Invasive Procedures and NFL Week 12

 

The band has been in a real lull because we have had some "Old Guy Problems" with both Hector and Sugar having to get surgeries and then needing time to recover.  In the back of my head, I thought I was going to be next in line and I was right.  I work out during the week to attempt to maintain my svelte girlish figure as best I can.  I am not the first one to notice this, but why can I kill myself for a month eating lettuce and chicken breast and then immediately gain back any lost weight after three days in France?  Look, I dive in and eat cheese and bakery shit because that's what they do there, but there is something inherently unfair about one croissant undoing two weeks of circuit training and salad.  Regardless, I had been doing my workout thing trying to keep it together and I noticed that my wind was down.  I was doing short runs or weight sled pushes and just be gassed after something that a month ago I'd hardly noticed.  Something was up.

I have this family history of heart issues.  Again, I'm not alone in this.  I'm sure your family has a history of heart issues or cancer since that's what cause 50% of deaths in the United States.  I get these stress tests done every four or five years just to see that everything is operating normally.  There's nothing like walking uphill on a treadmill with a bunch of electrodes attached to you and someone shooting radioactive shit into your arm to make you feel connected to "good health".  I told my doctor what's happening with my exercise fatigue, and then she schedules me for one of these.  I go and take it and I'm thinking "I ain't doing so good here".  Results come back as two lines of email from my doctor.  "There was an abnormality in your stress test.  I'm sending you to cardiology STAT!".  

If you are looking at sending me an email that taps into every dark fear lurking in my brain, that's the one.  I have long assumed with my strong match to my father's genes that my fate is some sort of early cardiac death.  Of all the ways you gotta go, I suppose that's better than most.  I have always leaned heavily towards "shark attack", but it's tough when you're in Ohio to strongly pursue that avenue.  I got a call from the Clinic Cardiology to set up an appt and the pleasant woman on the phone says, "I am calling to set up an office visit for you.  How is March 16th?".  Ummm.  What?  When I see "STAT!" my thought is all those TV medical dramas where Noah Wiley is yelling out shit like "Give him 200ccs of MetaTriLaCane!" not "Hey, can you swing by around St Patrick's Day?".  

I call my doctor back via video call and have a variation of "Hey, what gives?" that probably cost me a $1000.  She then calls someone and I get into see a "Cardiac Interventionist", which is decidedly not someone I normally want to meet with in other circumstances.  That meeting was better than if he had walked into the room, taken off his glasses, and then said "Have a seat.  This is never easy.  But in all my years of medicine, NEVER have I seen a test result as bad as what I have just looked at on your chart.".  Still, I am heading into the Clinic on Tuesday for a "invasive procedure".  I don't like to have my blood pressure taken, so an "invasive procedure" freaks me the fuck out.  I'll lay out the game plan in layman's terms.  They are going to shove this thing up my vein, nose around to see what's happening, and then if they think they can fix it right there, they will.  Now, if they get in there and it's really fucked up, they are going to just wheel me into an operating room and start chopping away.  This is not how I wanted to spend my Tuesday, especially since I was supposed to be in Australia.  

In my head, I don't feel any differently than I did when I was 26.  I'm curious about the world, want to have adventures, and have an ambitious drive.  This is a stark blow across the bow that tells me, "Buddy, you are going to run out of time to do all the things that you want to do."  It's a drag to go over to the Clinic and you see almost everyone coming and going in there is a complete physical disaster.  People can barely fucking walk.  It's got to be a full third of the people in the building have their mouths open the entire day like zombies.  Meanwhile I'm technically a middle aged guy that is sorta keeping it together coming over after his workout and I'm the one heading into surgery?  Fucking genetics man.  I'm standing at this crossroad where I am logically optimistic that this "invasive procedure" (whatever it turns out to be) is going to go OK but at the same time staring right at my mortality while looking at my watch. 

The great news is that I will likely be alive to see the only thing that really matters, Shedeur Sanders first NFL start.  There is this idea that the Browns want Sanders to fail, which is no only stupid but also terrifying.  The Browns are going to make you fail on your own, so thinking about them actively trying to knock your career off the tracks has to be very concerning for Sanders.  Here's what I think about Sanders.  He's not ready to start in the NFL.  He's going to make some mistakes.  That's going to lead to Raiders points.  The Raiders are terrible, but all NFL teams are good if they get the ball on your 20 yard line.  The Browns have won once on the West Coast since 2014.  I just can't see them doing it this week with a green QB that isn't prepared for the speed of NFL starters.  Vegas -2.5 AND Vegas OVER 19.5 points.  

Like myself, Aaron Rodgers looks old and rickety.  Unlike myself, he has to go play the Bears with a broken wrist.  I think the Bears sorta suck but I think the Steelers do too.  I am of the opinion that the Steelers would be better off having Mason Rudolph play QB than Rodgers anyway, much less with Rodgers doing some kind of wounded hero act.  I think he's washed.  Look, it's not like I think the Bears aren't a fraud either.  Detroit and Baltimore killed those guys.  I'm not sure what to make of either team, but if I think these two teams are roughly equal and my choice is an ascending Caleb Williams at home or an old injured Rodgers trying to conjure up old ghosts, I'm taking the Bears.  I feel so strongly on this I might go the other way if it's Rudolph and the line moves past 3.  As of now, I'm Chicago -2.5.

Atlanta is better than the Saints.  Why are they getting 2.5 because Cousins is playing?  I think the Saints went full tank mode after they sat Rattler for Shough.  Rattler was playing pretty well, and Slough is a fucking disaster.  The QBR rankings today go Nix, Jayden Daniels, Rattler, then Flacco.  Rattler is 21st in the league.  Now they're playing Shough as if he's going to be better than 21st in the league and lead them not to draft a QB with the #1 pick.  The Falcons, who have long ago traded their #1 pick, don't have that tank mindset.  I see Cousins, who at this point probably considered a good backup QB, as at the very least an equal to Shough.  Atlanta has lost 5 in a row, but losing three on the road to SF/New England/Indy isn't a smear.  The Saints beating Carolina last week on the road blew my mind.  That was their first cover, much less win, in a month.  I see Atlanta in that sea of teams where a win and a loss is razor thin each week, all those Jacksonville/Carolina/Arizona/Miami/Cincinnati teams you just don't think about too often because they don't matter.  The Saints just suck.  I think Cousins is better than the public perceives.  At least I hope so.  Atlanta +2.5             

Current record:  16-20

    

Bloodied But Not Down... NFL Week 11

 Now that my phone always eavesdrops on my conversations, out of nowhere it started providing me with medicines to repair deep seeded health fears I spoke aloud in conversation with my doctor.  This is increasingly unsettling.  It's especially unsettling when you read the side effects in the small print of these advertised medicines.  "Hmmm... Maybe profuse anal bleeding and open sores on my back aren't THAT bad if I can address my blood pressure creeping up."  Then I got something even worse pop up.  Staring at me on social media, I got served a photo of some woman that for a brief period used to be the General Manager of Channel 5 during my tenure there.  She was recently appointed something like Director of a Conference Center in Foggy Bottom Arkansas or some such shit.  It was a HUGE step down from her old gig in pay and perks, that's for sure.  I stared at the dumpy old lady in the photo, and wondered "How in the hell did that woman exert so much control over my life for a few years?".  

The work thing is crazy.  You can randomly get placed in a situation where some weak minded emotionally stunted person is placed in a position where they can randomly make your life miserable.  I have worked for some certifiable monsters.  Some of them were just "little people" that had never naturally risen to places of prominence in their social circles because they just didn't have any juice.  They had never been entrusted by whatever peer group they are in to pick where to order a pizza much less be the leader, and then suddenly they find an office job with a staff of people kissing their ass to curry favor.  It drives them fucking crazy.  They start to think "Hey, I'm really something now that I am Assistant Regional Manager of District Four", when in fact they are the same dipshits they always were and the "power" they have isn't real.  You get these guys swaggering around an airport like they are Elon Musk because they are the Omaha Region Manager of Target.  In my case, this General Manager of a Top 20 ABC affiliate went from being a Small Time Mussolini transformed into an old fat woman in a dress presumably bossing around four people in a shitty conference center in Foggy Bottom.     

I stared down at that picture and remembered how she would assemble the entire staff and just pontificate, talk complete shit in jargon circles in an attempt to prove to herself how exalted she was in this "important" role.  After one of these meetings where the staff listened to her drone on about herself, a woman I worked with said, "Can you tell me what she meant?  I didn't understand anything she said.  What does Friendraising mean?"  I told my co-worker to chill out.  She didn't really say anything.  It was like having to listen to a Castro speech in the 1970s.

I wondered what her memories are of that time.  I'm sure that she twisted her past into something pleasant as opposed to the reality of her being a monster everyone avoided for fear of a professional execution on a whim.  Her bio at the convention center touts her as having a dazzling array of jargon laden skills.  I found this not to be true.  I found her to be an obstacle to make money for myself and the company because she was fucking crazy.  This one time we had this deal with Ganley Auto come up for renewal.  Tom Ganley used to put money into Crimestoppers because he was terrorized by the mob at some point, and then thought it would be a good idea to back this on air police initiative for the good of the community while also keeping his name front and center.  It was a good idea that worked for everyone.  From the station standpoint, all we had to do was air these :30 units and then put a "Bad Guy" who was wanted up on the news screen once a week.  It was a win/win and easy.  I'm trying to renew this thing, and I'm getting some kind of stall from the GM woman to sign off on it.  I can't move ahead and get the money until she rubber stamps it, but she won't commit.  It makes no sense because we had done it for years, everyone agreed it was "on brand" and she didn't have to do shit.  Still, she's delaying doing anything one way or the other.  This goes on and on and on.  I got the client calling me saying "WTF man?  We doing this or not next year?  If not, your competition will do it."  This woman keeps stalling and I'm losing my mind.  What the fuck is the problem here lady?

This woman is really volatile.  Everyone in the station is afraid to confront her and get an answer because A) they're weak and B) they think if they ask a tough question maybe she will think ill of them and do something irrational like when she wanted to fire the national sales manager when he said on the week of their mutual birthdays "Looks like we are both the same age!  We're getting up there!".  The guy had been there for 15 years doing his job and she wants to clip him for that.  She's that terrifying combination of incompetent and vindictive while trying to hide from everyone she doesn't know what the fuck she is doing.  What happens is she stalls so long, the client takes it somewhere else.  It's the worst case scenario.  The station is out six figures and I'm out something like $20,000 of annual income.  It's a disaster.

THIS is when she decides to call a staff meeting to dig into the situation.  It's pointless.  The train left the station you dumbfuck.  All the department heads are sitting around the table, sort of like a Trump meeting where they all race in to praise her.  Nobody wants to veer into uncomfortable reality of her fucking this thing up.  The meeting starts and she pretends she doesn't know what the status is.  "Ummmm... We lost the buy and it's on another station as of two weeks ago."  This is when she says to me "I want you to set up a meeting with me and Tom Ganley."  Of course I'm thinking, "Well, what's the point of that?  It's done lady.  I fucking told you for weeks what was going to happen and then it happened."  I asked her what she wanted me to say was the pretense of this meeting.  I swear to God, this is what she said.  "Tell him I have a plan.  I just want to get in the room with him and see the whites of his eyes."

What the fuck are you talking about?  I asked her what the plan was so I was clear when I called what was going to be discussed.  "Oh, I have a plan."  Great.  What is it?  "I can't tell you right now because I'd have to kill you."  (No laughs from the grim faced staff). Look, if you don't have a plan, let's at least get one together.  "Oh, I have a plan.  I just can't tell YOU."   The entire table of department heads is sitting there and they are blank faced like they have left their bodies.  There's like ten people sitting there.  No one is stepping in to say shit.  They are pretending they aren't there.  It's just me and the crazy lady at this point.  She repeats "I want to see the whites of his eyes."  Now I could have left it there like those other weasels sitting there leaving me to die, but this is KRAZY.  That's when I say, "Look, it's obvious you don't have a plan, and that's fine, but at least tell me what I'm working with here so when I call over to set up this meeting I can set some reasonable expectations.  As far as he's concerned none of this is an issue and he's moved on.  What is the pretense for this meeting?  I need to have something rational."  She just looked at me and said "Oh, he'll want to meet with ME.  I have something big.  REALLY big."

As you might expect, she didn't have a plan.  She didn't get the money back.  She went and ate lunch with the guy at a steakhouse.  She didn't let me go to the meeting because I was going to see in person that she didn't have a plan and probably never even addressed it.  She tried to blame my manager and I a few weeks later for losing the money.  She eventually got fired from the job when she stayed at the station overnight during what she thought would be a big snowstorm that she wanted to sell to corporate management as her being the Captain at the Wheel during the Blizzard of 78, and padded around the facility in onesy pajamas yelling at the Late News crew.  It snowed a quarter inch out East, and her fragile mental health got exposed.  The news director ratted her out to Corporate I think.  She disappeared a few weeks later and a guy from Corporate came in and sheepishly admitted that maybe she needed some help.  Now, all these years later, there she was on my fucking phone.  How on Earth did I allow that piece of shit have that much control over my life?  I can tell you right now, there's some small staff in Foggy Bottom picking over some leftover doughnuts by some stale coffee that's already come to the conclusion that she is mentally ill.     

That's the randomness in life.  It just as easily could have been me making her miserable, but instead it was me trying to figure out what "seeing the whites of his eyes" could have meant when selling TV ads.  It's got to be the same way for these NFL QBs when they get drafted.  It's the random turn of a card.  One guy becomes a Bronco with Sean Peyton.  The other becomes a Jet.  Sam Darnold becomes a Jet and is totally fucked.  Can you imagine the culture shock from being The Man at USC to suddenly finding yourself a Jet?  He leaves there shattered, has a bad stint at Carolina, and finally makes his way to Minnesota and becomes a franchise QB.  Darnold's old coach Adam Gase from the Jets got fired after trashing the team and is out of the NFL.  Hell, I could have gone in and taken the Jets to a 2-14 record but at least I wouldn't have been an asshole like Gase.  The worm has turned now.  It turns out Darnold was worth one of the first picks in the draft.  Gase might be at a competing Conference Center from my old GM.  Give me Seattle +3.5 against the Rams.  This should be a great game.  Somebody wins this by one score I think.  I'll take the points.     

The wind is howling in NE Ohio today.  Dare I say "the gales of November came early".  I remember when the Browns drafted Dillon Gabriel, there was an interview clip that got played of how the Hawaiian QB doesn't like playing in bad weather.  Who else but the Browns would then think "we gotta get that guy?".  How can the Browns beat a good team with Gabriel at QB in the wind?  Baltimore is trending the right direction and it seems a foregone conclusion that they are going to win the AFC North with Lamar back on the field.  Sure...  The Browns defense is good at home, they know how to play Lamar, but how do the Browns score?  Seriously... How do they move the ball consistently?  Dillon Gabriel is Connor Shaw is Charlie Frye is Ty Detmer is Cody Kessler.  The Ravens need this game and the Browns know the season is over.  This game will be ugly and no one cares in the near empty stands.  I might bet the under Gabriel passing yards too if it's really windy at kickoff.  Baltimore -7.5

I got burned last week when Tennessee got a pick 6 and a punt return TD to cover.  They aren't doing that two weeks in a row.  That franchise is a great example of what happens when the kids think they are smarter than the Old Man that made the money that bought the team.  They get control of the team, fire Vrabel who immediately makes the Patriots a Super Bowl contender.  They hire Callahan's kid that doesn't know what the fuck he is doing and the team goes down the shitter.  Tennessee is EASILY the worst team in the league.  Look, I don't think Houston is any good either but they're better than Tennessee.  It's odd to be giving almost a touchdown on the road with Davis Mills, but here we are folks.  Houston -5.5.

Buffalo probably isn't very good, but they just got embarrassed last week by the Dolphins.  The Dolphins poured it on so bad that their coach drove by a Bills bar in Miami just to troll them.  Fuck.  That's bad.  Tampa was a nice story early but they are decimated by injuries.  Another key point is their quality of wins.  Tampa has beaten one good team this year, Seattle.  Good win.  They lost to New England, Detroit, and Philadelphia.  They beat the Saints, Niners and Jets.  I think Buffalo at home after a bad loss is more like NE/Det/Philly than they are Saints/Jets/Niners.  Buffalo money line.

OK, I've been scuffling.  Here's where I'm at on Sundays...

Current Record; 14-18

Welfare Mothers and NFL Week 10

 

I was reading this morning how our current administration, after being ruled that they had to release SNAP benefits to program participants, then went and appealed the decision.  The legal system being the legal system then put a hold on everything and wanted to hear further arguments.  I'll be honest, I don't know that much about the SNAP program beyond that it's the "food stamps" of today.  I grew up in what some would call a stereotypical suburban household.  A friend of mine from France was walking around my current neighborhood last weekend and started laughing.  "This is so funny.  It looks like an American movie." Around him was a Dad raking leaves, a couple that passed by on bikes, a couple kids tossing a football in front of enormous (by European standard) houses.  It's how I grew up, so it didn't seem weird.  From this perspective I grew up hearing a chorus around me about "welfare mothers rigging up the system for free food so they don't have to work".  Everyone in our community was of a common mind that "they" were leaching off the system.  Now, we didn't personally know anyone that was a "they", but it was assumed it was the black people that lived in the downtown bad neighborhoods of Erie.  Cut to one of my friend's mothers telling us, "You aren't driving in downtown Erie, are you?  It's DANGEROUS."  (That meant black people lived nearby.). It ain't easy living in The Bubble with dangers lurking everywhere.

It's very easy to be pissed off at people you didn't know living off the state when you were working hard to make the money to keep yourself fed.  Well, you weren't, but your Dad was doing whatever the hell he did at his company to keep food on the table and by extension, that was YOUR hard earned money.  Right?  Well, that was the attitude at my school.  Everyone was a self assured Charlie Kirk type with all the black and white answers.  Fucking poor people were poor because they were lazy and now they take MY (my Dad's) tax money for a free ride?  Fucking bullshit man.  It gets hammered into you out in the Burbs.

As you get more experienced in life, travel a bit, and meet people out of your bubble it begins to dawn on you.  Hey, maybe that kid Darryl from school, who lived in that beat up house by the water treatment plant with his sick Mom wasn't up front with us when he said he didn't want to go on the class DC trip.  Maybe Darryl didn't have the money to go.  He seemed to have some deal at the school cafeteria we didn't know about too.  I never remember seeing him pay at the register.  In retrospect, maybe Darryl's Mom was getting food stamps, and he's a good dude.  So...  OK I guess I don't have a problem with Darryl getting food stamps because his Mom can't work.  She is sick as shit.  Yeah... I guess it's OK if he gets them.  It's not like he's living like a King over there.  What, are we gonna let him starve?  I don't know those other people though.  They're probably ripping us off... or maybe there are more people in a bad spot like Darryl?  

I looked at those SNAP demographics.  39% of the people on the program are children.  88% of them are households with kids, disabled or elderly persons.  Our current government not only stopped giving these people food, but when a judge said "OK Government, you have to give those people their food", they went back to court and said "Yeah but we don't want to because we think we can pressure the other guys that don't want us to cut these same people's health care into signing that deal that gives rich people a little bit more tax money back".  And it's not like the money to feed everyone isn't just there.  That's not even the issue.  We are the richest country in the history of civilization and we are going to allow people to go hungry.  Our nation is willingly stopping kids, sick and elderly people from eating just to see their food used as a bargaining chip to cut a tiny minority's taxes that don't need it.  It's obscene.

As I munch on a bowl of granola and drink an espresso, t's not like I'm solving the problem by delivering food to sick people.  I'm "part of the problem adjacent".  I'm nestled into my spot of being in the one third of the population watching the other third gleefully inflict pain on the final third.  We all have our part to play I guess.  It's hard not to feel powerless as these types of injustice get rolled out.  What is it exactly that I can do about it?  Maybe I'll "take to the streets" later.  If I take my dogs, does it still count as "taking to the streets", or did I just take the bassets for a walk?  I don't know.  I guess I'd probably need to have a sign, but I'm not that craftsy so maybe I'll just watch these NFL Week 10 games instead.  Sorry kid without food.  I'm rooting for you but I don't know what to do about it.

Man, I got an assbeating last week.  I was way off on a couple of those.  Now I'm a little gun shy, but let's get back on the horse and get back to.500.  I do have a pick that I absolutely love this week.  The New York Jets.  Wait!  Hear me out on this!  The national narrative is that the Jets are dead in the water.  They traded shutdown corner Sauce Gardiner and that foundational D tackle for a boatload of draft picks (which they will presumably bungle).  The team is gutted and they have no chance.  To me, that's all New York myopic media shit.  Who are the Cleveland Browns to be favored on the road against ANYBODY?  Since the Browns decided to see "what they've got" with Dillon Gabriel, the Browns have the worst offense in football by a mile.  They make the Titans look dangerous.  Let's be realistic here.  The Jets don't have Gardiner, who Pro Football Focus has rated out as an average cornerback over the last two years.  Who cares?  The Browns can't get the ball to the receivers anyway.  Gabriel exclusively throws the ball in the middle to the tight ends, dump passes to the side, and has shown zero ability to throw downfield.  The Jets lose a D tackle?  Who cares.  The Browns problem comes from the edges because they don't have decent tackles.  The Jets defense is more than enough to stack the box versus the run and play everything in front of them like everyone else has done.  The Browns can't move the ball on anyone.

"Yeah, but Justin Fields sucks."  Yes, he does.  Fields has the 29th place QBR this year at 38.  That's not great.  But compare that to Dillon Gabriel and his 26 rating placing him 31st in the league.  So you are telling me that the Browns with the worst offense in the NFL since Gabriel started are going on the road and getting a win?  With a defense that gives up 30 per game on the road?  No way.  The Browns last covered a game on the road on October 13, 2024.  This line is an overreaction.  In a battle of "who sucks worse?", that answer is always the Browns.  Jets +2

Quarterbacks are divided into "win with" and "win because of" players.  That piece of shit JJ McCarthy that somehow put a good game up last week appears to be a "win with" guy.  You know, he's the kid at the pizza place that you let close up because you trust him just enough not to burn the place down, but you aren't having him handle peak Friday night rush.  Lamar Jackson is a "win because of" player.  That guy is really good at football.  He takes the Ravens from being a losing team into a winning team, and suddenly Jim Harbaugh becomes a good coach again.  I think I'd be a good coach if I had Lamar.  Between you and me though, that Ravens defense really blows.  I think the Ravens going to Minnesota is going to be all about Lamar pulling a rabbit out of the hat late.  I'm a little uneasy about betting against Lamar in the regular season, and I hate betting on NFC teams that have never faced him before, but I think this line is out of whack.  Lamar coming back doesn't fix everything.  Minnesota is a tough place to play. I'm on the Vikings +4.5.   

The Saints were bad with Spencer Rattler.  My biggest bet of the year was Saints under 7.5 wins when it seemed like Carr was maybe done.  The fact they somehow got worse by putting Tyler Slough in at QB is remarkable.  With the exception of that weird Buffalo game, the Saints are bad on the road and worse outdoors.  They like a nice smooth indoor track to play in.  I'm not sure if Carolina is any good compared to real teams, but they are better than the Saints.  The spread has me concerned because the public is on Carolina, so I'm going Carolina money line at home. 

Current record:  13-16