Frustrating...

I had a really good idea for a post the other night, just as I was going to bed. For the life of me, I can't remember it. It even had a larger point. Sorry, wait, by now that needs to be Larger Point (tm). As opposed to a Lager Point, which is something you make after a coupla beers, or even a Point Lager, which is decent but not spectacular beer from Pennsylvania, by no means the peer of Yuengling. And since I just googled it, I now find that Point is actually from Wisconsin, meaning it's actually no peer of of Leinenkugel. Aggressive Lethargy regrets the error.

Unrelated things...

These things all happened yesterday...

1. On the train to a "career fair," (quotation marks explained below)I saw a van parked behind a building somewhere on the NorthSide. The van was painted up with the logo and trade dress of the Illinois Lottery (Have a Ball!), and sitting on the front dashboard were two giant novelty checks.

2. Chatting with a woman in line at one of the booths at the fair, she recognized the person at the table as someone she'd interviewed with earlier that morning.

3. Open letter to the gentleman on the el sitting across the car from me...the whole "tough guy hair net" thing complete with "you lookin' at me? Huh?" scowl is totally undermined by the fact that you are carrying your son's Thomas the Tank Engine backpack. Cute kid, but it's kinda hard (and unnecessary on a midmorning Red Line train) to be that much of a badass that way.

4. Still on the train, at one point (maybe Argyle) a woman quickly fumbled with her fancy phone-camera (don't know what kind, but a nice one) and started furiously taking pictures of...? No clue. There was nothing I could imagine anyone taking pictures of, unless the train was the only way she could get a high enough view of something. But then, why the suddenness to it? Wouldn't she know where she was looking if she was on some sort of photographic mission? My guess was she was looking for a car parked somewhere it shouldn't be.

5. Return trip, several hours later (I really need to ride the train more often, I guess), a rough-looking older guy is sitting in front of me. He's on his phone barking orders at someone in a gravelly, Eastern European accent that instantly reminds me of some kind of bad guy from 24. With that image in mind, I can see him texting. It's relevant that he's older, because a) his phone is pretty old, and b) it's taking him FOREVER to text. Naturally, I'm fascinated by what could be worth this much effort. When I manage to sneak a peek as he's finishes, it says "Sorry for the way I've been acting lately. I love you." I feel terrible for spying on him.

6. This last one, I need to tread lightly. Because there are all kinds of things wrapped up in this that I don't really want to go stomping around in. But here goes...So I'm standing in line to get in to this "career fair" (ok, explaining the quotes. Basically, if you're unemployed, avoid these things like the plague. If you want to spend your time more productively, make two phone calls to random companies inquiring about their open positions, then take a 3 hour nap. At least you'll be refreshed, instead of exhausted from getting dressed up, slogging downtown on the train, getting totally f***ing lost in the Merchandise Mart, standing in a giant line of desperate people only to find out that the 20 booths inside consist of 4 insurance companies hiring sales people, a retail chain hiring stock clerks, 2 or 3 companies looking to fill incredibly specific positions (you could tell the HR person just wanted out of the office for the morning), and 10 or 11 booths where they were actually trying to sell you something (get computer training! Get your bachelor's degree/GED! Enroll in the police academy! Have you considered the Coast Guard? Run your own home busines over teh interwebs!) Just. Don't. Go. Next time you go downtown, fling 10 copies of your resume into the air at random points on the sidewalk while passing large office buildings, you've got a better chance of landing something. Ok, I'm done now. Where was I? Right, standing in line). So I'm standing in line, waiting to "register" (don't get me started). Everyone has their resume out so the registration desk can take your information. Looking over the shoulder of the woman in front of me (hmmm, seems to be a theme...I was nosy yesterday, I suppose), I saw her name written in comically unprofessional 18 point type, the kind where the letters were all jagged and uneven. If she was a graphic designer, then maybe it works, I suppose, but it was the name itself that jumped out at me.
Her name was DeJaVu.
Yes, it was her first name, and yes, it was capitalized like that. Her last name was something common, plus I don't want to publish it here. Oh, and I almost forgot, there's an accent mark in there somewhere, but I couldn't tell if it was over the J, the a, or the V. And yes, only one accent mark. Again, I know this gets complicated when discussing these things, and gawd knows that a guy whose surname is pronounced "more head" (not to mention a first name that can be a title or a verb) has no business making fun of anyone else's name, but how much do you have to hate your child to name it something that ridiculous? How is she ever supposed to be taken seriously? How does she not strangle someone after hearing, for the 3,052,789th time "Haven't we met before?" In short, and to sum up: argh.

At least I don't have to pretend Andie MacDowell can act

Of course I watched Groundhog Day last night. What the hell else was I going to do? There are two movies which must be watched on the same day every year...Planes, Tranes and Automobiles must be watched on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (the day the story starts), and this one. I can't believe TBS doesn't show it on a continuous loop every year the way they do A Christmas Story. What other movie has been named for something (in this case, a holiday), then has completely overtaken the meaning for it? When someone says "it's like Groundhog Day around here," they don't mean that there's a weird animal ceremony regarding the weather, they mean it's the same thing over and over, like the movie. People reference the movie far, far more than the actual day.

Anyway, even though it's Super Bowl week, and it was primary night (and let's face it, watching the local news doofuses try to be CNN or MSNBC and report on election returns while mixing in occasional commentary is high, high comedy), I watched it. First, a nitpick: really, Bravo? You took a 1 hr, 41 min movie, stretched it to two hours and yet still somehow had to cut the flapjacks line? D-bags. Whatever.

I should warn you that I'm a sucker for these types of things. I don't know if there's a good word for them, but I suppose you could call them Connundrum pieces. They aren't all good, but they are, to me at least, interesting. "What if you lived the same day over and over?" "What if you had 30 days to spend $30 million?" and sadly, even "What if you were on a bus that couldn't go below 40 mph or it would explode?" There's a book that my friend Ramon gave me a long time ago that's sort of a variation on the Groundhog Day theme, where a guy has a heart attack on his 40th birthday and wakes up 18 and in college again, and keeps living his adult life over and over, always having the same heart attack at the end no matter what. Whereas Groundhog Day was personal, this book ("Replay") got more into how this one guy could change things (could he prevent the JFK assassination? Could he make a gazillion dollars investing in Microsoft in 1975? And so on.) Hell, I even still like playing the "What would you do if you won the lottery?" game. But back to Punxsutawney...

It never fails to strike me what a sad movie it really is. Maybe it's because I buy into Phil's
character so completely, but the look on his face sometimes when he "wakes up" is excruciating. Harold Ramis says that originally, the idea was for Phil to spend something like 10,000 years reliving the day, but they considered that too cruel, so it's probably more like 10 years. I suppose that's enough time for him to learn the things he learned, but it really feels like longer to me, as though he lived an entire lifetime just on Feb 2nd. Watch it once and you'll laugh, watch it a couple times and it will become a Connundrum piece for you too...

But a strange thing happened while I was watching it last night (warning: Larger Point Ahead). I realized that in some ways, I had been patterning my own life after Phil's for the last 11 months or so. Ever since I've been unemployed, getting a new job was my "waking up on Feb. 3rd." And like Phil, I've tried a lot of different ways to make it ok for me to wake up tomorrow. By which I mean I subconsciously think "ok, if I can just do X, then I can move on." Over the last 11 months, X has mainly been based around "getting my s*** together" either figuratively or almost literally. Getting our financial house in order by finally, after 10 years, getting all my old 401Ks into the same place, and really, truly learning my lesson about being in debt and spending too much money seemed like the thing. Then it was "doing all that stuff around the house" like remodeling the upstairs and cleaning out the garage. Surely I'd get a job after I did all that. "Getting in shape," while certainly not complete, was a contender there for a while. I go to the gym a lot, which coincidentally enhances the Groundhog Day feel to the whole thing (I try to use the same locker and the same elliptical machine every time, and until yesterday I had no idea why). I could've sworn that the universe was going to give me a job recently when I decided that it was time to swallow my pride and apply for a temp job with the Census. The fact that I got a call for an interview for a real job the same day I decided to do that was a clear sign. I guess not.

The lesson here, I suppose, is that I need to let go of the crazy. I'm not a superstitious person (great line by Peyton Manning at Media Day yesterday "I'm not superstitious...well, maybe I'm a little bit stitious"...what, you thought there'd be no football at all in this post?), but for some reason I've been working under the unconscious assumption that two unconnected things could possibly be affecting each other. So no more. I do what I do, and that won't change whether or not I get offered a job. Period, end of story.

Unless, of course, watching the movie again, making this realization and letting go of it was what I needed to do all along in order to move on to February 3rd, which would be some remarkable irony if it happened on February 3rd, right?

Your move, groundhog...

Roman Numerology

So a lot of people have been asking me who I'm rooting for in the Super Bowl (ok, not really, that's just a construct to start this thing off). The bye-week story seemed to be that these were two evenly matched teams with no good-guy/bad-guy issues. There are no TOs to root against, no arrogant cheating-coach overdogs, and no aging superstars who want one last shot at a ring.


It also happens that these two teams are involved in the complex calculus of teams I root for in the NFL (yeah, I stole that line from King Kaufman, big deal. It's not like he's Rick Reilly, going around trademarking all his bits). So the reality is that no matter which team wins, I'll be ok with it for a change. I say "for a change," because I'm not sure the team I was rooting for has won more than 3 times; Giants in XLII, (and even that had a caveat), Bears in XX (I didn't live in Chicago yet, but c'mon, nobody outside of the state of Massachusettes was rooting for the Patriots), and Broncos in XXXII (only because I wanted Elway to get one so he'd be ahead of Marino, who I always thought was a punk and a loser). There were a few times I didn't really care that much (Patriots/Panthers in XXXVIII? Ugh, whatever. I was more interested in the long roman numeral than the game). There were also, of course, times when I cared a lot; two of them, to be exact (XVI and XXIII). Both times I was crushed by the same Notre Dame quarterback, cementing my hatred of two pro franchises, the one in San Francisco and the one in South Bend.

So anyway, this is the first time, at least in recent memory, that I've had two teams I liked in the game. How to distinguish between them? I mentioned a complex calculus, here's an in-no-particular-order ranking...



Bengals: Ok, this part isn't so complex. Still rooting for them pretty much no matter who they play. I grew up there, went to my first game there, and even attended a playoff game in the run-up to XXIII, the infamous "Joe Nash injury game" that you no doubt remember (Seahawks DL Joe Nash faked a leg cramp on every 3rd down to slow down the Bengals no-huddle offense). Or at least you would remember it if it hadn't happened 3 hours after the "Fog Bowl" at Soldier Field.



Bears: I have a really complex relationship with the Bears. I either want them to be 13-3 or 3-13. It has to do with the sports talk radio. It's cool when they're good, and schadenfreudtastic when they're bad. Seasons like this most recent one, where there are mixed expectations and mediocre results, are the worst. The hiring of Mike Martz as offensive coordinator makes me happy, because it means both 13-3 and 3-13 are in play.


Those are the easy ones, and I dare say the top 2. No matter who they play, I'm rooting for them, and if they play each other, there's no doubt I'm rooting for the Bengals. Then it gets tricky. There are a bunch of teams I don't care about, and a few I root against actively (PIT, BAL, CLE, DET and MIN for divisional reasons, SF for historical reasons, WAS for racist nickname reasons). There are some who will note an omission in that last set of parentheses and maintain I can never really be a Bears fan because I don't hate Green Bay with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Those people are stupid. Green Bay, in theory, is what all sports franchises should be. Publicly owned, part of the community, smaller market that actually gets behind the team (I'm looking in your direction here, Jacksonville). The others I root for:

San Diego: Yeah, ok, it's mostly about the throwback uniforms, but what I really like is the restraint they've shown in not becoming the Los Angeles Chargers.

Tennesee: Hard to explain this one, but I like the fact that they have had the same coach for 15 years.

But neither of them are in the Super Bowl, now, are they? I'm clearly procrastinating here. So let's get into it...

I really should dislike the Colts. They were a classic bedrock franchise of the NFL, and then they packed up in the middle of the night and moved to Indianapolis, ripping the hearts out of Barry Levinson and everyone else in Baltimore. Peyton Manning destroyed my Wildcats in a bowl game (something I never forgave Keyshawn Johnson for). They play in a dome. They once employed Jim Harbaugh. But here's the thing...screw Baltimore. First of all, it was 25 years ago, you really should be over it by now. Second of all, you guys went and stole another team, so you got your blood revenge (for which I thank you, because you made Cleveland miserable, and that makes me happy). Manning? Eh, it was the Citrus Bowl. I was so hung over for that game, I don't remember it much. As for Harbaugh, well, everyone makes mistakes.

But Indy has a lot going for it, both as a team and as a fan base. They're right in between my other favorite teams, three hours from Chicago, two from Cincinnati. I once spent the Friday afternoon before a game day in downtown Indianapolis. It was a regular season game, but if I recall correctly it was fairly important. Walking around Monument Circle and the surrounding few blocks, I was stunned. Almost half of the people walking around were wearing Colts jerseys. And yeah, a lot of them were #18, but there were a ton of Marvin Harrisons and Edge James and Dwight Freeneys also. Of those not wearing jerseys, there were a ton of Colts sweatshirts and hats, and even a couple of guys wearing horseshoe ties. And not only was this not the playoffs, this was a Friday. One last note on Indy fans. You'll rarely see Manning give the "quiet down" wave, because those guys act, when the Colts are on the field, like they're at a golf tournament. Once the play is over, they applaud, even cheer, for about 10 seconds, then it's back to near silence. That's why any time you watch a Colts home game, you can hear everything Manning says.

As for the on-the-field stuff, the Colts don't do much that's fancy. They don't run guys around or shift guys four times before the snap. In fact, they seem like they only have 3 or 4 formations. If Wayne is in the slot left for the first play of the drive, he's probably there for the entire drive. There used to be a lot of whining about Manning's machinations and gyrations before the play, but I think people understand now that it works. It's scary how well Manning reads defenses, and how well the offense has been tailored to his strengths.

New Orleans? It's one of my favorite places to visit, which is not exactly a stunning insight. But I should dislike the Saints primarily because of a really picky thing. "Who Dat?" is really similar to the Bengals rallying cry of "Who Dey?" While "Who Dat?" has been around at Southern University and/or Alcorn State forever, the Saints reportedly didn't start using it until 1983, while the Bengals started with the "Who Dey?" in 1981. Now everyone assumes that Cincinnati stole it from New Orleans, because what the hell would Cincinnati be doing with something before New Orleans? But that's stupid, and I actually think it's kind of cool, in the age of the generic stadium with the Jumbotron that has to tell you when to cheer with the same graphics package that every other team has, to have something unique like that. As for the fans, I think the national media makes more of the whole "lifting the city up after Katrina" thing than the locals do. But they're into it, and they don't really seem all that bandwagon-y. It seems like how you feel about the Saints determines how you feel about Reggie Bush. I thought the guy handled it perfectly when he came into the league the season after Katrina. He negotiated sponsorship deals for himself that demanded the company make significant contributions to the city as well. He gave his his share of merchandising revenue to relief efforts (thus why I was willing to own something with the name "Bush" on it in 2006), and he was very conscious of doing good without calling a whole lot of attention to the good he was doing. How many 23 year olds can handle something like that? Ok, sure, it was probably a shrewd agent, and yeah, it makes for a good joke that he didn't need the money, he still had plenty left from his days at USC, but still...

As for the on-the-field, dang is Sean Payton good. They throw like nine guys at you, all with different skills, all of them really good at what they do. Their defense is exciting, in that they give up a lot of big plays, but they make a lot of big plays. In other words, they are the perfect opponent for an entertaining Super Bowl.

As I write this, I realize something. The point of this whole thing was to tell you who I was rooting for, and truth be told, I haven't figured it out yet. I'm leaning Colts, but it's a very, very slight lean, and it may have more to do with my prediction than my feelings.

So let's get that part out of the way. Every schlub with a picks column, or a football blog, or an internet connection and a blogspot account (present company included) is going to make an "official" pick. I'll go one better, I'll make a prediction about the predictions. A whole lot of guys who do this for a living are going to look at the line (hovering between Colts -5 and -6, depending on where you look) and take the ultimate copout by saying "Hmmm this feels like a field goal game" and thus default their pick to the Saints. It's a copout because they're really just picking a close game, which is much safer than saying either that the underdog will win outright or the favorite will win big. Since nobody really cares about my pick, I'm willing to do that. I try to make my Super Bowl pick as soon after the Championship games are over, just because you get so much crap over the next two weeks, you can talk yourself into anything. Freeney's injury is big, but it's not as big as we all think. It won't matter that much in the end. The Colts just have too much offense. They have shown they can win 14-12 games and 45-38 games. I think this one ends up Colts 38, Saints 24.

That's what I think will happen. Is that what I want to happen? I'm surprised to say, I still don't know...

Flabbergasting...the black Grinder found

Ok, if you've talked to me extensively over the last few years (or, for that matter, just stood somewhere near me for more than 5 minutes), you've heard me bitch about the fact that sports commentators (you could stop the sentence right there and eliminate the "the fact that..." let's face it, I despise these people, or at least the half-assed way they do their jobs) have this annoying...um, let's call it a verbal tic. In order to remove this all from the realm of some larger social commentary, we'll say verbal tic.



Whenever a white player makes a great play, does something great, or just is great, it's because he works hard, is the first guy on the practice field and the last guy off the field, and is a smart, hustling, grind-it-out guy who gets the most out of his talent. For shortcut's sake, let's call this kind of player a "grinder."


When an African-American player does makes a great play, does something great, etc., it's always "look at the athleticism! The natural, god-given ability! That he is in now way responsible for! It's all talent!"


Now you see why I want to call it a vocal tic. Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not. I don't care. It's annoying. But tonight, for the first time in history, I heard the exception to the rule. From, of all places, Dan Dierdorf.


Ok, I know. He's terrible. He is to football announcing what Jeff George was to the quarterback position. He should be better than he is. But good god, he's not. He doesn't know the rules of the game (he tried to tell us there would be a 10 second runoff had Indy been called for delay of game near the end of the half...no, Dan, no. First, the clock was stopped, that penalty only applies when the clock is running). He makes mistakes all the time, and I'm not sure if he's actually watching the game, or if he's doing the People magazine crossword puzzle. But tonight he (sort of, temporarily) redeemed himself.


In the 3rd quarter, Ed Reed jumped Pierre Garcon's deep out route and picked the ball off. Because he's Ed Reed, he started running it back, and quickly at that (he's good at this part). Even though Garcon was at a dead stop when the ball got picked (and Reed had a good 5 foot head start), Garcon took off after him, chasing him for about 40 yards, then executing a textbook punch-the-ball-out move (yeah, I know, technical term). The ball popped out, bounced right to Dallas Clark, and the play ended about 8 yards behind where it started. It was quite possibly the best defensive play I've ever seen from an offensive player (and don't give me Don Beebe, because a) that play was a meaningless part of a blowout, and b) Leon Lett had given up).


So the play ends, the crowd is going batshit crazy, and Dan Dierdorf...Dan Dierdorf...says, while narrating the highlight "look at the hustle!" And he didn't just do it once. He called it a great hustle play at least four times the rest of the game. Not once did he mention the athleticism of Garcon, who to be fair looked like Usain Bolt chasing the guy who just stole his lunch. I mean, damn, he was flying.


But no, not a single mention of his speed. Just the hustle, the never giving up on the play...dare I say, the "grindyness."


So, if you're scoring at home (or even if you're alone...), this football season has now seen:


1. Herm Edwards as sage evaluator of talent ahead of the curve ("those Bengals can play some defense..." Week 1)

2. Bill Belicheck as basic strategy failure (4th and 2, Indy)

3. The following coaches are in the playoffs: Brad Childress, Norv Turner and Wade Phillips.

4. MVP discussion (before he got hurt) of Cedric Benson.

5. And now, in the second round of the playoffs, 361 days after the inauguration of the first black president, the designation of the first black Grinder.

Pierre Garcon, welcome to the club. See Aaron Rowand about your jacket and membership card. And even though he's behind you professionally, you still have to get Tebow his coffee.

Credit where it's due

I can't help but notice that a bunch of these posts are negative, as in "Why I don't like X (where X=the Superstars, Republicans, and for some bizarre reason, Alan Thicke)."So I'm sucking it up and handing out some credit.

That new NBC show, "Community," merits some special mention. Not to go all hyperbolic, but it is quite possibly, at this point in its development, a flawless show. Joel McHale makes me laugh out loud a minimum of 4 times per episode. The supporting cast is growing on me, and (yes, Mitch, I'm stealing your line) I'm really happy to be able to find Chevy Chase funny again.

As much as I was trying to avoid it, there's a larger point here, because the emergence of "Community" has pointed out to me what both it and "The Office" are really about. It's the slow, and usually soul-crushing realization that you (because let's face it, both Joel McHale's Jeff and John Krasninski's Jim are "you" in this scenario, meaning I like to picture myself as being about 6'3" with atrocious hair and a permasmirk) are no better than your surroundings, no matter how much you may think you are. Sure, you may be back at a community college, stuck working for a crappy paper company, or working yet another in a string of unfulfilling corporate jobs, but eventually the reality settles over you that this is, professionally speaking, all there is. You aren’t going to be magically transported to some other world where everyone acknowledges your inherent awesomeness, quintuples your salary and promises to make it up to you for all the suffering you’ve endured over the years. My guess is, this a better thing to experience for 24 minutes a week on network, surrounded by impossibly attractive and witty co-workers (or classmates) who always neatly wrap things up before moving on to the next adventure. If Jeff struggles with the self-doubt his situation is bound to have caused, it’s temporary and can be whisked away by a few encouraging words from a pretty girl. Jim can go play a prank on Dwight, smirk at the camera, and regain his sense of superiority. The rest of us? Well, I guess we get to tune in next week, anyway.

The Wait is Over...My Take on Tiger (Finally)

Hey, uh, it's me...Tig..um, I mean, Eldrick, no, dammit...Steve. Yeah, it's Steve, go with that.

Is it me, or is this whole thing just a little too convenient, a little too sordid. Ambien? Are you kidding me? The denials, then the immediate admissions? The wall to wall to wall coverage in every single news outlet? For frack's sake, ESPN is now throwing it to an actual ABC News reporter for the Tiger stuff. It just smells funny, is all I'm saying.

Maybe it's late (it is), and maybe I'm just odd (duh), but this whole thing is starting to feel like a rebranding initiative that got off to a little bit of a rough start. Sure, the accident went as planned, but the problem was the first people to run with the story got it a little bit wrong. The Friday after Thanksgiving (perfect time to launch, your entire demo is watching Who Cares State vs. Digested Tryptophan U) all the networks ran the breaking news crawl "Tiger Woods seriously injured in car crash." This is, admittedly, a Major Story. You're left wondering "wow, is he dead? Is he in a coma? Does he have massive internal bleeding and organ failure? Did he lose a limb?" which leads to "is his career over?"

Then the story quickly changed to "treated and released" which always reminds me of the Carlin bit (it really only works with that voice of his) "usually, I'm treated and detained." Then it became "and by the way this was all 12 hours ago." The hell?

There was some idle speculation on Saturday, but it was mostly cleaning up the details. Escalade, fire hydrant, tree, no airbag, not talking to police yet, Elin with a golf club. It wasn't until Monday or so that the "rumors" started. Then the one who was in the Enquirer, Rachel something, gave a pretty convincing (if bat-guano crazy sounding) denial about the whole thing. Combine that with her hiring the lawyer, and it seemed like this was going to go away, maybe. Sure, there were a couple other women playing the me-too game, but whatever.

Then the voicemail. Oh, ok, so this is true, then, eh?

So here's the thing. This all sounds so weird and out of whack that you could make the case that this was an image-rebranding that launched poorly. Imagine:

Minor car crash...check.

Oh crap, they're reporting it as serious, which is causing this to cross over to non-sports media. Abort!


Floodgates open, etc. Quick, what's our exit strategy?

Have the girl deny everything. There'll be some collateral damage, but we can revisit this thing in the spring.

Other women are coming out of the woodwork (heh). And it's not just the sports blogs picking it up. Who is? ESPN? Oh, #%$%&, Access Hollywood. Ok, I guess we're full go with "Operation Horndog Tiger" again. Put Elin in hiding, let's get the marriage counselor on retainer.

I mean, look at the calculation here. First, the lead seems to be "Tiger's squeaky clean reputation ruined!" But is it? Has he lost anything here? Are his sponsors going to drop him? Amex? No, though they're probably the most likely to be hacked off at this. They'll get over it. Nike? For crying out Pete, this was probably Nike's idea in the first place.

Let's face it. Tiger is pretty boring. And he knows it. And so do the companies that sponsor him. Now? Not so much. And when he wins 10 tournaments and 3 majors this year, it'll be hailed as the greatest achievement in the history of achievements, what with the "distractions" as this will officially be known from now on.

If this whole take seems unusually cynical, even for me, I should back up a second. This entire scenario is based in my belief that, with certain exceptions, most celebrity relationships are a complete and utter sham, created by marketing consultants. In the case of athletes, it's even worse. These people are young, rich, famous, and on the road a lot. And you're going to tell me that there aren't certain trade-offs you, as the spouse of an athlete, aren't making? Come on, unless you're completely and totally naive to the world of professional sports (and Elin was a nanny for another professional golfer, let's not forget, so there's no way that's possible), you've got to know what goes on. Put it this way...I'm not a professional athlete, and I know at least three slang terms for the women with whom such extramarital relations happen (groupies, Annies, and Road Beef). When I was in college, the Magic Johnson HIV story broke. It came up in a discussion group, which was filled to the brim with moralizing (I know, you'd think college kids, but no...this was Northwestern. Oy, the repression) when one of my classmates cut in, saying that he played Class A minor league baseball the previous summer, and even they had groupies. And not just a few, either. So go ahead, name a Class A baseball player for me. They aren't exactly what you call mainstream famous. And if they're attracting groupies, can you imagine Tiger's groupies? I'm not defending him or saying he had no control over himself, but come on. What I'm saying is that to not understand the situation, and to suddenly go completely nuts over the revelation of an affair just seems a little fishy. My final piece of evidence that this is a fake? The cocktail waitress. I mean really, Jamie Grubbs? Did you add in the extra "b" thinking we wouldn't notice her last name was a verb that describes what she was doing in selling her story? Amateur hour.

One final point. How many more times does this need to happen before we acknowledge that Tomme Lee Jones was right in Men in Black? The first media outlet on this story, a full 4 days before the crash...the National Enquirer. They were right. Again. Damn.