The Layoff Beard

And Now For A VMA Rant

Honestly, Kanye West, I’m really happy for you and your ability to wedge yourself into other people’s situations, but I’m going to steal your thunder, because you want this story to be about you.

I haven’t seen all the music videos for the Video Music Awards’ nomination for Best Female Video, just the six snippets they pancaked together before announcing the winner. There were six relatively different setups (a wedding, a car, Bob Ross’s empty gray canvas), but the music? Sweet merciful repetition, if you would’ve told me that was all the same song, I’d have believed you. But, of course, this is not music. These are music videos, where the purpose and intent is to, I guess, try and make your head explode by trying to figure out what the hell is going on in the first place. If you can accomplish that, then you are a shoe-in to win a VMA Award and use your PIN number to withdraw money from an ATM machine.

Now to rag on Taylor Swift… somewhat. She said she had always dreamed of winning that award. Not a Grammy, but a VMA. Any award which is created by a TV station really doesn’t have much bearing. Athletes don’t dream about winning an ESPY. The home run record? The world’s fastest man? Most hot dogs in 12 minutes? Sure. But the ESPY is a throw-in. And pop performers’ dreams are probably similar. They want platinum records. They want to not become cokewhores by age 22. These are respectable dreams. To put your hopes and dreams into winning “Best Music Video,” a creation which was largely the work of a studio, a director, and a room full of marketers, is probably not what little girls hope to win someday.

My Fantasy Football Retirement

The year was 1999. I started playing something called “fantasy football.” I had the first pick in a league with my friends. I took Steve Young. He played two and a half games before a concussion ended his career. Right then and there, I knew this was the greatest asset to enjoying the NFL.

Two years later, I recall doing a “blog but not really a blog” weekly wrap-up of each fantasy game. It was a terrific seasonal project that catered to exactly eight people. Okay, seven. One of the girls wasn’t really that into it. I used pictures and tables and probably the blink HTML tag, because kids in college who didn’t drink used the fucking blink tag. That was their demon drink.

As college ended and my pseudo career in Professional Sports Internet Commenting took off like an NHRA funny car, I began receiving more and more invites to fantasy leagues than one could handle. It was so intense, during my previous life as a Professional Newspaper Computer Show-How-To-User, I had a fantasy draft on the same evening as their big software conversion go-live day, and I cleared it with their personnel to make sure I had a couple hours to myself to sit behind my laptop and guess at which running backs would not get torn ACLs that season.

Then last year, I was in a league with one of my co-workers and his friends. I never showed up for the draft. I never made a roster change. I never even knew who I had on my team. I don’t even know how I finished.

It was probably then that I realized I was playing fantasy sports for the wrong reason: I was just in it to create hilarious* team names. That’s no validation at all.

(* – Hilarious to me. Kilroy Waz-Zahir.)

So I hereby announce my retirement from fantasy football. I have no use for it anymore. Maybe it’s all the conversations I have with people who tell me all the fantasy players they traded for. Those are about as interesting and useful as hearing about a dream someone you barely know had. (”And then I went to this Italian restaurant, but Maurice Jones-Drew was there, and I don’t know why he was there, because I didn’t draft him in three years … and then I don’t know what happened, but later we were on an aircraft carrier…”) But to enjoy fantasy football to the fullest, you have to be one of those guys that talks about their team all the time like it’s something tangible. And ESPN will cater to that reality by having Drew Brees appear in fantasy football commercials. It’s all too weird now.

Also, because I am retiring from fantasy football, based on recent events, I reserve the right to recant on this retirement at a moment’s notice. Perhaps as soon as next week.