A Hodge Podge of Potpouri
I've got alot of links today, so here goes:

Some unsurprising but nonetheless alarming news about infants and toddlers and how much time they spend watching TV, DVDs and playing on the computer and how much time they don't spend reading or being read to. I'm going to email this link to my mother as well. As you know, Lucas and Maggie each have a television in their room and have for a couple of years. I know I watched a lot of television as a child, but I also played three different sports all year until I was in sixth grade. Then I dropped football, picking it up again in 7th grade. Meanwhile I played basketball until 8th grade and baseball through at least the summer after my freshman year of High School. The point is, I was outside or engaged in activities other than television for a large part of my time as a youngster, and I still watched too much TV. Kids today watch even more television than I used to and do even less outside.

I've got three political links, all involving the Democratic nomination. Edwards (Some good stuff in here about what voters want out of candidates) campaign is faultering, but why. He's got money (or did, before he starting outspending what he was taking in), good looks and charm and is from the South. So why is he struggling? I think it's because he's vacuous and people can smell it on him...Sharpton went after Dean the other day, although his real target was Rep Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), who has offered his support to Dean. Sharpton called Dean anti-black. Donna Brazille, my new best friend since she pressured Carole Mosley Braun to jump in this race in order to siphon off votes from Sharpton, called Sharpton's comments ridiculous. In my opinion, this can only help Dean...David Broder chided the New York Times today for congratulating a couple of candidates for eschewing New Hampshire and Iowa. He called the Times "snobbish."

OBLIGATORY REDSKINS LINK OF THE DAY
Sally Jenkins has a few choice words for the Danny regarding how you run a professional football team. Also, note that the Skins, maybe the team with the worst chemistry and cohesion in all of professional football, are going after a former Oakland Raiders player who even the Raiders found morally repugnant. Nice.

Until next time kids,
Tony

Rod Roddy, come on up...to heaven

Rod Roddy, dead today at age 66

Rod Roddy, the golden throat of television who served as announcer of such venerated game shows as Press Your Luck and The Price is Right, died today of complications from colon and breast cancer. Now we are faced with the task of finding someone who can wear his flashy outfits and sequined blazers now that he is not of this world. My nominee: Andy Dick.

Peace & Love,
Tony

Is Sammy Baugh Dead?
You might recognize Norman Chad as a sometimes guest-host on PTI and as Gabe Kaplan's ESPN partner at televised Poker games, but he's also a sports columnist for the Washington Post. He usually writes about sports as he sees it from his couch or barstool. This week he tackles a newly emerging foe, the fantasy football freak. I've had my suspicions about this crowd for sometime, but I'm now convinced that my worst suspicions are true. They will not only ruin football but sports and eventually, all of society.

I know this won't be my last post about the Redskins' quarterback troubles, but here goes. Danny Wuerfel's not coming. He's passed on the offer and the Skins will now promote Hamden to the 53-man roster. So, to recap: One quarterback, the franchise, who's been sacked more than any other quarterback in the league and hasn't finished a game in two weeks. Two quarterbacks who have never thrown a pass in an NFL game. You know, the Broncos have been looking at Jeff George of late. If they don't take him, why not?

Peace & Love,
Tony

And The Leon Award Goes To...
Keyshawn! Props to Gruden for handling that turd the right way:
Passes thrown to Keyshawn - 3
Passes thrown to Keenan McCardell - 11
Zap!

It Could Have Been Worse

Hey Draper, the last time Marc Bulger was in Pittsburgh, he threw for 409 yards and 6 TDs, beating Pitt 52-14. And just for the record, this is not the Steelers' worst start ever - only their worst since '88, when they went 1-6 on their way to a 5-11 season.

Marc

Mmm, that's good bloggin'
Good to hear that TMQ will return at some point. Easterbrooke seems to be taking this whole thing pretty hard, which I guess you've got to expect.

Novak and Broder on Meet the Press this Sunday!

I'm going to try to keep the Redskins talk brief, before I become a single-issue blogger. The Skins are apparently having trouble getting Wuerfel and are now faced with only two quarterbacks (one who might be dead before the season's over and one who has never thrown a pass in an NFL game) as well as a third on their practice squad who may have to get promoted to the actual roster soon (Gilbran something from Indiana)...Here's an interesting nugget from California. San Fransico Mayor Willie Brown left rival city supervisor in charge for a day and teh guy appointed people to government positions and had them secretly sworn in. You'd think this was crazy, but seeing as it is in California it doesn't really seem that odd...In case anyone's interested, Google is going public and will be having an IPO in the near future. Seems like a good stock to get into, and I suggest we all pool our resources and invest...

Peace & Love,
Tony

TMQ Update
Gregg Easterbrook addresses the TMQ situation at Football Outsiders, a pretty interesting site in its own right. Easterbrook says TMQ will be back soon somewhere.

Marc

Dead-Skins Part Deux

THIS IS THE 100TH BLOG ENTRY

I know I've ranted about this before, but I can't help myself. The Redskins seem to be going out of their way to piss me off. Now Spurrier says that he's going to get back to his style of football. Long pass plays and plenty of them. Attn Steve Spurrier: YOU DO NOT HAVE AN OFFENSIVE LINE. Ramsey is going to be murdered, Wuerful will be brought in as a number three, but will be the starting quarterback (due to Tim Hasselback's lack of experience) probably before Thanksgiving. I am really in a state of shock. Spurrier said that he's going to play his game plan and if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. He's not going to focus on establishing a ground game. You know, they call it coneventional wisdom for a reason. This team needs to be about more than Steve Spurrier's ego. The most important thing has to be winning and not testing the Spurrier philosophy on the NFL. The Redskins used to be a quality franchise. We've won three Super Bowls. Let him experiement in Seattle. Once again, like always, I'm so sick of this shit.

BJ Rudell, who was an organizer in the Southwest part of New Hampshire for Bill Bradley and whom Liz and I worked with while we were there, has written and published a book, Only in New Hampshire. Liz and I, as well as Holly and a girl named Sarah are all featured prominenetly in the book. Now my antics will be saved for posterity.

Peace & Love,
Tony

BREAKING NEWS
Gregg Easterbrook has been sacked from his gig at TMQ. He said some rather bizzare things about Disney related executives in a New Republic Blog, and has since been released of his duties at ESPN.com. I think He basically accused them of not being good Jews for supporting Tarrentino's new violent movie.
Tony

MPRC
I Have another meeting with MPRC next week. Hooray. I am one of their strongest candidates and they want me to see the day to day operations. Holy fucking shit.

Draper

Dead-Skins
I can't believe it. My mother was right. Kinda. She said that the Redskins would get another quarterback after Ramsey went down on Sunday, and they did just that. In order to shake up the team and get them out of this funk, they've cut Rob Johnson and signed Tim Hasselback. Let me repeat that. THEY CUT ROB JOHNSON. That's the answer? Are you fucking kidding me? There are a variety of things wrong with this course of action, but the most glaring being: How in the fuck is that suppossed to help? Further, Johnson has NFL experience and has actually been a starting quarterback in this league. Hasselback, brother of Seattle Hasselbeck, has never thrown a pass in a regulation NFL game. NEVER. Truth be told, I think it's the first step in Spurrier's plan to resign Danny Wuerfle. Spurier made it clear when Wuerfle was cut that he would consider resigning him if the need arose during the season. This is a bad football team, with bad owners, bad coaches and players with shitty attitudes. On Sunday they looked like they'd never seen each other before. I hope this is Spurrier's last season, cause i don't know how much more of this I can take. It's not that he's losing. I can deal with that. (Gibbs went 8-8 his first year, eventually won 3 Super Bowls; Schottenheimer also went 8-8 his first year). It's that Spurrier and Snyder make every wrong decision available to them. They've taken a franchise that belongs in the pantheon of professional football and made them look like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The Democrats are up to thier nutty tricks again. Because the field is so cluttered and the calender is so compressed, three candidates are employing a strategy that forgoes New Hampshire and Iowa and focuses on primaries on February 3 in Arizona, Oklahoma, South Carolina and maybe a couple of other places. They seem to think that this cycle is somehow outside of history. No candidate has ever been successful by employing this not-so-new-ask-Al-Gore-circa-1988 strategy.

As for Draper's poem quandry, my best advice to you is to either become an 11 year old cripple with a heartsong of gold, or get in your time machine, go back to the 1880s and speak with someone who actually gives a fuck about poetry.

Peace and Love,
Tony

pomes, hon
How do I go about getting out a book of verse? I have a collection well over 100, 'bout half for public consumption. Find this out. Waste time at work. Enable my words.

Draper

Bad News for Derailers Fans
I've checked their website and it looks like they don't play outside of Texas until next April, and that show is in North Carolina. I guess i'm just going to have to be satisfied with soft candelight, earphones and pleasuring myself until I get a chance to hear them live. OR, we could all take a trip to Texas!...This Sunday I will make my triumphant return to the Drap-a-torium for football. I borrowed my brothers John Madden cookbook in order to prepare an approripate feast, but all the recipes seem complicated, so they may have to wait until the Super Bowl...
A Canadian Thanksgiving Haiku
President J.K. Polk
54, 40 or fight
Ham would be ham.

Viva la Butt-ass!
Tony

You Can't Have A Police State Without State Police
Heads-up to Shawn Sprague: I was merging onto Route 10 South last week and got pulled over for "unsafe lane change" and following too closely. Officer Friendly explained that he gave me two tickets so that I "would have something to bargain with". Thanks.

Marc

Start Your Tomorrow Today
Hey Draper, here's a job for you. It's not psychology, but it involves statistics and SPSS.

Marc

Spinning Plates update...
past the 50, 000 word mark.

We're into parents and pain and sorrow and all the good stuff in books.

It's all there...harumph

A taste:

Both my parents, well, it was never good with them and their brains. They have been forever sabotaged by that one illness that is like a vice, squeezing and warping reality forever. They have schizophrenia. It's ok. Really, I am just glad that I don't. But, it made for life as a son, it made it fucking weird. Never believing, never taking the side of blood. I knew, had to betray too many times my parents. They do not exist on the same plane as the rest of us. It has probably a lot to do with my detachment from the rest of the world. I don't know. Maybe that is just an excuse, a cop out. Oh my folks are nuts so I get a free pass. I don't know.

No, I do. That is all bullshit. No one ever wants to think about the horrible things that are so close to oneself. I ask nor accept any sympathy for having to grow to learn, to know from too early an age that my parents can not be trusted for much at all. It is an odd sensation though to listen to them, to hear the sad delusion spilling out, and to not be able to say ok, sure, I'm on your side.

The last time my mom was committed it was because of me. I had it done. I was in the ninth grade. I had my mom locked up in some sub standard state facility, to get better. Whatever the fuck that means. Usually, just more chemicals. You don't get over being crazy. You live with it, until you die. Then, it doesn't matter any fucking way.

It is a death sentence. But one much more cruel than cancer or AIDS, or any other fucking thing where you know you will die, sooner rather than later. Because in those moments of clarity, rare though they may be, when the meds are actually working, you can sit back and realize that no matter how functional you might be, you will never be the same as before, before that blade came down, before the synapses starting misfiring. All you have is that delusion world that you spend most of your time, and if lucky, family, and maybe friends. And to have your own son cast you to the wind. Well. You know.

So maybe I am guilty. Maybe I feel bad about the distance I keep from my parents. Or, or maybe I mad at them for corrupting me, for causing me to lead my life down this lonely path, this path where I hide from people for fear of learning that it may all turn out bad. Because the most important, the very first relationships with other people in this life were with people who are fucking insane.

Or maybe, none of this shit is true. Maybe, I'm just scared of ending up like them. Fifty years old and permanent cripples. Maybe I am terrified, maybe. My mind, my ability to think and live and work, and create, and be who I am dangles on a thread, a thread clinging to this unlikely 50/50 split of genes from two very smart crazy people. Maybe I am thankful, eternally, stupidly thankful that in the great ping pong ball mashup that is human genetics, that I have dodged the bullet.

Maybe I am sick to my inside to think that I could bring someone into this world that would be afflicted just like my parents. And if I cast them away, what would stop me from doing the same to my own progeny. I am sick to think that's even a possibility. Maybe, I just want to be alone, to stay alone forever, because that is safer than risking it. Safer to suffer alone than to bring another hopeful soul into this world only to have the curtains drawn at the dawn of their most hopeful time.
Maybe I am just tired and have been in the car too long.