I was never a Packers fan. I didn’t dislike them, just didn’t really care much one way or the other. They were just another team. But somewhere in the early 90’s their identity changed. It was out with the old Packers of Vince Lombardi – farewell to the smashmouth teams of Ice Bowls past. There was a new sheriff in town.
Brett Favre was fun. He played the game in a reckless way that made it hard to root against him and always on the edge of your seat to see what he’d do next. The childlike enthusiasm and joy on his face when he won that early Super Bowl was contagious and when he popped up out of nowhere in “There’s Something About Mary” the national love affair was on.
I admit it. If I was busy doing something else with the TV on in the background and I heard the words “Brett Favre” on ESPN, I’d look up from whatever I was working on, grab the remote and bring up the volume with hope of seeing something amazing. Now when I hear the words “Brett Favre” I grab the remote to change the channel.
The last few years have been so ridiculous that I’ve almost completely lost the renegade gunslinger that captured my attention years ago… which is amazing considering that he may be coming off the best season of his career.
In the Spring of 2008, Brett Favre held that tearful press conference announcing that he was retiring. Hell, he was 38 years old and coming off a disappointing loss in the NFC Championship game so nobody blamed him, but he had really had a very solid year and it looked like this was one of those “go out on top” kind of guys. You have to respect that. Then he had a change of heart. The way the whole thing went down with the Packers was unfortunate. It’s hard to blame either side too much, really. He said he was done… Green Bay had a good young quarterback waiting in the wings… so he was sent to New York to lead the Jets. Ok. I can live with this. Brett looks a little silly for the flip-flop, but the guy still wants to play. I’m still wishing good things for him.
The Jets season was a nightmare. For the first time, he looked old. He led the league in interceptions, the Jets missed the playoffs… and Brett said “this time I’m really done.” I’m still on his side at this point. He gave it one more shot. Now he sails off into the sunest.
It was here that the wheels came off. As the ’09 season gets closer Favre announces he’s “thinking about” playing again. Really? This guy’s about as reliable as a ’77 Pinto. But the Vikings want him anyway and he says he’ll let them know by the start of their training camp. Training camp starts and the Vikings say “he’s staying retired.” Then he shows up a few weeks later (probably in a red cape) and leads the Vikings to the brink of the Super Bowl, having an inspired season. But it was hard for fans outside of the Twin Cities to enjoy it. He was marvelous last year. No doubt. This should be a time when we’re really rooting for him and looking forward to a new year with the possibility of winning it all one last time. But he made a joke of himself in ’09 and this year he thumbed his nose at us all and did it again.
As recently as two weeks ago we had heard that Brett was retiring again. Then he wasn’t. Now he’s back with the team and practicing as if he never left. But he did leave. And this year was the worst of them all. He wasn’t between teams. He was holding a franchise hostage. When it looked like Favre wasn’t coming back, the Vikings went from Vegas favorites to win the NFC to another team in the middle of the pack. You know why? Because no football team can afford to have two franchise quarterbacks. You either have Brett Favre or you don’t. If you do, great. If you don’t, you go spend a bunch of money to get the next one. But if you “might” have Brett Favre then you’re in big trouble if he doesn’t show up. So much so that a handful of Vikings flew to visit him last week just to get a frickin’ answer once and for all. What a great teammate Brett must be. Other players have to fly across the country to see him just to get an audience with his majesty.
There are different theories as to why he keeps doing this. I hear about injuries and how he is waiting for diagnoses before he commits. I hear that he’s just trying to avoid training camp, which seems like the most likely answer. Honestly, though, I don’t care. The “how” has been such a train wreck that the “why” isn’t even important. Maybe he loves the drama… maybe he’s just an attention hog. Lord knows, the media just eats it up with “Favre Watch” taking center stage. Has there been a time in the last year when you could turn on SportsCenter and NOT hear the names Tiger Woods, LeBron James or Brett Favre? It’s been a giant “who cares” carnival act with ESPN acting as the big media ringleader directing your attention from one freak show to the other.
If the conventional wisdom is correct and Favre is just trying to get out of training camp, then just say so! Would anyone REALLY have a huge problem with a guy of Brett Favre’s pedigree skipping the bulk of camp to keep the wear and tear off? Why does it have to be some back alley deal in a shroud of secrecy, lies and betrayal? Roger Clemens had it right. When the Astros wanted him to come back, he said, “ok, but I’m not going to Spring Training, I’ll join the team a month into the season and on certain road trips that are far from home, I’m just not going to go. Oh, and that’ll be 8 million dollars.” At least then the franchise got to make a decision on their terms. Here it is – take it or leave it. Brett Favre chooses a much more cowardly track. “But it’s my shoulder!” Oh shut up!
In an NFL world where guys just choose to ignore their contracts, pout on the sidelines and demand more money I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by any of this… but there was a time when Brett Favre seemed to remind us of what was good with the game. In the end he’s just selfish – and the people it hurts the most (his teammates and fans) are the people to whom he’s supposed to be the most allegiant.
In “There’s Something About Mary” the question was a funny one. “What about Brett Fav-ruh?” It’s not funny anymore.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Ode de Toilet
From the amount of feedback I received from the travel nightmare story it’s clear that you people seem to revel in the misfortune of others. Well… you’re in luck. This also happened in the past month and would make a wonderful scene in a movie (or perhaps “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”)
It was 6:45am and I was stumbling through my morning. You know how it is – you’re awake, but not really AWAKE. I went into our half bath… still a little groggy… and stood in front of the toilet. We have a framed photo of some palm trees over the loo that we took on our Hawaiian honeymoon. On this particular morning, that photo looked just a little crooked. I reached up in my morning haze to adjust the frame on the wall and it slipped right off its hook and shot downward.
Now for some reason this toilet sits a little bit off the wall. JUST enough room, as it turns out, for a decorative projectile to fire through the gap. So in a split second, the photo slides down the wall and disappears behind the toilet heading for the floor. I tense up and brace for the breaking glass noise that is surely coming. We have hard wood floors in this bathroom and this can’t end well. Instead of a crash, however, I hear a thud and a hissing. PSHHHHHHH! A strange mist appears before me. It’s not until I feel my pajama pants clinging to my body that I realize what has happened.
The frame made a beeline for the toilet’s cold water supply line, catching it just right so as to pop it out from the underside of the tank and now water is rocketing out of this tube at an alarming rate. Like a tiny fire hose it is dousing my legs as I instantly reach down to turn off the water supply. This is a very small room. It’s a tight squeeze to get to the valve and this is also a knob that probably hasn’t been turned in 30 years. It’s stuck. Water is now plugging me in the shoulder and chest as I start to think, “do I need to go get a tool of some sort?” Keep in mind, all of this is happening in that early-morning “get used to the day” time. Gallons of cold water has a way of sobering you up in a hurry.
I decide in this moment that leaving the room to get ANYTHING is a bad idea and I am GOING to get this to stop. I dive onto the top of the toilet (belly on the seat) and reach over with both hands. My feet are leveraged against the wall and I give it everything I’ve got. The valve squeaks a bit and begins to turn. Within seconds the water is off and I am standing among the wreckage. Somehow the glass didn’t break, but the wood frame splintered apart and there is standing water in the bathroom that has started a small river into out into the main rooms.
Since it’s all hard wood I’m now getting a crash course in the topography of the back half of the house as this little tributary snakes its way across the family room, then forks. One stream moves toward the kitchen. The other creeps toward the mass of cords and power strips behind the TV/video game area. I think at this point I made an audible yelp of fear. I fly into the laundry room (splashing as I go) and grab every large towel I can find. I turn off the power strip that has been dampened and raise it onto a shelf. Disaster averted. The next several minutes are just towels sopping up water and me discovering new areas that have been corrupted – the game closet, the laundry room (did water actually make it in here on its own or is this a result of all the dripping off my soaked body when I fetched the towels?) Finally the spill appears to be contained and I gather up the soaking towels and hang them out on our back patio.
My wife was sick that morning and slept through this entire affair, so I quietly nudge her as I’m leaving for work. “Everything’s ok and the story is actually kind of funny, but don’t use the half bath. I’ll explain later.” She says she kind of forgot about it until she woke up and walked past the back patio. Apparently 9 full-sized bath towels dripping water got her attention.
The good news is that there was no major damage and the fix to the toilet was an easy one, but what a wakeup call! This is yet another reason that you really should have cameras set up everywhere. You never know when you’ll find yourself in the middle of an award-winning moment.
It was 6:45am and I was stumbling through my morning. You know how it is – you’re awake, but not really AWAKE. I went into our half bath… still a little groggy… and stood in front of the toilet. We have a framed photo of some palm trees over the loo that we took on our Hawaiian honeymoon. On this particular morning, that photo looked just a little crooked. I reached up in my morning haze to adjust the frame on the wall and it slipped right off its hook and shot downward.
Now for some reason this toilet sits a little bit off the wall. JUST enough room, as it turns out, for a decorative projectile to fire through the gap. So in a split second, the photo slides down the wall and disappears behind the toilet heading for the floor. I tense up and brace for the breaking glass noise that is surely coming. We have hard wood floors in this bathroom and this can’t end well. Instead of a crash, however, I hear a thud and a hissing. PSHHHHHHH! A strange mist appears before me. It’s not until I feel my pajama pants clinging to my body that I realize what has happened.
The frame made a beeline for the toilet’s cold water supply line, catching it just right so as to pop it out from the underside of the tank and now water is rocketing out of this tube at an alarming rate. Like a tiny fire hose it is dousing my legs as I instantly reach down to turn off the water supply. This is a very small room. It’s a tight squeeze to get to the valve and this is also a knob that probably hasn’t been turned in 30 years. It’s stuck. Water is now plugging me in the shoulder and chest as I start to think, “do I need to go get a tool of some sort?” Keep in mind, all of this is happening in that early-morning “get used to the day” time. Gallons of cold water has a way of sobering you up in a hurry.
I decide in this moment that leaving the room to get ANYTHING is a bad idea and I am GOING to get this to stop. I dive onto the top of the toilet (belly on the seat) and reach over with both hands. My feet are leveraged against the wall and I give it everything I’ve got. The valve squeaks a bit and begins to turn. Within seconds the water is off and I am standing among the wreckage. Somehow the glass didn’t break, but the wood frame splintered apart and there is standing water in the bathroom that has started a small river into out into the main rooms.
Since it’s all hard wood I’m now getting a crash course in the topography of the back half of the house as this little tributary snakes its way across the family room, then forks. One stream moves toward the kitchen. The other creeps toward the mass of cords and power strips behind the TV/video game area. I think at this point I made an audible yelp of fear. I fly into the laundry room (splashing as I go) and grab every large towel I can find. I turn off the power strip that has been dampened and raise it onto a shelf. Disaster averted. The next several minutes are just towels sopping up water and me discovering new areas that have been corrupted – the game closet, the laundry room (did water actually make it in here on its own or is this a result of all the dripping off my soaked body when I fetched the towels?) Finally the spill appears to be contained and I gather up the soaking towels and hang them out on our back patio.
My wife was sick that morning and slept through this entire affair, so I quietly nudge her as I’m leaving for work. “Everything’s ok and the story is actually kind of funny, but don’t use the half bath. I’ll explain later.” She says she kind of forgot about it until she woke up and walked past the back patio. Apparently 9 full-sized bath towels dripping water got her attention.
The good news is that there was no major damage and the fix to the toilet was an easy one, but what a wakeup call! This is yet another reason that you really should have cameras set up everywhere. You never know when you’ll find yourself in the middle of an award-winning moment.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Planes, Trains and Disabled Automobiles
Oh, how I wish the following story was fiction... but sadly, every bit of it is true.
This past weekend my wife and I travelled to Chicago for a family wedding and long weekend together - an anniversary trip of sorts, but really we'll take any excuse to go to one of our country's true "living" cities.
On this particular day, weather was GOING to be a problem. Thundertsorms in the Dallas area had actually closed DFW airport for a spell and more storms in Chicago weren't exactly helping matters. Our 5:55pm American flight, however, still showed that it was 100% on-time (even though when we got to the gate, it still said "Raleigh-Durham" on the placards.)
When it felt like we should be boarding I decided that perhaps it was worth asking a gate agent just what was going on since nobody I could see had any real interest in travelling to North Carolina's tobacco country.
When I inquired about the O'Hare flight, the agent clicked away at her computer and then gasped. An actual, audible gasp. Then she whispered to the agent next to her. This can't end well. She looked up at me and said "they just canceled it." Yes, that's right - straight from "on-time" to canceled. These guys aren't dicking around with "delayed." Luckily for me, I'm the first passenger to know this information. I have her get to work on getting us on the next one. I am told I get literally the last two seats - both middle seats and 10 rows apart, but hey - at least we'll get there tonight.
The new flight was scheduled for 7:30, but was now showing 8:00 so it was off to the bar. A couple of drinks later (and another half hour delay) we are on a plane and headed for Chicago. When we leave we are told that we should land around 10:15 or 10:30 and at this point most of us are just feeling lucky to be going tonight at all. Of course, as we get closer we're informed of "heavy traffic" at O'Hare due to storms and we begin a circling pattern over Lake Michigan. This costs us nearly another hour, but at 11pm, we're coming down through the storm clouds. It's bumpy - lightning is flashing all around us and when we do hit the ground, the wheels have no grip - skidding intermittently as we finally slow down and come to a stop about 100 feet short of our gate in a driving storm.
"Folks, this is your captain speaking. This storm is far too dangerous for Chicago to allow the grounds crew out - they have a lightning policy - so we're going to sit right here and wait out the storm until it's safe to park at the gate and get you and your bags off the plane. Sit tight."
Well, it IS storming pretty badly so this is an understandable delay, but it's just a thunderstorm, so how long could it be? As it turns out, it can be 3 hours. And I'm not talking about us sitting there going, "this is bullshit. They should have gotten us off the plane by now." No, this was legitimate monsoon-like conditions with lightning - a supercell just hovering over the field at O'Hare dumping gallons of water by the minute. The guy to my left had an app for that - a live doppler radar shot of the area - this storm was big and it wasn't moving.
An aside here: I would have loved to have slept through some of this - I mean, it would be after 2am when we finally got off the frickin' plane - but no, I had this ridiculous woman behind me who had recently gotten married and worked in public relations and thought this was just a wonderful time to flirt with the guy next to her. Both of them talking... and talking... and talking - far too loud for the 18 inches of space between them and both laughing WAY too loud at things that weren't even remotely funny. Add to that the American pilot seated to my right who took this opportunity to tell me the "long version" of his story about how the builders on his house screwed up his windows and his house was flooded and it's been four years and they're still fighting it out in court and the whole process is corrupt and he's trying to be a single dad now and on and on and on. You want to be off this plane now, too, don't you?
Well, you're in luck, because just after 2am it's off the plane we went and on down to baggage claim. I know what you're thinking. I'd be thinking it, too. There's no WAY our bag is there - just another chapter to this travel nightmare story. But actually, our bag came right out - a little wet, but no problem there. See? I told you this wasn't fiction. If it was fiction the bag would have been a problem. The REAL fiction, however, is still to come.
We go outside to catch a cab to our hotel and we have a new problem. You see, every plane that landed in Chicago in that entire 3-hour period was in the same position we were: they couldn't get to the gate. Therefore, every one of those people de-planed at exactly the same time. The line for a cab snaked all the way around terminal 3 and practically out of sight. To make matters worse - there are no cabs. The city is flooding, this monster storm is still happening. Cabs aren't easy to come by. Every 60 to 90 seconds a cab would appear and pluck two people out of this line of 300. Two hours go by and we're still at least half an hour from the front of this line and it's still raining. A guy on the other side of the partition from us is getting into a cab by himself. He asks if there's anyone who wants to do a shared ride downtown. It's as if my wife and I are shot out of a cannon. 50-pound bag and all I'm in that thing in 2.2 seconds. It's almost 4am... this is a disaster... but at least we're finally in a cab.
The guy we're sharing with is now giving the driver directions to his house. It's only 10 minutes from our hotel. This is going to work out just fine. As we turn off Armitage toward Ashland we're headed for a viaduct. The "El" train rides above and we're below where there's a little dip in the road that is currently filled with water. Our cab driver decides it looks safe enough to cross. Our cab driver is wrong.
As the car reaches the bottom of the viaduct the tailpipe goes under and that's all she wrote. The car is now dead in high water. You've seen those stories on the news of people stuck in cars as flood water rushes around it and you wonder, "what kind of idiot must be in that car?" Yeah, that idiot was me.
So now we must push the car out of the viaduct and onto higher ground. When we open the back door to get out, water rushes into the cab. That's how high we're talking here. Once the car is out of the impromptu river, we are all sitting inside. It's pouring rain. It's me, my wife, a cab driver and a stranger in a dead cab at 4 in the morning.
The driver calls a tow truck for himself and another cab for the rest of us and half an hour of uncomfortable silence later... we're in another cab. This time we drop our shared ride guy at his house and at 5am we FINALLY walk into our hotel's lobby drenched and dead tired.
"Sorry, sir. We have no rooms available."
Fucking hell.
I had a pre-paid reservation. In theory this means that I have already paid for a room and therefore it should be sitting empty right now with my name on it like an homage. I also called the hotel from the tarmac during our 3-hour delay to let them know that it was going to be a while, but I was still coming. Smart, right? Apparently not smart enough.
They explain to us that they have made accomodations for us at a hotel across the street (the "street" in this case being Wacker and therefore across the Chicago river) and that it might be a little while because they've called a cab to take us over there.
It's now so late that a guy has actually checked out to make HIS way to O'Hare. This, as it turns out, is a rare stroke of luck in this grease fire of a night. We wait half an hour for them to make up the room and it's all ours.
At 5:30am, after a cancelled flight, a delayed flight, a holding pattern over Lake Michigan, a bumpy landing, 3 hours on the tarmac, 2 hours waiting for a cab, a high-water rescue and no room at the inn... we finally hit the mattress in Chicago.
Anyone feel like writing the screenplay?
This past weekend my wife and I travelled to Chicago for a family wedding and long weekend together - an anniversary trip of sorts, but really we'll take any excuse to go to one of our country's true "living" cities.
On this particular day, weather was GOING to be a problem. Thundertsorms in the Dallas area had actually closed DFW airport for a spell and more storms in Chicago weren't exactly helping matters. Our 5:55pm American flight, however, still showed that it was 100% on-time (even though when we got to the gate, it still said "Raleigh-Durham" on the placards.)
When it felt like we should be boarding I decided that perhaps it was worth asking a gate agent just what was going on since nobody I could see had any real interest in travelling to North Carolina's tobacco country.
When I inquired about the O'Hare flight, the agent clicked away at her computer and then gasped. An actual, audible gasp. Then she whispered to the agent next to her. This can't end well. She looked up at me and said "they just canceled it." Yes, that's right - straight from "on-time" to canceled. These guys aren't dicking around with "delayed." Luckily for me, I'm the first passenger to know this information. I have her get to work on getting us on the next one. I am told I get literally the last two seats - both middle seats and 10 rows apart, but hey - at least we'll get there tonight.
The new flight was scheduled for 7:30, but was now showing 8:00 so it was off to the bar. A couple of drinks later (and another half hour delay) we are on a plane and headed for Chicago. When we leave we are told that we should land around 10:15 or 10:30 and at this point most of us are just feeling lucky to be going tonight at all. Of course, as we get closer we're informed of "heavy traffic" at O'Hare due to storms and we begin a circling pattern over Lake Michigan. This costs us nearly another hour, but at 11pm, we're coming down through the storm clouds. It's bumpy - lightning is flashing all around us and when we do hit the ground, the wheels have no grip - skidding intermittently as we finally slow down and come to a stop about 100 feet short of our gate in a driving storm.
"Folks, this is your captain speaking. This storm is far too dangerous for Chicago to allow the grounds crew out - they have a lightning policy - so we're going to sit right here and wait out the storm until it's safe to park at the gate and get you and your bags off the plane. Sit tight."
Well, it IS storming pretty badly so this is an understandable delay, but it's just a thunderstorm, so how long could it be? As it turns out, it can be 3 hours. And I'm not talking about us sitting there going, "this is bullshit. They should have gotten us off the plane by now." No, this was legitimate monsoon-like conditions with lightning - a supercell just hovering over the field at O'Hare dumping gallons of water by the minute. The guy to my left had an app for that - a live doppler radar shot of the area - this storm was big and it wasn't moving.
An aside here: I would have loved to have slept through some of this - I mean, it would be after 2am when we finally got off the frickin' plane - but no, I had this ridiculous woman behind me who had recently gotten married and worked in public relations and thought this was just a wonderful time to flirt with the guy next to her. Both of them talking... and talking... and talking - far too loud for the 18 inches of space between them and both laughing WAY too loud at things that weren't even remotely funny. Add to that the American pilot seated to my right who took this opportunity to tell me the "long version" of his story about how the builders on his house screwed up his windows and his house was flooded and it's been four years and they're still fighting it out in court and the whole process is corrupt and he's trying to be a single dad now and on and on and on. You want to be off this plane now, too, don't you?
Well, you're in luck, because just after 2am it's off the plane we went and on down to baggage claim. I know what you're thinking. I'd be thinking it, too. There's no WAY our bag is there - just another chapter to this travel nightmare story. But actually, our bag came right out - a little wet, but no problem there. See? I told you this wasn't fiction. If it was fiction the bag would have been a problem. The REAL fiction, however, is still to come.
We go outside to catch a cab to our hotel and we have a new problem. You see, every plane that landed in Chicago in that entire 3-hour period was in the same position we were: they couldn't get to the gate. Therefore, every one of those people de-planed at exactly the same time. The line for a cab snaked all the way around terminal 3 and practically out of sight. To make matters worse - there are no cabs. The city is flooding, this monster storm is still happening. Cabs aren't easy to come by. Every 60 to 90 seconds a cab would appear and pluck two people out of this line of 300. Two hours go by and we're still at least half an hour from the front of this line and it's still raining. A guy on the other side of the partition from us is getting into a cab by himself. He asks if there's anyone who wants to do a shared ride downtown. It's as if my wife and I are shot out of a cannon. 50-pound bag and all I'm in that thing in 2.2 seconds. It's almost 4am... this is a disaster... but at least we're finally in a cab.
The guy we're sharing with is now giving the driver directions to his house. It's only 10 minutes from our hotel. This is going to work out just fine. As we turn off Armitage toward Ashland we're headed for a viaduct. The "El" train rides above and we're below where there's a little dip in the road that is currently filled with water. Our cab driver decides it looks safe enough to cross. Our cab driver is wrong.
As the car reaches the bottom of the viaduct the tailpipe goes under and that's all she wrote. The car is now dead in high water. You've seen those stories on the news of people stuck in cars as flood water rushes around it and you wonder, "what kind of idiot must be in that car?" Yeah, that idiot was me.
So now we must push the car out of the viaduct and onto higher ground. When we open the back door to get out, water rushes into the cab. That's how high we're talking here. Once the car is out of the impromptu river, we are all sitting inside. It's pouring rain. It's me, my wife, a cab driver and a stranger in a dead cab at 4 in the morning.
The driver calls a tow truck for himself and another cab for the rest of us and half an hour of uncomfortable silence later... we're in another cab. This time we drop our shared ride guy at his house and at 5am we FINALLY walk into our hotel's lobby drenched and dead tired.
"Sorry, sir. We have no rooms available."
Fucking hell.
I had a pre-paid reservation. In theory this means that I have already paid for a room and therefore it should be sitting empty right now with my name on it like an homage. I also called the hotel from the tarmac during our 3-hour delay to let them know that it was going to be a while, but I was still coming. Smart, right? Apparently not smart enough.
They explain to us that they have made accomodations for us at a hotel across the street (the "street" in this case being Wacker and therefore across the Chicago river) and that it might be a little while because they've called a cab to take us over there.
It's now so late that a guy has actually checked out to make HIS way to O'Hare. This, as it turns out, is a rare stroke of luck in this grease fire of a night. We wait half an hour for them to make up the room and it's all ours.
At 5:30am, after a cancelled flight, a delayed flight, a holding pattern over Lake Michigan, a bumpy landing, 3 hours on the tarmac, 2 hours waiting for a cab, a high-water rescue and no room at the inn... we finally hit the mattress in Chicago.
Anyone feel like writing the screenplay?
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