Left Coast Mailbag!

5:03 PM / Posted by Ryan / comments (0)

I know that you have all been waiting in breathless anticipation, so with just a little bit more ado allow me to present the first of many exciting and elucidating Left Coast Mailbags! In case you aren't familiar with the concept of a mailbag, I will clarify. A mailbag is when we here at LCB look through the clever, inane, humorous or absurd emails from our wide and diverse readership and select some few to reply to here on the blog. Don't feel bad if your email was not selected for publication, don't cry yourself to sleep at night or hoist yourself on your own petard, don't even spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what a petard is. Just get your game in order and up the level of your next email. I promise that we read them all and give careful consideration to those that make it to the page. That being the last of the ado,

Left Coast Biased,

I was watching my son's football game last week and the best player on the other team was named Michael Jordan. He was absolutely dominant on both sides of the ball, and he ended up scoring something like 7 touchdowns. Every time he touched the ball the announcer would yell "JORDAN!!" over the PA system and every single time I get this vision of Jordan (you know, the one you can refer to by one name, either of his names?) rising in the paint, or throwing one down and I start gritting my teeth. By the end of the game I can't even talk to my wife as we pile into the car. Worse, now I have to put up with the "Honey, what's wrong?" questions all the way home.Then to top it all off, this kid is clearly a big time talent. He is already talking to schools like Texas and Oregon. Which means nationally televised games and maybe the NFL. Isn't there something that can be done about this? Can we put a list of names together that can never be used by any parents of even moderate athleticism? The confusion is more than I can bear.

Jason, Albuquerque

LCB: Jason,

Here's our thought. There has to be a cumulative name recognition matrix which combines personal infamy with name obscurity. We'll call it the Jordan Corollary. We have to make it infamy instead of any kind of performance quality based standard to allow for Anna Kournikova. I'll set it at an 11 on the Jordan Corollary. So for example, Joe Johnson has two completely common names and is not one of the best players in the world and has never gotten in trouble with the law. On the name obscurity scale (the N.O. scale) he gets a 1 and for infamy maybe a 6 on a scale to 10, which brings him to a 7 overall. Still on the table for all you prospective parents. Now on the other hand Duante Culpepper hits a 9.5 on the N.O. scale and at least a 5 on the infamy scale, and that's a double whammy, because after the whole Love Boat incident it is out of the question for all prospective sea faring progenitors. Of course, you could always circumvent this rule the way the Brazilians do, who have known it intuitively for ages. Just add an 'o' or an 'inho' to the end of it. Michael Jordinho? Game on.




Dear Left Coast Biased,



I am pleased as punch that the CryBoys were soundly beaten by the Eagles on Sunday, thereby keeping them from the playoffs. And I felt confident that we would see a melt down of Owenian proportions. But we haven't yet...what gives? I was sure that we would see TO resorting to blaming everyone but himself while managing to call his QB's sexuality into question. But he and Romo were united in their blame of the play calling. And Wade Phillips wasn't fired! What can we expect of the soap opera that is TO?



Sincerely, Giddy in Philly



LCB: Dear Giddy,



We here at Biased feel your pain, and offer our sincere condolences at your parents choice of nomenclature. Look on the bright side: you won't ever cause our friend Jason more angst and anger. So you know, one of us personally put money on either a meltdown or a sob session in the post game interview. Alas, one of us has a slightly lighter wallet...all things being equal. But do not doubt, fair reader that you will yet see a resolution to this madness. This is our theory: for all the media warmongering Owens did this season, he is actually not bringing his full insanity to bear. Rather he is keeping it pent up, letting it build inside of him waiting until he is retired and doing Viagra and Crest tooth whitening commercials to let it all loose with a fury we haven't seen since OJ let the crazy out of the closet and into the Bronco. Mark our words: Owens will eventually pull an OJ.



Dear Left Coast,


So it appears that Brett the Jet will take a few weeks to make a decision about whether or not to return to the Jets. If he retires, which team will he play for next season?


Andre, Buffalo


LCB: Andre,

The answer to your question is so brilliant that I am not even going to address it for a minute. the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets ownership has stated that it would like to keep Brett as the Jets starting quarterback for next season, although how that will be affected by the recent decision by the rest of the Jets players to put a bag over distant and alienating Brett's head, kick him in the nuts and shove him in front of an entire caravan of Greyhound buses remains to be seen. But can we take a moment to get back to the Worst Game Ever Played? How did we stop talking about how atrocious the Cowboys are just because some guys who are never going to even visit the Hall of Fame are a little resentful of the Darwinian fact that living legends get treated differently than working stiffs? But there it is! Brett goes to Dallas and backs up Romo! They can havepostgame competitions over whose drawl is more sincere and take turns blowing important games late in the season. Romo takes all the indoor games, Brett gets all the outdoor games unless they are in Florida in which case they run the wildcat all day through Felix Jones. Throw in the necessary Ocho Cinco signing and is there any group that would be more entertaining? I would want to follow them around with a camera waiting for the inevitable moment after their 8-0 start when the wheels for off resulting in an Anchormanesque royal rumble in the parking lote pitting Brett and the disgeruntled recievers against the Romo/Witten coalition against the Jonses Felix and Adam with Terrance Newman that gets taken to a whole new level when Keyshawn and Michael Irving set aside thier personal differences and coke to come lay down the law. On the side of the scrum Bradie James beats up any fans who try to hold them accountable. The thing is, you can actually see this happening! How much would you pay to see this? Could we get it on pay per view? I'm excited just thinking about it.


Lost Coast Biased,

If there was a fantasy acting league where actors got points based on movie grosses, tv cameos, talk show appearances, and acting awards, or something along those lines, who would you draft first? You would have different slots for leading actor, supporting actor, tv actor, and maybe director? You could play Kiefer Sutherland in any slot and Eastwood too. Maybe Branjelina as one actor? It would be hard to balance the scoring sytsem out, but wouldn't this be a way to get the E! audience into fantasy sports?

Amy, New Jersey

LCB: Amy,


We like the idea of being able to field a team of Hayden Panetierre, Megan Fox, Britney Spears,
and Rachael Bilson while being competitive. Throw in points for magazine covers, include pictures in the weekly lineups and you have our full support.

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Less of a scrouge than I had hoped

11:06 PM / Posted by Ryan / comments (0)

I spent the week leading up to Christmas in a cabin with my family next to a frigid lake in Oklahoma. When I sat down to write this, I was planning on doing this whole bit about the frustrations of Christmas, replete with scriptural allusions and caustic bitterness. You know, almost precisely what you would expect from me. It started pretty easily. Most of the aspects of Christmas annoy me. 2000 years ago a guy who never bought anyone a present in the entirety his much debated and nevertheless world changing life was born in a shack, probably some time in August. On top of the inherent ludicrosity (yeah, I made that word up) of thee when and how we celebrate this day, the consumerism we have built into the day is pushing the holiday season deeper and deeper into the autumn weeks, which are brief enough in Arizona as it is. The evils of Christmas Creep have been much bemoaned elsewhere, but in case you happen to own a major media or consumer company and you haven't been paying attention: QUIT PUSHING CHRISTMAS ON US!!! The 12 days of Christmas have been more than enough for thousands of holidays before this year, we don't suddenly need 12 weeks of it now. Give us time to enjoy Halloween and Thanksgiving before settling into the materialist driven stress of the fat man. There are plenty of things about this holiday, and this whole season (see footnote for example) to go off about, but There was a moment that against all odds lightened my pervasive gloom and got me thinking about all the things that make this a special time of year.


We are visiting with my grandparents here, who are getting on in years, approaching that twilight where gets a bit more beautiful for its imminent paucity. Not quite there, but closer. We were all sitting around paying rapt attention to the clinic that I was holding on the bridge table when my grandmother's youngest son walked in to surprise her. She wasn't expecting to see him this season, and she broke into tears when he came through the door. This is the kind of moment that is truly at the heart of everything that we do this time of year. it is an excuse to allow ourselves to really delve into the depth of the emotion that we feel for our loved ones, with a reckless abandon that would be exhausting if we pursued it year round. A lot of this is accomplished by pushing the ever invasive world at large back to arms length and letting ourselves just dwell with a bit more awareness in the togetherness of family moments, whether it is the comfort with which we fight over taking pictures, the stories that we all laugh at for the hundredth time, or the moment when everyone decides to spontaneously throw mashed potatoes at the youngest sibling. The other, and much less significant way that we show this emotion is in the giving of gifts.


Gift giving is an incredibly powerful and vulnerable experience. I learned this the way kids learn anything: the hard way. I was in my early teens, and there was a cd that I was soooo excited about. For all of you who were not big on the mid 90's music scene, this was just around the time of Napster, before the onset of glorious iTunes, and I lived in the sticks so there was no high speed internet. The short of it is, you had to still go buy the actual disc to get your music. So imagine living in this pre-musical liberation world and there is a cd that you go around talking about for weeks, months even. Ok, enough with dodging the issue. It was the first NSync album. I watched the Disney concert, knew the dance moves, all the words. Yes, I still liked girls. In any case, I was hyped on this album and Christmas morning rolls around and my mother actually went to the tree and grabbed one of the presents and brought it to me, standing there watching as I opened it. Her face was glowing, eyes eager, the anticipation that only comes when you know that you are about to make one of the day of one of the dearest people in the world to you. I unwrapped that shiny blue case with Justin and JC and the boys smiling out at me and my mother caught her breath, waiting for the reaction... I looked up. "Mom, I bought this last week." Derisively I tossed the cd to the side and reached back into the pile. out of the corner of my eye I see my mother's face fall, tears welling up in her eyes, and she starts telling me that I can return it. This moment has never left my mind. Giving a gift, that is, trying to give a good gift, is a very vulnerable experience. And to be clear, a gift card is never a good gift. I am not saying that they are bad gifts, but a good gift is a painstaking, deliberate searching out for that thing, that moment which will not just be appreciated but be the key stone of a glorious arch of joy and utility. it says that I know you, intimately, and value who you are and what is meaningful to you. A gift treasured is an affirmation of that knowledge and a validation of the relationship. A gift spurned is is precisely the opposite. You cannot really give a good gift to someone until they begin to embrace the world around them and engage in things passionately, so to some people who roll through life as mere bystanders you can never give a good gift. This was my mother's first real effort to give me a good gift and my reaction had consequences that rolled down through the years. Since then I have made every effort to give as good of a gift as possible, to risk that moment of vulnerability, to tell all the people that I love how much they mean to me.


All of that to say, dig through the consumerism and gloss that is thrown over this opportunity. Give good gifts. Relish the loved ones in your life. Feel as much emotion as you can, and embrace it. Happy holidays.

-Written on the latest of the good gifts my mother still gives me.


Footnote:
Know your traditions. Do you know where the Christmas tree comes from? You know that little nativity scene with the snow and the tree and the cute little kid with all the animals. I was a shack in the summer in the middle of the desert! What snow? Have you ever seen pictures of Israel? Did you see any freaking pine trees? The evergreen come the Celtic/druidic tradition of keeping a fire lit throughout the longest night of the year, to bring the sun back out of the darkness. Some years were worse than others, less rain, poorer harvest, Caesar killed everybody. In those years they would tie captives or slaves onto the tree to appease whatever gods they might have offended. Human sacrifice gradually grew distasteful over the centuries, so instead of burning the slaves, they would tie little dolls to the tree and then burn it. Then they would just tie candles on the tree with the dolls to symbolize burning in effigy the slaves they no longer had. So as you look at your pretty tree with all its fancy lights and carefully crafted ornaments take a moment to reflect on the thousand year old ritual of pagan human sacrifice you are carrying on.


--


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Bigger the love, merrier the Christmas

8:41 AM / Posted by Ryan / comments (0)

We might as well have this out sooner rather than later. At some point in time during your perusal of this collection of our idyllic ramblings you will begin to wonder whether I am being serious. Did these stories really happen? Do I really believe these philosophies that I am espousing? Let me anticipate the question with this answer: I am always serious, especially when I am joking. For reasons that I don't delve into, as there are fears of delving to deep and awakening things better left to sleep, I have always had a more fluid relationship with the concept of truth than that with which most people are comfortable. Let us just say that for those of us who are more flexible when reaching that place where subjective perception intersects with objective reality sincerity is always very easy while honesty is somewhat more difficult to achieve. So to guide all our interactions heretofore let this be your rubric: if you think that I am joking then I likely firmly hold to what I am professing, and if I appear more earnest then the chances are good that I am having a laugh. That being said...

I have long been a fan of polygamy, both as a theory and a practice. I like the idea of having a larger relationship, of them being friends, of creating my own little fiefdom. I am a love the community of family and I want to have as much of it as I can. Polygamy (e.g., Warren Jeffs, Big Love, Mitt Romney) tends to get a bad rap, in my humble opinion (a phrase you are not supposed to use, because you are obviously the one writing; of course it is your opinion). We have so long operated under the assumption that polygamy is a dirty word and a dirtier concept that there aren't any rational arguments against it. The objections run the gamut from ad hominem to ad baculum without ever pausing in the realm of validity. Let's run through them:

......

Polygamy is pedophilia. True, some polygamists dip into the wine before it is fully aged. But these are the religious nut jobs who are equally as likely no ask everyone in their commune to chase a comet with them. No offense, Brigham. Polygamy isn't any more inherently oppressive to women than a monogamous male-female marriage. Should we abolish booze (again) because Tara Ried goes on nightly benders?
.....

If you legalize polygamy, it's a slippery slope, and next you'll have to legalize men marrying goats. Not really. Two (relatively) rational adult females who are capable of declaring yes or no do not equal one insensate and incoherent goat.

.....

Polygamy is an affront to God and the Bible. Perhaps. Depends which part of the Bible. In the Old Testament, you know- the part where it was unbelievably strict and judgmental, polygamy is accepted without a cross word. I read about a man after God's own heart who had eight wives, and his son holds the record with 700. All the New Testament says is that you can't be a deacon.

......


It's bad for the kids. The studies are vague. And actually, anthropologist Philip Kilbride says that polygamy would reduce the divorce rate and be better for kids. Given that most kids suffer from a lack of attention and absentee parentism, wouldn't more parents be better?

.....

There would be a single-man surplus. This is actually the most realistic and severe problem. The math is simple: The rich men will snap up several women. Bill Gates will rack up Solomon-like numbers, leaving the rest of us schmucks crying alone in our rooms. (This will be true even if polygamy is a two-way street, as it should be. Women should be allowed to marry multiple men. But most won't. DNA and testosterone say that men will be the ones who do most of the spouse collecting.) And yet...so what? Isn't that the point of the free market? Why should love be any different from business? It'd be good incentive for us other guys to start our own software mega company. Given the laws of evolutionary progression, aren't the more successful among us the ones we want breeding anyway?



If the government legally required that all men earn the same salary, that system would be described in a book called Das Kapital. And that's the marital system we're living under. Which isn't to say that I think a socialist society wouldn't be better. I'm just asking for a little internal consistency.

Polygamists of the world, throw off your chains.

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My name is Brandon Flowers--I mean David Bowie--I mean Brandon Flowers?

11:09 PM / Posted by Alan C. / comments (0)

Hey there kiddos. Remember where you were when you heard the refrain:

Somebody told me that you had a boyfriend
Who looked like a girlfriend
That I had in Februrary of last year
Its not confidential
I've got potential

I do. I was working at the campus bookstore. It came over the PA and I thought: Hey that's one damn catchy tune. Funny, dark, and rhythmic. I bought Hot Fuss after I heard the second single, Mr. Brightside (at least that's the order I heard them in, actual release order has little bearing on this post) I became an instant fan. Seriously did not leave my cd player for a long-ass time (no I did not, nor still yet have an ipod. don't ask) Ryan and I made this cd an essential part of our road trip to San Fran. That is of course until wet pavement and deft evasive driving by Ryan um--created?--the opportunity to drive a car with no cd player.

Aside: who the hell makes a vehicle with no cd player? GM that's who. No wonder that company is asking the government for an absurd amount of money. Hope they don't invest in audio technology.

Back to the point. Hot Fuss was--nay still is outstanding. Then something happened. And when I meet God I will make it a point to ask him: Who the F! gave Brandon Flowers a piano and a David Bowie box set for Christmas? Because if that's what Santa does with boys who are nice (read:make damn fine 1st albums) then I am opting out of that program right now. Somewhere along the line, during the writing of their follow-up Sam's Town, The Killers ditched the gritty guitar motif and Flowers made a back-handed attempt at a concept album. Please, unless you are in the musical ballpark of Pink Floyd, the Beatles, or the Who...don't try. Case in point: Coheed and Cambria. First two cds of the concept awesome. Next three were progressively less so.

Back to the Killers. Can the guys from Men in Black please use that silver wand, red light thingy and erase Sam's Town from our collective conscience? As a fan of the original Killers I can say with chest puffed out: their second cd sits at the bottom of a box in a closet. When I get hard up for cash I will probably sell it back. Too bad I can't just take the money from the Killers, because that would be poetic justice.

And now to the third cd Day and Age. I am not sure how I feel about this one yet, but it is truly apparent that Mr. Flowers busted out the trusty Bowie box set, listened to every damn song Bowie has ever written, and then took a vacation to Europe and spent time in numerous dance clubs. Europe is really behind the times with music (save England and Iceland, except Bjork.) Example: they really love Michael Jackson. We gave up on him shortly after Thriller stopped being bad-ass. Oh and when he bought the bones of the elephant man. Anyway, the point is that I am not sure "dancy" music is what original Killers fans are going to keep coming back for. There is only so many poorly constructed grammatical clauses like "Are we human or are we dancer" that any self-respecting music fan can take.

I am going to listen to Day and Age a few more times, skipping "Human" of course because after about a month radio has officially beaten the proverbial horse. Hopefully the cd will come around and by an act of God redeem itself. If not at least I learned my lesson after purchasing Sam's Town: I have a burned copy of Day and Age. --Como Out!

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Love, Misery, and Denial- The life of an Arizona Basketball Fan

10:38 AM / Posted by Ryan / comments (0)

Nobody has ever summed up being a sports fan better than the New Yorker's Roger Angell in his piece "Agincourt and After," in this passage about Carlton Fisk's famous home run in the 1975 World Series:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.


We care about sports. We care deeply and passionately. The society in which we live offers so little to attach ourselves to emotionally that we end have ended up swimming in materialism, as our possessions are the only way that we have left to identify ourselves. Not only does a sport offer an object for emotional investment where you can feel such great and immediate fluctuations, but it provides a community that is altogether absent in today’s world, a community that comes from sharing those emotional ties. No one else cares about the things that matter intensely to me. You don’t care about what I am reading, what my kid did at kindergarten today, or the terribly engaging minutiae of my job. No real conversations will ever be born out of those topics. You will listen politely wait, either to subject me to your own inanities or to make a hurried exit. And I wouldn’t blame you. Sports is a different topic. I can go up to someone in a Liverpool jersey anywhere on the planet and have a 3 hour conversation on the merits of Captain Fantastic and the impotence of Robbie Keane (20 million pounds?!?! Really?!?). I live in a relatively large town, and I can go up to almost anyone in the city and talk about the Arizona basketball team for hours, and at the end of it we have a relationship. I may not know his name but if I ever run into that hypothetical conversational foil again we will share a nod and feel better knowing yet again that we are not alone in the world. This is what sports give to us.

With that understanding, the deepest and greatest love of my life is the aforementioned Arizona Basketball team. I’m certain that I am entirely to blame for this allegiance. I grew up in an almost quaint little town on the Arizona/Mexico border in the 80’s. Arizona didn’t have a baseball team, I couldn’t support a team who wore purple, and take a moment to think about what the Cardinals have been like for the last 2 decades. Jake Plummer was a highlight. On top of being the only game in town, the Wildcats were good. I was awakening to sports consciousness in the late 80’s when Sean Elliott and Steve Kerr carried us into the national spotlight where we lived in comfort for the next 20 years. I can count on one hand the number of times that I didn’t think we could win a national championship. Being the UA point guard was practically synonymous with “future NBA All-Star”. When we rioted in ’97 after winning the title I went out in my yard and threw some rocks and lit a small pile of weeds on fire and screamed our triumph into the night. Quietly, so I didn’t upset my parent’s. In 2001 I forged a hatred for Duke so deeply entrenched that when my sister got a job there I almost didn’t talk to her, and settled for burning a Duke shirt in effigy.

The point is this. I love the UA basketball team the way I have loved few things in my life, and I want you to understand both the immensity of this affection and it’s impact on my life, my relationships and my community. I want you to understand it, so you can understand what these last few years of watching it fall apart have done to me. It is like having a brilliant and beautiful daughter, who you love more than anything in the world, who is the light of your life. She is good at everything she does, maybe not always as good of a student as she could be, but she is so pleasant in person that you overlook those little things. But then something happens. She goes off to school and you hear rumors that she is falling of the deep end. You don’t believe it because when she comes home she is still so bright and beautiful, but the grades are dropping a bit more each year and then BAM! It happens. She drops out of school and starts turning tricks for crack. You can’t really believe it until one day you are driving and you see her on the corner flagging a guy down. And to make matters worse your next door neighbor has a daughter that was always a little behind every curve there was, but you were always nice to her, because she was so far below your own daughter that it didn’t matter. But then she went off to school, blossomed into a Rhodes Scholar who married a doctor. It hurts so much. Every time you see a girl who is beautiful, funny, successful, you cry a little bit, because that what your daughter used to be. Then every time you see a girl hooking for crack, you cry more, because that’s what your daughter is! You are torn between trying to forget the past and all its glory, or ignoring the present and living in the past. Then our girl shows up for Christmas and she is cleaned up and gorgeous and she dazzles the whole company with her wit and charm and you start to think that maybe, maybe things aren’t as bad as you thought. Maybe there is hope for your little girl yet. For those of you who need it spelled out, the stroke/Lute going crazy was the drop out of school moment, ASU is the girl next door (or even UCLA. What a crappy block), losing to UAB on national television at home was seeing her on the corner, and last night’s victory over #4 Gonzaga was the brilliant holiday dinner. Now listen to me closely. The dinner is a lie. She isn’t your bright and beautiful girl anymore. She is a filthy crack whore who every now and again remembers what it is like to be incredible. You are in for a long and miserable decade, filled with weeping and the gnashing of teeth. You will see her out on the corner many more times than seeing her wash up and remember who she is.

This is my advice. Live in the past. Block out this painful reality and dwell on all the brilliance of the last twenty years. In fact, we need a dvd: Lute: The Glory Years. It will have interviews and player profiles on the college and NBA careers we have been witness to- Kerr, Elliott, Tolbert, Rooks, Mills, Stoudimire, Reeves, Bibby, Terry, Dickerson, Edgerson, Wright, Jefferson, Woods, Arenas, Frye, Iguodala, Gardner. Have games from all the great teams- ’88, ’94, ’97, ’99, ’01, ’03, ’05. Have a CGI representation of the Team That Didn’t Happen- Jennings, Bayless, Buddinger, Negedu/Horne, Hill. Show the entire ’97 tourney run. Show the three biggest heartbreaks, also- ’01 final (The Great Referee Robbery), the ’05 Illinois game (The End of an Era), and any of the any of the end of tournament losses in ’88, ’89, ’94, ’99, or ’03. Or the Santa Clara game. We need this dvd, to get us through the times to comes. Please, someone make this happen.

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america's drama team

9:45 AM / Posted by Alan C. / comments (0)

So are people really that surprised about the meltdown in dallas? I mean everyone with a pulse kind of expected this to happen eventually right? I think most people assumed that once the Cowboys started to struggle, once any receiver on that team caught more passes than TO, that the monster of all egos would rear its ugly, loud-mouthed head and initiate the beginning of the end. I am surprised it took this long. Thats the only shocking part for me.

But what I love about all of this is that ESPN keeps showing the clip of TO crying because people were saying bad things about "his quarterback" Tony Romo. If you haven't seen it you might be missing out on brilliant television work. Its not only ESPN's preferred lead-in for the continuing drama, its also filler. Meaning ESPN doesn't want you to forget, even for a moment, that TO is the biggest baby on the planet.

So apparently Romo and Witten are drawing up secret plays in order to exclude TO from the offense. What evidence does TO have of this? None. He tells the media that the QB/TE have secret meeting and secret plays designed to get Witten the ball. And then provides zero evidence to back up his claim. And isn't it at all interesting that this conspiracy only emerged after Keyshawn Johnson said on national tv that Romo seems to have more trust in Witten than in TO? Could Key have been the catalyst in this whole situation?

No. Terrell Owen's megalomaniacal mind latched on to 1 man's opinion and began to obsess, and then he became paranoid. Which led to delusional behavior. I am not a mental heath expert, but I think these are signs of serious mental disorder.

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obligatory title

11:40 PM / Posted by Alan C. / comments (0)

Alright, its time I entered the fray. First things effing last (name the movie), I agree with Ryan. About what? About most things, and usually not everything. We get along just fine that way.

He came to me with an idea I was sure to be on-board with before he fully explained the idea. Its usually how things are with us. Its how we ended up in San Francisco for New Year's in a car that wasn't ours. Its also how we stole a car the night we became instant friends. The two events are unrelated, yet very connected. So when approached with the idea of writing a blog about our random musings, I was obviously already penning ideas in my head.

So we will write about sports, our love of them, our biases, our frustrations with how the teams we root for routinely avoid any semblance of wanting to field a competitive roster. And we will write about how you Americans--yes, you elephants--don't understand the Beautiful Game. And this makes us angry and frustrated and sad all at once. I suppose Ryan will muse on the merits and virtues of Premier League Soccer, I will wax eloquent on Serie A, and AC Milan in specific.

But it won't all be about sports. Lovers of beer are we, and of good food and music. Occasionally we will tell you about great places to drink a pint, to catch a band, eat a brownie dessert known only as "the bomber".

I think thats all I have for now. Expect future blogs to be more amusing. That goes for both of us. Como Out!

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First things

6:40 PM / Posted by Ryan / comments (0)

I don’t know what to do with a blog, but quite a few people (some of whom I even respect) seem to think blogs are a good idea so I guess we'll give it a go. I don’t even know what a ‘blog’ is. I mean, I’m familiar with the concept, but how did we get here? So I looked it up. It’s short for weblog, and apparently it is just a journal, albiet with an audience and hyperlinks. Memoirs with the conceit of not being retrospective. Well, I’ve kept a journal for years so this shouldn’t be too difficult of a transition. Having stepped into this now, what exactly are the standards? Do we address you, the ever present reader, or are you the elephant in the room? Do we have to write daily? Do we need a theme? I am a huge fan of standards as they play nicely into my completely unfounded sense of elitism, but I look around the World Wide Web and it appears that there are none whatsoever. Looks like you elephants will have to indulge our flights of fancy as they swing o’er philosophical ranting, sports commentary, local cuisine, and random biographical nostalgia. The central theme will be the reflection of our intellectual meanderings and as such most of what ends up here will be our own opinions, some original, some colored more heavily by other’s thoughts and some ripped off wholesale, but go read Neal Stephenson’s Anathem for a fun little illustration of the vanity of original thought. Or the copyright to Days of War, Nights of Love. Or Ecclesiastes.

I am sure that no one is going to read this without having substantial personal exposure to us already, but on the off chance that someone is bored and stumbles across this by hitting the I Feel Lucky button, I guess I’ll start with a justification of our chosen name. First of all, this should be an imperative: if you are going to start a blog with a clever name, say, back in 2002, and then not post for the next 6 years DELETE THE BLOG. Or don't be foolish enough to post your home address unless you want some future blogger to come drag you into the street to physically vent some of the frustration of spending a half an hour trying to find some domain name that is appropriate and witty. To all of you, I hate you. That being said I don't want the chosen title of our blog to give the impression that this will be a bludgeoning of provincial sporting convictions. We will try to keep that to a mere smattering, at most. The name was chosen from our undivided affection for all things West Coast. The coast itself, and all accompanying beaches and subsequent recreational pursuits are more pleasant. The weather is nicer for longer. The people are prettier. Everything about this edge of the country is better. And that assertion is in no way related to the fact that my entire family moved back east and now I never get to see them.

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