Fantasy Football's Finest

It's no secret to the 7 people that know me that I am an avid fantasy football player. Like most good fantasy players, my team loyalties have been completely blurred and I have been known to cheer for Peyton Manning to throw touchdowns against my hometown team of Houston and for David Garrard to fracture his tailbone. It's a brutal world of nerdery that as a former football player, I am at least slightly ashamed to admit that I have completely bought into. That is until I won my league championship last year. A mix of 10% football knowledge, 80% luck, 6% others' lack of football knowledge, and 4% Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, lead me to the championship, mostly on the arm of Manning and the legs of late season juggernaut Ryan Grant. For those of you who don't know who Ryan Grant is... I'll just assume that's everyone, so never mind.

With the 'real' NFL draft behind us, it's already time to start formulating draft boards for the 2008 Fantasy Draft, and in light of that, I felt the need to address a few things.

In the coming months, the general 23-45 year old working male's productivity at work should be expected to dip by about 10-12%. This is probably good news for our sagging markets, because as we all learned in 11th grade Economics, Adam Smith's Invisible Hand guides our country better than Jim Cramer. Remember when he said not to sell Bear Stearns?

Also, with less time to focus on politics and current events, the working, white male vote, the one so elusive to presidential hopeful Barack Obama, will be less dramatically impacting, because white guys will have less time to youtube snippets of Jeremiah Wright sermons and may even forget to vote altogether. Let's be honest, election Tuesday is the day after the Redskins play at home on Monday Night Football (what a coincidence) but more guys will be worried about how Clinton Portis played, busy tallying their week 5 results, jockeying for free-agent pick-ups, and writing trash talking articles on their message boards than voting. In actuality, fantasy football could ultimately be the downfall of John McCain and Republican party. It definitely wasn't George W. Come on, we all know that.

I would also venture to say fantasy football builds camaraderie between men all over the nation, and even the world. I played my championship match against a guy in Sweden who I have never met who is a friend of a friend. He and I now have a healthy banter and if I'm ever in Helsingborg, I'm sure I'll have a great place to stay.

All in all, I would say fantasy football is good for our economy, our patriotism, and our global outlook. Here's to you, guy who decided to attribute a points system to every individual recordable offensive statistic in a sport where the main goal is to smash someone's head off. If you could take the most manly, violent sport in America and make it into a game for nerds, there's hope for all of us.

Ruse'd!

This past weekend marked the last that my best friend Alex would visit me in Austin before moving on to Indianapolis to start thwarting ignorance through his efforts as a high school math teacher with Teach for America. We've had some good laughs being roommates for nearly 6 years of our adult lives, and I will surely miss him being close, but I am very excited for him none the less.

The weekend wasn't much of a departure from our normal interactions, mostly filled with witless and inane banter about antics and nonsense, which I guess makes it that much more memorable.

One particularly memorable exchange came at dinner on Saturday night.

To quickly set the scene, we were at a Thai food restaurant with our friend Sarah and we were all deciding what to order. On the menu, they indicated how spicy an entree was by assigning it a number of asterisks, 1 meaning mildly spicy, 3 being the spiciest they offered. We set to order, and I went last.

me: Yes, can I have the Udon bowl, and can you make it two stars?
waiter: Absolutely.
sarah: (looks at menu) I thought you were ordering it, and then like saying, 'make it good'.
me: Oh, no, see they rate spiciness by stars.
alex: Yeah, that would have been better if you were like, 'I want this, but I want you to make it good. Don't make it shit like normal, make it good.

Food comes out. I take several bites.

me: Whew, this is really spicy. They must have made it like 4 stars instead of 2. They rused me man. I'm waiting for Aston to come out right now with the cameras and everything.
alex: Yeah, wouldn't that be great if they had a whole show that was like Punk'd except it was for really minor bullshit like that?
me: Yeah, and instead they would call it 'Ruse'd', and they would jump out with cameras in the most menial situations and everyone would start going crazy.
alex: it would actually be a lot more entertaining than the regular show.
me: yeah.

I'll miss you buddy. Good luck up there.