Deep Fried Junk

I admit to eating too much junk, but even I am mesmerized by the gastronomic horror show that is a convenience mart deli.

There is one next to my office, and sometimes if there is no time to drive into town I will go there for lunch. Luckily, they have sub sandwiches available, but the big sellers are in the fried food case, sweating under heat lamps, cooked to golden brown perfection. Egg rolls, something called taquitos, potatoes, corn dogs and so on, all deep fried and ready to go. Today I discovered they have macaroni-and-cheese nuggets. Seriously.

First you take macaroni-and-cheese, which is already one of the worst things you can possibly consume, and you roll it into balls, dip them in batter and deep fry the damn things. And then, supposedly, people eat them. Probably dipped in ranch dressing.

I'm sorry, are you feeling queasy? Me too, and believe me, I have eaten plenty of junk in my day. At this point I'm thinking that not even the fair can beat deep-fried macaroni-and-cheese nuggets in the Heart Attack Inducing Foods department. Well, unless they figure out a way to serve them on a stick.

I bought a bag of cashews and called it lunch.

Milestone

Way to go, Browns fans, for reaching the milestone 500,000th post in the forum. Special props go to BigBrownNICE for hitting the mark perfectly. Additional kudos for including the name of a permanently banned, yet daily venerated, former forum regular. Nice work (NICE). It's a shame the post has already been deleted, though I have no doubt it was copied for future reference and study.

Just Enough To Be Dangerous

OK, I admit it. I don't know nearly as much about football as I would like to think.

When it comes to my favorite sport, I know a lot more than some people and horrifyingly little compared to many others. Some of my friends say, using only rolled eyes and annoyed expressions, typically, "How do you know all this stuff? And more importantly, why?" Then I try to talk football with those who know their business and will often hear, "Are you an idiot? You need to LEAN football ASAHMFP." (Yes, I know it's misspelled. Long story.)

So I do try to learn more by reading and listening and watching, which is all great fun, but I'm still missing something and I've figured out what it is. I never played football, and that said, I don't think you can ever fully know and understand the game unless you have. It would be like reading a book on how some athlete trained for a marathon in comparison to actually training for one yourself. You can know a lot of facts but you can't really "feel" it.

I have seen in recent years that a growing number of girls are playing football. There are even womens flag football leagues in places around the country, and high school girls here and there will actually play on their school's team sometimes. But it's still extremely rare. So men, and more specifically, men who have played football, will always have the knowledge advantage here. It's OK. We who haven't been there just need to recognize this as fact and defer to the experts. Any dumbass can memorize and spout off a bunch of numbers, but if I want a true assessment of whether or not Jamal Lewis has "lost a step," I will ask someone who has made those kinds of steps themselves, and those are, by and large, men.

Of course, this also means that men need not offer their astute views on childbirth, menstruation or PMS. Fair is fair.

Hurry Up and Wait: How to Stay Busy During The Off Season

I read once that, for some of us, there are only two seasons in the year: Football Season and Waiting For Football Season. I've just about reached my breaking point. It's been two months since the Super Bowl and it's still two weeks until the NFL Draft. And once that is done, it will be another four months until the pre-season games kick off.

Sure, we get thrown a bone here and there: Free agency has provided a lot of excitement for the Cleveland Browns this year and fueled speculation that Phil Savage (a good ol' Alabama boy) will pull some draft day magic and get us back into an early round. College teams have played their spring games, which is a nice treat during this Time of Famine.

But ultimately, it's a whole lot of nothing until you finally get to the something. How does a football fan stay sane?

1. Watch NFL Network.
Right now I'm getting my fix on the Browns/Miami game from last season. Whoo hoo! Bodden just intercepted! Braylon Edwards just scored! The best thing about the replays on NFL Network is that you know how it ends. If you prefer to watch the glorious victories, you got 'em. If you like to mash the bruise that is a defeat (Cinci! Arggggh!) you can do that too.

2. Argue with other fans.
Come on over to the Browns forum on cleveland.com and get into the fray. Pick a side. Waffle. Taunt your fellow fans on their choice of quarterback. Sign up for Stoolers Troll Sniper Duty. And when that gets old you can wile away the time with occasional sexual innuendo, Monty Python quotes and further battles over how your musical taste is far more refined than that of the average fan.

3. Review your fan gear.
Has the guy on your jersey been traded to another team? If you're a Bengals fan, has he been incarcerated? If you're a Miami fan...do they still play football there? How about your caps collection? Time to replace it if there are too many salsa stains or if that "one more beer" during the last home game resulted in fall-induced broken bill syndrome. The off-season is a good time to build your fan wardrobe. Get yourself a golf shirt with a tasteful logo, and get yourself a T-shirt with a less-than-tasteful message to Art Modell (or the scourge of your choice).

4. Proselytize.
We all know those people who understand that football exists but have no further grasp of its importance in our world. Teach them a few terms. Buy them a shirt if you have to, but spread the gospel. And gents, most of these unwashed are women. If it's true that there is no greater zealot than a convert, you may manage to create yourself the perfect girlfriend: one who knows that when the game is on, all else takes secondary status. (Note: You are probably not likely to reform a wife.)

5. Plan Ahead.
Once the final season schedules are released (hopefully soon), you can get a jump start on your watching/attending/tailgating plans for the season. Get a whiteboard and map it out. Get your newly converted girlfriend to plan menus. Give the gameday party room a fresh coat of paint.

Just stay busy. It will get here eventually. Please.

What's in your iPod?

I was going through my iPod with my friend Steifon the other day. He's a DJ and has wildly eclectic taste in music. When you are African-American and DJ at a country station, your musical taste is broad to say the least. Many a time he's rolled up blaring Dixie Chicks on the stereo, only to follow it with P. Diddy or something equally incongruous.

So we were going through the Pod just to make sure I have a suitably good collection of music. I got points for all my Queen, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn, but I was deducted for style due to having too much Backstreet Boys, My Chemical Romance and Duran Duran. What can I say? While I certainly love the smoky and well-aged flavor of classic rock, I can still be enticed by the refined sugar that is pop.

In any case, I'm open to new sounds. I suppose the oddest thing in my collection is probably William Shatner's cover of the Pulp song "Common People," but I have lots of stuff, from tango and techno to Texas swing. I'm willing to add more stuff but not willing to take anything out. I feel about music the way I feel about movies and books: Yes, some things are vastly superior to others, but if you like it, enjoy it. And don't worry about it. I'm not sure this really is such a thing as good taste. There is such a thing as bad taste, for certain. If you like something, but know it is in bad taste (like a good poop joke), you may laugh but you know it's crass. Good taste is entirely a matter of opinion. I have friends who worship music all day long and think Dave Matthews is a musical god, and other friends who worship music all day long and think Dave Matthews is the anti-Christ. Who am I to say? I can't even play guitar. Still.

So what's in your iPod? I'm taking suggestions.

Hoops-A-Licious

Basketball is not my favorite sport. Not even my second favorite. But like many, I tend to get caught up in the whole March Madness thing. Mostly, I like to beat people in insignificant contests, so I fill in a bracket and challenge my friends. I got second place last year, and I had no help at all.

But this year my competitive nature made me start to want more, and that made me start to over-analyze my bracket choices. I sought input from one of the football forums. You might imagine, sage advice was in short supply. Homers will scream out their favorite team's name in orgasmic ecstasy, even if they are a 16 seed. Some people will advise you to go with standard Final Four teams with no further thought. Others will start handing out NCAA tourney facts: four No. 1 seeds have never met in the Final Four, no 16 seed has ever beaten a 1 seed, etc. These are things I already know. Eventually, I remembered this was a football forum when I was told that, as a woman, I should just pick my teams based on colors and mascots. I realized then that at least half the fellas there didn't know any more than I did about college hoops.

So after careful analysis, I'm going with UCLA to win it all. This analysis consists mainly of reading the little postage stamp sized stat box on my Yahoo! pick'em bracket. I have North Carolina over Wisconsin and UCLA over Texas in the Final Four. Then I went with the Bruins due to their superior defensive efficiency stat. Defense wins games in football, so let's hope it holds true for hoops as well.

And if it doesn't, oh well. It's still three weeks of intense boys-playing-sports action! I can live with it.

$5500

So ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer has had to resign for diddling with hookers. Hey, we all like a little diddling, it's just that most of us aren't governor of a state or possibly spending other people's money on call girls. Some of us have the good sense to either get married, thus ensuring a relatively steady supply of nookie, or at the very least hook up with some guy/gal who works part-time at the Video Shack and thus "owes" us for rent.

Still, if a man wants to drop a little coin on some snatch, who am I to protest? Free country and all. Well, free if you don't count the $5500 an hour part.

It begs the question: What exactly does one get for $5500? An hour!

It can't possibly be something new. Anyone familiar with the internet must know by now that, whatever you like sexually, you ain't the first to like it, get it, sell it, steal it, film it nor write about it. It can be illegal, disgusting, painful, messy, patently immoral or bizarre in any number of ways, and it has still been around since civilzation arose and advanced humans first learned boredom. We can thank Ancient Rome for inventing most of the delightful perversions many of us enjoy (with the exception of that Grecian pass-time).

It can't possibly be because the ladies in question were that superior aesthetically to the average woman. Oh, I'm sure they are beautiful, but you can find a pretty girl nearly anywhere, even the Video Shack. And it can't be that they have vastly superior skills either. Plumbing is plumbing. There are only a few ways to join Tab A and Slot A, B or C.

So I think it must not be a question of what you get. It must just be, like so many things, "because it's there." Women have vaginas--and other orifices--and men like to stick things in them. Wealthy men simply have money to spend on it, and certain women are willing to set a steep price. It isn't that it's different. It's just that it exists.

And it all goes to prove that women, no matter how mercenary some may think us, are smarter than men. When I think $5500, I think of paying off my car or...Oh, God, yes!...a 60-inch plasma HDTV. I just know damn well I'd never drop $5500 on a spitzer.

Mean

I've never been one for being mean. Not on purpose anyway. I realize and accept that I have, at times, been indifferent or thoughtless or inconsiderate. Usually I feel a guilt for this forever, once it is recognized or pointed out to me. But in all honesty, I can truly say I have never been intentionally mean to a person, unprovoked.

I had a friend in high school who was mean. She was the closest female friend I have ever had, and we were friends for years, but once in a while it comes back in my mind how she was mean when we were in school. There was a girl in our class who was in the "special education" classes. Your school might have called this the "learning disabled" or "special needs" classes, but basically it meant the girl was retarded. This girl was particularly obsessed with money and counting it, and to be mean to her, sometimes kids would toss pennies down the hallway. This girl would stop everything when she heard the sound of pennies on the floor, and she would dive for them and gather them up. Once she was on the floor, kids would continue tossing pennies and then just leave her there. Long after the bell, she would still be on her knees on the floor, gathering pennies.

Usually I would tell the other kids to stop it and usually they would. Once one "normal" kid vetoes your behavior it is usually enough to make you straighten up. Sometimes it wasn't enough and I would find myself on the floor helping the retarded girl pick up her pennies. She never was upset. She didn't realize it was a prank. That was good, because then I didn't have to explain that my friend was only joking and wasn't really a mean bitch. She was, though.

In my life I have come to realize that people don't usually change. Whatever you are, that's what you are. If you throw pennies at retarded girls, that's what you do and it is what you will do all your life. I'm not friends with my friend anymore. Things happened that ended our relationship. Whenever I feel bad about that, I remember how she threw pennies at a retarded girl, and I don't feel so badly anymore.

Caught Looking

So I'm in Wal-Mart. I had to pick up something for my mother and then I wanted to see if my shade of lipstick was in stock, and that's it. I'm in a hurry to get home because we're going to dinner. I've been back to the crafts department to look for some stuff which they didn't have, and I was headed briskly to cosmetics.

As I approached the front of the store and hung a right toward my destination, in walks this guy. He's about 20 years old, 6'3", 195 or so, and he's wearing some royal blue basketball shorts and a white tank top like this one. It looks like it has been painted on his perfectly sculpted Abercrombie & Fitch-esque torso. His hair has been carefully highlighted to mimic the effects of a summer at the beach. In a split second I have gathered this much information. Having done so, my mind quickly said, "Hey, I need to look at that again." But how?

In a mere moment, I opted for a 360-degree turn; quick spin maneuver, get a fresh eyefull, and then back around to lipstick without ever breaking stride. And if my target continued on his present trajectory, I should be able to catch a nice look at his butt. Bonus! So...I executed.

Having just passed by one of those poles with a price scanner on it, I stepped slightly to my left and did my spin. Sure enough, he was right in sight, two long strides away from disappearing behind the candy aisle. I started at the shoulder, made my way down the bicep, stopping briefly at the trim waist, and then down to an absolutely squeezable ass. Then I backtracked, all the way back to the top, just in time for him to turn his head and look right at me.

Now, from the time I spotted him walk in the door to the moment he busted me, about four seconds have passed in the real world. But at that point, time froze. I thought, "Can I avert my eyes and appear to be looking elsewhere? Can I feign confusion as if I merely mistook him for my nephew or the neighbor's kid? DID HE JUST CATCH ME LOOKING AT HIS ASS?"

His response told me everything. Yeah. He caught me. His sexy little crooked grin seemed to say, "Go ahead. Everybody thinks I have a cute ass," and then he just kept on going toward his destination, probably sporting goods. I'm sure he needed another basketball or free weights or maybe some Stud Builder Protein Complex or something. For my part, I blushed like an 8th grader and stumbled my way onward to the lipstick where I found my shade not in stock. Or maybe it was. I was having a hard time concentrating.

Come On Home, Brett

Brett Favre was my fantasy football quarterback last season and he served me well. What a great guy to watch play the game. I'm glad his last season was such a good one, complete with records, playoffs and a run for the Super Bowl.

You had the feeling he realized he was lucky that he could spend his life playing. Not that football isn't work. Of course it is, and the pain in his body and the stress in his mind, both of which doubtless contributed to his decision to retire, are testament to that. But it isn't the sort of stress we regular people have, and he seemed to realize that. So he had fun. I loved watching him tackle his own guys and tote them around the field when they scored. Forget running from the other team. Run from Brett. My secret wish is that he had played defensive end for just a snap or two. I have a feeling he would have loved putting a fellow quarterback on the ground just once.

I don't know how Favre will stack up against all the other all-time great quarterbacks. He's won a Super Bowl and been the League MVP thrice. He is the most winning quarterback in NFL history. His career passer rating is a modest 85.7, but he owns the record for most touchdown throws with 425 and is the League's all-time leader in completions and attempts. Oh, and interceptions too. Brett didn't guarantee perfection, just effort. I read an article about being successful which included advice from Favre. In a nutshell, he said to follow your dreams, be realistic, listen to your coach, get yourself a mentor and show up for the job every day. Hard to argue with that, particularly when that advice comes from a guy who had to show up to play football outside in the middle of December in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for 16 years, that first temperate year in Atlanta a long distant memory.

So come on back home, Southern Boy. Ride your tractor, do some hunting and watch out for the alligators. Maybe I can catch a glimpse of you the next time I pass through Mississippi if I can't see you on Sunday afternoons anymore. Have a great retirement. But I give it 50/50 you really stay home next season.