Man! (Note: Jewish people, and people who aren't anti-Semitic, need not give it up for Jets Man.)

Who would win in a fight, though, between Jets Man and the number one result on Youtube for crazy Eagles fan? I give you... EAGLES MAN!

I like the scream at the end, because with that, the video answers the question: What's Howard Dean been doing with himself?

Jets Man is crazy, so he gets 5, but then I have to subtract 15 for being anti-Semitic. Eagles Man earns four: one for stealing the Lombardi Trophy, one for his cape, and 2 for heading up the DNC.

Updated tally:

Jets: -7
Eagles: 7.5

3. Politicians' Bets. You know what? I don't like this category. It's dumb. Politicians' bets are always dumb, because politicians are dumb. If they had anything useful to say or do, they'd not be in politics. Useful people don't go into politics; useful people get jobs and make money and help people out.

Politicians, on the other hand, are the kind of people who do well in the Iowa Caucuses, then drop out of sight until they resurface wearing a green cape and yelling Whoo!

So I'm eliminating this category. Instead, I'll replace it with Best Name On The Roster. This indicator is a follow-up of my long-held theory that the best quarterbacks are those with the best names, and by best names, I mean two simple criteria: One-syllable, manly first name, and strong-sounding last name. The closer a quarterback comes to those ideals, the better that quarterback is:

Joe Montana: Perhaps the best quarterback name ever, and winner of not only five Superbowls, but also now a rodeo rider and assistant screenwriter for the hit TV series Two and A Half Men (uncredited.)

Terry Bradshaw: weak first name, but the last name sounds burly: like Broad Shoulders.

You can do the rest of the work to determine how good your favorite quarterback is. But the theory is accurate, and explains how Trent Dilfer won a Superbowl, why Matt Hasselbeck might yet, and why Ryan Fitzpatrick never will.

I'm expanding that out to pick the Best Name On A Team's Roster, which I will do using the entirely-objective system of Whichever name I kind of like.

From the Jets' roster, I was tempted to go with former first-round pick D'Brickashaw Ferguson, on the scientific, objective basis of "I like a name with an apostrophe in it," but then I saw Chauncey Washington, a running back on the Jets whose career stats with New York show that he's never carried the ball for them. Not only that, but Chauncey is the Man With No Country -- his official team bio is blank.

That led me to develop some sympathy for Chauncey, and to hope that this weekend, in the Jets' only playoff game this year, he'll at least get one or two carries in what's bound to be a losing effort. That, in turn, led me to wonder whether growing up as a Chauncey made him tougher because of all the teasing he probably got as a kid; kids still tease each other over names, weight, height, glasses, and every other thing, right? If I had to get teased for being named Pagel, (wondering how they teased me? It rhymes with bagel. If you don't think a tasty bread-like treat can also be an insult, then you were never a kid), then kids should also have to get teased for being Chauncey.

That, in turn, made me remember that one episode of Friends where Chandler tried to be friends with Monica's dad, but Monica's dad thought Chandler's name was Chauncey, and then Chandler sat on Monica's dad's (naked) lap in the steam room, which, on reflection, was actually a very risque storyline for a sitcom that aired early in the evening.

I don't want to put a picture of that in here, so I'll settle for a screen capture of the time Jennifer Aniston dressed up as Princess Leia:

And not that I should know this, or ever make use of the site, but there's a whole website devoted to Princess Leia's metal bikini. I just thought I'd share that for you, and mention that I know what I want from Sweetie for my birthday.

So, Chauncey is the best name on the Jets' roster, and I'll award him a 4, or one point for every time he's carried the ball in the NFL.

The Eagles' choice was a little easier. While I was tempted to go with Defensive End Victor Abiamiri, because first, who's named Victor anymore, and, second, his last name sounds like it might mean something in some other fake, non-English language, so his name, translated, might be something like Victor "Looking Into The Future" or some such, I was quickly distracted by tackle King Dunlap, whose name outranked even Eagles' cornerback Macho Harris. I wanted to go with royalty as the best name. The only other people I know named after actual royal positions are Prince, Prince Albert, and the guy across from the courthouse who insists that I call him Viceroy and crosses the street to talk to me.

But then I noted that there are not one, but two "Quintins" on the Eagles' roster. And not only that, but they both play safety -- so the Eagles are the only team ever in history to have two safeties named Quintin (prove me wrong! I dare you!). On a hunch, I checked to see what secret, fate-defining meaning the name Quintin might have, and I learned that the hidden meaning of Quintin is... it comes from the name Quentin.

Quentin, in turn, means... the fifth. That probably is symbolic of something, I'm sure. I'll give Quintin five points; who am I to argue with a website set up to tell me the meaning of names?

Updated tally:

Jets: -3
Eagles: 12.5

4. Weirdest Thing For Sale In Their Shop.

The Eagles' official store has a category entitled Novelties, and under that, something called Eagles Forest. I clicked on that and found the Eagles Forest Tree in Neshaminy State Park . To my disappointment, you can't buy an Eagles Tree and have it shipped to you, so, Sweetie, you're not getting that for Valentine's Day.

Instead, you can, for the low-low price of $61.99, plant a tree in Eagles Forest! The idea is to offset the Eagles' greenhouse gas emissions, and, if you buy a tree to do that, you'll get "a card acknowledging the purchase." In 2-4 weeks.

While it's pretty obvious this concept doesn't work, I'm going to pick it for the Eagles anyway, and also lament that I didn't know about this in time for the Nongift! Nonguide!. I can only picture this exchange between two Eagles' fans in the stands of whatever stadium the Eagles play in:

Fan 1: (Pointing to his own jersey) Whoooo!! WHOOOO!! I love the Eagles. You can tell by my jersey that I am wearing. Whoooo!! (Looks to fan to his right, who's wearing regular clothes.) Don't you love the Eagles, man! Whoooo!!

Fan 2: Um, yeah. I do. Can you keep it down a little?

Fan 1: Whooo!! No can do, man! I love the Eagles! If you love them, why aren't you wearing an officially licensed replica jersey with an NFL-approved name that doesn't offend anyone?

Fan 2: I thought about doing that, but instead decided to help reduce the Eagles' carbon footprint by sponsoring a tree in the Eagles forest, hopefully reducing the number of greenhouse gases by nearly a ton over my lifetime, and preventing the polar ice caps from melting and flooding the eastern seaboard, including probably Philadelphia, which the author of this blog is pretty sure is kind of close to the Atlantic Ocean.

Fan 1: Um... Whooo!! Go Eagles!! (Passes out.)

From the Jets' pro shop, we get... nothing, because they don't have an official pro shop. You can, though, buy a woman's New York Jets' thong on eBay for only $7.99. This guy, in fact, is wearing one:

And I've got all that money left over from not buying an Eagles tree...

I'll give the Eagles five, and the Jets zero for not having a pro-shop. So the final tallies for these two teams is:

Updated tally:

Jets: -3
Eagles: 17.5

I'll look at the five seeds tomorrow. Until then, group photo!

Tiny computing can be fun! And squinty! (3 Good Things From 1/5/09)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:41:00 +0000

I'm slowly getting back to full speed on the 'puting. Blame my delays on the buildup of egg nog in my veins, and on the fact that even though I took a couple of days off, nobody else did, so now I have to actually work at my job, for upwards of an hour a day...

Here's the first 3 Good Things of Twenty-Ten!

1. Mr Bunches knows 9 numbers by sight, and 8 of them are even different numbers. Mr Bunches has always liked counting (he spontaneously counts everything, including attempting to count all the puppies in 101 Dalmatians, an effort that's hampered by the fact that they're always moving, and by the fact that he only can go up to 10 and has to keep restarting. If Disney had made 10 Dalmatians, he'd love it.) (And, on that note, I've only watched a few minutes of the movie, but if I understand correctly, Cruella De Vil bought most of the puppies to make into a coat, and then stole the last 15. I don't understand that. Was England out of Dalmatians? Was she just that evil? With Disney movies, I've noticed, there's always one crucial plot point which, if pulled on, unravels the whole movie. Had Cruella just bought the last 15 puppies, she'd have [SPOILER ALERT!] never gotten busted and her fancy car wouldn't be smashed up.

Anyway, the good thing is this: I began the other day drawing numbers for Mr Bunches, and he'd say what the number was. I'd draw a 1, and he'd say "One." And so on: Two, Three, Four, Five (which sometimes has an s in it: Fives), six, sebben, eight... and then six again. Mr Bunches refuses to recognize that 9 is an upside down 6. Or that 6 is 9 standing on it's head. Whichever.

2. Our new tiny computer came! Our old laptop fizzled out last week and is in the shop, so on Friday, Sweetie and I ordered a netbook, and it came yesterday and I'm 'puting on it even as I type. But it's small. Really small. I didn't think a 10" screen would be that big of a change from a 17" screen, but it's giving my eyes a real workout. Then again, it cost only $99, so if our nephew burns this one out by playing virus-loading games on it all night (as we suspect happened last week to the old one), we're only out the cost of 21 frosted cookies at the Diner.

3. I won the Boise State/TCU Bet with The Boy: Rather than betting on the BCS National Championship game this year, The Boy and I moved our traditional college football t-shirt bet to the Boise State/TCU game that was aired Monday night, and I had Boise State -- so I get a Boise State t-shirt to win. (And, even though the game took place on Monday, it's a Tuesday good thing because I fell asleep in the 4th quarter, so I didn't know the outcome until Tuesday. Rest assured, I did spend the day saying "Go, Boise State!" every time I saw The Boy.

Tuesday present update: I didn't get a Tuesday present for Sweetie yesterday, because I had only $5 cash on me on the way home from work, and my gas tank light was on. So I'll have to get her the present today, belatedly. The past few Tuesday presents have been:

Last week: A $50 gift card to Target (a present from my work that I re-gifted.)
The week before: A frosted cookie from the Diner.

American Residential Law Group has the information you may want to help save your house.

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:30:00 +0000

A lot is happening in the mortgage world these days -- take it from me, and take it from the headlines that you see all over. Foreclosures are still up, there are scads of federal and state programs that have gotten going, banks are trying to ramp up foreclosures or forestall them, lawyers are scrambling, and everywhere you go, someone's got something to say about it all.

Here's a new way to help you sort it out: the American Residential Law Group has a new wiki page designed to give you the tools you need to understand the loan modification issues and process.

The idea here is to gather up information and make it available to you in an easy-to-access, easy-to-understand way (hence the wiki format) and they've already gone a long way towards that goal, with their FAQ and easy interface.

The page is run by American Residential Law Group, a consumer firm that's helped people for more than a decade; they're serious about making sure not only that people like you know what their options are, but use those options effectively.

So if you're confused about what to do in the foreclosure crisis, click on over there and begin learning what you can do to get out of trouble, or not get into trouble in the first place.

The Most Popular Thing I Did In 2009...

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:48:00 +0000

Google analytics is a wonderful thing; it lets me find out what most people were looking at on my blog. Today, I checked to see what the number one spot on Thinking The Lions was in 2009, and found out that it was...

.... something I wrote in 2006. Click here to see what everyone in 2009 wanted to see.

I Read The News Today Oh Boy: Holiday Roundup Edition.

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:55:00 +0000

It's been a while since I did I Read The News Today Oh Boy (the title comes from The Beatles' song A Day In The Life, an explanation I should've given long ago, maybe.) But as I ease into this year sans laptop (our home computer gave up last Friday, perhaps-only-coincidentally after being used by our nephew to play online games), and having been out of my office for nearly two complete weeks, I thought I'd bring that feature back and give you not just a single day in my life, but a recap of the holidays (mostly) in pictures.

It's a recap of the holidays (mostly), because I didn't actually include any pictures of what happened on the holidays in question. Instead, these are all pictures around the holidays.

As you know from reading way back when, my holidays began with a thoughtful, generous, kind, overwhelmingly charitable act on my part as I spent the first two hours of my Christmas vacation bell ringing.

With the whole peace & love & understanding thing out of the way, it was time to party, holiday style, which we did in this case by taking the Babies! to Chuck E. Cheese's on Wednesday the 23rd:

Mr Bunches found a better way of playing Skeeball --
a necessary modification to the game when your
arms are tiny...

Mr F soon copied Mr Bunches' revolutionary innovation...
to lesser effect.
(He's throwing the balls into the zero-point slot.)

One good thing about taking three year olds
to the arcade? They don't know when they're
playing games and when they're just
watching someone else play. So watching
The Boy play a game while hitting the "One Player" button
is satisfying for Mr Bunches:

The Babies! and The Boy ended up earning about 200 tickets, which The Boy generously decided to donate to another little kid who was there. The Boy did that, though, with a complete lack of ceremony, dumping the tickets on the table in front of the other kid's dad. It's possible that the dad knew the tickets were donated; but, since The Boy immediately left after doing that, it's possible the dad thought The Boy had stolen the tickets from the kid and then had a change of heart.

Middle tried to get Mr Bunches interested
in one of the thrill rides, a swing that
traveled in a clockwise direction:

Mr Bunches wasn't liking it.

Mr F, meanwhile, spent a good twenty minutes
on this Bob The Builder ride, which gently rocked
him into a state of near-sleep, until he noticed (shown here)
the animatronic band at the back of the restaurant.

Not pictured: Mr F running up to the motionless animatronic
band, then seeing it start up playing and running away in fear.

Middle tried again, showing Mr F how to play a
fishing game.

Middle is boring.

We left Chuck E. Cheese's just as a blizzard was starting up, a blizzard that would serve as our cover to not go visit my family the next day on Christmas Eve. That holiday was celebrated in the time-honored way we almost always spend it: lounging around all day, mostly in pajamas, playing with the Babies!, discussing hot celebrity gossip, and closing with the Traditional Family Movie.

Past Traditional Family Movies have included Godzilla, Halloween, and Friday The 13th. This year's Traditional Family Movie broke new ground by introducing sci-fi as we watched, in loving family togetherness, District 9.

Christmas Day was presents from Santa (in keeping with the True Meaning Of Christmas) -- Hot Wheel tracks and motorized dump trucks, plus buckets of dinosaurs and farm animals for the Babies!, jewelry and t-shirts for Sweetie, clothes and movies for the kids, and a Kindle for me. A day of leftover egg nog, pizza (there's always pizza involved), showing Mr Bunches how to play Hot Wheels and helping Mr F read his new book (I Love You, Stinky Face), and general lazing about, as well as a day of potentially bankrupting myself when I am momentarily tempted to purchase every book, ever, for my Kindle.

I was held back from that major purchase by the realization that due to errors in my bookkeeping system, I was probably overdrawn in my bank account. (My bookkeeping system is best summarized by the phrase "Try to keep track of how much I've spent, sort of.")

Saturday, I took the Babies! on their first-ever sledding trip. The hill we chose was dictated by Sweetie, who wouldn't let us go any place fun, on account of, in Sweetie's world, fun = "horribly dangerous and probably also you'll lose one or both of the Babies!"

I'll tell you: mention just once how Mr F escaped at the grocery store while you were selecting a cake and was gone for 10 minutes, and some parents never let you forget it. And it was her birthday cake we were there to get... so in a way, it was very much her fault.

In the end, we chose a nearby park with a sledding hill that went down about 10 feet. It was much of a hill, but then, the Babies! weren't much interested in sledding.

Mr Bunches and Mr F both refused to
wear their own mittens, so they
ended up having my gloves lashed to them:

After a few runs down the hill, during which they mostly
sat bored on my lap, the Babies! set off on an expedition around the
baseball diamond at the end of the park. They were like little
Admiral Pearys, if Admiral Peary had explored a park in Middleton
instead of discovering the Straits of Magellan, or whatever
it was Admiral Peary did. (I'm pretty sure Peary did something involving cold.)

Mr F was not a fan of wind chill:

The park we chose is also the park where I take the Babies!
to play in the summer, and Mr Bunches saw the swings he
loves, at which point he insisted on doing some swinging:

Saturday, the 26th is also, of course, the day that everyone
goes to the Mall to get the stuff they wish they'd been given
for Christmas. Sweetie needed a new coat, so we went to the
store with her. The highlight of the trip for me:
The Gingerbread House Display that was still up, including
the house from Up:

Not pictured: Mr F escaping from me in the Mall and running almost the entire length of it as I chased after him carrying Mr Bunches, finally corraling him at the pharmacy he ducked into in a clever evasive maneuver.

The week between Christmas and New Year's was marked by a Series of Unfortunate Events that I may elaborate on in the future but won't yet.

When the dust settled, the week finished up with a New Year's Eve that saw me and the Babies! partying by staying up until 9 p.m. watching a movie. That doesn't seem late, but it outlasted Sweetie, who fell asleep about 8:45 p.m. I then spent the remainder of the New Year's Eve... don't get too excited by by near-rock-star-ness... reading Juliet, Naked on my Kindle until 11:45 when I fell asleep.

New Year's Day was spent much the same way Christmas Day was: pizza and pajamas, but no presents. The next day, the Babies! and I tried another sledding trip, one that was made even more difficult by the fact that in my haste to load the car, I forgot the sleds.

So we walked around the park, exploring again, and
came to the Splash Park where the Babies! like to play in the summer:

As the temperature dropped to six degrees, we called it a day and went back home. The remainder of the weekend was spent quietly, until we finished up with a dinner of burritos last night. The highlight: Mr Bunches playing with the baby carrots:

Not pictured: Mr Bunches making me eat four baby carrots at once.
Some with lint on them.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Eclipse: Buy it here.

Getting Professional Logos The Easy Way

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:54:00 +0000

This is a sponsored guest post written by LOGO DESIGN IDEAS on behalf of Logomyway. Post powered by Sponzai.

LogoMyWay connects companies needing design work such as a Professional Logo Design, T-shirts designs, Professional Business card designs and more to a thriving community of talented logo designers. Start a professional logo design contest within minutes! Choose from 70-400+ custom logo designs. All designs are 100% original from talented designers all over the world.
Start A Logo Contest for as little as $200.00. Mandatory prepaid prize amounts produce much higher quality and quantity from our community of designers.
Three simple steps and your design contest goes live. You will see amazing logo designs within hours. QUALITY is our niche at Logomyway.
You can browse contests to see exactly what our professional logo design community can deliver.
Hundreds of creative logo designers in over 100 countries waiting to create your company logo design.
Receive Industry Standard Vector Logo Files that can be used in almost any application you choose. (Websites, T-Shirts, Mugs, Pens, Business Cards Etc..)
You will get a free legal contract giving you 100% full legal ownership of your new logo design.
MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. If your logo contest doesn't receive at least 40 logo concepts

Today, I'm bringing democracy to the NFL. Next week, I'll bring it to the US Senate. (Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:12:00 +0000

This week, I am going to propose a revolutionary change to pro sports, something that I am not afraid to do because as I face the prospect of turning 41 next week, I've realized that there is some freedom that comes with being old.

For example, I am free to not really care anymore that Facebook deleted my account, finding me unsuitable to mingle with the 33 billion other people who have Facebook accounts because I made too many friend re quests. Sure, it bothered me at first that Facebook looked down on me, because Facebook doesn't look down on the practice of encouraging abusive husbands to look up their wives; but I've gotten over it, so I don't even mind that F acebook lets a convicted burglar flip people the bird on their site while evading the police.

(Plus, since Facebook dropped me, my readership is up!)

In addition to having the maturity to not mind that I can no longer waste a few minutes each day reading OMG! Is It Monday Again! written by people who should never use OMG

(and, I cleaned that up; it was typically OMG Isi t Mondy ag in)

(...Can we all agree that every single person in the world should learn to type, and if you can't type, then at least spell check?...)

I also have the freedom to admit two other important facts about me:

One, most of the time I now I wear pajama bottoms around the house, and

Two, I think that the NFL should use a part of college football's system for playoffs rather than the other way around.

The pajama bottoms thing is easily explainable: they're comfortable. I have to wear dress-up/grown-uppy clothes five days a week; sometimes more if Sweetie makes us go to a thing on Saturday or Sunday, like when we go to her parents and I feel compelled to wear a sweater and blue jeans, the sweater counting as the "dress-up/grown-uppy" clothing in that mixture. And the jeans, too, because at worst on the weekends I want to wear not a sweater, but a sweatshirt, and there's a difference, isn't there? It's not the same, wearing a sweater to relax. Try wearing a sweater to a football game get-together. Or to the Mall playground with your three-year-old Babies!, the playground you always have to go to because you live in Wisconsin and from December 26 through March 4 the high temperature is eight degrees, so you can't go outside, really, at all, but nobody has thought yet to build indoor playgrounds, nobody except McDonald's, that is, and you don't have any money on you to buy something at McDonald's and you feel bad going in and using their playground without at least buying a soda, for Pete's sake, which is weird, because you'll go use the Mall playground and not buy anything at the Mall, without feeling bad, but I guess it's not actually that weird because if you think about it, if you were to go to McDonald's and spend $2 on a soda then you could use the playground without any feeling of guilt, so the cost of using the playground, then, is $2, and if you go to McDonald's and use the playground without buying the soda, that's like stealing two bucks from McDonald's. But at the Mall, the cost of the playground is also a Theoretical Two Bucks only there's, what, 35 stores, if you count that kiosk that sells only calendars and somehow is open year round anyway? And that's not counting the one place that pops up every Christmas selling hermit crabs, which I think would be the worst possible pet to find under a Christmas tree:

Parents: "Merry Christmas!"
Kids: "Eeeeeek!"

So in using the Mall playground without buying something, I'm still stealing a Theoretical Two Bucks, but it's divided by 35, and $2.00 divided by thirty-five is... um... I don't know. I left my calculator down in the downstairs conference room of our office, and I don't feel like opening up the computer-calculator, so let's just say $2.00/35 = $0.08. So if I use the Mall playground without paying, I'm stealing $0.08 from each store, which isn't very much, so it seems less guilt-inducing, although now that I've worked it out I can see it's morally wrong and I should stop doing it. Only I won't. Fight the power. Or something.

That, in a nutshell, is why I feel free to wear pajamas during the day when I'm not working and not expecting to go anywhere. Or maybe I didn't explain it at all; I got kind of lost there and there's no way I'm going back to re-read everything I just wrote, and I wasn't really paying attention.

The other thing, the college-vs-NFL thing, is equally important and equally unembarrassing to me, even though everyone in the world including The Boy thinks that college football's system is screwed up and the NFL's system is great and also (probably) thinks that the BCS is responsible for everything bad in their lives, ranging from the lack of new flavors in Ramen noodles to the Death of Conservative Thinking, a death best explained by this video:

Did you catch what happens between 30 and 40 seconds? Dana Perino, who apparently held a position of some significance before her lobotomy, said "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." And neither of the two guys around her bothered to correct her.

To most people (everyone but me), the BCS is responsible for that: The BCS is responsible for Dana Perino's complete lack of intellect/memory that doesn't go back more than 7 years, and it's responsible for terrorist attacks that may or may not have occurred during Bush's years, and it's responsible for science being unable to find a way to get more than 12 grains into an average loaf of bread, and it's responsible for the way my feet hurt at the end of the day.

The BCS, in short, is bad. Not as bad as the Worst-Possible-Hitler-Analogy-Ever, which I heard this morning on ESPN radio, when Beano Cook (who is, I believe, a sports guy of one sort or another) was talking about who he'd pick in the BCS National Championship Game, Texas or Alabama. Beano (?) said that he's picking Alabama, even though he likes Texas, and he explained that he doesn't let his heart make his picks by using this analogy:

If Germany invaded France, I'd root for France but I'm going to pick Germany.

At which point I had to invoke Godwin's law and change the station.

But who will we compare Obama to, if this becomes
common practice?

Courtesy: XKCD.

But I'm not one of those people (everyone else in the world) who thinks the BCS is terrible. I like the BCS, because it combines a couple of things that I think are important: Sports, and democracy.

It's been said over and over that the BCS should be replaced by a "playoff system," and that the BCS is not "fair" and that we shouldn't let computers choose a national college football champion. But all of that is bunk, because there's nothing inherently more fair about any other playoff system, and the way we choose other champions is even less fair and less transparent than the BCS.

So all those other systems have nothing on the BCS; they don't improve it any way, but they do make things a little worse, because by not using the BCS, other sports leagues guarantee that most games don't count, whereas, in the BCS, all but one game typically matters.

College football's BCS system means that college football teams play, at most, one meaningless game per season.

One.

That's this many.

Every game in a college football team's schedule, barring maybe the last one, is a meaningful game. (And that last game, the one that might be meaningless, is usually played over the holidays, when you're not really watching, and sometimes features fun matchups, the kind of what-would-happen-if type of game that fans love to talk about. What would happen if Notre Dame played Wisconsin? Who would win if Florida met Auburn? Bowl games answer that question.)

That can't be said about any other sport. In baseball, last year's/most year's World Champion, the Yankees, were 103-59, so in baseball you can lose 59 games -- more than 1/3 of your schedule -- and still be the World Champion. Minnesota (they have a baseball team? Apparently so!) lost 76 games and made the postseason; in baseball, you can lose almost 1/2 your games and still get into the postseason.

Basketball's a mess -- almost every team makes the playoffs there. Last year, New Orleans (THEY have a team?) won 49 games -- barely over 1/2 -- and made the playoffs. In the NBA, you can lose 1/2 your games and get into the postseason.

Don't even mention such notable nonsports as NASCAR or Indy racing or golf, where you don't need to ever even win to become famous or get awards.

I think the trophy could be a little bigger; it's not clear, yet,
just how much you're overcompensating.

In college football, by contrast, teams have got to win, all the time. And not just win, but win good. And win quality games. Teams have got to play big games from beginning to end and win them; if they're not playing a name-brand opponent, then they've got to slaughter the other side just to stay even with the other teams.

Consider four teams that were contending for the National Championship towards the end of the season:

Boise State in its nonconference schedule played Oregon, which finished the season ranked at number 7 in the BCS. Texas played Texas Tech and Colorado and Missouri. Alabama played everybody, it seems. Even lowly TCU played Texas to beef up its schedule. Teams that wanted to make a go at the national championship made sure that they played worthy opponents. (USC, which didn't even come close this year, stacked its own nonconference schedule with games against Ohio State and Notre Dame.)

The BCS forces teams to do that. In college football, if you want a bowl game, you have to win six games. But that won't get you a good bowl, or the National Championship; that'll land you playing the Huskies in the International Bowl. If you're a college football team and you want a real bowl game, you have to win all your games, and you have to play good opponents. Teams that snuck into the BCS top 25, like Central Michigan, know this: Central Michigan scheduled games against Arizona and Michigan State to bump up its BCS cred. Brigham Young played Oklahoma (then ranked 3) and Florida State (losing to the latter, but in the BCS, a loss to a quality team still helps.)

(My home state of Wisconsin scheduled nothing but cream puffs in its nonconference season -- and struggled to remain ranked as a result; in the end, the Badgers played a meaningless bowl game to round out their season.)

These guys were terribly concerned about
the outcome of the bowl game that day.

No other sport does that: No other sport not only ensures that every game but one counts, while also ensuring that teams will seek out quality opponents. Can you imagine if the NFL did what the BCS does: Let teams schedule a few of their own opponents, then count the results? What would the NFL season be like if the Packers, instead of playing two games against the Lions, made sure they put the Patriots* and the Colts on their schedule because they wanted a shot at the Superbowl?

The NFL doesn't do that, though: They don't allow teams, or encourage teams, to play meaningful games against quality opponents, and they don't ensure that every game counts.

In the NFL, only about 9 or 10 games count; a team with 9 or 10 wins can generally make the playoffs, so the remaining 6 or 7 games don't really matter. That was amply demonstrated last year by the Chargers, who finished 8-8 and sewed up a playoff spot in the final game of the season, and will likely be demonstrated again this year if the Jets win tonight and make the playoffs at 9-7; if the Jets do that, then 7 of their games didn't matter. (The Tennessee Titans came excruciatingly close to making the playoffs this year after starting 0-6, helping [almost] further prove my point.)

That leaves the NFL with meaningless games, especially in Week 17, a week that is so meaningless, even the NFL admits it doesn't count.

That's right: The NFL doesn't really count Week 17. You can tell they don't because the NFL's fantasy football league, run by the NFL on the NFL's own website, ends in Week 16. (This year, in my league, Mr F's and Mr Bunches' team, the Pantless Pete's, won the league! Hooray for them!).

The NFL doesn't run fantasy football into Week 17 because Week 17 is meaningless: most teams won't even try to win today. Peyton Manning and Drew Brees will not step on the field. Brett Favre might not play. The Packers and the Cardinals will likely save their real firepower for their likely matchup next week.

There are 16 games on the NFL schedule today, and 7 of them are absolutely meaningless: they could in no way impact the postseason, period. Those games include one of the league's marquee teams, the Colts, who will travel to Buffalo today in a game that doesn't matter to either team.

Today will mark Buffalo's 367th
consecutive meaningless game.

If it doesn't matter to them, why should it matter to me? I won't be watching, and I'll probably instead watch Ninja Cheerleaders, which I taped off of Showtime last night.

Of the remaining 9 possibly meaningful games, well, there's meaningful and then there's... "meaningful." Sure, there are a bunch of AFC teams with their hopes alive for a playoff spot, but hopes should rightfully be in quotes: "hopes."

Take a look at the hopes of one team, the Denver Broncos, who started 6-0 under Nearly Quarterback of the Year Kyle "Ortsie" Orton. Here is the official NFL layout of the Broncos' playoff scenarios today. The Broncos can make the playoffs with a:

- Win over Chiefs plus losses by at least two of the following: Baltimore (at Oakland), Jets (vs. Cincinnati), Pittsburgh (at Miami)

- Win over Chiefs plus Jets loss AND wins by Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Houston (vs. New England)

- Win over Chiefs plus Houston win AND loss by either Baltimore or Jets

- Loss to Chiefs plus Pittsburgh loss AND losses by at least three of the following: Baltimore, Houston, Jacksonville and Jets

- Loss to Chiefs plus losses by Baltimore, Houston, Jacksonville and Jets.

Note that the Broncos can make the playoffs even if they lose. They could go 2-8 over the second 2/3 of the season, losing their final game, and still make the playoffs.

Does that sound like a meaningful game to you?

In reality, there are two meaningful games, really, in the AFC today: The Ravens and the Jets both "control their destiny," meaning if they win they're in the playoffs. The Jets were scheduled to play early, so most teams would know fairly soon whether they had anything left to play for - -but the NFL moved the Jets' game to Sunday night, a canny move that meant that some teams would have to at least pretend to play today.

So the NFL's system might not result in meaningful games, but it is claimed to be fair, unlike the Hated BCS. The BCS is seen as so unfair and is so hated that it actually factored into the election of Barack Obama, and took up some of Congress' time in 2009. The people who say that the BCS is unfair, though, can be described in one word:

Stupid.

Sorry, President Obama. I hate to label you with the rest of the dummies, but you are.

In saying the BCS is unfair, the people who label it as such demonstrate that they don't know the meaning of fair. Fair is having everyone play by the same rules and not favoring any one person arbitrarily. That's fair, and unfair is the opposite of that.

It would unfair if the BCS were to say Wins by Florida count a little more because we like them.Or it would be unfair if midway through the season the NCAA said "If you have worn uniforms with red on them, you're out of the running for the championship." Changing the rules, or having squishy, arbitrary, unknown criteria for selecting a winner, is unfair.

The BCS doesn't do that. EVERYONE knows how to win in the BCS, how to get themselves to the National Championship game: Win all your games, and win them against quality opponents. That's all. If you don't play many quality opponents, well, then... fix that. Play them. College football lets you set your own nonconference schedule, so everyone could play good opponents if they wanted to do that. College football even lets you change conferences to get better opponents, so teams like Rutgers (which made an abortive run for the National Championship not long ago) could get a leg up and try again.

The NFL doesn't let teams change divisions to try to increase the odds that they'll make the playoffs, do they? Ask Dallas and Houston how they feel about the idea that they could go jump into the NFC North, or the NFC West.

The BCS is perfectly fair; it sets out the rules and expects people to play by them, and everyone knows what the rules are. That puts the BCS miles ahead of such other noteworthy postseasons, postseasons like the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, which is inherently unfair.

That's right: the NCAA Tournament, which is so frequently heralded as a model of fairness, is about the least fair thing ever. The NCAA Tournament selects its entrants one of two ways: One, win a Division One Conference Tournament. Or, Two, be selected based on unknown, arbitrary criteria by a supersecret star chamber.

Let's look at Way Number One, first: The Ultra-Fair (?) Way the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament lets people into the postseason is to win a Division I Conference Tournament Championship. Back in 1955, that let Bradley into the Tournament -- with a 7-19 record. More recently, in the past 20 years or so, 5 teams with losing records have made the NCAA Tournament. Sure, they all lost in the first round -- but half the teams in the Tournament lose in the first round, and wasn't there a better team to play in the first game than Florida A&M (8-18 in 1999, and made the NCAA Tournament.)

So in the NCAA Basketball postseason, not only do you not have to win all your games to get in the tournament, you only have to win three games or so: a team could lose every single regular season game, win three games in the conference tournament, and they're in.

Fair!

What about Way Number Two? Selection by the UltraTopSecretSuperDeluxe NCAA Tournament Committee (UTSSDNCAATC)

Original title for this movie:
NCAA Selection Committee Training Video.

People complain all the time that in the BCS, "computers" pick the winner. (They don't; Computer help select the top two teams for a one-game playoff. Again, people who don't like the BCS are, in a word, dumb). But is the alternative any better? Who's on the UTSSDNCAATC? Do you know? I do -- they put it on the Web (they put everything on the Web, now, including top-secret anti-terrorism procedures.)

Right now, two of the Selectors are commissioners for conferences; the rest are Athletic Directors at colleges, with three big colleges represented. But that changes every year; about 1/3 of the Selectors are new each year... and who chooses them?

And what criteria do the Selectors apply to let schools in? Nobody knows. You can't find the standards on that website. You can't find them anywhere.

Oh, but the NCAA Selection committee does use computers. They use "RPI," a statistical analysis based on strength of schedule and win losses.Just as the BCS does.

Wait a minute... the Tournament uses RPI. And
if you replace the "R" with an H, and the "P" with
an A, and the "I" with an L... it all makes sense now.

So the most-fair-system people can think of is completely unfair, and also makes use of the despised computers to help be so unfair. That's a powerful argument in favor of the BCS; at least the BCS is upfront and applies the same rules to everyone.

Now, after all that, you'd think I'd be wholeheartedly supporting just simply using the BCS to select the NFL's winner each year, and I've in the past argued for just that -- importing the BCS into the NFL and letting it set up the two top teams to play in the Superbowl, regardless of division or conference.

Doing that, I theorized, would result in great Superbowls, the games people really want to see. We could see Colts-Titans, if that was the number one game. Or Saints-Patriots*, or any combination we wanted, provided the computers helped up pick it.

But I like the NFL playoffs, because I like it that I get to see each game and I like pro football on Saturdays, and I like it that the games really matter, unlike the NFL regular season. I like anything, in fact, that extends the pro football season in a meaningful way, so I'm no longer arguing to scratch the NFL system in favor of the BCS.

Instead, I'm arguing to adopt a portion of it for the NFL (and all other leagues, which would equally benefit from this idea.) Here's what I think the NFL should do:

Adopt a little democracy for your postseason.

To be more specific: Stick with the current format of division winners, and two wild cards. But instead of having the two wild cards be selected purely by record (as they are now), have the #5 Wild Card be selected by record, and the number #6 Wild card be selected by a BCS-style ranking system of fan votes and strength of schedule.

Here's how it would work. The NFL would play its regular season just like now. At the end, for 24 hours, following the close of Week 17, fans could vote for the teams they wanted to be the #6 Wild Card in each conference, the AFC and NFC. The NFL would take the fan rankings and match them up with the strength-of-schedule rankings, and have computers determine which teams not already in the playoffs would be the number 6 team by selecting the highest-ranked team not already in the playoffs.

It's genius, and I don't mind saying so myself.

It's the kind of thing Einstein would've come up with,
if he'd ever bothered working on something important.

Having a Fan Vote Wild Card would do a couple of things: First, it would encourage teams to take seriously every game on their schedule -- and would especially encourage weaker teams to really go all out against stronger teams. If you're a Tampa Bay or Cleveland, and you beat some playoff-bound teams like Green Bay and Pittsburgh (as each of those teams did this year), that'll give you some hope that you might make the playoffs even though your record isn't that great. If you're Pittsburgh and you're 8-7 because you lost a key defender and play an impossible schedule, you're still alive in the Fan Vote. If you're the Titans and you started 0-6 but changed quarterbacks and then went 7-2 since that time, you've got hope, too.

Next, the Fan Vote Wild Card would get the team the fans love into the playoffs, and how is that not a good thing? NFL, you want fans to watch, and how better to guarantee they'll watch than to put the team they love into the game they're watching?

The Fan Vote Wild Card could even replace the joke that is the NFL Pro Bowl voting -- voting that is completed before the season is over, and which votes players into a game they'd rather not play on. The NFL could scrap the Pro Bowl, but televise the Fan Vote Wild Card Selection, replacing the Pro Bowl in the ratings game.

If the Fan Vote Wild Card existed today, we'd all watch today's games and teams would go all out in today's games because starting at about 10 p.m. tonight, the fans would begin selecting the two final teams for the playoffs -- and later results count more than earlier ones, as we all know.

I even know who I'd vote for, pending today's games. In the NFC, I'd replace Dallas with the Carolina Panthers, a move that makes sense because Dallas can't win a playoff game with Tony Romo, whereas the Panthers have been playing excellent football lately and have a good new quarterback taking charge of a young, hot team that has, this year, beaten Brett Favre's Vikings, the defending NFC Champion Cardinals, and trounced the giants 41-9 in a must-win game for the Giants.

In the AFC, the obvious choice is the red-hot Tennessee Titans, who under Vince Young have lost only twice in the past 9 games -- those losses coming to the playoff-bound Colts and Chargers. While the Titans are 0-2 against the top two AFC seeds, they're 7-0 against the rest of the NFL recently, but won't get a chance to play in the postseason. If the Fan Vote Wild Card existed, they'd be in, the Jets would be out, and we'd get a great first-round matchup with an exciting team instead of the prospect of watching Mark Sanchez throw four interceptions next week.

Instead, because the Fan Vote Wild Card isn't a reality yet, and because everyone thinks playoffs are fair and the BCS isn't, we're stuck with pro sports in which only about 1/3 of the games matter, playoffs that routinely feature mismatched opponents in blowout games in the first round, and a lot of time to watch Ninja Cheerleaders instead of pro sporting events.

I'll be watching in my pajamas.

__________________________________________________________________________

It may be winter now, but before you know it, spring will have sprung and summer will be just around the corner -- making now the perfect time to start planning for warm-weather fun by signing up for Boating School before it's too late. Find the best boating schools for your needs by clicking that link.

I'm not putting any actual music from them in here because I don't want to encourage Sweetie to listen to them. (Sweetie's Hunk of the Week, 44)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Time to put down my presents long enough to give you Hunk Of The Week Number 44:

Daughtry! (The entire band, not just the guy!)

You Don't Know Them Without You Have a 13-year-old girl living in your house and/or no taste in music. Daughtry is the band formed by Chris Daughtry, a guy who was on American Idol. I know this because we have Middle living in our house, and Middle, despite being a student in college right now and having various parts of her face pierced, is also a 13-year-old girl, at least at heart. For hobbies, Middle does all the stuff that 13-year-old girls do: She watches American Idol, and she takes pictures of her cats, and then she buys the music from the people she heard on American Idol, and puts it on iTunes, so that I can be jogging along, minding my own business and listening to my iPod, when all of a sudden I'm sonically assaulted by David Archuleta, or Daughtry, or Aaron Carter, who I know wasn't on American Idol, but he is on my iTunes, thanks to Middle, and he's an example of the kind of terrible music that Middle, and 13-year-old-girls, love.

The band features one of each required Rock Hairstyle.
In order, from left to right: "Punk," "speed metal," "indie rocker,"
"I'm only in this band because I own a van," and "grunge."

Other than knowing who they are, I don't know anything about Daughtry, and I was surprised that Sweetie did since, so far as I know, the band never guest-starred on Law & Order; I suppose there could have been an episode about a guy who finished fourth or fifth on a reality show music competition called Continental Idol, and then formed a band, and then was onstage performing with that band when the reality-show winner died backstage, seemingly of accidental causes but those accidental causes were set up by the fourth-or-fifth place winner to get his revenge for what happened on the show, which the runner-up/murderer would say was the winner rigging the vote so that runner-up would lose.

That might have been on Law & Order, but it's really more of a The Closer kind of storyline, don't you think?

Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm About Them: I'm at a loss for anything else to say about Daughtry, since I don't know anything about them beyond the lead singer was on American Idol, and also that the band is made up of guys who don't mind that Daughtry is taking all the glory. I've always wondered about that, forming a band with the name of just one person as the band's name, like Van Halen, and... um... The Smiths, I suppose. And Fleetwood Mac, which is a lot like Mick Fleetwood, who I'm pretty sure was in Fleetwood Mac. What do the other people in the band think about that, I wonder? Did they sign up knowing that was the deal? Or were they ready to cut a record, and the lead singer was like "Okay, it's time I told you, the band is named Jim."

(In case you're wondering, a quick Google search shows that no band is currently named Jim, so Jim, or Jim The Band is available for your band-naming purposes.)

(But there are a bunch of bands headlined by guys named Jim, like The Jim Halfpenny Band:

Those guys aren't bad, I suppose, but they should rethink their name; no band named after a real guy has ever achieved any lasting success. The Doors never had a shot when they were The Jim Morrison Band (assuming they were; I don't know if they were or not, but it sounds like the kind of thing that could be true. You never know, with band names. I mean, Simon & Garfunkel began as Tom & Jerry and The Beatles were The Black Jacks, The Quarry Men, Johnny & The Moondogs, then The Nerk Twins (really!) then The Beatals, then The Silver Beetles, then The Beatles, so who's to say that The Doors weren't once The Jim Morrison Band, doomed to playing weddings and the Holiday Inn by I-65, until they changed their name?)(Who's to say, I mean, besides, you know, history? But what does history know, anyway? It can't even get things like what number president Barack Obama is correct.)

That's really the thing that makes you go hmmm about Daughtry, I think: Do they have any chance at success, given that they're named after the lead singer, and given that bands named after real people never make it big?

In fact, if you Google What's the most popular band named after a real person, ever, you'll find out that David Bowie was born "David Jones" but changed his name so that people wouldn't get him confused with Davey Jones of The Monkees. Everyone who would like to see The Monkees perform David Bowie's The Man Who Fell To Earth, but with that patented Monkees slapstic comedy, raise your hand! Good! It's unanimous! Get on that, Hollywood, or whoever's in charge of such things.

This version of the band appears to be at least 40% different from
the prior version. Note the absence of Grunge, and note that
Guy With The Van opted to wear a sportcoat. That's why he'll be kicked out next.

Are There Going To Be Any Actual Daughtry Facts In This Post: Possibly.

Okay. Fine. Since you insisted, and since I'm really just killing time until I reveal just how superficial Sweetie is, I'll point out this important fact about Daughtry:

They're lying to you, 13-year-old girls.

How's that for an earth-shattering fact? And I'm not making it up, either. Here's photographic evidence. Consider this screen shot from the front of the Official Daughtry Merchandise store! (Yes, that exists.)

Notice anything? I hope so, because I went to a lot of trouble creating that arrow, which points to a coveted Daughtry stocking cap with some sort of stylized iron cross on the front. But, it's my sad duty to point out, if you click on that cap in hopes of getting yourself a really cool Daughtry cap to show the other people in the line at Arby's that you like bland "rock," you're in for a huge letdown, as there is no headwear available at the official Daughtry shop!

To help get you down from your perch of shocked outrage, or outraged shock (whichever), I'll point out that Daughtry has a fan in Mongolia. Exactly one, it appears. But that's still one more fan than Aaron Carter has, anywhere.

And that fan can't buy this hat. I bet Aaron Carter
would never do that to his fans.

Reason I Tell Myself Sweetie Likes Him: Please don't be the music, please don't be the music ran through my head when Sweetie told me, in the post-Christmas glow last night while I pretended to listen patiently, hoping that she'd get done talking soon so that I could go back to playing with the Kindle she got me, please don't be the music please don't be the music, because what happens when Sweetie or the kids get into a new song follows these three steps:

1. They get into a new song, and download it onto iTunes.

2. Unsuspectingly, that night or the next, I will put on my playlist so that I can listen to my music while I clean up after dinner; I always tell Sweetie and the kids that I don't mind doing the chores if I can listen to my music while I do that.

3. I will be about 38 seconds into the song I've chosen, and I will hear it stop, and then the new song that Sweetie and/or the kids are into will be put on, and I will spend the rest of my time doing chores listening over and over to Poker Face, or Heartbeat by Don Johnson, or Cruel To Be Kind (all actual songs that Sweetie has on her playlist) and then, when I wrest control of the music back, it'll be declared to be too loud and turned down.

So I was relieved when it wasn't the music that Sweetie liked about Daughtry. Relieved, and not at all surprised, because I've never heard a Daughtry song, and I doubt anyone (except that one guy or girl in Malaysia) has.

Instead, I found out what it really was...

The Actual Reason Sweetie Likes Him: ... by asking Sweetie. I said "Why..." and Sweetie interrupted me, blurting out:

"I like 'em. They're cute. I'd be a groupie."

I then finished my question while I tried to digest that: "Why... do you know they exist?" I asked her.

Sweetie said that she'd been working out at the health club, listening to her music on her iPod while watching the TV screen; she heard her music (probably She's Like The Wind, another actual song on her playlist) while she watched the Daughtry guys pout and be bald and not have headgear for sale at their official store. So it was just seeing them that made Sweetie think I would probably follow those guys from tour stop to tour stop, hanging around backstage and trying to sneak into their hotel room and throwing various undergarments at them while they performed their big hit onstage, assuming that they had a big hit, which I'm pretty sure they don't.

Not only did that prove that Sweetie is very superficial, but think about this: She was confessing to me that just seeing Guy With a Van and Baldie Von Balderson made her think "I'd be a groupie," which is exactly what you want your wife and mother of your children to say to you, on Christmas Day: As you sit around, the holidays winding down, tired and full of Christmas pizza (our actual lunch) and enjoying the Christmas tree lights and the few remaining ornaments the Babies! haven't torn off, you want your wife to announce that she'd happily be a groupie for a fourth-tier "rock" band. It's like music to your ears.

Point I'd Like To Make About Sweetie's Actual Reason For Liking Them: Sweetie's just lucky she got me that Kindle and I wasn't really paying attention, or I might've been more...

um...

hey, did you know you can subscribe to magazines on a Kindle? And books are only $9.99! And they've got blogs...

Where was I? Oh, yeah:

Guy With A Van got a whole suit!
And turned into Bizarro Nick Lachey!

We're gonna take the soda, and we're gonna score!

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:06:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine.

I don't watch every football game that comes on TV, not even for the teams I like. I try to watch the games that really capture my interest or are a big deal: Rivalries, or Sunday night matchups, the playoffs.

So when I'm watching a game, it's a big deal, and I like to make it an event: have a lot of fun with it. I get my jersey on (whichever one I happen to feel like wearing that day), make the Pizza Nachos (TM), get the good spot on the couch, and now I can make it even more fun with the team soda from Jones Soda.

Jones Soda-- the guys that put those cool pictures on the excellent-tasting sodas they make -- has come out with Seattle Seahawks soda, in three different flavors: Cream soda, green apple, and berry lemonade, and at just $3.99 a pack, it's an easy and fun way to add a little more enjoyment to a Sunday afternoon: Now you (or I) can kick back with our Hasselbeck jersey (Or Jim Zorn, if you're old-school), put our feet up on the 12th Man Hassock, and take a cool, refreshing sip of Seahawks Cream Soda while watching the team...

... well, this year, while watching the team limp to the finish of a disappointing season. But it won't ALWAYS be like that! Seattle will rise again, so don't despair: The City of Grunge will once again have a team that will make the playoffs and put on a Superbowl run, and when they do, you can drink them all the way there (hangover free!) with a personalized Jones Soda!

I just hope they come out with one for every team, so that no matter what game I watch, I can savor the memories while drinking some Arizona Cardinals Black Cherry, or Buffalo Bills Cola. Ah, dreams!

Charity begins at home, travels to a grocery store, and then heads back home again to fall asleep. (Thinking The Lions/Essays about Stuff)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:31:00 +0000

Last night, to start my Christmas vacation, I finally fulfilled a dream I've had for years:

I was a bell ringer for the Salvation Army.

For as long as I can remember, I've walked past those little red kettles during the holidays with a mixture of envy, admiration, and a little bit of panic as I tried desperately to get my spare change out of my pocket to drop it into the kettle without breaking stride or making a big deal out of it.

(Although sometimes, I walked by with a mixture that could be best described as 33% envy, 33% admiration, with the remaining 33% being "I hope they don't think I'm a jerk because I'm not giving anything.")

And each year, I've thought to myself, I should do that. I should be a bell ringer. It looks like a really neat thing to do, plus I'd be doing something good for charity.

Then I'd add: Plus I'd get to ring a bell. That was a big part of the draw.

But I never did anything about it, in my previous forty years of existence. I'd just drop the change (or sometimes a dollar bill if I was feeling particularly rich and/or charitable) and think my thoughts and move on.

This year, that changed. This year, one Sunday morning after shopping the day before, I logged onto my computer and looked up bell ringing at the Salvation Army. As it turned out, they had a website where I could log on and sign up for a bell-ringing shift, a high-tech option that appealed to me because it made it easy to get into the charity, but also which ran contrary to my low-tech view of the Salvation Army, a view that has been created entirely from just two sources:

1. The Bell Ringers, who form my primary opinion of the Salvation Army, and

2. The movie version of Guys & Dolls, which we watched in a college class I took. The class was called Humor In American Literature, and it consisted of us reading (outside of class) such humorous american literati as Peter Benchley and probably others, and then, in class, never discussing those books because we were too busy watching movies by Preston Sturges, and also watching LA Story and Guys & Dolls.

The movie version of Guys & Dolls included a scene, to my memory, now, years later, in which someone, maybe a woman, played in a band on a corner or maybe stood by a bell-ringing-kettle, and there was also a revival meeting in which various gangsters (the colorful, fun gangsters of the 1940s, not the scary gangsters of later years) were saved.

To me, then, the Salvation Army is a group that does something or other that's charitable, and has those red kettles and bell ringers to raise money, and also puts on big showy song-and-dance-numbers. I didn't know how the website fit into that vision, but I shoved that aside and signed up for a shift, after first calling Sweetie to find out which 2-hour-block of time would work out best: the first two hours of my Christmas vacation, on Tuesday night from 6-8? Or the 8-10 a.m. shift on the 23rd, my first full day off?

Or, maybe Christmas Eve itself? I saw that I could sign up for a bell-ringing shift on the Eve, and my eyes teared up a little as I pictured myself, leaving my warm home on Christmas Eve to go stand (bravely, and cheerfully) in a blizzard, ringing a bell and raising money for charity (and musical numbers) on a holiday, giving up my own free time that day to do something good for others! I'd be like a hero.

Sweetie thought maybe the Tuesday night shift would work better, though, and I agreed, because I really didn't want to go out on Christmas Eve. So, not as much of a hero, but still pretty heroic.

After logging in and getting my confirmation email, I was all set to go, and then a cheery e-reminder on the day of the big charity gave me some last minute pointers: Bring your ID with you, it told me, and set out various security procedures by which I would be confirmed as a man who could be trusted with a kettle full of money and a bell. One particularly stern line told me that I was required to print my name neatly in big letters, and that worried me a bit because I have bad handwriting.

But it's for charity, I thought, and vowed to do the best I could.

I drove from my office to the grocery store where I would be ringing a bell for the next two hours, bravely (and cheerfully, and charity-ly) giving up my dinner and comfort to stand outside in a light snow, ready to greet grocery shoppers with a hearty hello, and as I realized it was snowing, I realized that I'd also forgotten my gloves that day.

Should I try to go home and get them, and risk being late for my shift? I wondered. Or should I tough it out? The thought of letting down all those starving kids or whoever the Salvation Army helps gave me the strength to decide to tough it out. I can always pull my hands into my sleeves, I thought.

With that, I grabbed my cell phone (in case of emergencies!) and headed into the store, where I got my first surprise: There was a bell ringer there already! That surprised me because when I'd signed up, the shift before mine (4-6) had been open, so I thought I'd be the only one that night. I kind of panicked: What if he stays the whole time? Will I have to talk to him? I wondered.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," I said, and added "I'm your replacement." That was the politest way I could think of to say "Don't hang around." I said I'd go sign in and I found the service desk inside, where a clerk took my ID and wrote down, herself, my name in the notebook. I didn't totally abdicate my duties, though -- I made sure she printed, in big letters.

Then she gave me a little piece of paper with a red Santa stamped on it. "This is to give to the guy there now, so he knows you're official."

That seemed a little low-tech -- but I was okay with that, because it was more in keeping with the Salvation Army I believed I knew. I went back up front, where my predecessor was jingling his little band of green bells. I showed him the little Santa paper, and he handed me the bells and took off his Santa hat.

The bells were disappointing; instead of a big handbell, it was a little dog-collar type of jingly-bell bracelet. As I held them up, I said "These are my bells?" and he said:

"No," and then as he took off his Santa hat, and before he could finish, his cell phone rang and he took it out and got on a call. "Hi," he said into the phone. "What? It's snowing there, too?"

I stood there, looking at the kettle and the not-my-bells and the stool and the Santa hat. What was I supposed to do? Shoppers were walking by, and the Guy Before Me just kept talking on his phone. I realized that I didn't know if I had been supposed to bring my own bell or not; I'd just assumed they'd give me a bell to ring. Who has their own bell? I thought, and stood there dumbly while the guy discussed weather in Salt Lake City.

I didn't know what to do if I didn't have my own bell. I didn't want to just stand there, loitering, for two hours, and without a bell, I knew that's what it would look like.

Guy With Bell Standing By Kettle = Charitable person doing good.

Guy Without Bell Standing There= probably a mugger.

The guy kept talking, and people kept wandering by, looking awkwardly at us. Nobody was putting money in the kettle, and I didn't know what to do. Why wouldn't he end his phone call? I didn't want to ring his bells, plus, it seemed rude to ring the bells while he was standing a foot away talking on the phone.

Then there was the Santa hat he'd taken off and set down on the stool. Was I supposed to wear that, too? If they didn't give me the bells, would they give me a hat to wear? How many other people had worn that hat?

Finally, Guy Before Me was done with his phone call, explaining that his daughter's flight had been delayed due to snow. After we agreed, several times, that such things did indeed happen this time of year, he finally explained about the bells:

"Those are replacement bells," he said. "We've had a bit of trouble keeping bells this year."

That gave me a lot to think about, right there. Beginning with the we. Who did this guy think he was? I knew the gig: Everyone just signed up online and got their bell. He wasn't any big shot in the local organization; he was just another bell ringer, like me, and the We was jarring, smacking of a guy trying to sound more important than he really was. (Unless he really was important, I then thought, and wondered if I should be trying to impress him, show him I was a pretty up-and-coming bell ringer.)

Then, I wondered this: Who steals the bell after bell-ringing?

As I pondered those things, Guy Before Me picked up his Santa hat (Thank God!) and the stool, and left, waving to me. "See ya," he said, and I was left to wonder at his professionalism: He'd not only brought something Christmas-y, but his own stool.

Then again, I thought, the stool is not necessary, and besides the point. It seemed to me important that a bell ringer not sit; something about the position of bell ringer seemed to me to make it important that I be a little uncomfortable, put some effort into it. I'm glad I didn't bring a stool, I thought to myself.

And so it began: I had to start ringing the bells and raising money. I put the little bell-bracelet on my left hand and shook it experimentally. Good. Nice and jingly. Some people were coming in. I began ringing in earnest, ringing my bells up and down and realizing as I did so that they were knocking into my knuckles and it hurt.

So as my first patrons walked by, I was adjusting the bells and trying to come up with a system that wouldn't break my fingers over the next two hours. I then went back to bell ringing, and got it right this time, a good steady rhythm, up down up down up down up down, and some people came in, smiled at me, and one of them put some money in the kettle.

"Thanks!," I said, and she smiled, and I added "Happy holidays!" She smiled again and they went in and I began to give some thought to what I'd say to people. I kept ringing the bells, up down up down up down, jingle-jingle-jingle and decided I'd stick with Happy holidays. That way, I couldn't offend anyone who didn't celebrate Christmas. I suspected that the Salvation Army was a Christian charity (something about the Guys & Dolls movie made me think that, probably the trip to Cuba that Frank Sinatra took) but I didn't think that non-Christians should be forbidden to give, or put off by giving, and none of the emails had given me any kind of ruling on whether I should talk at all, or what I should say.

Another person came in and dropped some change. "Thanks," I said. "Happy holidays," I added. He smiled and said "You, too," and I felt good about myself.

My arm was getting a little tired. I checked my watch. 6:04.

I switched hands, over to the right, and kept going. People came in about every 10 or 15 seconds, stamping their feet and smiling at me or not. This was the after-work rush, I realized, and it would be pretty busy as people stopped on their way home for groceries or last-minute supplied.

As the next 20 or 30 people came in, I picked up quickly on the different kinds of looks people would give. Nearly everyone met my eyes as they came through the sliding doors -- the kettle had been stationed just inside the door, where the carts were, so I wasn't totally out in the elements and my lack of gloves wasn't a probelm -- but there were those few people who determinedly didn't notice me at all.

Those people would come in through the doors with their eyes locked firmly ahead-and-up-to-the-right, looking off into the corner of the produce department that lay behind the doors I stood in front of, seeming not to see me or the kettle as they took the four or five steps through the vestibule. They seemed to have heard my bells and opted for complete disregard rather than at least a nod or smile as most people did.

Another type of person was the brief eye contact group. These people would be caught by surprise, coming in the door and seeing me; making eye contact required that they acknowledge my existence and they would do that, smiling or nodding or saying Hi or something like that, before themselves becoming engrossed in their shopping cart or the 6-pack of paper towels on display across from me, turning off to whatever caught their attention next with a look like they were saying I'd love to be charitable, but I really need to focus on whether the 6 big rolls are really the equivalent of 8 regular-size rolls. You understand, right?

I tried, for my part, to project "Understanding," with a mixture of "Slight guilt and disapproval," so that maybe next time, they'd give a little.

The third type were the people who would interact with me, some of them givers and some not. They included parents of children, pointing me out to their little toddlers. "See the bells?" they'd say, and I'd try to jingle with a little more spirit, and smile at them. The kids didn't care.

Others would say "Hi," or comment on the weather or my position there or say random-seeming things like "Nice, huh?", an actual comment I didn't get.

The givers usually had their money ready -- they were folding bills or grabbing for change as they came in the door, my bells having alerted them to the opportunity to do something nice. They'd tuck in their money and I'd say "Thanks!" and add "Happy holidays!", something I kept doing for some time until one lady stuck some money into the kettle, about a half-hour in.

"Thanks!" I said. "Happy holidays!"

She looked back at me with pursed lips. "Merry Christmas," she said, with a determined and steely air. I was taken aback, feeling like I'd offended her by trying not to offend her. As I kept ringing, I wondered which of us was wrong: Me for not assuming she was a Christian, or her for assuming I had assumed she wasn't a Christian? It was all very confusing and mixed me up as the next person, an older guy, put some money in the kettle.

"Um. Thanks. Happy... merry Christmas!" I said, and he smiled and said I should have one, too.

After that, it was all Merry Christmases for me. I didn't want any trouble. As more people came in I kept up the jingling, switching arms every few minutes and wishing people a merry Christmas.

Then my cell phone rang. I took it out and saw it was my Dad. "Hello?" I said, answering it, and had to explain to my Dad that yes, the message I'd left earlier was true: I was ringing bells for charity.

Dad, undeterred, launched into a conversation, making me nervous again. I didn't know if I was supposed to be talking on the phone or not. None of the rules had mentioned that, or said anything about socializing or entertaining oneself.

Guy Before Me had used headphones -- he'd rung his bell while listening to music, which seemed wrong to me, as wrong as sitting down. This was supposed to be a selfless act of charity, and how selfless is it if you're sitting there, all comfy on a stool, listening to The Who? (Guy Before Me looked to be about the right age, and had the right kind of beard, to be a Who fan.)

I assumed that I could chat with people -- and that if someone had come with me to bell ring, I could have talked with them, but talking on the phone seemed a whole different thing. It seemed rude and distancey, like I was one of those high-powered executives in a Christmas movie, the kind who can never put down the phone and go spend time with their young daughter on the night of her big pageant, until they learn a valuable lesson after almost being run down by a bus driver who lost his own daughter on Christmas Eve, twenty years ago, so they rush to the Pageant and throw their phone in a snowdrift on the way.

I got the feeling that talking on the phone would interfere with charity and that feeling was confirmed because as my Dad droned on and on about all the same things he always talks about, I kept ringing but nobody gave any money. They'd look at me and then look away, and I could feel their disapproval raining down on me.

I got off the phone with my Dad -- not an easy thing to do -- and redoubled my efforts. I'd been at this for a long time now, and my arms were really tired, but I wanted to make the last little bit count and really finish strong. I figured it must be about 7:20, maybe 7:30, almost through my shift. I checked my watch in a lull.

6:55.

Oh, man, and my shoulders were getting a little sore, now, from the jingling. I tried to mix it up, change rhythms and get a little jazzy, but, really, there's only one way to ring a set of bells, and that's jingle jingle jingle jingle. Any other attempts at rhythm, at least for me, quickly fell apart and went back to the basic four-beats-to-measure.

I tried to think of a song that had a good rhythm, one that I could jingle to, as people went by and dropped money and got their Merry Christmases. My mind went blank; the only song I could think of, seriously, was Radar Love. It was as if no other songs had ever existed.

I went with that, humming Radar Love to myself, and jingling the bells in time, and wondering if anyone else could make out what I was jingling. Would they go away from that store humming Radar Love themselves? Would they forever associate Radar Love with Christmas, and wonder why?

Things were slowing down as 7:00 approached, seemingly an hour after I'd checked my watch at 6:55. I was switching hands more frequently now, and getting bored in between people. For a while, I amused myself by reading the sign advertising the various pre-cooked meals one could order at this store, turkey and ham dinners for 8-10 with various sides. I tried to figure the costs of cooking the meal oneself versus the cost of buying it, as a way of distracting myself from the increasingly-tired arm and shoulders I had, and also making time go a little faster.

That last thought made me feel morally confused. Was it wrong, I wondered, To want my charity shift to go by quickly? Either way, I would spend two hours doing this, and that was the charitable effort, right? So did it have to seem long, for it to be truly charitable? I didn't know. My morals seemed to lay somewhere between "Sitting on a stool listening to Baba O'Riley" and "Saint."

Whether it was right or not, I wanted time to go by a little faster. My knees were getting stiff from standing, and as I stood there, I realized that it'd been a really long time since I'd stood for two consecutive hours. I tried to remember the last time I'd done that, and couldn't think of when it might be. Was it when we went to Sea World last year? I tried to remember, and decided that, no, even at Sea World I'd probably sat down here and there. It might have been a decade, or more, since I'd stood for two consecutive hours, and my knees and back were starting to ache.

Across from me there was a display of snow shovels, and for a while I stood by them, jingling and looking at the various brushes and shovels and trying to decide if after my shift I should pick up an ice scraper for my car. I needed one, as the other day I'd been reduced to trying to use a soda can to get some ice off and had scratched my windshield a little.

Before I could make up my mind, I got moved back to the other side by the stock boy, who came out to fix up the display of paper towels. He and the manager worked on that while I jingled and people gave money and got their Merry Christmas, and I listened to them talk about the grocery business and the manager's sweater.

From time to time other store employees came in or out, including a small woman who had to push all the carts from the parking lot to the entry way. I felt bad for her; it looked like a lot of work, and I wondered whether I should help her out. I'm not really here for the store, I reasoned, and occasionally chatted with her about the weather while not helping her.

For a while, the little grocery baskets were gone, too, and shoppers would come in and notice that, commenting to their friends, or spouses, or sometimes me, about the lack of baskets. I felt somewhat obliged to do something about that, too, but I didn't, because I didn't want to abandon my post to go search for baskets for them. Instead, I decided that the next employee to come through, I'd mention it to. Then I didn't do that, either.

About 7:15, I noticed that the snow shovels weren't called shovels. They were Poly Snow Pushers, a name that struck me as overly technical, and unnecessary, and irritated me a bit, by that point.

Then, I noticed that there was a set of handbills posted for various plays and productions that were going to be put on in our city soon; the notices were across the room, near the door people came in by. I wanted to go look at them, to help kill time between the increasingly-sparse shoppers and donors, but everytime I wandered that way, people came in and I had to retreat back to my kettle. The best I could gather is that one of them had to do with a bridal show.

By 7:25, I was getting pretty tired and hungry, too, and the shoppers seemed less charitable. One lady came in and said, as she walked by me, holding up a hand "I donated yesterday, so don't think I'm bad," walking quickly. I said "Thanks, and Merry Christmas" anyway.

Another lady came in and shrugged at me. "He's coming with the money," she said and pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. She went into the grocery store and I kept ringing.

A woman and a small child came in.

Then an elderly lady came walking by.

I kept ringing and began to figure the lady had lied to me, and in a particularly elaborate way: Why make up a whole "guy who's coming with the money?" I thought. Why not just walk by? She didn't have to create this big work of fiction.

A minute or so later -- about five minutes after the lady had gone through -- a guy did come in, and he got his wallet out and put a $5 into the kettle. "Thanks, and Merry Christmas!" I said, and privately, I decided that this was not the "guy with the money." He was too far behind that lady, who'd I'd long since decided was a liar.

There was then a run of hipsters, for some reason: young people in their twenties with haircuts that looked stupid, but expensive stupid, and sideburns (but not on the women) and fancy boots that went up past the ankles (on the men and the women.) I tried to figure out why there was a sudden influx of hipsters. Had a coffee-bar-poetry-slam just ended? I also tried to figure out why none of them gave any money. Was charity uncool? Were there more-hip charities out there, maybe raves which donated the proceeds to Goodwill and were DJ'd by Moby?

That train of thought ended when a girl with a leather jacket, lots of zippers, strangely-colored eyeliner and a very symmetrical haircut put a $5 into the kettle, and I stopped thinking mean thoughts about hipsters and instead tried to focus on how much time was left.

Throughout the night, too, I'd tried not to notice what people were giving. Bills had to be folded and shoved in and as people did that I tried not to look directly at the kettle, figuring that was between them and God and the Salvation Army. I tried to give the same cheery Thanks and Merry Christmas! to people whether it was change or paper they gave.

It was 7:35 and I was trying to make it through the home stretch, trying to figure out something to make the last leg go by more quickly. Maybe some Christmas Carols, I thought.

For a few minutes, then, I thought about whether I had it in me to be the cool Bell Ringer -- to sing Christmas carols and toss jokes out at people and wish everyone who walked by a Merry Christmas and a very happy new year, to be the guy who would be so jovial and entertaining that people would talk about it at their own Christmas parties: "You should have seen this bell ringer the other day," they might say.

I'm not that type of guy. I want to be, but I don't have it in me, and it's not my personality. Some people -- maybe Tom Selleck-- could get away with that. They'd pick up the bell, start jingling, sing a couple lines of a Christmas song, and a crowd would gather, drawn in by their natural charisma and charm. It would become a spontaneous Christmas-y event, one people would enjoy and love.

I lack any natural charisma or charm, and I feared that if I began singing, it would seem weird. So I didn't sing out loud, but under my breath; I began to sing under my breath and jingle in time with the songs.

My early blankness continued, as the first song I could think of now was "Frog Round," the song that goes:

What a strange bird
The frog are
When he sits he stands
(Almost)...

I sang that for a while, anyway, under my breath, stopping only to thank people and wish them a Merry Christmas, jingling away, and finally, finally, I remembered another Christmas carol, one that would carry me a good ways towards 8:00: The Twelve Days of Christmas.

I began singing that, but my tiredness and the continued interruptions to thank people and wish them a Merry Christmas! and the jingling really threw me off: I couldn't remember whether it was two turtledoves or two calling birds, and I kept singing Six maids a milking instead of Six Swans a swimming. I made it through, and it was 7:50. I tried some other Christmas carols, singing quietly, but nothing worked.

Instead, I jingled my way through to 8:02 quietly, working until 8:02 because a group of people came through and I didn't think I should just abruptly up and pick up the kettle in front of people. After they were done, I took the kettle and carried it into the service desk with the bell and the little wooden stick they'd given me to push money down into the kettle with.

"Here," I said to the service desk girl.

"Thanks," she said, and took it and walked away. I felt a little let down; it seemed like there should be a check-out procedure or some sort of acknowledgement, a card or a thanks or ... something. I mean, sure, charity is it's own reward, yeah, I got it, but that doesn't mean that charity can't give you a pat on the back at least.

I didn't get one, not this time. I walked out of the grocery store, got in the car, and headed towards home, with only a brief detour to buy Sweetie some Christmas cookies. Charity may be its own reward, but Sweetie deserves more than that. She deserves some frosted sugar cookies shaped like mittens.

I didn't get one for myself; I already had my reward: the good feeling that came from volunteering my time, and the better feeling of knowing that I was done volunteering my time and could go home and watch TV.

NYE Hotel Packages in LA

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:30:00 +0000

This is a sponsored guest post written by Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau on behalf of Hotels in Los Angeles. Post powered by Sponzai.

As we bid farewell to 2009 and welcome a brand new year, celebrate in style at one of the premier hotels in Los Angeles. Hotels across the city are offering several fun-filled options to help ring in the New Year.

Millennium Biltmore Hotel

At the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, guests have the opportunity to choose from two exciting dining options on New Year’s Eve. An elegant four-course menu is featured at the hotel’s Rendezvous Court or head over to Sai Sai where guests can enjoy a lavish tapas buffet of fresh Asian seafood, robata and sushi. Dinner includes tickets to the annual NYE Gala in the hotel’s Crystal Ballroom where there will be live DJ music followed by champagne and a shower of balloons from the ballroom’s ceiling at midnight. After an evening of celebrating, find peace and quiet in one of the Biltmore’s guestrooms. Package includes one night's Classic or Club level accommodations, your choice of NYE Dinner for 2 in the Rendezvous Court or Sai Sai, 2 tickets to the NYE Gala and valet parking. Dinner at the Rendezvous Court is $99 per person, excluding tax and gratuity. For reservations call 213.612.1562. And dinner at Sai Sai is $89 per person, excluding tax and gratuity. For reservations at Sai Sai call 213.624.1100. New Year’s Eve room packages include dinner, the gala celebration and an overnight stay. Prices begin at $379 and are subject to availability. www.millenniumhotels.com; 506 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90071, 213.624.1011

Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor Hotel

At the Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor Hotel in San Pedro, guests will have an opportunity to ring in the New Year at an elegant New Year’s Eve Gala in the hotel’s San Pedro Ballroom. The gala, beginning at 6 p.m., will include dining, dancing and a live DJ. The evening will conclude at 1 a.m. Guests who attend the gala can stay at the hotel for a rate of $99 plus tax, based on single/double occupancy. For reservations call 310-521-8026. Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor, 601 Palos Verdes St., San Pedro, 90731;

ww.crowneplaza.com/laharbor

Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel

Visit Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel’s restaurant, Ocean and Vine, to ring in the New Year above the clouds. Enjoy live entertainment and an exquisite four-course pre fix menu with choices including white asparagus cappuccino, caramelized Mano de Leon sea scallops, and Beaumes venise poached pear. The 6 p.m. seating is $85 per person, plus tax and gratuity. The 9 p.m. seating is $125 per person, plus tax and gratuity. A special “New Year’s Eve” package includes luxury guestroom accommodations, a Champagne welcome amenity, preferred dinner reservations in Ocean and Vine (a $320 value), complimentary parking and a 2 p.m. late checkout time. Rates starting from $725 per couple. For reservations, please call 310-458-6700. Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, 1700 Ocean Ave., Santa Monica, 90401;

www.loewshotels.com/santamonica

The Standard, Downtown LA

The Standard, Downtown LA is hosting a free New Year’s Eve rooftop party. Guests can expect a multi-zone dance party with floor to ceiling lobby and rooftop visuals, a digitally projected countdown at midnight and a multi-level champagne toast. Also at the hotel is a pre-fix 3-coarse New Year’s Eve Dinner menu for $45 per person. For reservations, please call 213-439-3030. The Standard, Downtown LA, 550 S. Flower Street, Los Angeles, 90071;

www.thestandardhotels.com

Beverly Hilton Hotel

At the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Trader Vic’s Lounge, located poolside, will feature a special offer on New Year’s Eve. Beginning at 5 p.m., guests can enjoy an appetizer buffet with one Mai Tai for $45 per person. A live DJ will play music until 1 a.m. For more information and reservations, please call 310-285-1300. Beverly Hilton Hotel, 9876 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, 90210;

www.beverlyhilton.com

Omni Los Angeles Hotel

Also Downtown, the Omni Los Angeles Hotel is offering a “Standing Ovation” package for New Year’s Eve along with a three- or six-course dinner at the hotel’s elegant Noé Restaurant. For those guests celebrating New Year’s Eve at the Music Center, STAPLES Center or the NOKIA Theatre, the Omni Los Angeles Hotel will provide sedan transportation to the destination along with deluxe accommodations, a $100 credit to Noé Restaurant, overnight valet parking and breakfast for two in Grand Café. In addition, guests will receive a choice of opera glasses or a wine amenity during their stay. Guests not attending the theater can spend the evening dining at Noé and enjoying a live jazz trio, along with a complimentary champagne toast at midnight. If restaurant patrons wear a masquerade mask, they will receive a complimentary half-bottle of champagne. The three-course dinner is $60 per person while the six-course dinner is $100 per person or $160 per person when paired with wine. www.omnihotels.com; 251 South Olive Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, 213.617.3300

SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills

Across town at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills guests can dance until dawn and take the elevator home to one of the hotel’s luxurious room accommodations. New Year’s Eve Packages include tickets for two to the SLS New Year’s Eve Gala and room accommodations at special rates. Additional evening packages are available for those who don’t need a hotel room and just want to enjoy a dinner at The Bazaar by José Andrés, then head over to the SLS New Year’s Eve Gala for dancing with a live DJ in Bar Centro and the Albert Ballroom. New Year’s Eve gala packages begin at $500 and the Star Lit Soiree - dine, dance & indulge packages begin at $600. To reserve, please call 1.866.716.8149 and don’t forget to mention the promo codes; SOIREE or GALAPKG.

www.starwoodhotels.com; 465 North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048, 310.247.0400

Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel

At the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel , guests can ring in the New Year at the hotel’s world-class restaurant, The Blvd. An early seating will be available from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and will offer a three-course tasting menu. There will also be a Gala Dinner beginning at 8:00 p.m. that will offer a five-course tasting menu along with a champagne toast at midnight. Talented musician David Sparkman will entertain the room all evening. The early seating tasting menu will cost $75 per person while the gala dinner will be $250 per person.

www.fourseasons.com; 9500 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, 310.275.5200

Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

Over in Hollywood, guests can check out the 5th Annual New Year’s Eve Bash at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel which will be celebrated throughout the hotel in the historic lobby, the Blossom Ballroom and Tropicana Pool.

www.hollywoodroosevelt.com; 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028, 323.466.7000.

Mondrian

At the Mondrian guests can celebrate New Year’s Eve at the Skybar Speakeasy with open bar and champagne toast at midnight or dine at the popular Asia de Cuba with a four-course meal and champagne toast at midnight. An early seating will be available from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. for $75 per person, tax and gratuity not included and the last seating from 8 p.m. until sold out will be $100 per person. Admission to the Skybar Speakeasy is $150 per person or $125 for hotel guests and Asia de Cuba patrons. Room rates begin at $395.

www.mondrianhotel.com; 8440 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069, 323.650.8999 or for reservations call 800.606.6090.

Terranea Resort

For those looking to celebrate New Year’s Eve at the city’s newest destination, guests can join in the festivities at Terranea Resort, located just 30 minutes south of Downtown Los Angeles on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The VIP Velvet Rope Experience includes overnight accommodations for two, along with admission to the hotel’s New Year’s Eve Celebration and Countdown featuring sumptuous foods, desserts and a hosted bar. Rates starting from $635 per night.

www.terranea.com

; 100 Terranea Way, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275, 310.265.2800.

1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number Fifty-Three

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:20:00 +0000

53. Give in and have computers start remembering things for us.

I've joked before about subcontracting out my memory to Google -- but why shouldn't we do that, and why should it be a joke? We're already halfway there. The Boy has a cell phone, and I don't know the number for it, because I've only had to dial it one time: when I punched it into my cell phone. Now, when I want to call The Boy, I just hit "Contacts," scroll to him, and hit "send."

My email at work fills in the names and address of the person I'm trying to send it to. I just have to start typing some part of the name and it gives me suggestions for who I'm trying to find. So I don't know anyone's email address anymore; a caller asked me for my paralegal's email one day and I had to go to my email to begin to type her name and then read it to her. My computer does the same thing for website addresses.

Having computers remember things for us makes sense: Human memory is overrated and unreliable. I can recall my phone number from when I was a kid, but I don't remember which of the two numbers I have now is for my Mom's house, as opposed to her cell phone. So my little post-it note of her numbers is next to useless. With a little suggestion and interference, memories can be overridden and made obsolete or incorrect, and once that happens, you're stuck singing song lyrics to Pour Some Sugar On Me that'll make your wife laugh.

Paper memory is worse: the speed with which things like phone numbers and addresses change makes printing up lists of memories (like phone numbers and addresses) an exercise in waste and futility. Every year, the Wisconsin State Bar puts out a directory of courts and judges and clerks. In the past year, Dane County got five new judges and others moved their offices around, so the printed list I have on my desk is worthless (and I don't know why I still have it on my desk.) I never look in a phone book for a number anymore.

Plus, we're all carrying around, at any given time, extremely powerful portable computers that can easily be made to store any information that we want; with the improvement of voice-to-data programs, all we have to do is make a simple modification to cell phones or iPods and we can then quickly store information just by saying it into the mouthpiece.

That, in turn, would lead to applications like Taking notes -- having your iPhone record a lecture and automatically turn it into searchable text that you can recall with a few key words. Imagine the possibilities not just for students, but for doctors and lawyers and everyone else. I could meet with a client and have the entire meeting transcribed and searchable and on my office's network in minutes. When I run into you on the street and you say you've moved and give me your new number, I repeat it into my phone and it's in the updated directory instantaneously.

And from then on, it's smooth sailing: Sitting in traffic and need to know when the last battle of the war of 1812 was, or what your coworker mentioned about the boss monitoring internet use, or when your wife's birthday is? It's right there on your own Personal Memorizer.

(By the way: The last battle of the War of 1812 was fought on January 8, 1815.)

Prior entries:

52. Make cups and glasses wider on the bottom. (All cups and glasses.)

51. Sometimes easier is harder (and dumber.)

50. Don't lather, rinse, repeat (I'm going somewhere with this...)

49. Ban cigarettes.

48. Use metered lanes to close a lane when doing traffic repairs, thereby avoiding long backups when jerks opt to ignore the lane closing signs.

47. Switch to a parliamentary form of government with proportional representation. (If you already do that, then stick with it.)

46. Quit Cell Phone Charger Thinking.

45. Create an Internet Superhighway, giving high-speed Internet access to everyone, everywhere.

44. Stop teaching any math past algebra and geometry to almost everybody, and instead just provide a general theory of math to high schoolers.

43. Launch people to Mars. Or even further.

42. Think nice things, and then say them.

41. Get the cheapest toothpaste possible, then use the money you save to do some good in the world.

40. Allow gay marriage.

39. Stop describing things as "hell" or "hard work" when they're not at all.

38. Accept the idea that eventually we're going to have to pay for stuff on the Internet.

37. Spell your kids' names the right way.

36. Look up more often.

35. Put people before pets.

34. Share the profits with employees, directly and frequently.

33. Dress up, at least a little, in public.

32. Apply the "Line Pass" philosophy to everything (including some government services).

30/31. Impose a luxury tax that increases exponentially the more people spend/Neve r watch another Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie movie again.

29. What's so great about mom-and-pop stores and farms?

28. No more long answering machine or voice mail greetings.

27. Stop federal support of student loans.

26. Require everything we build, from here on out, to get at least some of its power from the sun or the wind.

25. Do an "Oklahoma Land Rush" in the cities.

24. Personalized Candy Bar Making Machines.

23. Learn new languages just for fun.

22. Opposite yourself.

21. Just like dandelions.

20. Why not have Radio-DVRs?

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

17. Open the borders. Everywhere.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.

15. Just allow colleges to pay athletes, already.

14. Don't get married before you're 30.

13. Ban driving any kind of automobile, motorcycle or other personal veh icle withi n 1-2 miles of downtown in any city with a population of more than 100,000.

12. Abolish gym class; instead, teach kids to play musical instruments.

11. Change copyright laws to allow anyone to use anyone else's creative work provided t hat the copier pay 60% of the profit to the originator and that the copier not cast the original work in a negative light.

10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.

9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.

8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.

7. Periodically, give up something you like for at least a month.

6. Switch to "E-money."

5. Have each person assigned one phone number, and then add an extension for the various phones and faxes that person might be reached at.

4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.

3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.

2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.

1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year .

Everything is okay if you just add "...but isn't that what the holidays are all about?" after it. Try it. You'll see. (3 Good Things From 12/21/09)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:06:00 +0000

It's my last day of work before taking off 6 whole days for Christmas break! Woo-hoo! And I have 3 Good Things from yesterday to keep me happy while I try to do 6 days worth of work before 5 p.m. tonight. (True, I might make more progress if I did the work instead of blogging, but what fun would that be?)

1. The package got delivered! I'd ordered a present for Sweetie that I was worried wouldn't come in time for Christmas, but it got delivered yesterday and we're set to go. Thanks, Internet!

2. The stores weren't crowded when I ran some last-minute errands. That's probably not good for the stores, but it was good for the guy who volunteered to be the one to pick up the "Boss Gifts" for the office, then forgot to take the money home over the weekend and so he had to go do it Monday night. But there was hardly anyone in the stores and I was able to zip in and out and still get back to the house with plenty of time to eat some carry-out KFC and biscuits, and we even squeezed in...

3. The egg nog shake I got at McDonald's: One of the high points of any holiday season is the holiday treat that's only available during that time of year: like Creme Eggs at Easter, the Egg Nog shakes McDonald's serves at Christmas are something I look forward to, so after jogging on the treadmill for 35 minutes yesterday, I treated myself to an egg nog shake on the way to errands. I know, I know: It entirely undid the workout, but isn't that what the holidays are all about?

It's true: A raccoon really did eat a hole in our roof.

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:58:00 +0000

Tomorrow, on my first day off for my Christmas vacation, I've got to get up on the roof and shovel snow off to avoid icicles and ice dams and other problems. Then, I've got to salt the sidewalk, and shovel the driveway again, and do all those other chores that come with home ownership.

I do those things because ... well, in my case, I do them because Sweetie makes me; I'd rather be sitting around reading. But Sweetie makes me do them because it's necessary to protect our house. She's good that way, always keeping her eye on the big picture -- like when she makes sure she has good homeowner's insurance coverage for us.

Homeowner's insurance is an absolute necessity. If you've got a mortgage, the bank is going to require you to have it (or they'll get it for you and it'll be super-expensive.) But even without a mortgage, you'll need homeowner's insurance, because at some point someone's going to slip and fall on your sidewalk, or the bathtub's going to leak and wreck the flooring, or lightning will strike and knock down your chimney, or, if you're me, a raccoon will eat a hole in your roof.

And when those things happen, if you've got homeowner's insurance, you'll be fine: You'll make a call to your insurer and they'll take care of the problem.

You don't want to go with just any insurer, though: It's expensive and you want good coverage at the lowest cost; getting a bad policy or paying too much is throwing money away. That's why you want to find your home insurance through a place like 01insurance.com. That site, which specializes in finding new york home insurance, will help you quickly and easily sort through the multitude of companies, options and quotes to find the policy that's best for you -- and it's free.

They'll even help you get coverage if you're a renter -- and that's every bit as necessary because you don't want to have your stuff destroyed in a fire and not be able to replace it, do you?

01insurance.com can be visited online or by phone at 1.800.255.2489; call them and they'll do your comparison shopping for you by getting you up to four quotes from major insurers. You'll save time, and money, and your home.

What I'm Doing For Christmas (Thinking The Lions/Essays About Stuff.)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:21:00 +0000

This is the time of year that people ask other people, "So, what are your [fill-in-the-holiday] plans?"

That's kind of an awkward question for me, because the first thing I think when people say So, what are your plans? is Why, what do you want me to do? I have to be constantly on my guard against people inviting me to do something, or people inviting themselves to do something with me; if I'm not careful, people will make me go to a holiday party, or they'll have a holiday party at my house and I'll be forced to be there for it, hoping that my clever/desperate choice of serving "Black Licorice in a Decorative Glass Mug" will be seen as funny or neat, rather than the move of someone who not only forget to buy hors d'ouevres but also never had anything to put the appetizers on in the first place.

The second thing I think of when people ask me So, what are your plans is this: Why do I have to have plans?

And the third thing I think of is: At present, my plans are to continue to monitor the slow but fun deterioration of our Christmas tree.

This is our Christmas Tree, as it exists right now, in a picture I took moments ago:

There are lights on the tree, but they're not on as it's only 3:30 in the afternoon and I don't put the Christmas tree lights on until later on in the day, unless we have company over, which I desperately try never to do. So the lights aren't on yet.

Sharp-eyed and long-memoried readers will note that this year's tree not only violates every single Christmas Tree rule I was raised to adhere to strictly, but also that it is more or less entirely home-made. This tree has ornaments that touch the branches, it has ornaments that violate the tough-but-fair guidlines on what is, or is not, an appropriate color for Christmas (appropriate: Red, green, gold, silver, but only in timeless, classy shades. Inappropriate: Blue, pink, orange.) It also has yarn, something that would never have passed muster on a tree supervised and implemented by either my mom or my dad.

This is not my mom and my dad's tree. It is, though, the tree of a person who doesn't like decorating trees, and it is the tree of a person who lives in a house where Mr Bunches and Mr F also reside.

Mr Bunches and Mr F aren't really classified as "3-year-olds" or "twins" anymore. They've moved beyond those into "Forces of Nature." Soon, I worry, pediatricians and babysitters and other professionals will begin describing them using those hurricane codes, and the Babies! will be tracked on SuperDoppler radar with little warning bands across the bottom of the screen: If you live in the following counties, Mr Bunches is heading your way and he's upset because he wanted to play with the spray hose at the sink, but he did NOT want Mr F to also play with it, too, so when Daddy said that Mr F got to also play with the spray hose, that was good cause for Mr Bunches to get off the counter and to take Mr F's Astro Boy figure and run into the living room, causing Mr F to forget that he wanted to play with the spray hose and get mad, mad enough to go to the downstairs play room and tip over the empty rack that usually holds DVDs but we got smart and finally moved the DVDs, because that way when Mr F tips it over, at least we don't have to pick up the DVDs, which is good because there's no time to stop Mr F since Mr Bunches is trying to go upstairs and throw his mattress around because he's still mad, remember?

That warning would take a while to scroll past, but you'd better heed it.

Last year, we dealt with the Babies! near-total lack of civilization by building what I referred to as "Fort Christmas" :

But that wasn't a permanent solution to the problem, and couldn't have been because it required a lot of work, and also because the Babies! can climb right over the fences now. It's a terrible thing when you can no longer corral your three-year-olds and have to start treating them like actual people, but that's the phase we've reached in our lives.

(While the Babies! can climb over the fences, The Boy cannot; we had a gate that we used in the upstairs hallway to keep the Babies! out of the bathroom and our room. It was more symbolic than practical, as either Mr F or Mr Bunches could get over it without much trouble, when they bothered to try. But it slowed them down and gave us that critical extra half-second necessary to keep toys and heads out of the toilet, so we used it, until The Boy couldn't get over the gate one day and crashed down onto it. Even repairing it with electrical tape [we were out of duct tape] didn't help, and after a couple of weeks of that, we gave up on the gates and resorted to locking the doors we don't want the Babies! to get into. The result of that, I'm sure, is that one morning Mr F or Mr Bunches will spontaneously figure out how to pick locks. Or they'll just tear the door down. Either way.)

Because I didn't want to go to the effort of building Fort Christmas again, I began, about a week ago, pondering what to do this year for the Christmas tree. I'd long ago abandoned my family's strict rules on that subject, anyway, and each year that I got further and further away from those ideas, I felt more and more freedom to just do what I wanted to do. By this year, I was free enough to know that I could wait to put up the tree until the week before Christmas (unforgivably late, in my family's honor code), and I thought perhaps I could tinker even more with the whole concept of a Christmas tree.

I briefly considered "Not having a tree this year," something I would be glad to do, but which I didn't think, in good conscience, I could actually let happen.

I'd be glad to not have a tree because the tree has never been a big part of the holiday for me. As a kid, the tree was scary. We spent hours walking around Christmas tree lots up by the A&W and Red Owl, watching Dad hold up trees and shake them, and Mom frown them off. We watched Dad saw the trunk and saw off branches and wire them into different places in the tree. We went through tense moments getting the tree into our stand, and making it stand level. We tested lights, and unwrapped six big boxes of fragile ornaments, each of which had to hang a certain distance from all other ornaments, and from all other branches. We hung tinsel, strand by tremulous strand, and then we spent the remainder of the Christmas season forbidden to go near the tree at all.

Then, as a young adult, my Christmas trees posed different problems: Raised to believe that only a "real" tree is a good tree, I snuck real trees into my apartments, then worried that landlords would find them and I'd be evicted just for following the rules of Christmas trees. Alongside that I worried that the real trees would catch fire and burn down the entire building, including me. I'd never worried that the trees would catch fire at home, but it seemed more dangerous in an apartment: Why else would they have rules against having trees in an apartment, if it wasn't because "real" trees were that much more likely to ignite like matches on a hot day once placed in an apartment?

Then, once married, Christmas trees became my own battle, first with Sweetie and the kids, who preferred all-white lights to colored lights. We were never allowed "all-white" lights on a tree as a kid, and I'd grown to associate doing that with lower-class, distasteful displays that the neighbors might look down on. But Sweetie liked the all-white look, and I eventually caved to that. I had a few years of my own battles with the kids, trying to get them to understand the importance of hanging ornaments the right way, and such, before I abandoned that, too.

That history of Christmas tree problems meant that I didn't care, much, whether we had a tree or not; it had always been a source of work, or worry, or trouble, for me, and I could easily not have one, except that not having a tree made me worry that things would fall apart the way they had when I'd stopped using birthday cards.

A few years back, I opted to stop buying birthday cards, except under two very limited circumstance: One, if I didn't get you a gift at all, I might get you a card -- or maybe not; if I didn't care enough to get a gift, the odds are I wouldn't bother picking out a card, either. Two, if I sent you a gift card or check, I'd send it in a card because an envelope with just a check in it seemed a little cold (and invited thieves to steal it, and one big part of my upbringing that I've never forgotten is that everyone, everywhere, is a potential thief and serial killer, so why ask for trouble?)

It didn't make sense, to me, to give Sweetie a card with her gift. She'd have to open and read the card (sometimes a long process, because for a wife or grandmother, you have to get a card that's heavy on text and roses) before opening the card, and the card always said something like "Happy Birthday, I love you," which is what I'd be telling her, anyway, over dinner.

"Don't forget to open the card!" people are always saying at gift-giving occasions, and I began to wonder why? What's the big deal with the card? Why can't you just say "Happy Birthday" when you give me the gift?

So I stopped buying cards. I just bought gifts, and gave them to people, and that had two results.

For most people, it perplexed them. They would pick up the gift I gave them and I could see them look around, nervously, waiting for someone to say "Don't forget to open the card!" Some people even asked "Is there a card?" When I'd say No, they seemed confused, and a little disappointed, but I stuck by my guns.

That was the result outside of our house. Inside of our house, the result was to completely break down the bounds of society, devolving us to near chaos.

My simple decision not to buy cards any more was welcomed by the kids and by Sweetie, who agreed that it was dumb to buy a card and that we'd just as soon not waste the two or three or four bucks cards cost now. I was proud of myself, until I saw what came next as we descended into the maelstrom.

It's not my fault, really; I couldn't have known that greeting cards were the fragile thread that held up the safety net preventing my family from descending into savagery, but they were.

Before long, we also didn't light candles on birthday cakes. Nobody in our house smoked, making it dicey to find a lighter or match (and our stove doesn't work that way.) So we'd put the candles on the cake but not light them, and then the candles dropped away because why have candles if you're not going to light them?

Once the candles were gone, the singing faded out, too. No more quavery versions of Happy Birthday To You, with guys trying not to sing on key so they didn't seem lame, no more slight hesitation while the kids try to figure out if they should sing Mom or her name, none of that. If we weren't going to light the candles that weren't on the cake, there wasn't much point of singing, right?

Then presents were not wrapped any more. They were put in their boxes, or into a gift bag, perhaps, but there wasn't even tissue covering them up if they were in a gift bag. That, too, made sense, in the long slow slide down; we're just going to tear the paper off, and it costs money, so why waste that extra funding?

I put the brakes on when we had a birthday where Sweetie was given her gifts by the kids, still in the bag from the store, with the tags on. The cake was on the table, people were milling around, and Sweetie was surrounded by what looked like the results of a recent shopping trip. We were, figuratively speaking, one rung above ruin, "ruin" being the kids just saying "Here's a couple bucks, buy yourself something nice."

So I re-imposed some rules: Presents must be wrapped -- nicely, I had to add, one year -- and tags removed. Cards were optional but the present must be purchased and made to look nice. Even with that, I'm still fighting: Oldest had me in the extended family gift-drawing this year, and we exchanged presents at my in-laws yesterday for that. Oldest "exchanged" with me by tossing me some of my asked-for dress socks, unwrapped and still tagged. "Sorry I didn't wrap them," she said, and wandered away.

If all that could come from not giving birthday cards, I could only imagine what the result of We're not going to have a Christmas tree would be; the kids would stop wearing pants, I figured, or would take up arson. Whatever it would be, I didn't want to find out.

But we still had the problem of the Babies!, the problem being that somehow we've never really instilled in them an understanding of the dichotomy between "things that are okay to pick up, touch, and throw at your brother"and "things that are just for looking at."

We try to teach them that. But it's tough, and sometimes at the end of a long day when the Babies! are crabby and it's 8:15 and I've got a cold and I still need to help The Boy with his homework and Sweetie's cleaning up the kitchen, sometimes then I decide that maybe my cell phone is okay to play with.

And then I try to figure out the best way to get chocolate off a cell phone.

Faced with the need to have a Christmas tree in order to stave off the older kids' transformation into Visigoths, and the need to not put out a collection of glass balls that would soon be ground into the floor and tiny feet, I came up with the solution of having a Christmas tree that celebrated all the great things of the season, the great things being paper, and yarn.

I'm not kidding -- paper and yarn are two household things we can have without worries, but I didn't sell it that way, of course. I sold it to Sweetie like this:

"We could take colored paper, and print up pictures of the kids and us and the family, and cut them into shapes, and hang those on the tree with yarn as a kind of family-photo Christmas tree."

Sweetie was sold on the sentiment and celebration of family that represented. Or, as she put it:

"That way, the Babies! can't pull it down and break everything."

So that's what we did. Saturday, I got out the basics of Christmas: The tree, the lights, the singing, dancing Cookie Monster who plays "Blue Christmas" when you press a button, but with these lyrics:

Me'll have a blue Christmas
Without me cookies

To those, we also added a Santa, and a rudimentary Nativity scene. I assembled the tree and began putting on the white lights while Sweetie and the Babies! and The Boy ran some errands. I got halfway up the tree when I realized that we were going to be short of lights, as many of the strands from last year were no longer working. (You'd think that when you pay a whole dollar for lights on the clearance shelf at the drug store, they'd last longer than one season, but there you go. That's our country for you.)

I called Sweetie and told her to pick up more lights. "About 400," I said.

Then I put together the rest of the tree and began printing the pictures to cut out. Sweetie and the kids got home with the lights.

"You win the battle," she said. "Finally."

I met her in the kitchen and said "What do you mean?" She held up 8 boxes of 50-light sets, multicolored.

"You finally get your colored lights," she said.

I took her out to the half-finished tree, wired from the ground to midway up with white lights.

"They didn't have any white lights," she said, so I began unstringing the white lights and then restringing them, intermingled with colored lights, while Sweetie and The Boy began cutting the pictures into Christmas-y shapes.

"What's a Christmas shape?" The Boy had asked. I pondered, and said:

"Stars, and circles, and diamonds."

"What's Christmas-y about a diamond?" The Boy asked.

"What's Christmas-y about a circle?" I fired back. I don't give in to his terrorism.

They went back to cutting, and I only had to intervene once, when I noticed that there were a lot of circles (sort of) and not a lot of stars -- and what I'd really wanted, most of all, was stars.

Then I had to give some guidance on the pictures that didn't lend themselves to Christmas shapes, pictures where the subjects were far apart, or obscured by things The Boy didn't think should be in the picture, like milk cartons or alligators. We decided that additional shapes could be used, shapes like oblong and I did the best I could.

Sweetie pitched in by glittering some of the pictures, and, when he got up from his nap, Mr Bunches pitched in by helping take the leftover yarn, yarn I'd strung on the tree as a sort of garland, and hanging some himself. Mr Bunches wasn't as focused or diligent as I was about making the yarn hang decoratively -- but he was more energetic than I was, and hung a great deal more yarn in a shorter amount of time.

It's easy to be efficient when you're three. Mr F helped out by trying to unstring the yarn, pulling at it as quickly as I could string it back up (but not as quickly as Mr Bunches could clump it onto the branches.) Then, when Mr F finally was dissuaded from that, he opted instead to get behind the tree, standing in between it and the wall (probably so that he could push it down on me when I least suspected it.)

It took the Babies! only a few minute to realize that they could pull the pictures off of the branches to create a good, clean ripping sound, and also to make the adults in the room instinctively yell No before we settled down and remembered that this was the whole point, to create a tree that the Babies! could touch.

"If they pull them all off," I told Sweetie, "We can always print and hang more," and in saying that, I not only created the world's first Disposable Christmas Tree, but also engaged in a little of the fiction of the holidays, the pretending that we would fix the tree. I knew we wouldn't, of course, print more pictures. If the Babies! pulled them all down, we'd never print, glitter, tie, and hang more pictures. We'd just shrug and get on with our lives, the way we already were doing when they pulled yarn down and then threw it back on, creating great loopy tangles that only enhanced the charm, from my perspective.

We wouldn't print more pictures, and we wouldn't straighten out the yarn, and we would probably be slow to stand the tree back up if they pushed it down, because Sweetie and I understand that Christmas isn't about trees and ornaments; it's about not doing stuff. It's about not having plans, about not overloading ourselves with errands and work and tree-trimming and shopping and all the other trappings of the holidays.

Our holidays don't involve days and days of baking Christmas cookies; instead, we tend to stop off at the diner and buy a couple of their perfectly-frosted Christmas cookies the kids and Sweetie like, because we want the cookies, and time to sit and eat them -- not the mess and trouble and hassle of getting the ingredients and baking them.

Our holidays don't involve the massive amounts of outside- and inside decorations that light up everyone's house. We like to look at them, but we don't want to freeze our hands off and spend weeks putting them up and then weeks protecting them from the Babies! and then weeks taking them down. So we blow up the Giant Inflatable Rudolph, hang the pictures and yarn on the tree, and then go dance with the Babies! to the Lady GaGa song they like for some reason, and relax a little.

Our holidays rarely involve having a houseful of guests over, or driving someplace on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. We'll go visit you if you want, or have you over if you insist -- but we probably won't do that on Christmas itself, as that day we'll be lounging around, still in pajamas at eleven as we sit around the kitchen table and tease The Boy and talk and watch the Babies! jumping on the couch, killing time until we make ourselves a dinner of mostly pre-prepared food and then go, as a family, to watch Godzilla or some other movie that, while not holiday-themed, is the movie the kids want to watch and will be enjoyable because of that.

Those are unorthodox choices, I know; they run contrary to the idea that we should have fancy trees with perfect decorations, not trees covered in whorls of yarn and a hodgepodge of lights. They go counter to the image of families gathering around a sumptuous table with a centerpiece of turkey or goose, of moms and kids cutting out cookies and decorating them, of friends and families gathered in Christmas sweaters to talk and joke and laugh and be loud and stay late. The way I spend my holidays now is not the way most people spend their holidays, and not the way I spent my holidays as a kid.

But it's the perfect way to spend the holidays, for me. It's perfect because there's no stress, no trouble, no bickering and late nights and hard drives and excessive clean-up. Instead, I spend days and nights around this time of year sitting and joking with the kids, reading to the Babies!, snuggling up to Sweetie as I watch Bad Santa and she pretends to sleep but is probably secretly watching it, too.

And when you ask me, What are your plans for the holidays?, that's why I hesitate a little: Not because it's hard to explain, and not because I'm embarrassed about those plans. If there's a better way to spend Christmas Eve than sleeping in followed by chasing Mr Bunches around and then playing a game with Mr F, eating lunch and talking football with The Boy, asking the girls what they hope they get most for Christmas, and then sitting in the dark eating pizza rolls and watching horror movies, I can't imagine what that better way might be.

No, I'm not embarrassed or at a loss for words. I hesitate to answer the question What are your plans for the holidays because if I told you what I'm really doing, you'd probably want in, and that'd spoil it.

Take it from me: having one job is hard enough -- and even harder if you ever actually go into the office!

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:12:00 +0000

For the life of me, I don't know why anyone tries to sell or rent their house on their own. It's hard enough to have one job; why take on two? That's what you're doing when you take on the task of selling or renting your own property, after all: You're trying to do a whole job: to take out ads and print up ad copy and prepare the place for showing and take photos and have showings and solicit buyers...

... see? I'm tired just typing it.

That's all the stuff that a good estate agent does for you. If that stuff is not done, you won't sell or rent your property very soon (or for very much). But YOU don't have the time or the expertise to do it and do it right. So why try, when you can instead hire someone like Coalters, the premiere york estate agents?

Coalters uses local people creating local jobs to sell or let your property the RIGHT way -- quickly and professionally and for a profit. Having built their business from one that began in a spare room to the major estate agency it is now, the people at Coalters know how to get your property on the market -- and then back off of it, sold or rented quickly.

They've won numerous awards already, and those have been earned through their friendly professionals and their harnessing of up-to-date technology to boost your property through the market: Their site is the number one Google result in York, with over 10,000 visitors per month, and they place your property there and on a bunch of other premium sites designed to harness the power of the Internet in your favor.

Do YOU know how to get your site listed on Google's number one result? I didn't think so. You don't know how to do even 1/10 the stuff that Coalters does, so don't try. Instead, you do your job and let them do theirs: selling or letting your property.

It's the 2009! Nonsportsman! of the Year! (Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:37:00 +0000

Drum roll, please...

Thank you! That drum roll (and other clips of my All-Time Second Favorite Christmas Movie) serves to herald a major event, the awarding of the

2009! Nonsportsman! Of The Year! Award!

You can tell it's important because of the exclamation points!

Every year, since time immemorial* (*2007, and I didn't do one last year) I have given out the Nonsportsman! Of The Year! Award!, an award that is given to the nonsportsman who had the biggest impact on sports that year.

This award doesn't go to overpaid, whiny athletes who tax our collective patience when they say things like It doesn't look like they'll be able to go Christmas shopping this year, because they were fined $7,500.

That's a true story: Milwaukee Bucks rookie Brandon "Gucci Louie" Jennings recently was fined $7,500 for tweeting too soon after a game (Why wouldn't the NBA have a rule about that?), and when asked about it, Brandon Jennings said, appropriately,

"That's a lot of money, especially around Christmas time."

That's fine, so far as it goes. But Brandon Jennings didn't shut his stupid mouth there. Instead, he went on to say...

... wait a minute. Let me first point out that Brandon "Gucci Louie" Jennings, at the tender age of 20, has already earned $3.65 million before he entered the NBA this year; he was paid $1.65 million to play in an Italian League, and signed a $2 million Under Armour Contract during that time. Then, he got signed by the Bucks, and will be paid $2.16 million this season and $2.33 million next season. So the $7,500, which is a lot of money to almost everyone, is 0.1% of Brandon "Gucci Louie" Jennings' salary.

So, Gucci Louie Jennings -- you'll see why I call him that in a moment, who first acknowledged that $7500 is a lot of money, then went on to prove he's an ignorant jerk-off by saying:

You do a lot of shopping for the family. It doesn't look like I'll be able to do that this year.

How do you feel about that, Bucks fans? Gucci Louie Jennings -- who's going to spend $2.16 million of your money this year, thinks he won't be able to do much shopping because he got fined 0.1% of his money.

Gucci Louie then went on to add:

"Twitter cost me 7500. Looks like no Gucci and Louie for Xmas."

Thereby proving he's a jerk and an idiot. Twitter didn't cost you $7,500, Gucci Louie; you cost yourself $7,500 by not knowing the rules. And then you insulted your fans; Milwaukee's median income, Gucci Louie, is about $37,000 per family. There are many many people who root for you who never get Gucci and Louie for Xmas, and you're a jerk for making jokes like that.

This is the actual tattoo Brandon Jennings has on his back.

Ah, well: With that out of my system, it's time to get back to the 2009! Nonsportsman! of the Year! award, which, as I said, does not go to an athlete; athletes get lots of meaningless awards, like the "Cy Young Award" (named for Richard Nixon, its first recipient) and the "Heisman Trophy" (given annually to that athlete who will get paid $23 million by the NFL team that drafts him the next year, and who will then never be heard from again.)

No, the Nonsportsman! of the Year! award does not recognize athletes, but instead focuses on those nonsportsman who had the biggest impact on sports in that year -- shining the light of attention on that noteworthy person who, despite not being an athlete, still managed to achieve great things in the world of sports.

Prior winners in this coveted award include:

2007: * ("Asterisk,") winning as a recognition of a lifetime of involvement on sports that culminated in the high water mark of 2007, when Barry Bonds didn't set the home run record (and had the non-record setting ball marked with an asterisk), when Videogate tacked an asterisk onto Tom Brady's career, and then even Don Shula suggested that an asterisk go on the Patriots* almost-undefeated season.

This year's recipient is almost as dignified and important as Asterisk, as we'll see in a moment. But first, a word about the person everyone thought would win this.

The first-runner-up for 2009! Nonsportsman! Of The Year! is...

Elin Woods.

Elin Woods -- here's a photo, in case you already forgot that last one...

was, almost everyone thought, the frontrunner for Nonsportsman! Of the Year!, and it's easy to see why: With a couple swings of a golf club, Elin had more of an impact on the world of sport than her gonna-be-ex-husband had in his entire career. Hamstring injuries, changes of swing, Phil Mickelson, arcane rules for intercontinental play: none of those could keep Tiger from winning 1 or more majors each year. But everyone has his Achilles' heel, and in Tiger's case, his Achilles heel was literally his heel, that being probably one of the many places Elin caught him with one of her swings, swings which cost golf its number-one draw, cost Tiger many of his sponsorships, and which hijacked the media for the past two weeks, all of which is a major impact.

And all of which would make Elin a consensus choice for the 2009! Nonsportsman! Of The Year!, and a great choice, too, because it would let me keep putting up pictures like this:

which would guarantee this blog about 30,000,000 hits, but two things held her back.

First, golf isn't a sport. Sure, Elin had a major impact on golf, a major impact that included not just "taking out the number one golfer for a year or more," but also "making people aware that some golfers think that they're athletes" (and, as a sideline, "making people aware that Tiger Woods thinks he's gangster, but then can't even properly name the band "Bone, Thugs-n-Harmony.")

But you can't be the Nonsportsman! Of The Year! if your impact wasn't on a sport, and I've scientifically proven in the past that golf isn't a sport.

Even if it golf was a sport, though, another factor would keep Elin from being the recipient of this year's Nonsportsman! Of The Year! award, and that other factor is that there's a better person to win it. That better person is, as I said, almost as distinguished and accomplished as Asterisk, and he will now have the 2009! Nonsportsman! of The Year! award to add to his kind-of impressive resume.

It's been a while since the intro, so drum roll again, please.

Did you notice? That was a one-handed drum roll. I didn't even know you could do that!

Anyway, the recipient of the 2009! Nonsportsman! Of The Year! award is:

Barack Obama.

I know, I know -- you're all saying "What? Wasn't getting the Peace Prize, and those two Tony awards he got when he filled in for a week on Avenue Q, enough?"

Or you think that I'm jumping on the bandwagon -- sucking up to the President who has promised to turn back the tides. Or, you're expecting some kind of health care commentary because I never give up on that.

But this is none of that. This is a genuine recognition of Barack Obama as the 2009! Nonsportsman! Of The Year! because Barack Obama not only had the single biggest impact on nearly every sport this year, but Barack Obama embodied sports this year.

No person, in 2009, left his mark more on the world of sports than our esteemed President. Obama began the year choosing to root for the Steelers -- a move people said was motivated by electoral college concerns. (The people saying that, though, were apparently familiar with the electoral college but unfamiliar with the fact that the election was already over.)

He hosted a Super Bowl party at the White House (and John McCain said he was invited but wouldn't come.)

This is Obama watching the Super Bowl. In 3-D.
Don't you wish you were president, so you could watch the
Super Bowl in 3-D?

Then, Obama became the first president in my memory to actually fill out and release an NCAA Tournament Bracket -- and he did it live, with coverage by ESPN, leading people (me) to wonder if someday we might have all-day coverage of Obama's NCAA Bracket filling-out, the way we have all-day coverage of the NFL draft.

Obama threw out the first pitch at the All-Star game,

(maybe doing that to make up for his ad in 2008 that delayed the start of a World Series game by 30 minutes?)

Obama plays tennis with Mrs. Obama (and beats her, she says), and attended a George Washington U. basketball game in order to cheer on his brother-in-law, the Oregon coach.

He organizes pick-up games of basketball in a bipartisan way, drawing controversy for that anyway, as he refused to invite women to play. (He did, though, invite a female to play golf, buttressing my point about that not being a sport.)

As though any more proof that golf
isn't a sport were needed, here's a photo showing
you can play the game without any equipment!

The sportsman-in-chief even weighed in on bowling, and lent his presence to the attempt to get the Olympics to Chicago.

Those accomplishments alone would merit giving him this coveted award, but more than His Omnipresence's extension into the world of sports alone is the fact that Obama didn't just affect sports; he embodied them.

Think about the world of sports, 2009: We began the year with a seeming novelty: The Steelers and Cardinals in the Superbowl, the Cardinals' improbable appearance seeming to promise changes in the world, a new era of sports with teams that traditionally hadn't fared well rising up to challenge the assumptions of the Old Guard...

... only to have the Cardinals lose, and struggle again this year, while the Steelers carried away their 160th Super Bowl trophy, the Old Guard triumphant again (and me losing my Super Bowl bet.) The message: It's hard to change the way things have always been done, something The Jump Shot-In-Chief has learned, too.

2009 saw the end of the era of "Moneyball," the idea that smart teams armed with computers and nerds could match up against the Big Spenders. All the computing technology in the world couldn't prevent the Yankees, whose payroll slightly exceeded TARP, from winning their 160th World Series, while in the NFL, teams that lingered far below the salary cap (Tampa Bay, Cleveland, and Green Bay) struggled to stay even with teams like the Cowboys, who spent more on their Over-The-Field Television Screen than Tampa Bay spent on players' salaries in 2009. That's a sports mirror held up to President White Sox Fan's fight to convince people health care could be universalized for less money -- a fight he carried on, somewhat, but nobody's really buying it; we all know big money is needed to accomplish big things.

Obama tried to bail out the economy, and sports pitched in, with baseball paying C.C. Sabathia $15,000,000 for 2009 alone (or $65,000 per inning pitched),

Or, if you want to measure it another way,
CC Sabathia could have paid for
2,000 of Gucci Louie Jennings' tweets.

... Jerry Jones spending $1.2 billion on his stadium -- and the NFL planning on building a $1.6 billion stadium next year. That's a pretty big shot in the arm for an economy that still seems to be staggering under an economic swine flue -- and both the World of Sports and the World Of The Real World face potential economic nightmares next year: Obama will continue to fight against a sluggish economy and stagnant job growth, while the NFL faces the prospect of a season without a salary cap (something that the NFL treats as amazingly unusual and complex, even though the salary cap has only been around since 1994; for most of its existence, the NFL had no salary cap and did just fine. It's the sharing of TV money which keeps small-market teams alive in the NFL, not the salary cap, and in any event, one year without a cap won't matter much, since the vast majority of players are under contract and won't become free agents in 2010.)

Obama's biggest "accomplishments" were hypothetical or overblown; he was awarded a Peace Prize based on voting that was done when he'd been in office less than a month, an award he accepted in the same month in which he sent 30,000 more troops into battle. He was given credit for "Cash For Clunkers," a program that was passed mostly because it was attached to a bill to fund war efforts (that Peace Prize is looking more and more foolish now, right?) and a program that most people agree didn't do much in the long run to increase fuel efficiency or stimulate the economy; is Obama's Peace Prize any more of an honor than the Heisman Trophy award? (Before you answer, remember that in the 74 years of that award, only 16 recipients have had anything resembling a great career, and one of the recipients now sits in prison; there is a 4-in-5 chance that a Heisman winner will not have a good NFL career.)

Like the president, the Sports World gave honors that didn't matter much: The Yankees were lauded for another World Series win, but how could they lose? They owned all the great players in Major League Baseball. Serena Williams won another Wimbledon title, a victory that seems to be given to a Williams sister the way we give Peace Prizes to people whose names are in the news a lot.

Name the MVP of the NBA Finals. Name the Cy Young Award Winner. You can't, can you? (Kobe Bryant and Zack Greinke [who?], by the way.)

The Steelers won the Super Bowl early in 2009 -- and then stumbled through the NFL season so far.

Seriously; they have literally stumbled.

Obama and the world of sports even collided on the Big Issue of the year: health care. While Obama occasionally paid attention to one of his major campaign themes (he promised universal health care by the end of his first term, remember)(hey! It's my health care reference! You knew I'd get one in!), health care was front and center on everyone's mind (except the Senate's) this year, and the world of sports was no different, as the NFL instituted its own version of Universal Health Care, which might have been called "Let's pretend we care about head injuries while not actually mandating concussion-proof helmets," and the two worlds really did collide when a 16-year-old girl who had to quit basketball because she'd suffered 11 concussions testified before Congress in support of the "Contact Act," a bill to impose protections for high school athletes.

Don't worry-- health care got no further in the NFL, or high school, than it did in the Senate: The "Contact Act" was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in March, 2009, and has been sitting there ever since. If you don't remember what that means, re-watch this:

Died in committee. Sorry, 16-year-old girls and Ben Roethlisberger; you'll have to take care of your health the way the rest of us do: Praying our insurance company doesn't drop us.

Obama began the year on a high note, seemingly invincible as he went from rally to rally and striding forward with his TARPs and Cashes-For-Onomatopoetic-Things programs, but there were chinks in the armor: the Olympic bid failed, health care is mired down, the economy isn't turning over yet and may need another jolt, there's still terrorists in Gitmo but they'll be transferred to New York and Illinois soon...

... and who else seemed invincible but wasn't? The Saints and the Colts, both starting off 13-0 and both lagging as they hit the home stretch. The Saints dropped their first game of the season last night despite a furious rally, and Obama can only hope that the Colts, not the Saints, are the true metaphor for his first year, since the Colts struggled to 14-0 instead of fumbling away their last chance and hitting 13-1, the way Drew Brees' team did. In either case, though, the surface perfection hides a troubled turmoil underneath and the calls keep getting closer and closer, for both the NFL's two leading teams and the Frontrunner-In-Chief.

Obama was forewarned about the troubles he'd face: last year's NFL playoffs saw number ones knocked off left and right, a sign of ill omen for the Man Who Would Be Everywhere in 2009. And while he was everywhere (appearing on TV so much that the networks complained about the costs, and getting onto 5 consecutive Sunday morning shows one weekend, as examples), so much of what he was talking about seemed to not matter so much: He was killing a fly with his bare hands, or showing his dogs to Oprah, or pardoning a turkey, but where was the substance? Where was the health care, the economy, the rolling back of the tides?

In that, too, Obama was the living embodiment of Sports, 2009: It's hard to recall a year when so much was said about sports figures, with so little of it having to do with sports. Kurt Warner's age, Tiger Woods' mistresses, A-Rod and Kate Hudson, Serena's swearing, Michael Phelps' pot-smoking, the track runner who was both woman and man, the Brett-Favre-retirement stories, the continuing questions about steroids (including, at the end, one that dragged Tiger Woods into that controversy, too), and, finally, putting Stephen Colbert on the cover of Sports Illustrated...

I had a picture of the actual cover, but I very
much preferred this image, instead.

... all of that was talk involving sports but wasn't about sports, letting sports surround us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without any actual sports talk taking place. It was all sizzle and no steak this year, in the world of sports and the world of government, and Obama stands astride those two worlds like a Colossus,

Good, but not as good as the Stephen Colbert picture.

albeit a Colossus who has yet to actually pick up the world and carry it; Obama is a Colossus who's still warming up and stretching for his big feats of strength, and in that, too, he embodies the world of sports like no other person did in 2009, because Obama, as always, carries with him hope: the hope for a better tomorrow, the hope that we have the ability to do better next time.

The ability to look at the troubles of this time, and say to ourselves: We can fix this.

The ability to look at a perfect season gone awry, and say We can still win the championship.

The ability to take adversity in stride and still throw that last-minute touchdown pass to win the big game.

The ability to look at the titans of the world -- the Lakers, the Yankees, the health care industry, the economy -- and say You might have won this round, but we're not giving up and we'll keep on fighting next year.

In sports, as in the Real World, there are the ridiculous moments and the sublime. There are the stupid people and the smart. There are the triumphant victories and the terrible defeats. There are moments of glory and struggles with defeat, and each of those can be transient or lifelong; we hope the bad fades soon and pray the good lingers on, but even when it doesn't, we can look away from the bad result, lift our chin up, clench our fists, and in the manner of the 2009! Nonsportsman! Of The Year!, continue to fight on, continue to lead, and continue to hope.

There's still grass underneath the snow, you know.

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:27:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Safer® brand. All opinions are 100% mine.

There's an old saying that "a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested, and a conservative is a liberal who bought a house."

To that, I'd like to add this pithy addendum: "An organic gardener is one who sees his three-year-old boys walking around the yard and putting stuff in their mouths."

I am not an avid gardener in any sense of the word. Since we bought our house 6 years ago, every bit of my gardening efforts has been aimed at reducing the amount of work I've got to do in the yard, slowly turning it into a perennial garden of amazing beauty. (*Fingers crossed*).

But I did begin to give gardening more thought when Mr F and Mr Bunches began to be more mobile and wander around the yard playing and helping me. 3-year-olds, as we all know, touch things and put things in their mouths and try to feed things to each other and the cats, and I began to worry about what that might do to them if I was using pesticides and growing chemicals and the like.

That's how I found Safer Brand, at saferbrand.com: I was looking for something better to use in the yard, something that wouldn't make me worry that my Babies! would end up mutating.

Safer is an organic gardening line that doesn't rely on harsh chemicals and horrible things like that to control your yard and weeds. Instead, Safer has things like "Concern Weed Prevention Plus," a weed killer that can be sprinkled on your yard -- but it's made of all-natural ingredients like gluten meal and nitrogen and potash. It doesn't burn, it's not poisonous, and it's up to 90% effective in controlling dandelions and crabgrass.

With things like that, I was able to continue to do less work -- having my weeding done for me, organically, is nice -- and not worry about the Babies! being in the yard with me.

It's winter now, so I have fewer concerns about that - but spring will be here before we know it, and some of you live in warmer climates (lucky you), so keep up-to-date on what's available to help you, organically and safely, in your yard, by clicking over to
Safer brand's facebook page. And, if you're the hyperactive type who wants to be in constant communication, it may help you to know that Safer brand is officially on twitter, so you can follow their news there. Those two links will not only get you information on the organic products that protect you, your kids, and the environment, but will link you into all kinds of excellent gardening tips, tips like "how to get your roses to grow," or "how to keep your trees green and leafy," or, my favorite, "how to get The Boy to mow the lawn."

Unlike last week, there is no nudity in this one. Sorry, Sweetie. (Sweetie's Hunk Of The Week, 43)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:13:00 +0000

I'm just going to be honest with you. I don't care for

James Franco,

Sweetie's 41st Hunk of the Week.

It's nothing personal with him. It's just that he's so... boring.

I'm not sure why it is, but for some reason, just seeing James Franco show up in a movie makes me not want to see that movie. Not in a bad way. Not like how having Helen Hunt in a movie will make me not want to see that movie (and will make me want to punch something; Helen Hunt evokes a visceral reaction in me.)

And it's not like I dislike him personally, the way I dislike Ethan Hawke personally. I don't even know Ethan Hawke, and I don't want to know him. I can't stand Ethan Hawke, and his presence in movies also makes me not want to see those movies. More than that, the existence of Ethan Hawke makes me angry. The fact that he not only exists but does things sets off an almost-inestimable rage in me.

James Franco's not like that. He doesn't make me hate him or make me mad. He just bores me and I don't like him because of that.

But Sweetie has picked him for the 41st Hunk of the Week, so, um... here goes.

You Don't Know Him Without You Have: No matter who you are or where you are, and no matter how bored you are by James Franco's existence, which throws boringness out the way neutron stars emit... something... the odds are that you know James Franco, because he's been steadily crammed down our throat by Hollywood for the last 10 years or so in a variety of different movies, as the Sylvester McMonkey McBean's Hollywood Star-Making Machine tries desperately to make James Franco the movie star he so seemingly deserves to be.

He does, apparently, deserve to be a movie star, if anyone can deserve to be a movie star. He's got those casual good looks, he's a decent actor, he's apparently a pretty nice guy, too, and girls like him.

That seeming-movie-starness is probably why Hollywood keeps trying to make him an actual movie star, and that's why he's been in big-budget superhero movies (Spider-Man 3), romances (Nights In Rodanthe), action-comedy buddy films (Pineapple Express), Oscar Bait (Milk, In The Valley of Elah), and Judd Apatow films (Knocked Up), and why he'll be in four different movies coming out in 2010. Which means that James Franco will, by the end of next year, have had big roles in 10 different movies, as well as being on a soap opera. James Franco is in a major movie about every 2 months.

And still, I don't care. No matter what they put him in, his being in a movie bores it down a little for me. Even in movies where he's really good, like Pineapple Express, which I liked, James Franco seems a little boring and, more or less, uncare-about-able.

Thing That Makes You Go Hmmmm About Him: I think the most unusual thing about James Franco is that there's nothing unusual about him at all. I have a theory that I've been kicking around for a while now, and it combines and explains two things I believe:

(A) Supermodels aren't that pretty, and
(B) James Franco is boring.

Those don't seem to be related, but they are. In the Unified Theory of Everything, Supermodel not-that-prettiness and James-Franco-boringosity are related, and both explained by the same theory: They're just empty surfaces, something to look at with nothing behind them, and that makes them blah.

Supermodels are not that pretty because they have no personality. They're like looking at a painting; maybe it's attractive enough, but it's two dimensional and not that interesting, in the long run. That's why I've never understood why people go so nuts over supermodels; they have no story, no persona. I've never thought any supermodels were pretty, period, because of that lack.

Some actresses, and some real people, have that personality, and it gives life to their looks. When you look at an actress who's pretty - a Jennifer Aniston, say -- she's got something behind the screen. It may be something that I create, something that I think about her that may not be true at all (for example, I think of Jennifer Aniston as mostly acting like Rachel on Friends), but it's something. It animates that person and makes her prettiness come alive. In order for someone to be pretty, for me to like someone, they've got to have a personality and I've got to like it. Otherwise, it's like looking at a pretty vase: empty and boring.

Supermodels don't have a personality, and because I know nothing about them (and I have nothing on which to assume a personality for them, the way I can assume an actor or actress has a certain kind of personality because of a character they've played), they're not pretty.

James Franco, is just like that. He, too, has no personality that I can pick up on, at all. He's just... there. He's good-looking and competent and yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever; it's all surface. There's nothing behind it, so far as I know. He seems so interchangeable. He doesn't stand out in any way. Unlike most other actors and actresses, you don't get the idea that there's a personality -- any personality-- behind the face. Even when he plays a character, he doesn't seem to be like that character at all. Some people seem to be like their characters: Bruce Willis seems to be like That Die Hard Cop. Jason Batemen seems to be like Michael on Arrested Development. That kid who played the star of A Christmas Story seemed to be like the kid he played in that movie.

But James Franco doesn't even seem to be like the characters he's played. I can't say he seems like his drug-dealer guy in Pineapple Express or like Milk or like Harry Osborn in Spider-Man. He doesn't seem like anyone. Even when he plays a part, there's no personality to it and it makes him boring.

That might not seem fair, but it's true, and I think that James Franco knows it, too. That's why he's trying to get a personality, trying to create one the way I once taught myself to be a fidgeter, by just going out and doing it. He's trying to weird it up and make that his personality, in ways like how he's taking a role on a soap opera, and then claiming it's all in the interest of "performance art." He's trying to inject some personality into his life.

See what I mean?

But he seems to be trying too hard.
Also: The Bear seems more exciting
than James Franco.

It's not working, though. At least not for me. Just reading that little piece on how he's trying to pretend that being on a soap opera is some sort of meta-James-Franco-Experience bored me, too.

James Franco, I think, is the billboard that you drive by everyday on the way to work. You saw it once, years ago, and now, you can't think, really, what's on that billboard, can you? Are you even sure that it's got anything on it? Maybe it's blank? Maybe they tore it down and put a Mexican restaurant there... but until I brought it up, you hadn't even thought of the billboard at all, and then, the moment you did you became uncertain about it, period. That billboard has faded into the background existence of your life. It's there, trying to get you to notice it by advertising jewelry or the circus, but you drive by it every day, your eyes seeing it and moving on, so that now, it might as well not be there at all.

That's James Franco, and joining a soap opera isn't going to help him, anymore than changing that billboard will help it. You're going to go right on not noticing it at all, and we'll all go on not noticing James Franco, either, no matter how many movies he makes and how quirky he tries to be.

(Note: It's not just me, either. This person said "It's strange that people don't seem that interested in the fact that James Franco is in the middle of a two-month guest star arc on the soap "General Hospital." And if you Google news about James Franco, today, of the first six stories that come up, three aren't even about him:

That's right: Even the news about James Franco is bored with James Franco.

Reason I Tell Myself Sweetie Likes Him: Who cares? I'm bored by him, and in the time that I've been writing this, James Franco has made another 4 movies that nobody will care about in the long run. I'll just say "Because he's there."

Actual Reason Sweetie Likes Him: Something about him being "good-looking" and "tousled." Or good-looking in a tousled kind of way. Or tousled-looking in a good way. I don't know; I kind of blanked out on Sweetie's conversation about James Franco. Seriously. Yesterday, driving around and running a few errands, I asked Sweetie "Who's going to be your hunk of the week this week?" And she said "James Franco."

I said "Really? Why?"

And she then said something about tousled, but by then I'd moved on, mentally, and was probably thinking about having some leftover sloppy joe when we got home.

That's James Franco for you.

Point I'd Like To Make About Sweetie's Actual Reason For Liking Him: The point I'd like to make is about Sweetie picking him, period. I'm writing this at 2:40 p.m. on Saturday, nearly 24 hours after she told me "James Franco" was the Hunk of the Week. In that whole 24 hours, I was completely unable to come up with anything interesting about James Franco. The guy is like a black hole of interest.

I tried, too. I thought about doing a poem based on James Franco, trying to rhyme everything with tousled. I got this far:

When you're a good-looking actor who's tousled,
It almost seems certain my spouse'll...

And then I got bored with that. I tried looking up "James Franco" on Youtube, and it's just a bunch of boring interviews of James Franco.

I wanted to do something seasonal, so I tried Googling "James Franco Christmas" and even that didn't work. I got nothing. And so here I sit, at the end of the 41st Hunk of The Week, and all I can say is... I don't care for James Franco.

Oh, and also, I lied about the nudity. But I had to -- if I mention it up front, Sweetie just skips to the end.

Even his butt is boring!

(Sweetie, I know you just thought: Oh no, it's not! Shame on you.)

The casinos may be online, but that doesn't mean they're pantless. Let's have some standards here.

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:06:00 +0000

On my law blog the other day -- you do read my law blog, right, so you saw this, I'm sure -- I mentioned that I never really understood "insurance" in roulette. In actuality, that was an understatement, as I never understood much of gambling at all, let alone roulette.

Which is really a shame, because I think I'd be a good gambler. Any style of gambler: I could be the cool, suave, James-Bond-esque gambler wearing a tux and holding a fancy martini glass (although the glass would be filled with Diet Dr. Pepper, as I don't drink) and leaning back at a table of baccarat...

... baccarat's a thing, right?...

... or I could be the "aw shucks" regular-folks guy at the table in a flannel shirt and ironic t-shirt, the guy who never played before tonight and can't believe he's winning all this money, and making all these new friends.

The only thing I need to complete those scenarios is to actually know how to gamble, which I'm taking care of by learning to play roulette online, thanks to Best Online Casinos. This site -- I've mentioned it before, too -- is a great resource for people who like to gamble, for real or fake money, online. It's got reviews of sites that are compiled by talking to experts, looking at regular people's comments, measuring the bonus money for signing up, and more. But you don't need to know how the reviews are compiled to know that they're accurate and a great way to find the best online casinos for your gaming.

And, remember, just because you're online doesn't mean you can't bring it: Take me, for example. I'm wearing my tux right now, playing online baccarat.

(Will someone please tell me if that's a real thing?)

The Barber of Seville is a song I know thanks to Bugs Bunny Cartoons. (3 Good Things From 12/17/09)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:23:00 +0000

I was at work at 7:20 yesterday, and 6:50 today... but now I'm "working" from "home..." and missing phone calls from people because my phone plays The Barber of Seville for calls and it takes me a while to realize that it's my phone ringing instead of a hallucination.

Here's my 3 Good Things from Thursday.

1. I can get past the Q. The Babies! like a new game, the alphabet game from Kneebouncers. It's not much of a game: Just press any key and the 'puter will go through the letters, one each time you press them. The Babies! know how to do that, learning their alphabet and cycling through octopi and ice creams and the like. But they won't do the Q. Q on that game is a Queen, who comes out and marches around and gets cheered by digital throngs of royalists, and the Babies! won't sit for it or even press the button to get past it. Instead, they come and get me or Sweetie to do that for them, and last night Mr Bunches made it my job to get past the Q. Which I did for him, all the while being glad that he was so pro-democracy/anti-royalty... but worrying that his alphabet would be 3% smaller than everyone else's.

2. Mr F likes his tunnel. Lisa at my office gave the Babies! a Christmas present: a nylon tent-and-tunnel. Mr F enjoyed the tunnel immensely, so much so that for a while he wore it and walked around our living room, a multicolored, tiny-legged cylinder. Then he took it to bed with him, where he didn't sleep in it, he slept next to it.

Mr F is not shown with the tunnel, because I took one picture of him in it, but it turned out blurry, and then he insisted on holding my phone for the remainder of the time he played in the tunnel, either because he wanted me to stop taking picture of him, or because he likes the little song the phone plays when you spin the keyboard into place.

3. I was able to fix whatever it was I'd done to my phone. My new phone has many mysterious features on it, one of which is that little song it plays when the keyboard is activated and another of which, as I found yesterday, was that I am completely able to turn off the sound on the phone. All the sound. Keypad beeps, ringtones... and the ability to hear what callers are saying.

I don't know why that feature is on there; what good is a phone that doesn't been when you dial, doesn't ring when someone calls, and that doesn't let you hear the person you're trying to talk to when you realize that they've called you?

I also don't know how that feature gets activated; I only know that it can be activated randomly or by accident, as it was yesterday, and I also know (now) that it can be de-activated by turning my phone on and off.

Oh the toil that knows no breaking! (Friday's Sunday's Poem, 40)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:59:00 +0000

Christmas in India

by Rudyard Kipling

Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry --
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring --
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly --
Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"

High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us --
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it.
Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.

Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together --
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment --
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is hut -- we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus --
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

_________________________________________________________

As I searched for a Christmas poem today, I was struck by how many sad Christmas poems there are. I've heard that the holidays tend to be sad for many people, and can bring on or exacerbate depression, and I think that's terrible; it seems more awful to be sad at the holidays than to be sad at other times of the year. By the same token, though, Christmas can make little things seem more special: Looking at Christmas lights, or a small gift from a friend or coworker, or just a Christmas card with updated pictures of old friends you never talk to anymore.

This poem seemed to reflect both of those thoughts, as well as a third that I ponder on from time to time: What Christmas used to be like before it was a months-long buildup and frenzy of good will and shopping. I love to hear stories of how people spent Christmas when it was an important holiday but not so big as it is now, and in other countries where the traditions differ.

Kipling's poem does all that, positing a Christmas that is barely there: The speaker or people in the poem are in a foreign land, working amid the sun and strange sights, and barely acknowledging Christmas... until at the very end, there is a glimmer of hope and happiness and an acknowledgment that even a poor, mocked Christmas is better than no Christmas at all.

That seems an appropriate sentiment for this time of year: We are better off for having a period of time in which we, to a greater or lesser degree, try to be something better than we are the rest of the year, and we are that better off even if we don't reach our ideal.

Is is just me, or were the people in "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" only about 1 minute away from a home invasion?

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:48:00 +0000

One week left 'til Christmas, so all those chores you've been putting off need to get done now: Put up the inflatable Tigger-wearing-a-santa-hat! Get the Figgy Pudding properly figged! And go buy everyone on your list one of the Bulova chronograph watches from Blue Dial.

Those are all serious commands, especially that last one. If you've still got people on your shopping list, people who need a great present, there's very little you could give them that's better than a great watch. Watches are classy gifts: They're like jewelry, but useful: people can wear them all the time, and when they do, they'll think of you, the gift-giver, whenever they look to find out what time it is.

The one shown here is an excellent example of what you could get for that special someone. Polished gold over a steel case, a chronograph, and it looks like a million bucks (but costs way less than that, and is on sale for half-off at Blue Dial right now.)

And if you're getting a watch, make sure you order it from Blue Dial. Blue Dial offers pretty much every watch they've got for half off, if not more. I've checked and I can't find any watches that AREN'T on sale.

Also good: Right now, Blue Dial is guaranteeing delivery by Christmas on almost every watch they've got. So you can go online, order a great watch for someone, then relax knowing that it'll be there before the big day... giving you more time to figure out what figgy pudding is.

Mr F mostly behaved because I let him play with my cell phone... but whatever works, right? (3 Good Things Times Two)

noreply@blogger.com (Briane P) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:22:00 +0000

I didn't get to post the 3 Good Things yesterday because I spent most of the day busy with a variety of things and then at night, Mr Bunches had the flu and Sweetie got a kidney stone, leaving me and Mr F to try to cope with things on our own while The Boy was at work... but I liked the 3 Good Things I had planned, so I'm posting them anyway -- 3 Good Things From Tuesday along with 3 Good Things From Wednesday.

Also, Sweetie's doing pretty good except, she reports, Mr F and Mr Bunches are both feeling better now and keep jumping on her.

The 3 Good Things From Tuesday, 12/15/09:

Tuesday, after running out to get the last of The Boy's presents, we went driving around a little to look at Christmas decorations in the neighborhoods around us. Here are:

1. The best Christmas lights I saw:

2. The best Christmas lights Sweetie saw:

3. My favorite view of the night:

And, then there's the 3 Good Things from 12/16/09:

1. I was on the news! This story quotes me, but the television story (which aired yesterday at 5:00 on our local channel 27) did more than that; it featured me on air for almost 30 seconds, and referred to me as an "expert." Which I am... and a tired-looking one; one of our paralegals asked if I saw myself on the news and I said "Yeah, and I thought I looked tired." She said "I thought you did, too."

And that was before the night of barfing and kidney stones.

2. Mr F behaved like a perfect gentleman at the ER. We had to take Sweetie to deal with the kidney stone, and both Babies! behaved great while we were there -- but that's to be expected from Mr Bunches, who spent the day with an upset stomach. Mr F, who was already on the rebound, behaved, too, so there's hope for us yet that someday we will be able to go into society with the Babies!

3. I got to start on the Penguin Fudge, and it turns out it's Penguin Cake. I finally opened the Penguin Fudge that Uncle Dick sent us and found out it's not fudge, but delicious delicious cake, with layers of almost-candy-like frosting in between and on top of and below the cake. Candy-coated Penguin Cake is pretty much the only thing better than Penguin Fudge.