At least it's warm here

Yesterday morning I woke up and went to the airport to fly from Sacramento to Newark, stopping in Denver along the way. If you're on the Eastern Seaboard, you know this didn't happen. Apparently the Newark airport shuts down if someone whispers "snow flurries," so I rescheduled my flight and got back in the car.

Today I woke up at the asscrack of dawn to try again. This time I was smart enough to call my sister in Jersey and figure out that my flight would eventually be canceled again. So again I postponed my trip for another day.

What I mean to say is, I should be throwing party tonight.

Happy Mardi Gras

 

Or, if you're like me and not lucky enough to be in New Orleans, happy Tuesday.

 

Long, rambling football post you don't care about

So it's been a while since I've posted. I apologize to both of my readers.

I like football. It makes a good excuse to gather with friends and strangers and drink beer while shouting at the TV on a Sunday. Or a Monday night. And some Thursdays, but only if you're lucky enough to have NFL Network. And all day Saturday, if you're a college football fan.

So for the past few seasons my beloved Kansas City Chiefs have really sucked. They won four games in 2009 and it was an improvement. In 2008 they only had ten sacks. As a team. For the season. They then reached in the draft, taking Tyson Jackson about ten places before he deserved to go. And he didn't do much as a rookie --he was one of the worst defensive linemen  in the league according to this page on FootballOutsiders.com. They traded a second round pick for QB Matt Cassel, gave him a huge contract, then watched him blossom into a mediocre passer. Not good days to be a KC fan.

However, if the Chiefs follow my postseason plan below, they can get back to competing sooner than later. And thus I will have happy reasons to drink on Sundays, rather than drinking to forget. Here's what they need to do, in my opinion, with nice little bullet points to keep things organized.

• Sign Free Agent DT Aubrayo Franklin

The Chiefs this past year switched to a base 3-4 defense, meaning they have three down linemen and four linebackers. They did this despite not really having a nose tackle. In a 3-4 defense, this is the most important position. He lines up over center, taking on the center and often another blocker. He operates on his own and needs to be able to take up space and force running backs outside and clog blockers, leaving the linebackers free to make tackles.

All things told, Ron Edwards did a decent job for Kansas City last year. Franklin, however, was a beast for the 49ers. He didn't necessarily compile stats -- two sacks -- but that's not his job. He eats up blockers. Franklin can draw double teams.

Young linemen Glenn Dorsey, Alex Magee, and Jackson could still all develop into above average players or even stars. Defensive linemen are historically slow to develop at the NFL level. But none of these guys can play nose tackle.

• Replace safety Mike Brown and linebackers Demorrio Williams and Corey Mays

These were three of the worst players in football last year. Need proof? More Football Outsiders. This is actually good news. If you can manage to replace them with even average players, the defense can improve by leaps and bounds. The Chiefs hold a bunch of draft picks and presumably have money to spend on free agents.

I'm not entirely sure who all the replacements could be, but I have ideas...

• Draft S Eric Berry in the first round

That is, if he's still available. It's possible, but it's also possible that he gets picked before KC has the chance to snatch him up. If not, that's ok. The Chiefs have lots of holes. That's how you get to be 4-12. An OT would allow them to move Brandon Albert to the right side of the line and shore up two positions on the offensive line. A linebacker would solve the lack of depth and youth there. But Berry is my first choice.

Merely adding Berry and Franklin, while getting an average linebacker or two to replace Williams and Mays, could turn this porous defense into a good one. I expect Dorsey to improve. Jackson has nowhere to go but up. Tamba Hali was quietly very good, notching 8.5 sacks and 22 hurries. Brandon Flowers is a good cornerback.

• Draft a RB and a kick returner in the 2nd or 3rd rounds

More than any other position, running backs can step in right away and contribute, so the place to get them is in the draft and not in free agency. Jamaal Charles was really good this past season, but I don't want to wear him out. He needs a caddy, another back to take some of the load off and to give the opposing defense a different look.

The Chiefs have two 2nd round picks and three fifth rounders that can be used to trade up.

• Above all, draft the best player, not necessarily for need

The Chiefs have a ton of holes. Their draft strategy shouldn't be to luck out and plug the holes. It should be to get good players, as many as possible, then find places to put them. That way, they don't get stuck with Tyson Jackson at number three because there's a perceived need at DE.

8-29-05

Today is the four-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina ravaging the Gulf Coast. I thought I'd use this space to recreate that night as I remember it. So crack open an Abita and put your feet up.

If it keeps on rainin', the levee's gonna break.

I couldn't get that damn song out of my head. I paced up and down the house, singing it softly to myself (and anyone within earshot.  I had escaped with some friends and wound up at the childhood home of one of these friends, in Beaumont, Texas. This was not an unfamiliar place; we had fled tropical storms for much of my four years at Tulane and I had come here at least one before. We rushed out the door as if we had just gotten there. In fact, we had. Classes for the semester hadn't even started yet.

Hurricanes are nothing unfamiliar to New Orleans. It seems that about once a year there is some alarming storm bearing down on the city, most of which sits below sea level and is protected by a horribly outdated and overmatched levee system. Everyone knows that a well-placed storm could wipe it off the face of the earth, turning this Southern port into a modern Atlantis. In typical New Orleans fashion, no one seemed to worry. Not that there was nothing to worry about, but there are so many better ways to spend time than worrying.

Us students, though, we're not that hardened. We flee if a newsman whispers "hurricane." Well, most of us do. The locals, like my roommate Clay, don't panic so much. And some of the students try to stay. Most hurricane threats came with mandatory evacuation, but they would skirt the rules and lock themselves in their rooms, surviving on Doritos and Dr. Pepper.

This hurricane threat was different, though. The lines for gas at the local Chevron station went around the block. Everyone who could was getting out. Later stories emerged about the tens of thousands of people left in the city. Very few of them were there by choice. Some had no transportation, some were unfit for travel, and a great many could not afford to. The hurricane struck right before payday and a huge proportion of impoverished New Orleans lives paycheck-to-paycheck. Travel is an expensive luxury.

Besides, there were "catastrophic" storms bearing down on New Orleans all the time.

We stayed up most of the night,  watching, on a television set in Texas, the rain pound New Orleans. Every now and again the camera would show a familiar building, only with the bottom three feet submerged. Or five feet. Or ten feet. The best word to describe that night is "surreal." Not horrifying, although it was that too. Or sad. Those emotions hadn't hit yet. It was simply surreal.

If the levee breaks, we got no place to stay.

Adam narrates his life

Adam felt like he was living the same day over and over again. Not like in Groundhog Day, in part because he knew it was not literally the same day over and over again. Also, he knew it was not like that movie because he believes that, no matter what the circumstances, he could never fall for Andie McDowell. It could be the same miserable day in the same miserable Puxatony with the same miserable things happening at the same miserable time, every time, and he would not fall for her. Also, he knows that, unlike Bill Murray's character, he could not find constructive ways to better himself, like learning piano and poetry. He would likely find funny ways to kill himself, only to wake up the next day, as in the montage in the middle of the film. And that's only if the Internet and cable were out and he became forced to go outside and interact with the world.

Anyway, Adam felt like he was having the same day over and over again. Part of it is the California weather. Ever since he came here, the weather has been constant. It's been pleasant, sure, but unchanging. Every day hits a temperature in the low 80s, every night is a bit chilly, there's always a howling wind, and it never, under any circumstance, rains. He never realized how much he'd missed the seasons. Adam always hated the hundred degree Kansas summers and he'd hated the zero degree winters twice as much. He'd hated how thunderstorms made his dog nervous, hail would put dents in the roof of his car, and his television shows interrupted by newscasters warning him of tornadoes that never came. Now, in the unchanging California weather, he found himself missing all that stuff. Maybe his mild fever is making him delirious.

Today was another boring day in which nothing was accomplished for the out-of-work 20-something with two degrees and no experience. Just like yesterday. And the day before that. At least now he has the excuse of a fever to coop him up in the cozy apartment he shares with his girlfriend, who lately has been working hundred-hour weeks doing some job he doesn't really understand for a large, faceless corporation (the American government). Usually the excuse is the double-digit unemployment rate plaguing the State of California and the fact that all the best civilian jobs in the city go to those with military clearance or dependents of the military. Or another excuse, this one equally valid and just as partially-true, is that the finance world doesn't hire and may not exist anymore in this recession, which makes tough goings for a guy with an MBA in finance (and no experience). However, the biggest truth of it all might just be the crushing world, the weight of expectation, the sense that he is getting older and going nowhere, all combined with his personality traits of awkwardness, lack of confidence, and frequent fatigue. At least he has a sense of humor about it all. He's just not sure why anymore.

Whither Twitter?

When asked, on air, whether he Tweeted, baseball announcer/humorist Bob Uecker responded, "No, thankfully, they have medication for that now." Good call.

I don't get the "phenomenon." Mini posts, limited to 140 characters? "Convenient?" Why the hell would I want to limit myself to 140 characters? What can I say, or read, in 140 characters? Further, couldn't I just do that on this blog? I could update this blog from a cell phone just as easily as I could tweet. And I could do it using full sentences.

Twitter is one of those phenomena created by people who don't understand it. Magazines put it on the cover because it sells like a supermodel or Michelle Obama. CNN uses it to stay "hip." Twitter is not hip. Twitter is what people who can't ever be hip use to try to stay hip.

Twitter is also used by people trying to brand themselves. Real people have nothing to say in 140 characters. Brands can say things like, "omg, shooting green screen all day.  It's the wierdest thing we do." (Ashton Kutcher, the OMG added but believable.)

Twitter is a great marketing tool*. You can get people to follow you on it and then pitch yourself to them several times a day, and some people will eat it right up. But you can't have any serious discourse on it. All you can do is make claims and  refute claims. It's like an Internet chat room with nothing but room for flame wars.

*The greatest Twitter irony is that it serves primarily as a marketing tool, but can't turn a profit for itself.

The fact is the media wants to be in on this social networking that's otherwise its undoing. So they report on the "new, hip" thing, press their own involvement, and start a trend. If I were an old guy who didn't know shit about social networking, but wanted to get involved for my business, I'd probably be drawn to Twitter. After all, it's been on the cover of all those magazines. And CNN talks about it constantly.

I just don't see the big deal. Twitter is like Facebook with only status updates enabled.

I also love the semantics. A single Twitter post is a Tweet. That's because saying, "I just Twittered," sounds dirty. Personally, I think the past tense should be Twat. As in, "I'm going up to to my room to get on my computer and Twat for the world to see."

Don't ask...

Lost in the shuffle of celebrity deaths this week is, you know, relevant news. At least something more relevant than anything Farrah Fawcett has done in the past, oh, say, thirty years.

Our armed forces is kicking out capable Americans. Decorated fighter pilots and Arabic translators and fighters and soldiers, under Don't Ask Don't Tell. This is nothing new. DADT has been on the books for sixteen years now. What is new is the length that we are going to for new recruits. It amazes me the kinds of people we let represent us to the world and the kinds of people we are kicking out.

For instance, this Salon piece argues that our military has become a training and recruiting ground for white supremacists. And it is reported that "moral waivers" are way up in military recruiting. A moral waiver is when the military lets someone in who otherwise would not qualify, such as an ex-felon. Does this mean that prison sex does not count as gay sex, or is somehow less offensive than gay sex?

Let's do a comparison of who is allowed to represent the USA overseas while wearing a military uniform.

Former KKK leader David Duke: acceptable

Congressman Barney Frank: unacceptable

Convicted felon: acceptable

Recently outed Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbacht: unacceptable

Hitler-worshipping Neo-Nazi who would ultimately like to overthrow the United States government: acceptable

John Amaechi: unacceptable

So where do we draw the line? Do we let child molesters in, but only if they target little girls and not little boys? Do we allow "rehabilitated" gays serve our country?

I view the ability to volunteer for military service as one of the liberties that makes this country great. The military is one of the ways for people to rise to power from nothing, both historically and in modern times. It is against the American spirit to deny this avenue to capable men and women.

For every gay person we accept in the military, there's one less moral waiver we have to use and one more person fighting so I don't have to.