Why Your Super Power Sucks

When like-minded individuals get together, the conversation may turn (often after the fourth bong hit) to the following question:

If you could have any super power, what would it be?

This question generates some common answers, with most people having an idea of what would be the coolest power to have. Well I am here to put an end to all of this debate. Your super power sucks.

What follows are the ten most common answers to the question: If you could have any super power, what would it be, and my explanation of why having that power would really, really, suck for you.

This will not only free you up to debate more important things, like why most burger chains don’t serve hot dogs or why men don’t wear hats regularly any more like they did in the Fifties, but it will also save you a lot of time and aggravation should a genie ever appear before you and offer to grant you super powers. You’re welcome.

1. Mind Reading

This one is always near the top of people’s lists. How cool would it be to read minds? They say. You would always know exactly what the other person is thinking. You’d know exactly what to say to get that guy/girl to fall in love with you/sleep with you. Exactly what that interviewer is looking for in a potential hire. Exactly how low your opponent in a negotiation is willing to go.

Okay, reality check. First of all, just because you can read someone’s mind doesn't necessarily mean you’d be able to pluck the information you wanted from their brain like you’re doing a Google search.

You’d probably only be able to read what they’re thinking of at the current moment. Now, if you are in a negotiation, or a seduction, or an interview, what they’re thinking might be about you, but frankly, half the time I don’t know what I’m thinking until I think it.

I don’t necessarily know what will get me to agree to a deal or to pick someone for whatever I happen to need. In a negotiation, you might actually be worse off, since you’ll automatically accept the "rock bottom" offer you pull out of someone’s head, when a little pressure might have gotten them to change their mind and offer you more.

Beyond this, though, the ability to read minds would have catastrophic consequences. Here’s why. Everyone who is close to you, be it your parent, spouse, child or best friend, has, at one time or another, thought something absolutely awful about you. I mean, horrible. Not like, they wish you’d pick up after yourself more, but more on the order of, they wish you’d fuck off and die. It may be a fleeting, unwanted thought, they probably feel guilty as soon as it passes through, but if you happen to be looking in when that thought pops up, your relationship will never be the same.

That’s not to mention all the perverse, fucked up shit your people think about that has nothing to do with you. Do you really want to accidentally pick up your kid’s unspeakable sex fantasy? I don’t think so. Oh, but you’d respect the privacy of your loved ones and never take a peek inside their brains? Please. Don’t kid yourself.

2. Invulnerability/Immortality

Okay, you say, forget all that, how about I can just never be harmed, or I can live forever? Well, immortality sounds great, but it can quickly become a nightmare. First of all, you need to pair it with eternal youth, or else, like Tithonus of Greek Myth, you’ll spend an eternity in a living hell as a withered husk.

But let’s say you’ve got the whole package. Great. The first thing you’ll have to deal with is explaining to everyone who knows you why they’re aging and you’re not. Unless you want to spend the rest of eternity in a government lab, you’ll need to disappear and reappear as your kid every twenty or thirty years, and you’ll still have a lot of paperwork and fast talking to do. Furthermore, you’ll have to watch everyone you know, your wife, your friends, your kids and grandkids, get old and die. But maybe you can live with all that. What you won’t be able to live with is something called Time Dilation.

Have you noticed that the older you get, the faster time seems to go? It’s not just existential angst you’re facing. The older you get, the less time one day is in proportion to your life. In other words, when you’re 2, a year is half your life, which is a long time. When you’re 50, that same year is only 1/50^th of your life, and you can feel the difference. By the time you hit 500, whole generations will pass by for you in the blink of an eye.

If this doesn’t drive you insane, consider what will happen when the sun goes supernova and the solar system is destroyed, leaving you to float out in space, alone, until the end of time, or some generous space freighter from Alpha Centauri picks you up.

Okay, you say, forget the immortality, just give me invulnerability. Nothing can hurt me. Also sounds great, but believe it or not, the ability to feel pain is an important part of your humanity. Without it, you can’t appreciate pleasure, or love, or even a sad song on the radio. You’ll also probably become extremely careless, like being on a permanent Ketamine high, and there’s a good chance you’ll hurt someone else this way sooner or later.

3. Invisibility

Invisibility is a tempting power to have. You can sneak into the girls’ locker room or be a fly on the wall of the White House. However, if you gain this power, I hope you are prepared to become a criminal. 

We’ve all seen what happened to Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but the idea of invisibility bringing down even the most incorruptible goes back to ancient Greece, where in Plato’s Republic, Glaucon speaks of the Ring of Gyges, a ring discovered by a shepherd which confers the power of invisibility. According to Glaucon, Gyges then: “seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.”

Glaucon then goes on to explain the fate of any possessor of such an item:

 Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point...For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. 

But maybe you don’t mind the idea of being a criminal. You’ll need to keep in mind that you’ll probably have to strip naked every time you want to take advantage of this power, since it’s unlikely your invisibility will extend to your clothes. Also, since invisibility from a scientific perspective means that light bends around you, rather than bouncing off you, you may be blind when invisible, since no light is striking your eyes.

4. Flight

Flight is one of the better powers to have, but it still sucks. But how freeing it would be to fly with the birds, you say, or to be able to safely jump out a window, or up to a rooftop? Maybe. But here are a few things to consider.

First, have you ever noticed what people look like when they climb a mountain? They’re wearing parkas and oxygen tanks, if they’re smart. That’s cause it gets fucking cold up there, and the air is thinner. If you think you’re just going to hop out of bed and go cloud surfing in your pajamas every morning, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Also, in your fantasy of leaping off rooftops, you’re probably imagining graceful spins and dives from roof to roof. Here’s some more news. If you can’t do that shit in real life, you won’t be able to do it just ‘cause you can fly. Have you seen what those Chinese divers do at the Olympics? If you can do that, flight might be for you. If not, you’re probably going to be a sprawling, crawling mess flying through the air, grabbing at handholds that don’t exist. And unless the wind is always in your favor, you’re probably not going to get where you’re going any faster than you would by walking.

5. Super Strength

Okay, super strength. Bad ass power, right? No one’s going to mess with you because you can knock them out with one punch. Thing is, you can also break someone’s spine with a hearty slap on the back, so you’ll have to spend your entire life focused on controlling your body so you don’t do any property damage, or worse, people damage. Your hands will become registered as deadly weapons, and if you do get into a fight, you’ll probably end up in prison on a felony charge. Also,  one particularly bad dream that has you thrashing, or one temper tantrum, and say goodbye to your furniture.

And with all that, super strength isn't particularly useful. Have you seen what they do at those World’s Strongest Man Competitions? It’s mostly dragging large vehicles around and chopping wood. Is that really what you want to do with your life?

6. Time Travel

Well, first of all, time travel is almost certainly impossible, as I've explained here, here, and here.

Secondly, time travel would really suck. It’s tempting to go back in time to meet your younger self and tell them not to make some of the mistakes you made, but you’ll just make other mistakes, and they could be worse. That’s assuming your child-self recognizes you and doesn't call the police on some crazy old stalker who says in the future everyone will carry tiny computers around in their pockets.

Let’s say you go further back. You want to see what life was like for your parents growing up. No you don’t. Seeing mom and dad in old pictures or videos is cute, seeing them in real life would be super creepy and possibly scar you for life, especially if they act as stupidly as you did when you were growing up.

Okay, even further back. Let’s see what life was like in the Fifties, the Roaring Twenties, the 17^th century. There’s a reason they call them modern conveniences. Forget about not having access to things like the Internet, cable TV, or air conditioning, see how long you last without plastic. Or electricity. Or antibiotics.

Fine, let’s go to the future. Sounds tempting, even though you have no idea what to expect. We don’t know much about what the future will bring, but you know what it will almost surely bring? New viruses! Viruses that your 21^st century body has had no opportunity to evolve adequate defenses for! That 14^th Century Black Plague is starting to look pretty good now, isn't it?

7. X-Ray Vision

Okay, people have wanted X-Ray vision since comic books popularized the idea in the Thirties. Comic book ads of the 20^th century offered “X-Ray Specs” that could allow you to see through clothes. But X-ray vision is bullshit. First of all, X-rays can’t see through walls. But let’s say with your special vision you can see through anything. How would you control when you stop seeing through? Sure, you can see through a girl’s clothes, but why wouldn't you see right through her skin, or through her body entirely to the next room? Besides, if this is really the best power you can come up with, and this is the reason, you’re already staring at girls too much, you freaking letch.

8. Super Speed

Super speed isn't at the top of the list of popular powers, but it sneaks in there every now and again. Why does it suck? Well, for one, super speed is extremely destructive. Heat is generated by atoms moving very quickly, so running at high speed would generate a lot of heat. Enough heat to burn the runner’s clothes to a crisp, not to mention the runner.

But let’s say that like The Flash, you have a special aura that protects you from burning up, and you’re not running fast enough to cause sonic booms all the time. Your speed needs to come with fast reaction time, or it’s useless. It’s no good to run fast if you can’t avoid crashing into everything around you. If your reaction time were that fast, the entire world would seem like it were in slow motion to you.

To slow yourself down to the speed of everyone else so you could talk and interact normally would be agony, if you could even do it. On top of this, in order to feed your hyper fast metabolism, you’d probably have to eat as much as a stable of horses, which could get expensive.

9. Size Change

The ability to grow to great height or shrink to microscopic size also sounds fun, but in practice, you probably wouldn't like it very much. Let’s set aside the fact that size change is one of the most impossible of impossible abilities to have, since your mass would have to go or come from somewhere, as matter is never created nor destroyed. You’d still have to deal with the consequences of great height or small size. If you grew tall enough, there’s a good chance your body would collapse on itself, as bones, even giant ones, can only support so much weight.

Also, no one would be able to communicate with you, because the sound waves wouldn't reach you.

Shrinking is even worse. As shown in the classic comedy “HoneyI Shrunk the Kids,” being small can be extremely hazardous. Every annoying insect becomes a giant vicious nightmare monster. Also, you wouldn't be able to communicate with regular people when miniature either, for the same reason as above. You would, however, be able to live in a doll house.

10. Precognition

The problem with seeing the future is that it doesn't necessarily come with the ability to do anything about it. If you can see a future, it’s either preordained, or the future is mutable and it wasn't necessarily your future anyway. You’ll notice that when fortune tellers today predict your future, they predict things like new loves, money, or interesting opportunities. They never predict anything bad.

This is because they are scam artists. In reality, the future holds a lot of shitty things for a lot of people, and knowing about them without being able to stop them would kind of ruin the present. And you think you have trouble not giving away spoilers now…

So do all super powers suck? Not necessarily. Here are a few powers that you might actually find useful.

1. Energy projection
Strangely, in these philosophical debates, people rarely opt for the simple energy blast. These are great for protection, and as long as you’re discreet, probably won’t draw too much attention in your daily life in the same way super strength might, for example. Being able to fire blasts of energy can also be useful if you want to take out a wall in your house without paying a pricey contractor, too.

2. Transmutation

This is the ability to change one thing to another, like the classic alchemy of turning lead into gold. When abused, this power could get you into trouble, but if you use it for simple things, like turning garbage into steak, or an old rock into a diamond, it could probably prove extremely useful.

3.  Time Suspension

Traveling through time sucks. Stopping time is another matter entirely. Just ask this guy. Being able to stop time for a few seconds, to gather your thoughts, get out of a jam, or make sure you’re not late for work, is something everyone could benefit from. You run the risk of the invisibility problem with this one, but if the time suspension doesn't last long enough for you to get into any serious trouble, you should be all right.

4. Internal Life Support

Internal life support basically means you don’t need to breathe. This means effortless scuba diving, deep ocean swims without fear of drowning, and maybe even a stint as an astronaut. It’s not necessarily the most useful power, but it’s safe and fun.

5. Illusion Casting

This is another fun rather than useful power, and also one you need to be careful not to misuse. Also called projection, this is the ability to create realistic illusions, sort of like you’re a graphic designer who doesn't need a computer or a screen. As long as you don’t use it to prank all your friends into thinking they’re being chased by dragons (or at least, not too often), this could be a fine power to have.

Now you know why most super powers suck, so be happy you’re just an average jerk!

FULLY CLOTHED KIM KARDASHIAN PICTURES LEAKED

FULLY CLOTHED KIM KARDASHIAN PICTURES LEAKED

By Craig Berger

The Cyberverse was abuzz today as new pictures of Kim Kardashian, dressed conservatively and respectfully, were leaked to the Internet. The not-at-all racy pics were allegedly hacked from the cloud after being sent from Ms. Kardashian’s phone to a platonic friend.

Naturally, the rare photos have spread like wildfire, despite every effort by the Kardashian family to contain the damage. When reached for comment, Ms. Kardashian had the following to say:

“While I am aware I am a public figure, I firmly believe in the right of all celebrities to be covered up and respectfully dressed among friends and in their own homes. These pictures were meant for the eyes of close personal friends and family, and not from leering fans and insensitive media types desperate to get shots of me in candid poses looking like a normal person with a sense of human decency and self-respect.”

Despite seemingly standing behind these shots that any parent would be proud to display on their mantelpiece, the Kardashian estate is threatening legal action. Said an attorney representing Ms. Kardashian:

“This kind of non-lascivious invasion of privacy is completely unacceptable. My client has an image to maintain, she has fellow club-going celebutantes to impress and children to embarrass. The public dissemination of pictures such as these raises the level of discourse and fails to demean us all. What’s next, Miley Cyrus in a business suit? And not a ‘sexy’ business suit, but one a real woman might wear to an office executive job? No one needs to see that.”

So far the source of the leak has not been found, but the investigation, led by private detectives hired by TMZ and FOX News, is ongoing. More news on this terrifying story as it develops.

Five Things You Didn't Know About Scooby Doo

If you grew up in the 70s or 80s, you are surely familiar with Scooby Doo, and even younger readers probably watched revamped versions of the Scooby Doo cartoon, or are at least aware of the importance in pop culture of this cowardly but lovable Great Dane and his band of intrepid teen mystery solvers, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy. You probably think you know all about Scooby Doo. Sure, you know he had an obnoxious nephew named Scrappy and an intellectually challenged cousin named Scooby-Dum. You know that Shaggy was a hippie pothead and Fred was probably banging Daphne. You know that most of the time, the “ghost” was Old Man Whoever in a mask, trying to scare people away from his beloved property for one reason or another. But there are probably a few things you still don’t know about this classic cartoon. To wit:

 1. The show was created to replace much cooler cartoons like this one. 


Hanna and Barbera were the rockstars of cartoon creators in the 60s and 70s. They came up with awesome cartoons like the Herculoids, Birdman, the Impossibles, the Galaxy Trio, Space Ghost, the list goes on and on. And they weren’t even trying to sell any toys! But those nasty family watchdog groups said these cartoons were too violent for kids. CBS’ response? A seemingly innocuous cartoon about a rock group that solved mysteries. This wasn’t really H-B’s speed, so they passed along most of the task to Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, who, after a few revisions and throwing out the rock band idea (which would be revived with Josie and the Pussycats), came up with the Scooby Gang we know and love today.

2. Scooby Doo is Dobie Gillis meets the I Love a Mystery Radio Show. 

The basis for the Scooby Doo concept, as envisioned by CBS exec Fred Silverman, was a group of teenagers modeled on the gang from the popular 60s T.V. show “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” except, instead of dealing with typical teenage issues, they would solve crimes like the detectives on the 40s radio show, “I Love a Mystery.” Decades later, TV Creation Juggernaut J.J. Abrams would use almost the same mashup concept to create the show that launched his rocket to fame, “Alias.” (“Felicity” as a double agent superspy). In case you’re curious, the inspirations were:

Fred Jones                                                        Dobie Gillis

Shaggy Rogers

Maynard G. Krebbs

Zelda Gilroy

Velma Dinkley

Thalia Menninger

Daphne Blake

So where did the dog come from? Read on.


3. Scooby Doo was originally a bongo playing dog named "Too Much." 

In subsequent drafts he became a sheepdog before becoming the Great Dane we all know and love, designed by Iwao Takamoto, who was a pivotal designer for Disney in the ‘40s, and also designed Astro of the Jetsons.

4. Daphne is loaded. Oh, and she's also an identical sextuplet.

Did you ever wonder how the Scooby Gang stayed flush in Scooby Snacks with their crappy business model? Their adventures are financed by Daphne’s family, which is filthy rich. She has a butler named Jenkins and her close relatives include a golf course owner and a movie director. And yeah, in later incarnations of the series, it was revealed that she has five identical sisters, including, a race car driver, a doctor, an astronaut, a model, and a Marine.

5. Shaggy is also loaded.

Or at least, his family is. They may have cut him off. Shaggy’s Uncles include inventor Albert Shaggleford, Southern plantation owner Beauregard Rogers, and rich Uncle Shagworthy.

Congratulations! You now know way too much about Scooby Doo!

Three of the Best Character Actors on T.V. You Should Be Watching

Plenty of awards are given out for the people involved in making television, and they are often well-deserved. However, the real grinders in the acting world don't always get the recognition they should. In that spirit, and in the spirit of Emmy season, here are three T.V. actors that deserve your attention.

1. Carrie Preston

If you only know Carrie Preston from one thing, you don’t know Carrie Preston. From her seemingly-addled but disarmingly brilliant lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni in The Good Wife to the proud, battle-scarred mother and waitress Arlene Fowler in True Blood, Preston exhibits a range and ability that is rarely seen among television actresses today. She’s so good at disappearing into her characters that you may not realize how often you’ve seen her, as she’s played often minor but never forgettable roles in such shows as The Following, Person of Interest, Lost, and even Arrested Development, among others. She may be a victim of her own success, as her ability to fall so seamlessly into her roles may be why she hasn’t been given a nod for a front and center role on T.V.  YET.

2. Rick Hoffman

Rick Hoffman has been around for a while, but he just may have found the role he was born to play in ladder-climbing, underappreciated legal genius Louis Litt on USA’s Suits. When we first meet Louis, he’s a petty tyrant, terrorizing the associates under his command while making clumsy, desperate power grabs at those above, but Hoffman’s ability to humanize the character has been unparalleled, providing us a window into that kid who got picked last for gym in a man’s body, just wanting the respect of the cool kids and willing to do anything to get it. The last season of Suits has seen Hoffman with the opportunity to take Louis though a wide swath of pathos, losing the love of his life, his self-respect, and his job, before rising from the ashes to march forward and attempt to take the power that (at least he believes) has always been rightfully his. Hoffman has been more than up to the task, and his performances this season have easily been Emmy-worthy.

3. Eddie Marsan

There aren't any weak performances on Showtime’s Ray Donovan, but Eddie Marsan, as washed up boxer Terry Donovan, may be the least appreciated. British actors playing Americans is nothing new, but this London native who has won a mantel full of awards and has won distinction on both stage and screen brings a humanity to this working-class Boston guy that is both extremely moving and quite subtle. Marsan’s Donovan, with a Parkinson’s condition possibly brought on by his father’s poor management of his boxing career, and a fragile dream of running a boxing gym in Ireland, evokes sympathy, but at the same time, projects great strength. There’s a raw honesty to Terry that’s very appealing, and it’s to Marsan’s credit that he allows this character to shine a bit, but just enough as is appropriate among the larger-than-life characters that inhabit this show.

I’m of course, partial to the great writers who are populating the T.V. landscape in this “Golden Age,” but let’s never forget that T.V. is a collaborative art, and without great performances by strong acting talents, it wouldn’t be nearly what it is today.

What Is Humor?

I was watching a recent episode of the Big Bang Theory where Sheldon attempts to create a unified theory of humor. The joke in this idea comes from the fact that Sheldon has little to no concept of humor or sarcasm. Inherent also, however, is the implication that humor is just “what’s funny,” and can’t be quantified. However this is completely untrue.

Humor of all kinds can be boiled down into one simple concept: Subversion of Expectations. That is the essence of humor. A joke or a funny situation sets up a given expectation with its premise, and subverts that expectation with its punch line. For example, take the following joke: (Note: To see the joke answers, please highlight the area next to the A:)

Q: What’s worse than two hangnails on the same hand?

A: The Holocaust.

We’re given an expectation that the answer will be of a similar degree to the question. We would expect an answer like: a hangnail on each hand, or three hangnails on one hand.  But the true answer is completely out of proportion to the question. Thus we are surprised, and we laugh.

Maybe.

This particular joke is complicated by the fact that it is completely bereft of cultural sensitivity. Thus, if you are connected to the culture of the answer, you may find it offensive, rather than funny. Or you may find it funny, but feel guilty. However, this guilt and discomfort is also a part of humor. The famous line “Comedy equals Tragedy plus time” has its basis in truth. We laugh to protect ourselves from our existential terror, the so called “Morbid humor,” but when a tragic event is far enough away that we can assuage ourselves by parodying it varies depending upon the event and the audience. And, as a friend of mine once said: “Every joke is at someone’s expense.” 

Note that humor comes from subversion of expectations, not destruction of expectations. For example.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To use a washing machine.

To be sure, this is not the answer we expected, but it’s also not one we could have arrived at by any permutation of logic, so it’s not funny. The true answer to this joke, “To get to the other side,” is also not funny, but only because every child has heard the punch line, so this answer meets expectations. If you had never heard the joke before, you would expect a more deterministic reason for the chicken to cross the road, so the simple answer “to get to the other side,” would be surprising and funny. It’s a diminishing of expectations, the opposite of the humorous technique in the first joke. The point however, is that it’s an answer that can make sense in the right context, even if it’s one we didn’t expect.

Jokes can also use subversion of expectations to build an increasingly complex network of humor, setting up new expectations with the first subversion, and then subverting the new expectations, as in the famous “Monkey Routine.”

Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

A: Because it was dead.

Subversion of expectations. The answer makes sense, but it is the most out of proportion of all the possible answers.

Q: Why did the second monkey fall out of the tree?

A: Monkey see, Monkey do.

Our expectations are subverted once more. We expect an extreme answer and get a simple one.

Q: Why did the third monkey fall out of the tree?

A: Peer Pressure.

By this point, our expectations are so tangled we don’t know what to expect, and so an answer that is neither simple, nor extreme, but still meets the parameters of the joke, that it is unexpected and can still be arrived at logically (even though it almost certainly never would) is perhaps the funniest of all.

This joke also observes the Rule of Three, which states, for reasons too complicated to go into here, that no more or less than three permutations of the same joke provide maximum humor. You will find that sitcoms that employ runners, or a joke that repeats, will generally do it no more than three times: the first to establish the joke, the second to establish that it is a running gag, and the third to finish off the joke before it becomes expected. The idea of a runner, or a stand up comedian’s “callback,” both follow the idea of subverted expectations. We expect that the joke is over, so when it returns later and somewhat out of context, we are surprised and amused.

What about something like slapstick? When we see our clown walking carelessly towards the banana peel, we know exactly what is going to happen. He’s going to slip and fall. It’s exactly what we expect, and yet we laugh. Why? In this case, it is our visual expectation that is subverted. That is, every day, we see people walking down the street. It’s very mundane and boring. When someone suddenly stops that activity, goes flying, and takes a tumble, it subverts our visual expectation, if not our cognitive one. As Krusty the Clown once remarked regarding the “pie in the face” gag, “It only works if the schmuck has some dignity to begin with!” We know the pie is going into a face, what’s funny is the subversion of our typical visual experience that a dignified person won’t appear with a face full of pie.

I believe if you analyze any kind of humor, be it slapstick, political satire, joke, situation comedy or standup routine, you will find that at its heart lies the subversion of expectations. If your joke isn’t getting a laugh, you probably haven’t set up the expectation well enough or subverted it effectively. Take my Blog….

….PLEASE!

Happy Mark Sanchez Day!

And from this day forward, March 21st will be known as Mark Sanchez Day. And there will be much rejoicing and good cheer. And possibly presents.

And we will use this day to remember the Five Commandments of drafting quarterbacks:

1. Thou shalt remember that the Pac-12 in general and USC in particular has always made quarterbacks look much better than they really are, and thou shalt no longer be seduced into the belief that players like Todd Marinovich, Matt Leinart and of course, Mark Sanchez have any place in the NFL, no matter how highly they are touted in college.

2. Having failed to follow Commandment One, thou shalt not compound thy mistake by offering that terrible quarterback a ridiculously bloated and long term contract, tying your team’s fortunes to failure for much longer than necessary.

3. No matter how good thy quarterback looks eating a hot dog, wearing a woman’s hairstyle, or posing for GQ, thou shalt not be fooled into thinking he has a “winning attitude,” and better days are just around the corner.

4. Thou shalt not abide a head coach who falls so head over heels in love with said quarterback that he tattoos said quarterback’s image onto his wife. Such a head coach will be discharged immediately.

5. Thou shalt always remember these commandments and this day, and keep it Holy.

Happy Mark Sanchez Day everybody!

Arrivederci, Sochi

Here it is, my somewhat delayed, doubtless long awaited, biannual Olympics report! Here you’ll find my analysis of some of the best stories of the Sochi games! So, without further ado….

1. The Venue

Sochi was the story before the games had even begun. We westerners have always had the same view of Russia since the Stalin-era, that of a cold, dreary, bleak place, with men in fur hats and women in babushkas lined up around the block in the snow hoping to get their daily ration of bread, toilet paper or vodka. I’ve been to Russia, and it’s changed a lot since those days, but you wouldn’t know it from the first reports out of Sochi. Tales of warnings against drinking tainted water, malfunctioning or missing toilets, beds, or other amenities in local hotels, and so forth blanketed the social mediaverse.

Once the games started though, it seems that things were not so bad. Even a slight malfunction in the opening ceremonies was quickly forgotten and even played for laughs at the closing. Few complaints were heard once the games began in earnest, and most importantly, the games went off without a hitch. No attack by Chechnyan rebels, no bomb threats, no disappearing athletes—not even that many doping or cheating scandals. And it’s not like there wasn’t plenty of unrest that could have led to political uprising (Crimea, anyone?), so, whatever you think of Vlad Putin, you have to give him SOME credit—he pulled it off.

2. The Ukrainian Women’s Biathlon Team

Speaking of the Crimea situation, props have to go out to the Ukrainian Women’s biathlon team. Amidst massive unrest in their country, with the threat of the former motherland’s aggression looming over them, these four women, Olena Pidhrushna, Vali Semerenko, Vita Semernko, and Juliya Dzhyma bore down and collected the second Winter Olympics gold medal in Ukrainian history. Instead of turning their guns against Russian oppressors, they turned them on dime-sized targets and won gold in the 4x6K biathlon relay, striking a blow for national pride in the heart of the country that seems to be threatening it the most.

3. Speed Skating-Dutch Treat, American Horror Story

The Dutch have been known for speed skating for some time, but their dominance truly reached fruition in these games. The Dutch men won everything but the 1500m, where they came in second, but where their women picked up the slack, sweeping their version of the race.  One of their women even picked up an extra medal in short track for good measure. Speed skating ended up comprising the entire Dutch medal haul from Sochi, which was just fine, since they collected eight gold, seven silver, and nine bronze, putting them near the top of the medal leader board. In contrast, the fairly well-funded and highly touted men’s team, led by Shani Davis, collected….none. (One if you count their lone silver in short track). Some are blaming the USA uniforms, which were specially designed for Sochi with a vent in the back that was supposed to improve the aerodynamics, but probably should have been tested more extensively before being put into use in the most important competition in four years. Regardless, the Dutch have come a long way since Vancouver, when an embarrassing error by a Dutch coach caused their star Sven Kramer to lose his premier event (chronicled in my Vancouver recap). This year’s Dutch embarrassment was provided by Coach Jillert Anema, whose anti-American rant seemed to overlook the fact that outside of speed skating, the U.S. performance put the Dutch to shame.

4. Satisfied Countries

Although things didn’t go as expected for everybody, especially the U.S, which saw Shaun White fail to live up to his hype, the men’s hockey team flame out, and the aforementioned speed skating team crumble, there was something for almost everybody to be proud of. The Russians didn’t dominate cross country as they had hoped, but they did live up to expectations as the host country and take home the biggest medal haul. The Dutch, as mentioned, crushed speed skating, their national sport, and Canada maintained their national pride too, winning Hockey and Curling in both the men’s and women’s divisions. And, never fear, the U.S. took home plenty of medals as well, in freestyle skiing and snowboarding, alpine skiing and more. And by the way, did anyone miss Lindsey Vonn?

All in all a successful Olympics I think, and plenty to look forward to in Rio in two years.