The Layoff Beard

And The “Job” Begins

That was one hell of a summer vacation. It’s probably the last one of my life. And with the temperature dropping to nipple-hardening levels, football on the weekends, and miniature golf becoming more and more impractical to play this time of year, it’s fitting that I also have some “kind” of a job. It’s not technically full time, but for the next month or so will seem like it.

Technorati, which bought my second home Blogcritics last year, is going through a rather ginormous redesign very shortly, and one of their changes will be the introduction of their own writers. Their bright idea was to put me in charge of all those writers and editors, and calling the position an “executive editor.”

To date it’s probably the most responsibility I’ve ever had on the Internet, which is incredibly thrilling and terrifying to everyone. Remember when I was ruining the ability to comment on Deadspin by embedding Tetris games? Seems like just yesterday. But today they’d probably frown upon those kind of shenanigans.

So that’s what’s been occupying my non-Law & Order rerun time during the last month. It’s been a lot of policy drafting, editor hiring, writer recruiting, and fingernail biting. How will this redesign go? Aw, who the hell knows.

It’s quite amazing how much this gig feels a lot like my old job, in that I’m answering questions above my pay grade, troubleshooting technical issues, and trying to get folks on the same page in a small window of time. But at least I’m sleeping in my own bed, rather than in a room a thousand miles away in a town where fine dining is the Applebee’s at the edge of town.

So I hope you like what you see. (More accurately, I hope you can see it.) For the most part you’ll see a lot of work done by people with more programming knowledge than myself. And after that, you’ll witness the masterpieces of hundreds of bloggers and eight very special editors. And after that, you’ll see me, taking all the credit.

So maybe The Layoff Beard shall never die, as once promised. Perhaps I shall check back in occasionally, in the hopes that I shall always keep a state of mind as if I’m still on summer vacation. Or maybe I will finally be productive wearing sweatpants.

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.

We’re Getting Dumber As A Society

I hear the following sentiments all the time: People are getting dumber. We’re becoming more depraved. The Internet is ruining journalism. Before you know it, Idiocracy will no longer be a work of fiction.

Maybe it’s because of our dependence on technology and how much time we escape into the digital cloth. It’s true, all those glowing rectangles are quite amazing but ever-present in our lives. Could we, as a society, be losing the important quality of human contact because of our iPhones, tweets, Facebooks quizzes, and DVR? Do GPS systems help us lose our sense of direction and know where we’re really going?

Well, maybe. I used to be able to remember important phone numbers before I had a cell phone that could store them. Actually, wait, what’s a cell phone for anymore? Nowadays I can just tweet to my friends. I think I’ve forgotten how to dial altogether.

Dependence on technology is one thing. Yes, we’re probably a little too immersed in bits and bytes. But does that translate to intelligence? I’m no fan of “c u l8r” speak, and any grown man over 30 who writes e-mails like that should probably get a few slaps across the face with an unabridged dictionary. But I have trouble seeing how websites and TV shows that cater to the lowest common denominator are dumbing us down.

I see the logic, though. If planned premise television was thrown out the window, and shows about fat single girls trying to find boyfriends were replaced by something with something slightly more redeeming in value, we’d be a smarter society. But the thing is, there are already lots of shows on Discovery and The Science Channel and A&E pertaining to very interesting, highly sophisticated topics. When it comes to politics, NPR and BBC aren’t going away any time soon.

Text messaging and the Internet destroyed societal intelligence. Sure. They said the same thing about the television, rock music, radio, and perhaps the moving picture. Hell, I’m sure they had that same logic about the light bulb, the printing press, heliocentrism, and the wheel. (”You mean to say you need to CARVE a smooth object to get across that meadow because you ain’t smart enough to use your own feet? What have we become?”)

It’s pretty safe to assume that all those 2,000 comments at the end of any banal YouTube video were penned by toothless troglodytes who have walls covered in feces and keep running into the door because they forgot about the doorknob … which is also covered in feces. But 50, 200, 500 years ago, the common man never really wrote in front of the whole world. I suspect if a medieval kingdom’s peasants all wrote a letter to the lord expressing their views on the new tithing system, someone somewhere is going to call the lord a fag, and another person would compare the new tithing system to something Hitler would have done. And come to think of it, most of those peasants probably did have walls covered in feces.

I have to ask, when people say we’re getting dumber: what’s your reference point? When was the smartest year in the history of the world? Was it before or after the discovery of nanotechnology? If society’s getting dumb, are you referring to the aptitude of the 99th percentile, or the average ordinary citizen?

The discovery of idiocy kind of precedes everything else. There was always that caveman who thought it was a smart idea to yank on the mountain lion’s tail (hey, he was curious, plus he had good reason to think that’s how you start a fire), and the rest of the onlookers learned from it. (”Okay, no pulling on mountain lion’s tails. Your face will become mountain lion hors d’oeurves.”) Of course, there was that one cynical caveman, who worked in IT, that remained convinced mankind wouldn’t survive because people got eaten by mountain lions.

Let’s not focus on the stupidity and assume we’re doomed. Focusing on stupidity, if nothing else, makes us feel better about our own goof-ups, such as the time I … such as the time someone told the airport security guard he didn’t have a gun when the guard actually asked him if he had any gum. Nah, we’ll be okay. And if not, we just wait a few billion years, and the next generation of intelligent life will realize that their ancestors invented flavored dental floss.

The Last Refuge Of Phallic Overload

Hey, look, a wiener. You know, looking at the size of it, it kind of looks like a … oh, hi, mom.

(Warning, if you haven’t figured out by now: this is going to be a very sophomoric, suggestive post. I’m okay with that.)

More to the point, “wiener” is almost used less to refer to the edible frankfurter than it is a penis. I don’t know how we got to that point … well, actually, I know exactly how we got there. The shape of the food is almost exactly like shape of the appendage. It even has skin. But further down the line, everything became a phallic reference. If I have to give examples, I will: rod, stick, tool, banana, rocket, baby arm, and many others. Although I can’t explain how a male chicken became associated with that junk. (Ha. Junk.)

I was curious what the objects were that could have been called phallic, but aren’t. That way I can round them all up and ensure that these are not bitten by their innuendo-breathing brethren and themselves become penis slang.

Baguette. Perhaps that it’s French, and some macho guy somewhere didn’t want their creations to have that much credit? Maybe bread has an exemption because the “bun” associated with the hot dog represents something else.

Maybe bread alone does not a gutter mind make. As Quizno’s has shown, you need an oven with entry points and a name like “Torpedo” or “Bullet” to drive the dick point home. I’m awaiting their $5 Rocket sub.

Remote control. Could the buttons disqualify it? Or perhaps it’s such an advanced piece of equipment that turning it into slang gives the body part, which doesn’t emit radio waves, more credit than it deserves.

Yarn. Probably the thickness and rigidity. But the ball jokes, coupled with the fact with what the target demographic does with it, leads me to believe that’s the only thing holding it back.

Millipede. It could definitely be the feet. Not everyone is into that.

Stretch limo. The whole point of buying an impressive car, I’ve heard, is to, y’know, compensate. I don’t think a guy in his 40s who thinks his life is over will buy a stretch limo to try and feel younger, but maybe that’s because they’re rather inaccessible and hard to navigate. A stretch Hummer, on the other hand…

Cylindrical prism. Here’s one that completely baffles me. This is absolutely a phrase that rolls right off the tongue and can fit into everyday conversation. I guess I’m lucky that such an intellectual phrase hasn’t been sullied by dirty minds. Heh. “Fit into.”

I’m Not Gonna Write You A Swan Song

And to think I was done here. Oh, it was lookin’ pretty much wrapped up in a neat little bow with the previous day’s events, but sure enough SwanGate™, unlike its key players, simply will not die.

The swans who were initially thought shot by rednecks, or maybe eaten by coyotes, were in fact … hit by a car. Residents said the swans appeared to be shot, which means someone out there invented a firearm that shoots Volvos. I’d be scared if I were you.

The comments were moderated with a heavy hand, with a simple one of mine taken out:

And I thought it was swan flu.

Later a cryptic moderation message was planted afterward, saying that “we have removed three comments from this post that were either off-topic or did not further the conversation.” They then linked back to their community guidelines, which I have already read before enough times that I could probably recite it like I can the Preamble. (And without help from Schoolhouse Rock!)

In all my years of Internet tomfoolery, I don’t think I have ever had to do this before, but I’m actually going to diagram, outline, and explain my comment.

And I thought it was… — This sounds harmless enough. It is referring to a thought belonging me, one Matt Sussman, so perhaps they objected to that, but for doling out the benefit of the doubt, we’ll say it ain’t.

…swan flu — A play on words. I know! Hi, my name’s Matt. Nice to meet you.

The reference is to, of course, swine flu, an overblown disease that many people thought they had contracted when the media first started saturating their inches, minutes, and pixels with it. Swine flu was an unimportant story in the grand scheme of the news cycle. Wait a minute. Overblown news story? That sounds familiar.

So there’s the removed comment and its (hopefully) obvious meaning. In all fairness, it was one of my more favorite comments this year. The question then is, did it violate their commenting guidelines?

The best comments and posts are those that add more information to the story, express a different viewpoint or help create intelligent debate.

It didn’t add any information, but it did express a viewpoint that I was the first to mention on their website. Of course, you wouldn’t know, because that viewpoint was removed.

We welcome constructive debate on our site, but we won’t tolerate jerks.

We’ve already been over this. I am a jerk. But a useful, functional jerk.

Don’t be that guy – avoid comments or posts that are off topic, offensive, contain personal attacks or that don’t further the conversation.

Off topic? Nope. Patently on.

Offensive? Perhaps to some with extremely thin skin. It’s a very subjective word. People could take offense to viewpoints they simply don’t agree with.

Contains personal attacks? Nope, except to myself, for saying that I would truly believe it was “swan flu” that killed them. Perhaps they were protecting me … from me.

Didn’t further the conversation? This is another puzzling criterion. It assumes every comment furthers the conversation in some fashion. Perhaps some comments are made by people who just want to say their part and be done with it. It doesn’t further the discussion, but it doesn’t curb it either. Although, in the end, since my comment was discussing the overblown coverage, it was a method to discuss the unreasonable amount of coverage on this story.

My first thought to all this was, are my comments too subtle for them? Are they just gonna up and remove the comment because they don’t understand it, then point to the discussion guidelines? I realize they’re not even a month into putting this policy into practice, but if too much book theory goes into comment moderation, the discussion’s potential will be crippled and thought will be discouraged. Just like a real newspaper!

(Okay, maybe we’re done NOW. Probably not. Wait for the story about the swan love triangle.)

She’s Blonde, And Interesting!

Leave it to my girlfriend to somehow take a Playboy model and have me completely disinterested.

I don’t know how she does it, but girls, here’s some advice if your boyfriends have an unhealthy fixation on attractive celebrities: learn about them. Read and watch everything about them. Try to discuss minutiae of their lives with your beau. This will probably result in the guy being turned off about the girl.

I didn’t even really care about Kendra Wilkinson, and for a while, Brit would keep refreshing my memory as “that girl dating that one football player.” (Because Hank Baskett, is, like, a legendary wide receiver or something.)

But some people somewhere thought she would be perfect for a planned premise television show. It’s called Kendra (great name!), and it delves into how she’s adjusting to being on her own. I mean, all of us have, at some point in our lives, learned to live on our own, but none of us have had to overcome the obstacle of living in a large house with giant boobs.

They say that everyone kinda sorta secretly watches reality TV, whether I like to admit it or not. And the truth is … well, yeah, I watch it. But she watches it, and I’m in the room as well. I could leave the room entirely in protest, but I’m just not that big of a douche. (Just enough to pass as an insufferable blogger.) So I catch snippets of the show while hiding behind my laptop. That oughta be enough to validate the following rhetorical question: why?

She’s blonde and pretty and has a modicum of charisma. She has a supportive family and a big house and is married to an athlete and gets to call Hugh Hefner on occasion à la Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company. It’s just … filler show. You know that E! can’t show eight hours of The Soup in a row, so they need something else.

If the show gets cancelled, no big deal. There’ll be some other pretty person with a reasonably interesting life that can be captured on camera with WACKY UNPREDICTABLE PREMISES! Oh no, a long lost cousin showed up for dinner with a TV producer! And I left my makeup kit in the cabana!

Oh, everything turned out all right, albeit uneventful. Happy ending!

Monopoly Deal Is A Gateway Drug

When Parker Brothers came out with the iconic Monopoly game, little did they know — OR DID THEY? — that the game would have a profound impact on Sussman men, as the thrill of collecting properties, wheeling, dealing, and stealing is almost as blissful as illegal drugs. Once the rush became too much, the board game had to be sealed away in a safe location where nobody would find it: somewhere in the attic.

The competitiveness has also leaked over into a travel-size version of Monopoly, with all of the fun and none of the math. Monopoly Deal is the real estate game everyone loves (…?) in card form.

Maybe that’s all we needed. Perhaps the board game was simply too intense, and a card version of the classic game will alleviate everyone’s temper, soothe the soul, and bring world peace from Baltic To Boardwalk.

Ha. Nope.

The four major issues with playing the game are:

1. I win too much. Early on, I would beat my girlfriend (at the game! at the game!) and she would want to play again. I was getting fed up with the winning streak, and want to, y’know, get back to blogging. But it was always “just one more game.”

2. Unwritten rules. Once you know the game and get your head around the cards and the rules, it’s a breeze to play. You can probably finish a game in 5-10 minutes, which is about how long it takes to set up the board. But the delay lies within extenuating situations. Can you use buildings on a monopoly to pay rent? Can you move buildings onto other monopolies? It doesn’t mention that in the manual, You raging whore!

3. I lose too much. Genghis Khan once said, “It is not sufficient that I succeed — all others must fail.” That’s basically the greatest feeling in the world in this game, to wipe everyone else out of their properties and money and be left with everything. (EVERYTHING.) But to lose a game? Well, that just sucks. Earlier today I lost two games in a row, as a result of bad hands, and I actually threw my cards down before I was about to lose and forfeited. This is a first in Monopoly Deal history, but it’s not unprecedented in the Sussman tribe to concede in glorious fashion.

4. The light blue-railroad wild property is 4M. Seriously. What’s the deal with that? It should be 2M.

On Condition Of Anonymity

When I heard that Sammy Sosa had tested positive for steroids, I thought to myself, “oh, that’s a shame.” I then thought, “well, who would have told anybody that?”

Seriously. Someone has to tell the reporter these things. They don’t just dig up the documents and report. They use sources, and they keep them secret. Because that’s the way that America works. Freedom of the press, long live the written word, and don’t try to censor me! (Or something like that.)

I Apple-F’d the phrase, and sure enough there it was [emphasis on the phrase]:

The lawyers who had knowledge of Sosa’s inclusion on the 2003 list did not know the substance for which Sosa tested positive. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified as discussing material that is sealed by a court order.

Why, hey, that’s the title of this blog post! SPOOKY!

Before we go any further, I absolutely understand the need to use sources to break important stories. Watergate wouldn’t have been a landmark victory for the Washington Post had it not been for W. Mark Felt, the anonymous source which gave some useful information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. That’s great. Protecting sources is wonderful.

Now, obviously saying “Sammy Sosa did steroids!” isn’t anything remotely cataclysmic as Watergate, nor do I mean to compare the two to diminish the impact or the importance of it. And I’m not faulting the New York Times reporters for using anonymous sources, and I’m not asking them to divulge who they are.

Having qualified all that … who hell keeps putting this information out there?

Seriously, we see this phrase all the time in sports when talking about a potential trade, free agency signing, or whatever the hell is on an athlete’s mind. Every day it seems a person “with knowledge of the situation” or “familiar with the proceedings” is babbling onto a reporter that such-and-such wants a trade to Chicago, or whats-his-face is unhappy with the manager getting fired. Every damn day!

Here’s another one before the Sosa story came out. Donovan McNabb got a $5.3 million raise in his salary as a result of restructuring his contract, according to “a person familiar with the negotiations.” Ah, no big deal. McNabb and his agent talked about it the next day.

And there will be another example tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. But not the following day, because that’s Father’s Day, their day off.

These anonymous sources give the impression that these sports journalists have these inside sources, and they’re providing us SECRET INFORMATION THAT WE SHOULDN’T KNOW! And if “the man” found out who the leak was, he’d kick him to the curb like Norm McDonald and Artie Lange in Dirty Work. (And yes, Lange would just kinda walk off slightly annoyed instead of getting thrown out.)

The problem as I see it is that anonymous sources in sports journalism is becoming the standard, and business as usual. Anonymity adds to the intrigue of sport, which generates interest in the general public, and wedges a 5-11 football team into the news cycle during, say, the playoffs when they have no business being mentioned while great teams duke it out in the conference finals. Their star linebacker wants more money? How fascinating! By the way, who do you have in the Super Bowl?

This brings us to the Sammy Sosa story. An anonymous source, used in this case study, suddenly becomes a pretty big deal. The list of people who used steroids in 2003 was promised by the union to be a sealed document, and clearly it’s not, because we know Alex Rodriguez and now Sosa were on that list. How do we know? Anonymous freakin’ sources, of course. But no big deal! An anonymous source told us that LeBron James would named the MVP a few hours before it was formally announced. No harm done!

Would someone really have gotten in deep trouble had they leaked the LeBron MVP announcement? Here, let’s try this. If you leaked that announcement to the press, speak up. Tell me it was you, and let me announce you were the one who did it. Are you afraid you’ll get in trouble? Did you get in trouble? Or did the anticipation of the formal announcement make the leak that much more valuable?

I’m guessing the latter, because it’s not nearly as SCANDALOUS OR MYSTERIOUS if teams published those rumors on their own official web site. That’d give away the entire allure around everyday anonymous sourcing. And it’s not fair to say “Helen from accounts receivable heard that the general manager is getting a raise,” because of Helen from accounts receivable keeps dishing the tidbits out to Ken Rosenthal, then everyone will want to talk to Helen from accounts receivable, and then she’ll have to deny interviews, and then someone close to Helen from accounts receivable who wishes to remain anonymous will have to start leaking the news.

According to someone with knowledge of the situation, there will be a great promotion at the ballpark on Tuesday. I don’t know what, they wouldn’t tell me. You totally have to buy a ticket and find out!

It wouldn’t surprise me if teams kept on the payroll a secret Clarence Beaks-style employee whose sole purpose was to “leak” information to reporters, thereby getting controlled information to masquerade as hot, juicy news leads.

Celebs: We Like ‘Em Dumb

As a sign of my definitive ability to hide from trends simply by breathing oxygen, last week was the first time I heard of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, and it was from a joke in Conan O’Brien’s monologue. Neither the set-up nor the punch line provided any reference to who they were (or, what they were doing), but it was evident that neither of these two people were very well liked. (If there was a mental biathlon of Being Ignorant and Being Observant, I’d be a medal contender.)

So now I know who they are. As to why they’re famous, it’s beyond me. Then again, that’s pretty much how it goes. Paris Hilton was before her, and Britney before that. Kato Kaelin preceded them, and I guess before those people, the original celebrity trainwreck was Joan of Arc, the little tease. But these days, it seems that all the famous people making the rounds are just not people who are all that likeable.

Maybe that’s the point.

Imagine if all the people on television were learned, articulate Ken Jennings clones. You’d stop watching television and start reading books, exercising, and start talking to your loved ones, like, in person or over the phone and not through Twitter. TV stations can’t have that! They need brainfartin’ blondes and semi-sculpted adolescent men whose skin is capable of actually retaining its own douche. This is the only way the public can channel their anger toward distant idols rather than get the urge to bring a sledgehammer to the office and vent about unnecessary meetings or the new policy wherein every moment of your workday has to be documented and signed off by three managers.

So that’s one way that the general welfare is kept minty fresh. Of course, it can’t really be all that easy. After all, the average person ain’t that bright, so it may be difficult for television producers to find a character so behind the bell curve, climbing up to the median would put Sisyphus to shame. Case in point: most people aren’t quite sure what that last sentence meant.

It doesn’t seem to take much to find a catalyst for trash television. Sometimes all it takes for casting directors in New York or Los Angeles is to swivel one’s neck. And it doesn’t take arugula for brains to know that there’s good money in being hated, dim-witted, and beautiful. While the last one of those three can be hard to fake, the first two don’t even have to be organic, although it helps. Hey, if Angela from The Office can be cheerful in person, then antagonism can’t be that hard to toggle.

If you need more examples, I am wholeheartedly convinced that Ozzy Osbourne’s brain is not some sort of fine translucent paste that he makes it out to be. If he was, wouldn’t it be a little cruel to throw him on television to exploit him for endorsements ranging from Samsung to World of Warcraft? He knows exactly what he’s doing. He had an opportunity years ago to play the fool, because this was a time when people thought reality TV was more genuine than we now understand it is and the world took him almost too seriously, but they were captivated.

Even well aware that most of his songs were modestly intelligible, it was almost a given that his mind was last reported seen in 1982. Oh c’mon. He established relevance in a world where most rock stars from yesteryear are just trying to hang on. It’s not accidental fame.

The forehead-smashing reasons why certain people are famous don’t have to be revealed to us. But if more people were at peace with the fact that certain celebrities were hand-picked for a reason, it might help alleviate the headache a little bit. Most people seem fine with “pro” wrestling, because they know the outcomes are predetermined. It’s entertaining as hell, though, to some people. Network producers can’t fix the outcome of someone’s life, but they can script the characters and play the percentages that, for one brief moment, they’ll act like the insufferable bitch/prick of their dreams. And that’s all they need to keep their job and get another chance to find the next great beacon of antagonism.

About This Brandon Marshall Story

Outside The Lines is generally a very well done show that peruses sports stories that don’t involve Xs and Os, or who to add on your fantasy roster, or why LeBron James doesn’t shake anyone’s hand after games and how that’s DISRESPECT, y’all. No, they actually cover stories that they perceive to be slightly more important, if not of the human interest variety, and that’s pretty much what they execute.

But in a recent one that ran on SportsCenter in its entirety, OTC took a gander at Brandon Marshall’s history with his former lover. It looks like the Broncos wide receiver routinely abused and physically fought with his then-girlfriend Rasheedah Watley. This is, obviously, a terrible thing to do, and nobody would probably argue otherwise.

Here’s the problem.

We have a woman trying to get her life back together, parents demanding justice, and conflicting police reports where basically Watley and Marshall kind of say, “the other one started it!” It’s a classic he said/she said situation. It would belong on Maury if it wasn’t done in the OTL style of research, questioning, and obtainment of police reports. But in its irreducible form, it’s still a boyfriend and girlfriend who stayed with each other too long, resulting in hardship and fingernail scratches for everyone.

Here’s the climax of the series of altercations:

March 26, 2007: Police in Douglas County, Colo., arrested Marshall for false imprisonment and domestic violence. Watley told “Outside the Lines” she was assaulted by Marshall a day earlier at Marshall’s suburban Denver home — she never reported that incident to police — and that she was attempting to fly back to Atlanta to get away from Marshall. Watley told police she and Marshall argued at the Denver airport and that she later agreed to return to Marshall’s home. Watley told police when she attempted to leave Marshall’s home a second time, Marshall followed her taxi and, at one point, blocked its path with his Dodge Charger, leapt from his car and punched the taxi cab’s windows. When contacted by “Outside the Lines,” the cab driver confirmed Watley’s version of events. Marshall denied punching the taxi cab’s windows and later told police he was only trying to retrieve his cell phone, which he said Watley had taken from him.

Almost every other incident, including a knife wound, ended with “No charges were filed.” I mean, there was a whole another year’s worth of arguments and police calls before it looks like they finally stopped having contact with each other. I can only imagine if OTL documented all the petty, unnecessary arguments I had with my ex-girlfriends.

It’s good to see they’re not still together, because that would be a terrible ending, unless of course it was a story about persevering through adversity and how one gave the other a kidney. But no, it’s just a high school sweetheart courtship gone sour through the journey of life.

It was also, how shall we say, very one-sided. Is it possible that Watley is a wonderful human being inside and out, and Marshall is just a satchel of feces? Yes, it’s possible. But the report was so one-sided, I wasn’t informed otherwise.

Now all I need is an investigative reporter to give me a timeline of how an investigative report goes from the boardroom, to the field, to the cutting room, and finally to the screen, so that viewers can find the exact moment in the process the reporters realized the story was going nowhere.