Peter Pan-The Truth Behind My Dead Pet Nightmares!

I don't read enough and I don't write enough. 

I have this recurring nightmare where I'll suddenly remember that I have a pet and I'll walk into the room and look into its cage and see a petrified carcass looking at me with glassy, accusing eyes.  "Fuck, I forgot to feed it for how long? Months?  What kind of person am I?"

It's like this blog.  I sit here in the coffee shop and work on some headlines for Zifty.com and feel depressed because I can't write worth shit, and then I remember, "oh god, my blog!"   But thankfully it's still here even though I haven't fed it in months.  

I'd love to get a cat but I fear that I'd kill it.  I mean, clearly, I have some underlying issues with responsibility.  I've kept my several house plants alive for the last 6 months even though my apartment gets less sunlight than Mars.  So that's something.   

I struggle to accept my grown-upedness.   Every day I fight against it.  I just googled "Peter Pan (and threw in a) Syndrome (just for fun)" and lo and behold, there's such a thing as Peter Pan Syndrome.  As a side note, if I were to have any crazy mental health issue, that's the one I'd want, because Peter Pan is awesome.   Also, there's worse things than refusing to grow up and um, have the social skills of a child...

I don't grow facial hair well.  I'm just saying, it could contribute to my Peter Pan Syndrome.  If I had an insanely hairy face, maybe I'd have whatever the appropriate syndrome would be - "someone who looks way too old for their age-syndrome."  Instead of never wanting to grow up, I desperately want to be old and have the social skills of a 100 year old man.  I will do anything to be old.  Put me in a wheelchair, immediately.

And just like a 100 year old man, I can't seem to figure out what else to write about because I'm cranky, tired, and sore.  

  

 

Apocalypse at the Claremont Lounge.

I was midsip sitting at the bar at Claremont Lounge, surrounded by an eclectic mix of weirdos, outcasts, overweight strippers, full-body-tatted hipsters, hair-dyed transexuals and a particularly fratty group of 20 somethings when a thought/idea occurred to me.  I'll get to that.

I'm quite certain that the Claremont doesn't have any heat and positive that it doesn't have air conditioning.   It barely has ventilation.  

The 15 story building crouched on top of the bar is deserted/condemned, and The Claremont lies at the rear bottom.  Once inside, you are in a seedy club along a shadowy alley or, more aptly, underground.  The place is like the Cantina on Tattoine and its strippers fit the bill too. 

Its unabashed hideousness is its beauty. 

PBR is an award-winning beer.  People forget that.  I buy it whenever possible, especially off the tap where it's at its freshest and most award-winning.  There, at the bar, I held the brew in my mouth for a moment and thoughtfully considered what I had just imagined.  Swallowing, I let it play out in front of me:

--------------------------------------------

Cold beer.   You know it's cold when you feel the wetness of the can when you pick it up.  The frosty beer makes the overwhelming heat of the club almost bearable.  My only qualm is the guy leaning on me trying to get the bartender's attention.  I turn to tell him to get the fuck off of me - 

SHOOOOOOM

The bar turns bright bright white.  The fucking Sun enters the bar and I instinctively cover my eyes and my face and cower behind the bar with the girl who I have brought there.  It's a good thing we do - everyone caught in the direct line of the blast is incinerated, blinded, fried... 

My ears are ringing, my eyes are burning, my skin is burning (not bad but feels hot), the bar is shaking.  I sense movement.  There is a rumbling, a whoosh and a rush behind me.   My barstool is knocked down; me with it.  It's okay because I can huddle lower against the bottom of the bar.  Sound floods my ears - screaming, crying, yelling, and the sound like the sound of a wave crashing above you in the ocean - muted and fierce. 

Then the entrance to the bar collapses on top of the kids who were dancing there moments before.  The ceiling and what is above it comes down around them.  

Everything is still shaking and is uncertain.  I'm gripping something tightly and it's a moment before I realize its my other wrist.  

Then it stops. 

It's another moment before I realize what's happened.  We've been attacked by...who...who..somebody.  But I, along with my companion and the rest of this motley crew have survived.  In fact, we're the only people left.  It's up to us to create the new world.  Maybe it's up to us to fight back.  

And I look around to see what we're left with.   I look to see who are the seeds of the new smarter better world - a world that won't destroy itself again - and there they are - grotesquely beautiful strippers, a dozen fratty dudes wearing their hat backwards, a couple thugs that may or may not have guns on them, an alcoholic bartender and his very dark under-eye circles (or is that a black eye?), a bikini-clad tattoo covered stripper (mildly attractive), an old man wearing 1970's style bib snowpants, a few scantily clad sorority girls, a few waspy looking couples looking for something different that night, and me.   Ladies and gentlemen, your New Government!

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I've always been freaked out by "the end of the world" no matter how it happens, but I've never considered until then, ( thank you post-apocalyptic movies) and hypothesized why, the most evil fucking people always ended up controlling the world.  Maybe it's because the craziest, sleaziest bars end up surviving the War with their biggest customers in them.    

I admit that the weirdest looking people are usually the nicest.  But regardless - next time you're in a weird place, look around and imagine which of your fellow freaks would try to take control of the "new world order" and become a super villain or what role "that guy" would take in the "new government."  It's a fun exercise.  

I'd definitely run for President.

Dedicated to Matt Benjamin.

I promised Matt Benjamin that  I'd write him a poem.  This is it.

ODE TO MATT(RESS) BENJAMIN

Oh, what space-age magic is in you, friend
that you conform and comfort, relax and mold
around the contours of my body?
What mad god crafted you from the loam
and illicitly shared you with the world?

What thaumaturgy forged your spongy edifice?
What alchemy yielded your potent soporific?

The range of my dreamscapes nor the eyes of my lover
compare
to your sympathetic skin.

Whence you came and what you are is clouded in mystery
and yet,  I trust your nebulous hands to catch me as I
fall and
cradle me in your generous bosom.

Even now lying here, your siren song echoes in my skull
and I am confronted with the inferiority of my station.

And while your memory will be impressed upon by scores
of  admirers,
I have only one special memory of you.

I got I got I got the Remedy. Ugh.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no greater substance on earth than Nyquil.

I love the way it tastes and I love the way it makes me feel.  It has a slightly sharp metallic taste to it, but if you wash it down with a beer, it goes down smooooth.  I'm joking.  Really.

I would never ever take Nyquil unless I were sick, though I'm sure it would be helpful.  Just as Dayquil would probably be beneficial to a totally healthy person.  What's wrong with preventing coughing?  So you don't HAVE a cough - who cares?  Be proactive!

I just took my dosage for the night and I cannot wait for it to start working.  I love anything with a slow, creeping soporific effect.  It's like the post-Thanksgiving feast food coma.  Or the late Sunday night football games (the ones that start at 8:30PM[!!]) in Atlanta and end at 12:30AM.  In LA, the midday nap happened  around the middle of the second set of NFL games on Sunday, right around 2:45-3:00PM.  And what a glorious nap it was. Glory. Us.

Nyquil sleep is pretty extraordinary.  I could sleep on a fence.  Nyquil makes any body arrangement, any awkward neck angle comfortable - or at least bearable.  It's  a pretty special tonic.  I admit, I have a very small desire to take twice the required dosage just to see what the hell would happen.  I've heard from reliable sources that drinking an entire bottle results in some serious mushroom-trippy shit, and I've had enough of that experience in my life.  That's not the goal.

Both of the quils have attributed to my slow rise to health again, along with a ridiculous amount of honey, tea, hot water, random juices, and most recently, oregano oil.   I was told by a friend of mine that oregano oil is the cure all (I really thought that was one word - cureall - but it's not. Weird.) for sicknesses, so I endeavored to try it out.  It tastes very strongly of oregano.  I don't know why I didn't assume it would be strong, since it's basically extracted from the really really small oregano leaves, but I was shocked when I sipped my tea and it tasted like an italian sauce.  It took some getting used to, and it could just be good timing, but my health has improved since adding the oil into my diet.  

There's a pretty definitive way to tell how far along my healing is going.  I figured this out today, driving home from my late class.  Of the last four days, not including today, I basically spent 72 hours worth on the couch or in bed sleeping or trying to sleep.  When in the car, either going to class this morning, or going to the grocer's several days ago for the quils, I play music.  Usually, if I'm sick, it's slow music, like Cat Stevens or a good Jason Mraz mix.  (I say "good" Jason Mraz mix, because it's just his live stuff.  I abhor his studio shit.  It actually makes me mad.  I sort of hate him since he's a sellout and makes awful music now, but I can't part with his live stuff from Java Joe's.  It's THAT good.)  So anyway, the one thing this music has in common is that it's all singalongable.  If I feel like shit, the last thing I want to do is speak to anybody, let alone sing along to songs.  Well, today, I started slowly, but I sang along to some Cat Stevens and Mraz.  So that is a clear sign that I'm getting closer to 100%.  Once I'm belting out Hootie again, I will be free and clear from this dirty old disease.

I do not like being sick.  It's impossible being creative because I require energy to be creative.  I don't want to jinx it because I'm not free of the mucus monster yet.  A few more rounds of the quils and I should be good to go.

Psychosomatic Addict Insane!

So yesterday I had the opportunity to go to the symphony, this time with Nigel and while I was feeling a little like I was getting sick, I figured fuck it, lets have some fun.  It was an amazing time, both in symphonic excellence, food yumminess and most excellent company.   Unfortunately, my immune system wants to cash the checks that my body has been writing, and I fear I may have severely overdrawn the account.    (I'd like nothing more than to extend the metaphor into including $35 overdraft fees, but I'll just get depressed.)

What typically ends up happening when I start to feel like I'm getting sick is that I focus on healthy foods and tea and honey and other liquids and stuff - which is good.   But I also focus on being SICK.  Which is not good.   I'm attacking this...experience differently this time.   I think the more I ignore the phlegmy lump in the back of my throat, the better.  Essentially, I need to convince my body that I'm completely healthy.  Is it going to work?  I doubt it.   We'll so how it goes tomorrow when I try to work out and run and sweat it out.

That's part of the reason that I'm writing this blog right now - to NOT focus on my sore throat that's required two doses of tylenol.  I've resisted the temptation to say AH and examine myself in the mirror.  It's too dark anyway, but inevitably, I'll unsuccessfully try and find the right angle where the light manages to sneak past my teeth.   While I write this I am not thinking about the sinus pressure that is slowly creeping up the back of my skull or my narrowing nasal passages, becoming more and more corroded like copper piping.  I'm not thinking about the increasing frequency that I am clearing my throat because my uvula feels like it's choking me.  Nope.  I'm focusing on writing. 

I felt amazing last night, during the symphony.  It was a packed house because Izhak Perlman was the guest conductor.  So evidently, he doesn't have legs.  Or maybe he has Polio.   This requires Wikipedia. Checking...Yep.  Had Polio when he was 4.  He walks with supports.   I had no idea.  I also had no idea that the first piece for the evening was Mozart's 25th symphony, one of my favorites.  I listen to a lot of classical music - well, I listen to the same classical pieces a lot - and the 25th is one of them.  I'm getting better at making the connection between the "names" of the pieces and what they sound like, so I didn't know at first glance, that the 25th was a symphony that I really liked until it started.    It's harder with classical music.  "Pour Some Sugar On Me" is easy to remember because they sing, "Pour some sugar on me" about five thousand times in the song.  Not so with classical music.  Obviously.

Anyway, it was surreal watching one of the most famous violinists to ever live play (and conduct simultaneously) one of my favorite symphonies.  It was brilliant.  

After the short intermission, in which everyone basically takes extra large wine and champagne shots, they played a Dvorak piece that completely blew me away.  It was his "New World Symphony" and I thought it was going to be lame - I mean, how can you beat Mozart?- but it was outstanding.  Parts of the symphony sounded like it was from the Native American scale, others like a cowboy movie soundtrack, and others reminded me of High Holiday songs.   And yet, it all worked.  It was REALLY good.  I ended up enjoying the Dvorak more than the Mozart.  I couldn't believe it.  I still sort of can't.  But if you have a moment, download "The New World Symphony" and you'll see what I'm talking about.  It's a wonderful piece.

I'm going to do my best to get back to writing the blog more often.  It's an important part of my creative experience and it's definitely going to take my mind off of being sick these next couple days.  Oh dammit, there I go again. Fuck.

Simplifying Fantasy? Is it Possible? Find out. (It's not.)

The third year of my All-Cute Team is set.   That's the name of my fantasy basketball league.  The name originated because I thought, and continue to think, that Allen Iverson is a "cute" man.  It may sound questionable, but go and find a picture of him.  Right now.  Seriously.  Keep this window open, open another one, and google search Allen Iverson and then click on Images.  Done?  Okay.  Now you have to agree, that is one cute man.  Not sexually attractive - unless thuggish is your thing - but cute.  Like a puppy.  A man-puppy.   This led to me to the creation of an all-cute team.  What other guys in the NBA have a puppy-dog cuteness to them that is totally NON sexual.  I can't stress this part enough.
Creating weird "all-(adjective)" teams is sort of a Bill Simmons thing, but I may have invented the all-cute team before he came up with any of his teams.  It's also a fictional team.  We can play this game with anything - we can play the all-lascivious president team and put Clinton and JFK up on there for example.  It's possible every president would be on there, so maybe that's a bad example.  But you get the drift.

So my all-cute team ended up pretty good.  While the motivation behind the all-cute team is very real, the actual execution of it, is different - I don't actually go out of my way to draft "cute" basketball players.  That'd be ridiculous.  Well, unless Iverson were still in the league.  He's sort of my spirit animal.  So my goal has always been to draft the best group of guys I can.  And this year was no different.
This was my keeper league, which operates using an AUCTION format.  This is different than the typical draft setup.  In MOST leagues, the draft works as follows:  Ten team league.  Draft order is picked randomly.  The first team drafts first (duh), usually the best player in the league (determined by his stats and experts opinions, etc.), then the second goes second and so on until the tenth team drafts tenth AND ELEVENTH - and then the ninth team drafts 12th and the eight drafts 13th, etc..  This is called a snake draft.  There's nothing wrong with snake drafts and they work great for all fantasy sports.  They are problematic, however, because sometimes, the difference between the top three best players and the fourth through 20th best player is severe, so the teams that lucked out with the top three picks get a huge advantage for no reason.  This is SORT of true this year.  I ended up with the third pick, as I said, in my other draft and was happy getting Chris Paul.  Paul is great and, in fact, finished the last full season he played as the #1 fantasy player, but the first two picks this year were Kevin Durant and Lebron James.  In that order, usually.  Paul is slightly worse, statistically, than both Durant and Lebron.  Nobody would take Paul over either of those guys.  Ever.  At the same time, at the 3 pick , I could have gone with Chris Paul or Dwyane Wade or Dirk Nowitzki or a handful of other guys.  I would say that the 4 pick might be the hardest because  Paul could STILL end up the #1 guy if he plays as well as we know he can but Dirk or Wade have a low shot at it.  So the #4 pick has a greater chance of fucking you, essentially.
My ESPN league (my all-cute team) is a KEEPER league.  We're pretty serious about it, so I'll only hit on the important rules - at the end of any given year each manager (what you call someone like me who "owns" a team) picks up to 5 "keepers" that remain on the team next year.  Usually, after the year is over, all of the teams are emptied and we start all over again - in a keeper league, it's about maintaining your team and/or creating a legacy.  I kept 5 players.   Additionally, my ESPN league is an AUCTION league.  Instead of drafting players based on an arbitrary draft order, managers NOMINATE individual available NBA players and they are BID on.  For example, since I kept Kobe Bryant, he's unavailable for auction, so I choose Ron Artest as a player.  The bidding starts at $1 and continues until no one is willing to match a bid. That amount becomes that players "salary" for the year.   Each manager starts with $200 (FAKE) dollars - MINUS THE SALARIES OF THE PLAYERS HE KEPT.
One of the players I kept was Kobe and he was worth $50 (established from the previous year's draft) so I automatically have $50 less to play with from the start of the auction.  Once you take into account my other four players, I ended up with roughly $100 dollars to draft with.
My keeper league does an incredible job of mimicking the NBA and although it can be tedious, it makes for a richer experience.  This will be the third full season so we managers had to make decisions whether or not we wanted to sign our players to extended contracts.  It works like this:
The first two years of a players contract remain the same.  ie. I kept Kobe from his first year into his second season and his contract did not change - it was $50.  At the beginning of the THIRD year, if you have players (like Kobe) who will be in their THIRD year, you must decide if you - A) want to keep them until the end of THAT season, at which point they will be released into the FA pool and eligible to be bid on the following year, in which case their salary DOES NOT increase.  OR B) you want to SIGN them to a multi-year contract (ANY number of years 1-99), in which case the players salary IMMEDIATELY increases $4 per year.   In my case with Kobe, I chose to keep him for ONE more year and release him at the end of the year, which kept his salary at $50.  If I chose to sign him to a 2 year contract (this year and next year) he would IMMEDIATELY be valued at $54 dollars THIS year, and at $58 next year.    Those totals would then be immediately subtracted from my starting auction bank.   If I had a player that had a $1 salary and was in his third year (Brooke Lopez for example, who my friend Andrew has), I could have signed him to a 10 year contract, raising his 2010-11 salary to $5, his 2011-12 salary to $9, and each one thereafter $4 more.  For a player that's actually WORTH $40, it's an excellent idea to lock up quality, low cost players for as long as possible.
First year players are designated as A players, second year as B players, third year players who are being released at the end of the year are Z players.  Players kept for 1 year are designated as Y players, for 2 are X players, 3 is W etc all the way down the alphabet. Whenever a player is in their "Z" year, it is their final year of the contract.  Oh yeah, and all player trades within the league, include their contracts.  So if you signed a BAD contract, you CAN dump it off on another manager.
After that BRIEF (seriously) explanation of the league rules, here's what I ended up with: (all keepers will be the guys who AREN'T designated as "A".
The All-Cute Team
PG Rajon Rondo (Keeper - in his "U" year) - $17
SG Kobe Bryant - $50 - Z
SF Danny Granger - $42 - W
PF David Lee - $10 - U
C - Anthony Randolph - $15 - A
C - Andrew Bynum - $8 - A
G - Stephen Curry - $1 - B (kept from last year woohoo)
F - JR Smith - $3 - A
UTIL - Richard Hamilton - $16 - A
UTIL - MIke Miller - $4 - A (He's hurt for 3 months but quality quality guy)
BENCH - Brendan Haywood -$8 - A
BENCH - Andris Biedrins - $13 - A
BENCH -Thaddeus Young - $1 - A

If you do the math I actually screwed up and didn't spend $12.  Its a tough thing because you try to save money for the good players at the end of the draft that nobody else saved for.  It didn't work out quite the way I wanted.  But I'm happy with my squad anyway.  Bynum and Mike Miller are hurt so I'll need Biedrins to repeat his numbers from a few years ago and Haywood to step up and give me the boards and blocks that Bynum's absence requires.  Also Anthony Randolph is unproven, but if he can stay on the court for 35 minutes, he GOT to be good for at least 8 boards and 2 blocks.  The dude's a freak.

Season starts Wednesday.  Booyeah.

Halloween Sucks. But What it Stands for is AMAZING.

I always look forward to this time of year.  The stifling heat of the summer finally subsides to cooler winds and gray skies and the nakedness of the trees.  Plus, I like wearing jackets.  Let's face it, it was hard to wear jackets in Los Angeles unless it was raining or it was a suit jacket and I was going to Nobu.  Even though I'm not crazy about Halloween, the tail end of October and the opening of November is one of my favorite parts of the year.   There's a special feeling in the air - it's not quite Christmastime yet and it's not quite Thanksgiving, but the smell of nutmeg and roasted turkey is in the air.   And every sport is going - the important ones, anyway - Football in the meat of the season, the world series is starting up, hockey has just started and the great basketball egg has been cracked right onto the sizzling fantasy skillet.  That's right, ladies and gentlemen, fantasy basketball is BACK.
I have two leagues this year, a far cry from the previous years with 4-5 different teams, and I have a good feeling about them.  My keeper league draft commences tonight at 10pm and I drafted my other league yesterday.  Here's my insights after my first rotisserie draft: (9 categories - fg%, ft%, 3s, pts, boards, dimes, steals, blocks, TOs [negative cat.])
Every year there is a lack of a specific category.  It's usually blocks.  Ever since I started playing back in my Sophomore year of college blocks were the holy grail of categories.   If you were winning blocks, you were probably winning the league.  That's during Garnett's prime and Duncan and Nowitzski's emergence as top five players in the league - like 2002ish.  At time time Garnett was putting up insanely gaudy numbers - 24, 15 and 6 with a steal and block and a half.  Something like that.  He was the consensus first pick for years.  Which is why it was weird seeing him go almost undrafted yesterday, in the 11th or 12th round - and that's across the universe of webspace not just in my league or in the US.  Shawn Marion is another good example of an old powerhouse who inexplicably cooled.  Cooled isn't even the word.  More like froze to death.  Marion was the guy who always was drafted top 3 or 5 by the guy who had a plan and was really competitive.  Guys that drafted Marion knew the secret math behind fantasy success before the roto-nerds invented the algorithms used to analyze players' individual fantasy contributions and value.   In my leagues, my friend Eric always drafted him and I always passed on him.  I prefer explosive players.  I like my players to be exciting and provocative.   I like Kobe (in real life and in fantasy.)  Marion was boring but was a fantasy monster, never hurting your categories - always helping in multiple ones.  One particularly ridiculous year (2006-2007), Shawn Marion won the distinction of having more three pointers, blocks and steals (in each of those categories) than total turn overs.  In other words, he averaged 1.2 threes, 2.0 steals, and 1.5 blocks a game while averaging just 1.0 turnovers.  Insane statistic.  And he did all this and still managed incredible percentages, 17  points and 10ish rebounds a game.   He came close to this feat MANY times but only accomplished it this one year.  Insane.  Anyway, Shawn Marion went undrafted this year in my first league.  Mostly because he's now on the Dallas Mavericks where great players go to die.   I can't think of one player off the top of my head that got BETTER once he went to Dallas.  Not one.  But I digress...
So as I was saying - there's always a category that's hard to find, and this year, I think it's three pointers and, to some extent, points scored.  A couple years ago, it was impossible to find guys on the waiver wire that could contribute to your point total.  Not one of the players scored more than nine points a game. It was crazy.  This year I don't think it's quite as bad, but I think it will be challenging to stay competitive in points if you draft a more than two players who don't score very much, like Marcus Camby or another low scoring center.  Ben Wallace used to be the ultimate example of the valuable low scoring center, (he never averaged more than 10 points a game) but has averaged 10.2 rebounds and over 2 blocks a game over his 15 year NBA career.  So while he used to be a huge help in a few categories, he murdered you in a bunch of others.
So other than points, I noticed a lack of threes out there in the draft pool.  It used to be that I looked for certain categories from certain positions.  For my rebounds, blocks and fg%, I draft my centers.  For my points, assists, steals, ft%, I draft my guards.  And my forwards do everything else.   I remember during one my first years playing, my friend Kyle had a team that was last place in assists and threes.  He made a bunch of (suspicious) trades - his good forwards for all of the guards in the league - and within a few weeks he was leading the league in three pointers and assists.  It was that easy.
Nowadays its a little more complicated.  Just as the advertising world is starting to expect Designers who can Art Direct or Programmers who can Design, etc., the NBA has evolved over the last decade.  Players like Lebron James (heard of him have you?) basically play every position.  Magic Johnson did it for one game - Lebron does it EVERY game - at least statistically.  Troy Murphy, a forward/center now on the nets used to be known as a pure rebounder.  Now, he hits two threes a game playing the 5.  Conversely, there are guards in the league that are known purely for their passing and driving ability.  It started back in the day with Steve Francis who averaged good boards for a point guard (5.5ish) and nominal assists (7-8) but never shot the three.  He was still an amazing fantasy player, but if he shot the three he could've been elite.  Tony Parker has has attempted 1.6 threes per game over his 10 year career. Of those attempted, he makes roughly half a three per game.  Rajon Rondo, an up and coming point guard on the Celtics attempts .6 a three per game.  Pretty interesting, considering that the majority of guards in the league DO shoot the three and LOVE to do so.  Rondo is even more provocative of a player because he's proven he CAN shoot the three - as evidenced by the terribly directed HORSE competition during this year's All-Star Weekend in which he and Kevin Durant (arguably the best player currently in the NBA) traded 15 back to back threes from the top of the key.  
Don't get me wrong - there are threes available out there in the free agent pile, but none of the available players are worthwhile because while they average in points what they make in threes - and that's bad.

Okay keeper league draft starting. ..
I'm planning on doing a rundown of the teams for this NBA season this week - I'm going to try to be less confusing in the posts to follow. I think I confused myself with this one.
Madness, indeed.