Tra: As you know, I was brought in here by Andy to teach you something today, Jason. This game is the world to a lot of people. You and I both know you're talented, but there's a lot more to football than talent. Desire. Fire. Commitment. Relentlessness. Greed...and not for the money, JP. I'm talkin' the greed for the title, the need to be the best man on and off the field you can possibly be.

Jason: Huh? What? Oh I'm sorry I wasn't listening.

Tra: See? This is the problem! You're like a statue! You don't interact with your team, you don't communicate, you don't listen! Are you even listening right now?

Jason: Yea, totally. False starts are bad...I'll have to clean that up for next week.

Tra: What the hell are you talking about? I didn't even bring up false starts! I'm talkin' about pride and manhood; the kind that isn't measured in cars and money.

Jason: Yeeaaaaa aww man I love money! Did you know I was the highest paid offensive lineman in the history of the league? That shit is the shit, right?

Tra: I...I don't know what to tell you, big guy. You have all the tools, you--you're just kinda stupid. And by looking at the number of false start penalties you've received, I think you may have ADHD, too.

Jason: Do you see the stitching on this shirt? It was made from 20 smaller shirts...by Chinese orphans...wearing Michael Jackson gloves. Isn't that cake and money?

Tra: What?

Jason: What? That's my new saying.

Tra: Kevin is going to get killed this year, isn't he?

Jason: Hehehehehehehehe.

Photo by and courtesy of S. Stefnisson

The end of summer draws near.  Temperatures fall and the dust settles around Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano.  Far away from the white hot glare of the media, Iceland’s president is demonstrating a flying lesson; every event provides an opportunity to learn.


Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has invited geologists, pilots, regulators, airline executives and yes, even the press, to come to Iceland in September to review what happened in April when Eyjafjallajökull volcano issued the belch heard round the world.

To recap - since something that happened four months ago can seem practically pre-historic - from April 15-23, while Eyjafjallajökull was happily spewing  its abrasive ash directly into the North Atlantic jet stream, 300 European airports shut down causing airlines to cancel thousands of flights stranding 7 million passengers. SAS Airlines claims to have lost $68 million, British Airways, $250 million.  

"What's interesting is the fact that the eruption was not considered to be a major eruption," Thorgeir Palsson, former director of civil aviation in Iceland told me in a phone conversation this morning. "It had an impact beyond proportion. People knew an eruption that could cause difficulties and would take re-routing, but that it would close down the entire airspace, that no one had expected."

But of course that just underscores the delightful quip made by President Grimsson in his invitation to the conference at Keflavik International Airport, “The earth is capable of ultimate surprises.” He then suggested to the aviation industry that “systems must take into account the will of nature.” 

Photo by and courtesy of S. Stefnisson

Cutting directly to the chase, Tom Hendricks, Vice President Operations and Safety for the Air Transport Association called the airline losses, “eye-watering”.  He told me, “It was bad enough for the U.S. carriers, it almost brought the European carriers to their knees.”

Tom was flying as a captain for Delta Airlines at the time. When European aviation authorities began closing airspace, Delta and other U.S. airlines started canceling their flights rather than have their passengers, crews and airplanes grounded, even though Delta has experience flying planes in areas of volcanic activity. The European authorities were “too conservative,”  he said “This was a new experience for them, but the U.S. has operated safety for well over 2 decades.”

“There are some 52 active volcanoes in Alaska, and there are one to two eruptions in average per year,” Jón Hjaltalín Magnússon reminded me in an email. Magnusson is with Kelir Aviation Academy, which organized the conference and the engineer was explaining why Hendricks as well as representatives from Alaska Airlines, NASA the FAA, ICAO and IATA and the U.S. Geological Survey were asked to come and offer their advice about whether U.S. procedures should be applied elsewhere.

“The U.S. model delegates the responsibility to the operators - to the airlines," Tom said. "Airlines are managing their own risk but the Europeans chose to shutter vast areas of airspace that we thought were safe to operate in.”

Thorgeir Palsson Photo courtesy IATA

So next month, these disputes will get vented once again. Were the authorities overly aggressive in restricting flights? Are there ways to safely navigate around volcanic eruptions? Who should decide when it is safe to fly and when it is not, airlines or aviation regulators? Is there value in what Dr. Palsson and others are calling the "American approach"?

Safely protected by time if not by distance from the now-spent fury of the volcano, representatives from the whole alphabet soup of aviation organizations - a diverse crowd - will descend on Iceland to dissect what happened, with a few clocks ticking.

The European Commission is working to solidify its position on the matter in time for the International Civil Aviation Organization's assembly at the end of the month. And while bureacuracies like those can move with glacial speed, Dr. Palsson reminds me Eyjafjallajökull has a sister who could blow her top at any time.

Things could get very hot.

Per USA TODAY, THE SECOND-MOST POPULAR NEWSPAPER IN THE COUNTRY:

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Kevin Kolb elicits the image of Simba, the cub from The Lion King, suddenly thrust to the head of the pride after the unexpected departure of longtime leader Donovan McNabb. And with plenty of hungry hyenas lurking in the NFC East — McNabb, now a hyena in Washington Redskins clothing and still among them — Kolb will have little time to adjust to his new role on the league's hotly contested 100-yard plains, and he knows it.

I can't believe this shit was written by a real, live PAID journalist. What a terrible, terrible analogy.

Pumba better watch the fuck out.

[USA Today]

Hey - two posts in one day about people being intentionally hit with baseballs at the ballpark! Except this time, in a wildly unpredictable twist, it’s the fan who hits the player. I know you're on the edge of your seat right now.

This one happened while the Reading Phillies were visiting the Richmond Flying Squirrels. So the story goes, Phillies pitcher J.C. Ramirez threw a routine pitch to a Richmond batter which was fouled off into the upper deck on the third base side. The unidentified fan who caught it decided to throw the ball back on the field because he said he'd "seen it on TV at Cubs games". As you probably guessed by now, dude threw a perfect strike right into J.C. Ramirez's leg. The fan was escorted out of the stadium and banned for life from attending Squirrel's games.

Kind of a harsh punishment if you ask me. I mean, that’s a crazy accurate throw. I applaud him. Maybe the Squirrels should just sign him up, Rookie of the Year style.

In case you're wondering, Ramirez is "a little sore" but not hurt. He's contemplating filing a lawsuit, which is pretty lame. So just to recap, the Phillies traded Cliff Lee for:

Phillippe Aumont who has pretty much sucked.
Tyson Gillies who does coke.
J.C. Ramirez who gets beaned by fans.

Super duper.

[h/t to Sportress of Blogitude]

Apparently, Nyjer Morgan of the Nationals was suspended for seven games by Major League Baseball for being a sensitive asshole. Morgan decided it was a good idea to rocket a ball into the stands at a fan last weekend at Citizen's Bank Park. From what's been reported, Morgan was jawing back and forth with a fan for much of the game. At the end of the 8th inning, he'd had enough and (allegedly) threw the ball into the stands, where it predictably missed the guy he was aiming for and hit some other guy in the domepiece.

So seriously, how did this happen in CBP and stay unreported until now? That doesn't even make sense to me, especially since practically 1/3 of the crowd is filled with Philly bloggers. If a professional athlete loses his cool after arguing for 2 hours with a drunk (my assumption) fan, and throws a ball at an "innocent" fans’ head, I'd think the press would be all over him.

The fact this happened in Philadelphia and stayed so quiet really is baffling - not only because it's 'news worthy' but because every little thing that happens at CBP gets press. Whether it’s Werth yelling at some guy to get out of the way of a foul ball, a cute little girl tossing the ball her father caught back on to the field, or something as simple as an overweight security professional injecting 12,000 volts of badass into a skinny teenager - it's going to be talked about. Major League player throws a baseball at a fans’ head and nothing? Just odd.

Anyway, it's fair to note that Morgan denies any wrongdoing and has entered an appeal.

[h/t to HardballTalk]

As you may have heard, everyone's favorite Panamanian catcher was honored with his own bobblehead last night. Foremost, I have to say that this is one of the cooler bobbleheads in my collection. Between him being down in a plate-blocking stance and the fact it comes with a removable mask, I'm in love with this thing. Certainly cooler than quasi-racist lawn gnomes or any typical mid-swing batting bobble.

Clearly I was not the only one who thought this. Everyone loves Carlos Ruiz. That was evidenced by A) THE LARGEST CROWD OF THE SEASON and B) the prison-like bartering from some the Citizen's Bank Park employees. While paying for my price-inflated cheesesteak, the Tony Luke’s girl handing out the trays of food quietly leaned in and asked each patron the same question. “Trade your bobblehead for a free steak?” At first I thought she was joking. After realizing she was completely serious, I was just caught off guard. She looked seriously upset when I declined. No one I went to the game with accepted the trade, nor did I see anyone else in line make the swap. That would basically be placing a value of $8.50 on your bobblehead. Not worth it in my opinion, but you can't blame the employees for trying to get some Chooch. I'm sure some extra hungry fatass took a whiff of the whiz and made the rash, heat-of-the-moment steakswap.

But as we tweeted last night, and was pointed out by TWW friend Eric, this may be the most handsome bobblehead of all time. I mean just look at those deep brown eyes, the chiseled features, and his stoic ceramic determination! It's like they modeled Ruiz after a young Antonio Banderas . TOO SEXY MY FRIEND!

Or maybe he just looks like a generic Italian guy. One or the other. Either way: great bobble, Carlos. No homo.

Yeaaaa I guess all that oil money still can't buy your kids Little League wins! Jersey showin' the Middle East how to smack some Ding Dong Kabooms!

In other news, Little League Baseball is for 13 year-olds and pedophiles. TheWizWit OUT.

Rookie first-round pick and our defensive Lord and Savior Brandon Graham has officially moved past Juqua "I love weed" Parker on the depth chart for the starting LE spot. It was only a matter of time, but Graham sped up the process by recording three tackles (two for loss) and a sack against the Bengals last week.

Go get 'em baby Elvis.

My excuses for talking like a "mom" to airlines and passengers.

OK, so I am a mom, four times over actually, so that puts my recent comments on Portland's KPAM radio show in perspective.

This ongoing dispute between airlines and their customers sounds familiar, too familiar, like the sound of siblings fighting. What I don't hear is the sound of either side trying to understand the position of the other.

You can hear the entire show this weekend here, but in summary,  here's a common-sense mother's approach to remedying the problem.

Passengers: You first.

You board an airplane that will take you in hours to places that used to require weeks or even months to access. On this journey you and your possessions will be protected from the elements, you will be housed in relative comfort, a trained professional will take care of your immediate needs and protect you in an emergency. But that emergency is extremely unlikely to happen because - don't stop me even though I know you have heard this before - commercial air travel is exceedingly safe.

You'll be able to get where you want to go day or night, any season with only the most extreme weather conditions interfering with your plans. In short, commercial aviation gives you safe, convenient, access to the world.

This is a blessing.

Yes, a lot of the bells and whistles are gone, you're going to pay to check your bags, your snack, your pillow, even your place in the line to board the airplane. Yes, the flight crew may be grumpy, and your fellow passengers grumpier. But here's the fact, oil prices have quadrupled over the past quarter century, while the price you will pay to get on that plane is just about the same, in some cases less. How do you think the airlines make that happen?

Airlines: Your turn.

I've seen this quarter's revenue numbers. Many of you are back in the black. Now that there's a little financial wiggle room, I'm going to suggest where you would be well advised to throw a little cash.

You spend millions on creative marketing slogans, producing delightful advertisements to convince your customers that your skies are friendlier than the competition's. How about a clever campaign that explains to airline passengers how cut-rate fares affect the rest of the operation? The vast majority of us are reasonable and understanding. Speak to your customers. And while you're at it, speak to your employees, too. Then listen. That goes a long way.

Southwest Airlines has more than one million followers on Twitter. Last year, Alaska Airlines invited aviation geeks to visit the airline in Seattle and tour its flight simulator.  These airlines are working to bridge the gap. Need I point out the difference between these efforts and the kind of behavior that creates You Tube heroes like Dave Carroll of United Breaks Guitars fame?

There are a number of factors that are turning the relationship between airlines and passengers rancid and just as many ways to turn the ship around. It will take time and it will take commitment.

But in this mom's opinion, the only alternative to working this out between yourselves is outside interference. It won't be a sensible, forced time-out until you're ready to make up, either. No, it will be in the form of new laws emanating from Washington.

If  past is prologue, these laws will certainly make the situation more complex and more expensive, but they are unlikely to make it one whit more pleasant for passengers or airlines to fly.

(By American Zen’s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington.” - Erstwhile alternate historian Newt Gingrich in opposing the Cordoba Community Center on Fox

In a paraphrase of the old bromide against the Irish, it can be said that God invented Koolaid to prevent Americans from running the world for too long.

When people of other countries put their lives on the line in the act of defending their democracies and addressing real life or death issues, about the most I can expect of my fellow Americans is to color their Twitter avatars green and change their time zone to Tehran’s. At the end of the day, however, we find ourselves on the couch with a Red Bull in one hand and the remote in the other and tuning in to Fox “News” and ensuring that Rupert’s funhouse mirror dimension remains the highest-rated cable channel. And people wonder why I criticize my country so much.

Let me impress upon you one inescapable, incontrovertible, ineluctable fact: We are simply the stupidest and most willfully ignorant nation on earth. We’re the world’s biggest racial, national and religious melting pot yet the most bigoted. As Maureen Dowd reminded us yesterday, we panic in herds yet come to our senses, if we ever do, one at a time. Our eyes snap open like a doll’s when we’re alarmed yet when we awake from one soporific or another, we need to rub those eyes for a few minutes. Stupidity and ignorance has a much longer half life than truth and the facts. If stupidity was made of hydrogen and oxygen, our country would look like New Orleans the day after Katrina. And if racial or religious bigotry was gold, there’d be a rush of grubby Republican prospectors every year or so.

And need we look any farther than the biggest news story of the day, the “controversial” “mosque” at “Ground Zero” for a glimpse of how stupid we are? If you throw enough money for ink and pixels to convince an entire nation of something, even one as rich in colleges and universities as ours, you will sway public opinion at least temporarily. When the media blitz subsides, people slowly, very slowly, come to their senses. We see it with every election cycle because we depend on people to tell us what to think and for whom to vote as well as what buy, eat, drink and even how to fornicate. It’s hard to believe but it seems almost as many Americans are as ignorant as to what’s going on at Park51 as they are of Area 51.

Frank Rich also reminded us yesterday of the wildly vacillating poll numbers regarding the very religion of our president. A recent Pew poll showed that 18% of us still persist in believing that President Obama is Muslim, a number that was as low as 11% at his inauguration (long after McCain and RNC money stopped telling us what to think). Barely over a third of us know that Obama is Christian, down from nearly half in March '09. And the day after Pew published its results, Franklin Graham, who should never be put on television even to pitch juicers on QVC, told John King that Obama is both and "born a Muslim." This is not coincidental because it’s directly tied to the chief executive coming out two Fridays ago to support as he should’ve the Cordoba Community Center two blocks from Ground Zero.

The wingnut response was wearisomely predictable: “Well, if Obama’s all for it, should that surprise you? He is, after all, a refugee from a madrassa and a terrorist-coddling Muslim who wasn’t even born here.” Obama is Christian, is making progress on multiple fronts in the battle against terrorists and was born in the US. But the more stubborn and durable a lie is, the more it begins to resemble a truism because in this country, seniority equals legitimacy.

After we’d been pelted by catapulted propaganda, invading Iraq also seemed like a good idea as did Afghanistan a year and a half before that. Yet 31% of us still think we belong in Iraq and 38% of us feel the same way about Afghanistan despite trillions being thrown into these twin meat grinders that have produced hundreds of thousands of corpses, no real infrastructure providing even basic services to either nation, two corrupt Three Stooges parodies of democracy and no discernible enhancement of our national security.

But these shrill, strident Republican hate merchants like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich, without realizing it, find themselves in an absurd position: Smearing the name, character and allegiances of the same president who did exactly what they wanted him to do, which is to escalate the war in Afghanistan (and maintaining our crusade on Islam) and keep it going for years. Who cares that, after nearly a decade of trying, we can’t chase from one country a region-specific rump terrorist organization like the Taliban much less a global terrorist network like al Qaeda?

In the inevitable response to the outrage over Gingrich’s insanely stupid comments on Fox, he said in an email (emphasis mine), “Americans must learn to tell the truth about radical Islamists while being supportive of and inclusive of moderate Muslims who live in the modern world, respect women’s rights, reject medieval punishment and defend American laws and the American Constitution.”

One can surmise that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the community center’s driving force, isn’t included in Newt’s short list of “moderate Muslims who live in the modern world”, even if this particular one has helped bridge the gap between Islam and Christianity and Judaism for both Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet what else can one expect from someone so hypocritical and insensitive to others that even while he screamed for impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair he was diddling his own (younger) aide while his wife was recuperating in a cancer ward? Just once I’d like to see anyone, anyone publicly challenge any of these Republican organ grinders and their 100,000,000 Capucin monkeys to unpack their arguments just to prove there isn’t enough in there to fill a change purse.

And, as Frank Rich points out, Afghanistan’s precisely what the “controversy” is all about: It’s not the so-called mosque at Ground Zero that’s the issue to them: It’s the one-two punch of Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange throwing the moral purity and efficacy of Afghanistan into a harsh light. We got back at Hastings for his article on McChrystal by refusing to embed him with the troops (his Republican critics should at least give the man props for wanting to go to Iraq, which is more than we can say for most of them). We got back at Julian Assange by hounding him out of America all the way to Sweden and calling him a rapist in a Rovian whisper campaign.

What is this, high school where we spread rumors about our petty rivals being homosexuals and scrawl on bathroom stalls, “For great head, call 555-…”?

But we’ll always believe the sensational over the factual no matter how disingenuous or ill-sourced it is as long as it appears to have a point, especially one that pushes an emotional panic button. In this case, the point is, “Muslims knocked down our big buildings now ten years later they want to cockwand about it and dance in our end zone by putting up a mosque in the deepest part of Ground Zero.” That would be like us nuking Mecca or Medina and erecting a 100 story flaming cross in the middle of either. Ask the Saudis how they’d feel about that.

(As a personal sidebar, it’s notable that not one person of any consequence has publicly said, “Even if the Cordoba Center was put in the middle of Ground Zero, so what?”)

And the anti-Islamic rhetoric emanating from Fox sound stages is so amplified it would be easy for Muslim and Arab countries to mistake that for national consensus and to react accordingly. Indeed, to anyone outside the US following our news, they’d most immediately read about California’s Proposition 8, Arizona’s SB 1070 and the bipartisan nation-wide hysteria beginning in the seat of our government over a proposed Muslim community center and come to the same conclusion that we in the reality-based community have: That we are still very much a nation of homophobic, xenophobic, white Christian fascists. This is the hopey changey thingie Sarah Palin was so scared about?

Those of us who actually graduated kindergarten know that there’s no mosque in the proposed Cordoba Community Center but a small prayer room, it’s going to be two blocks from Ground Zero and within the same perimeter are places that are more objectionable yet equally legitimate such as the New York Doll’s Gentleman’s Club (a strip joint, to the poor and middle class) pictured above. Putting up the Cordoba Center would facilitate the creation of a much-needed private pre-school for children of all faiths. Plus, its two block proximity could even be close enough to begin to heal the widening divide between Muslims and our nation’s other faiths and denominations, a schism that was perfectly delineated by the nine year-old gaping hole where the Twin Towers had once stood.

Conveniently not mentioned is jailbird Bernie Kerik’s little love shack overlooking the devastation, all but 12 Republican congressmen voting against aid to 9/11 rescue workers, George W. Bush’s casual dismissal of hard, specific and prescient intelligence warning him of the attacks to come or the militant, crusading Christian evangelizing of our military in direct contradiction to the Constitution so beloved of Gingrich and with belligerent disrespect to other religions and the choice of none.

Rich is right: If McCain was in office, the right wing would be just as silent about the Cordoba Community Center as it was in the first five months after news about it broke. But now that we have a guy with a Muslim/African-sounding name in the Oval Office, it’s an issue when the president was forced to elevate a neighborhood matter to a national one in an effort to reassert some common sense in our immature, stupid country.

And we need at all times a president who will honor in both word and deed the laws and principles that distinguish us as a country, not one who has to waste his valuable time reminding us what those laws and principles are.

It's going to blow your mind when you find out who and what it really is. And no, it's not the Photon Wave Orchestra's "Echoes Across the Astral Wastelands" sped up or Vangelis on the Bladerunner soundtrack.

It's Justin Bieber's "U Smile" slowed down 800% so now it's a 35 1/2 minute, New Age epic. I wonder what else we could (re)discover if we were to do this to the millions of songs that have been written since the dawn of mankind?

The answer and video of the Stewart Bradley hit after the jump. With an UPDATE!

SO...quit crying.  TheWizWit will always love ya Chad but don't complain about hits...it's football.

In other news the Eagles got bullied by a much more aggressive and physical Bengals team in their first preseason loss, 22-9. Video of the Stewart Bradley hit below.






UPDATE: Chad's a good sport.

main photo courtesy of Getty Images

Blogwhoring. You do it, I do it, we all do it. What have you been up to, Big Boy?

---

Jill Hussein at Brilliant at Breakfast pretty much encapsulates the news story to which she links in three pithy words. I have another dimension to add: How come more of us in the reality-based community didn't also warn aloud that hysterical wingnut opposition to the Cordoba Center near Ground Zero could be used as a recruitment tool for al Qaida?

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Towleroad provides us with a video of the day The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur covered the desk on The Ed Show and had Rep. Alan Grayson. The topic of discussion was the GOP being caught with its flaming pants down around their ankles and not having a plan for unemployment and lack of health care and trying to manufacture relevance by hoarsely screaming about the abovementioned Muslim center near Ground Zero. And, once again, Grayson is right: Fox is largely to blame for this in giving these Republican lunatics a million dollar megaphone. He calls Fox "Monty Python's Lying Circus."

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The Rude Pundit gives a pretty bleak picture of the unemployment problem in this country that the GOP is trying its damnedest to pretend doesn't exist or isn't worth addressing. People with four year degrees showing up by the hundreds at McDonalds' out west and fighting for minimum wage jobs at 20 hours a week. Pretty soon, job interviews will be like the scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker snaps a pool cue in half, throws one half on the ground and says, "Let's have tryouts. Hurry up."

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What else is there to say about a guy who doesn’t discover that he’s bisexual until well into middle age, after he’s lost a lot of his hair and virtually all of his looks?

Consider this my coming out. I’m bisexual. There, it’s out. I said it. That closet was getting awfully claustrophobic. The only good thing about the closet is that you can only walk out of them, not in them.

For years, I’ve been wanting to tell you guys this but have been afraid to on account of certain former acquaintances here in town that would turn it into fun fodder (and for those of you ready to post homophobic comments, save your energy: They’re moderated and I will not tolerate anything that slurs the LGBT community.).

But then I realized that I shouldn’t let small-minded people dictate the depth, width and breadth of my self-expression, the yaw, pitch and roll of my thought. Like everyone else, I have no wish to be defined strictly by my sexual identity. But for years, I’ve been struggling with my emerging bisexuality and my desire to tell you guys this. I want to put it out there and then walk away from it and move on. It’s no different from declaring my liberalism or love for animals.

Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that when I first got an inkling of my real sexual identity, I was in even more of an uncomfortable spot than I’m now in. One person in particular would’ve been absolutely crushed and it would’ve been a devastating déjà vu. Up until a few years ago, when I first found out I was attracted to other guys, no one would’ve been prepared for such a bombshell. For the first 45, 46 years of my life, I was a flaming hetero who spent hours a day thinking about having sex with women. An ex girlfriend even uncharitably called me “a womanizer.”

And when I was actually worth looking at, I’d been approached several times by gay and bisexual men and I recoiled in horror. Whatever homophobia I had then is long since gone, trust me, but the thing I must remind myself is that only my emerging, increasingly powerful bisexual urges are responsible for that homophobia’s permanent retreat.

And when I say “bisexual urges”, I’m not talking about mere bicuriosity or just wondering “how the other half lives.” I’ve harbored romantic feelings for at least one guy in the recent past and that was the experience, brief and chaste as it was, that proved to me beyond a doubt that my soul craves more than just casual, anonymous gay sex. If I was single and I met my Mr. Right, you’re damned straight I’d take advantage of Massachusetts’ legal recognizance of gay marriage.

But Mrs. JP should not worry. Unlike some people I can name, I’m not the cheating sort. It’s really no different than being a pure heterosexual who’s still potentially capable of being attracted to the opposite sex but still knows enough not to touch.

But no one was more surprised by this than yours truly, who for the first four and a half decades of his life never felt the slightest attraction toward any male. There were no clues, no hints, no nothing to warn me about this looming crisis. After all, I still hold that in almost all cases, we’re born with our sexual identities. No one wakes up and decides to switch hit or simply turns gay or bi. It has nothing to do with morality aside from whatever conduct we adopt in our respective relationships and it’s not a lifestyle “choice” as the wingnuts are fond of insisting while we let them thusly frame the debate.

Yet my attraction to certain types of males was undeniable. Personally, I go for sweet, smart, younger, clean-shaven, long-haired guys with slender builds. But never in my callow, shamelessly heterosexual past was I ever in the slightest attracted to even those guys. I can’t understand it. It was like Kafka’s Metamorphosis as filmed by John Waters. And suddenly, I started seeing more and more gorgeous guys that made me turn my head. Some of them I saw only once and to this day, I still think about them.

Maybe it was my emerging liberal sensibilities, the ones that drove me to become a blogger, that helped put me in touch with my real sexuality. Taking up the good fights, especially gay rights, helped me to sharpen my self-awareness as well as my political and social acumen and IQ. It was a synergistic thing. The more outrages I saw being committed against the LGBT community such as Prop 8 and the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, the more it personally outraged me because I knew that I was now personally involved. Their struggle became mine. Gay and bisexual characters began tip toeing into my fiction, starting with American Zen.

Sadly, since I am in a committed, heterosexual and still very happy relationship, my urges will have to continue to be sublimated for the rest of my life (the age difference between me and the guys I go for will help keep me honest, too). But Mrs. JP has caught me looking at one stunningly gorgeous guy in particular and I’m not as subtle as I thought I was. As she said to me a couple of nights ago, “Women always know when their men are looking at others.” I’ll never know what it’s like to kiss a handsome guy on the mouth or to be loved by one. But then again, I’ll also never get to bungee jump off Mount Rushmore or get to spit in George W. Bush’s face. It’s just one more regret I’ll have to learn to live with.

So there. It’s out. I said it. I’m bisexual and while I’m not necessarily proud of my true sexual orientation (as George Carlin said, it’s like being proud of being 5’ 10”), it’s nonetheless part of who and what I am. I’m a huge believer in full disclosure. And as long as I was keeping this under wraps, I felt I was being dishonest with you readers, hypocritical toward the LGBT community that I passionately champion and, worst of all, to myself.

But to any young gay or bisexual person reading this, please heed my words and listen to me when I say how very, very important it is to be yourself. Don’t prove George Bernard Shaw’s axiom of youth being wasted on the young. If you know what you are, be what you are while you still have youth, health and beauty momentarily on your side. And in the grand scheme of things, they are momentary, as briefly-lived as a snowflake on a 33 degree day or a petal on a dogwood tree.

Be yourself and love as hard, as passionately, as unconditionally, as bravely and as honestly as you can while the whole world is still yours to take.

I'm going to caution you.  This IS NOT a list of rankings.  There are a ton of places in cyberspace where you can find a fantasy football rankings list.  Plus, rankings lists are  overrated.  Anyone with a working brainstem has at least a rough idea of where guys should be drafted.  If anything, the primary use of a rankings list is to cross the names off as guys come off the board during your draft.  They really just make sure you don't have a mental lapse and forget about a player still being available.

Fantasy leagues are won in these middle and late rounds.  Nobody should have a problem getting through the first few rounds of a draft - unless you took Matt Forte with your first pick last year, of course.  So sit back, relax, and let TheWizWit be responsible for your success - which I'm sure you'll then steal and claim to your friends you had this master plan along.

Now, I'm doing this for free so I'm going to keep things to a minimum of a few players per category.  If this is your first time, or you're super pathetic, feel free to email us and we'd be happy to draft a winner for you.  The number following each player's name is their current ADP (average draft position) in ESPN drafts.

Your average, mid-round sleepers. Guys that'll out-perform the position you'll draft them:

Dwayne Bowe - 62.5 - Bowe is a guy that got kind of got forgotten about on account of him being an asshole, Todd Haley being stubborn, and Matt Cassel not being very good. But, the talent is there and he comes at a bargain from where he was a year ago.

Justin Forsett - 65.1 - Even though the Seahawks don't seem very inclined to give him the starting job, he's really their best option - by far.

Santana Moss – 82.4 - I think a guy like Santana Moss will thrive now that he has a QB who can air the ball out. Moss is going to catch quite a few 30+ yard passes from McNabb and is going to have a sneaky good year.

Michael Bush - 102.5 - Bush is truly an underrated runner and not many people talk about him. His biggest competition was Justin Fargas who's in Denver now.

Arian Foster - 112.1 - Foster has been picking up steam and his ADP has gotten earlier with each passing week. His competition is Steve Slaton, who is a very dynamic back, but loves to fumble (which was the reason he saw the bench in second half of last season). Slaton even fumbled in the Texans pre-season opener.

Guys that someone will reach for on draft day:

Dez Bryant - A Cowboys fan, or that guy you draft with that loves picking rookies is going to take him a round or two earlier than he deserves. If he's on your team, I'm assuming you were that sucker.

Michael Crabtree - His QB is Alex Smith. Don’t get too antsy in the pantsy here.

Kevin Kolb - I think Kolb is going to have a good year, especially from a fantasy perspective. But if you're reading this blog, you'll be drafting with Eagles fans and one of your buddies will jump all over him a tad early.

Your Deeeeep Sleepers. The REM, you-don’t-realize-you’re-home-is-being-invaded-in-the-middle-of-the-night sleepers:

Matthew Stafford - 131.4 - Stafford may be the guy you draft as a backup QB, but end up wanting to start every week. The Lions defense is buttcheeks, so the offense will be forced to play from behind and throw a lot. He has the weapons to put up nice numbers with Calvin Johnson, Pettigrew, and Jahvid Best. And don’t forget - Stafford had a few great fantasy games as a rookie before getting injured.

Jacoby Jones - 145.8 - Kevin Walter is standing in his way of being a starter on a prolific offense. I really shouldn't have to explain to you how Jones is exponentially more athletic than Walter.

Lance Moore - 170.00 + - He was hurt last year, but the year before he had 79 catches for 928 yards and 10 TDs. As long as Brees is QBing that team, he's EASILY worth a pick in the last rounds of your draft.

Don’t Draft These People. They will kill your team and make Sunday’s un-enjoyable for you:

Hines Ward - 59.2 - There is no way in hell Ward duplicates last season. Or even really comes close to it. With Roethlisberger busy assaulting women for the first month of the season, the Steelers are going to 1.) run a ton and 2.) be forced to use Charlie Batch, Byron Leftwich, or Dennis Dixon. Neither is good for fantasy value. Ward is in his mid 30’s now and just isn’t worth a pick in the 5th round where he's currently going.

TJ Houshmandzadeh – 88.5 - You'll regret this. It's not 2007 and Matt Hasselbeck blows. Remember that.

Darren McFadden – 92.0 - Darren McFadden is a piece of shit. I know from experience. This guy has done a spectacular job of screwing me over in the past and I won't stand for it anymore. He will get hurt. He will frustrate you. You will finally cut him in week 12 and wonder why you're 5-6.

Bonus Sleepers! Because why the hell not?

Chris Cooley - 97.8 - McNabb has no problem dumping off to his tight end and Cooley is going to be a solid starting TE that you can get later in the draft.

Mike Wallace - 80.1 - No more Santonio Holmes. Wallace is the most talented receiver on the roster. Big Ben seemed to give him quite a few looks last year so stash him till Ben’s suspension is donezo.

Malcom Floyd – 134.2 - Vincent Jackson is still holding out. Even when he comes back, he still has to serve a 3 game suspension. The #2 receiver on the Chargers depth chart right now is some guy with the last name ‘Naanee’. So yeah, draft Floyd.

Trying to decide? Go with this guy over that guy:

Ryan Grant over Shonn Greene - Weird feeling I have. Don't have a real reason to give you, but just know I'm smarter than you. Although Shonn Greene is nasty in Madden which naturally makes me want to draft him, he’s not a good receiver and won’t really see the field in those situations.

Calvin Johnson over Reggie Wayne  - Don't get me wrong, Reggie Wayne will have a good year, but his production will begin to slowly taper at some point. Calvin Johnson has tremendous upside if he stays healthy. I'm fully expecting Calvin to out-produce Wayne this year.

Tony Romo/Phillip Rivers over Peyton Manning/Tom Brady  – Personally, I’m waiting an extra round to get one of the latter two guys than going with Manning or Brady in the second round. The total point difference between these four guys is going to be minimal.

Jamaal Charles over Rashard Mendenhall – I’m pretty high on Charles this year. He’s one of the most explosive backs in the league. Like top 5 explosive. Thomas Jones should be of no concern to you. Jones is old and won’t be very effective behind the Chiefs O-line. If you’re in a PPR, Charles should rocket up your personal rankings. Mendenhall should have a decent year when all said and done, but I don’t expect a ton of TD’s. He may have a rough start to the year with Ben out considering all 11 guys on defense will be keying in on him.

There you have it.  We've now given you a blueprint for a winning squad - and it didn't cost you an overpriced $9 magazine!  Gool luck on draft day, fella.  Don't fuck it up.

You back injury fakin', sloppy, lazy, wack rappin, Michael Phelps'in cornball loser.  If you ever get depressed in New York, never ever forget that an entire city hates your guts.

What do bored, attention-seeking millionaire athletes do when another team comes to town to play a meaningless game?

STORM THE GATE!!

Chris: glaring typo in that espn story btw
Chris: unless of course Percy Harvin's nickname around camp is now Migraine
Maurice: I say we post this before it becomes unfunnied by his death

UPDATE: Story was picked up by Deadspin...they gave credit to "six tipsters".

Aww snap best believe one of those was us.

These last 12 hours have been among the worst in my life. Last night, our new car died for good while we were 6 miles from home and I haven't the money to fix it with my major bills due in less than 2 weeks. This obviously puts a crimp on our job search and we may be looking at taking cabs to the store again. Even my black clouds have silver linings made of cheap tinfoil.

Then today, while my laptop was working (it's gotten some kind of a virus that slows things to a standstill), I got two form rejection letters from two different agencies for two different novels, queries sent so many months ago I'd forgotten about it.

Adding to this angst and pressure is a crisis in my sexual identity that I'm having and before you ask, No, it's not a typical midlife crisis that can be satisfied with a sports car and gold bling. It's a lot more complicated than that.

Just getting internet access requires walking into a cafe and buying overpriced coffee we can't afford to justify using the wifi. So I'm going to be hanging it up for a while and won't be posting much until I can get all this shit sorted out. I think it's important to once a while part the curtains and show the human side of the guy who runs Pottersville. You also deserve an explanation as to why I'm not posting anymore considering all the Paypal donations I've gotten over the last 16 months. But it's a struggle to come up with quality material to post every day especially when we lost our internet access at home (Comcast quoted us $60 a month just for internet). I just can't do it any more until something breaks and when something has to give, it's always going to be blogging.

Yes, that's a pic of John Madden asking for one of everything on the menu. I'm sure you're not surprised.

I love Goodell's face in this pic.  You can practically read his thoughts through his expression. "Maybe if I just hit this mammoth idiot with a blunt object I can shut him off.  But then how will I kill myself?  God, what the fuck am I doing at a TAKE OUT Chili's in bumblefuck Pennsylvania with John Madden??  I'M AN IMPORTANT MAN!"

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's website has a running blog complete with pics of his trip to each teams' training camp. What you may be surprised to see is how shitty his site actually is. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it's really sad. He's the Commissioner of the most prominent sporting league in the Americas. You’d think his shit would be a little better put together and presented. 

The stories from each camp visit are uneventful at best, and the Twitter feed really doesn't give anyone a reason to follow at all. And let's not even get into the awful Photoshop of Goodell at Lambeau Field in the site's banner. MS Paint would’ve been a much better choice.
 
So yeah, don't waste your time. This website doesn't really offer you anything in the way of an interesting perspective or entertainment whatsoever.  The only part of the site that was worth looking at were the back-to-back posts featuring Madden's feeding times. Here's a blurb:

"We're holding out hope for a Chili's," the driver of the Madden Cruiser called back to Roger Goodell.

                                               .......                                                      

 Madden was on the phone when we passed a sign showing Chili's at the next exit, but wasn't clear if was a sit-down or takeout version.  As Madden got off the phone, he said, "So what's the deal with Chili's?"" [Time for a pitstop]

We also learn in that story that John Madden loves tuna fish.  Enthralling.

If you still want more, you can see Madden getting ready to further raise his risk of heart disease amongst the Rest Stop truckers HERE.

Photos courtesy NTSB

It doesn’t take a professional to see what happened to the airplane carrying former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and his traveling companions earlier this month. TheDeHavilland DHC-3  flew into rising terrain. What happened is often not too difficult to answer. Why it happened is where it gets sticky.


My friend Chuck Allen is a private, instrument-rated pilot and avid outdoorsman, who flies as a passenger with some frequency in remote areas of Canada. It's an environment not unlike Alaska. So he has been following the few news accounts that detail the flight.

Chuck called me the other day wondering why, in what appeared to be difficult visibility conditions, the pilot chose to make the flight VFR rather than file a flight plan. Chuck was not surprised that an experienced pilot in an environment where ground transportation was not an alternative might decide to scud run from point A to point B. What did surprise him was that a pilot would do it with such a high-profile passenger and two children on board.

Hold that thought while I bring up what might seem to be an unrelated subject and trust me; I’ll get back to the Stevens crash.

Last week for the umpteenth time, the National Transportation Safety Board made a recommendation to the Federal Aviation Administration that it eliminate the practice of allowing lap children that is, infants and toddlers traveling in the laps of adults. The letter to the FAA said children under the age of 2 “should be afforded the same level of protection as all other persons”.

The safety board went on to say that a seat for every passenger should apply to commercial, charter and private flights and cited a particularly tragic crash in Montana in 2009 that killed 14 people on a plane designed to carry 10. It was clear from the accident scene that the four children aged 1 to 9 were not restrained in seats at the time of the crash.

Look, carrying extra passengers over the age of two is a violation of already existing FAA regulations, this I know. The message the NTSB seems to be making is that by getting fuzzy on just who is entitled to the extra safety afforded by seats and seat belts, the FAA has blurred a very real risk in the minds of air travelers.

“The fact that the FAA allows it, gives the impression to passengers that it’s safe,” Janice Brown told me when I called to tell her of the NTSB’s latest effort. Janice has a 20+ year investment in the issue. She was a flight attendant in 1989 and was working on United Airlines flight 232, known to all the world as the Sioux City disaster.  Since the crew was aware that landing the DC-10 without flight controls was going to be a controlled crash, passengers were given instructions prior to landing.

“We had at least four lap children,” Janice told me of the 298 people on the flight. “I picked up the microphone and gave them a head start, I told them, ‘Place the babies on the floor at this time.’  I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth!’ It sounds great in a classroom, but in a real life, I’m thinking, ‘how am I telling passengers to put their most precious possession on the floor?’ Held in the arms of their parents these children would most likely be tossed around the cabin on landing. Confining them to the floor space at their parents' feet was thought to provide some protection.

“They put them on the floor, but they couldn’t hold them there. That’s how two of them were lost.”

Since that time, Janice has been advocating a seat for every passenger, a campaign that has come close but not achieved success so many times over the years, that the NTSB recommendation letter outlining the history of the issue runs on for 12 pages.  But the important lesson of the effort is the one that Janice has learned so well.  The FAA’s power to make rules is a two-sided coin. The flip side to regulating something is that what is unregulated is - by default - deemed safe, even when it is not.

This brings me back to Alaska, a state with a dismal air safety record, a state that trumps all others in the number of pilots who have repeatedly crashed, according to a provocative study by Johns Hopkins University professor Susan Baker.  Yes, Alaska is unlike the lower 48 in the number of areas inaccessible by road. Yes, as a rule pilots in Alaska are proficient in flying in conditions that others would consider challenging. Yes, weather and terrain deal a one-two punch to a disproportionately large number of flights in Alaska.

“It’s a totally different world flying in Alaska than anywhere else,” my friend Chuck says, joining a chorus of others with the same opinion.

But in pushing the envelope on fishing trip charter flights, the message is that there’s an acceptable level of flexibility when it comes to flying in Alaska. That discretionary flying in circumstances unacceptable elsewhere is okay in Alaska.

Is it acceptable to the families of those killed with Senator Stevens –
Is it acceptable to the parents of children killed in Sioux City and Montana and elsewhere -
Is it acceptable to continue on without learning the lessons from these accidents?

This pic was part of the NBA's annual Rookie Photo Shoot – it’s the only one featuring Evan Turner that the NBA posted in their website slideshow. I would’ve liked to have seen some more of E.T. but the slideshow spreads around the love pretty evenly to all the rookies.

I’d give that pose a solid 7, I suppose. It’s nothing too spectacularly cool (like the style of photo shot for John Wall), but at least Turner didn’t embarrass himself.

Speaking of embarrass, quite a few rooks did an excellent job of doing just that...

Highlighted by Luke Babbitt's painfully weak photo.

This one is by far my favorite. It is downright turrible. Someone should’ve been a pal and brought the trampoline out for Mr. Babbitt here. As quickly as he got off the ground, he’s immediately plummeting back to earth. He’s coming NOWHERE CLOSE to the rim and decided to close his eyes in the last frame. Seriously Luke… what went through your mind that made you think this was a good idea? You had to have had an inkling you couldn’t pull this off.

Anyway, there’s a bunch of other photos from the event that are equally awkward and hilarious. I’m not going to go into them here – Trey Kerby of Ball Don’t Lie has put together a fantastic collection, complete with some funny commentary. You really need to go check out his post and see for yourself how un-athletic white guys look and how difficult it is for black guys to look angry when they’re really not.


[Ball Don't Lie - Scenes from the 2010 rookie photo shoot]