What Chris Cooley Meant to Me as a Redskins Fan
This post is going to be all about football, so most of you won’t care. It’s also going to be about the Redskins, meaning still less of you will give a shit. In fact, it’s going to be about one particular Redskin, so that’ll reduce the potential audience for this post to about one. I don’t give a shit. Some things need to be said.
I’ve been conscious of being a Redskins fan for 35 years. In that time I’ve had heroes, from good days and bad: Joe Theismann, John Riggins, Darrell Green, Dave Butz, Dexter Manley, Art Monk, Downtown Charlie Brown, Joe Jacoby – hell, I could go on forever. But it’s been a long time since the Glory Days of the Hogs and Gibbs and the Pearl Harbor Crew and the Posse and Fun Bunch and all the rest. In fact, for 20 years now, being a Redskins fan hasn’t been all that fun. There was fleeting success during the Norv era, but that didn’t last, and then came the Bataan March of coaching. Schottenheimer, Spurrier, Gibbs 2.0 (and the last glimpse of success), Zorn (Jesus Christ, I still can’t believe there was a Zorn Era), and now Shanahan. I have hopes for the current coaching staff, I really do. Hope is pretty much the only thing Redskins fans have had to hang their hat on for 20 years. Hope that this year the line can stay healthy. Hope that a quarterback could emerge from the pile and become an NFL-caliber star. Hope that the defense would finally stop giving up 65% of 3rd down conversions. Hope that the young guys could do something.
For 8 years, though, there was one position that I, as a fan, didn’t have to feel hope about. It simply wasn’t necessary, because for this one area, there was certainty. At tight end, for the Washington Redskins, Chris Cooley was going to give everything he had on every play. He was a bright spot, an anchor, one guy we could count on every play even when we were certain nothing else would go right. On the field he was a beast, even if he never got the pimpage from ESPN that others like Witten or Clark or Gonzalez got. Didn’t matter. We, the Redskins fans, knew how awesome he was and how special it was to have him in the burgundy and gold. He was Our Guy.
Shovelcast #1: From Realm of LARP, Sir Barrington / Christian Gebhart
Imagine me looking like this throughout the interview.
I warned you. And here it is. An hour and thirty-seven minutes of pure nerdery.
It’s the first-ever podcast, excuse me, SHOVELCAST, from Me and My Shovel, so it’s just like the typical post: long, rambling, full of curse words, unedited, and probably awful. I aim to please! Seriously, though, I had a lot of fun doing this interview with one hell of a great dude. We talk about LARPing in general, being nerds, and Realm of LARP stuff for a good long time. Christian was a hell of a good sport, considering that his first post-show interview was with an amateurish half-drunk boob (that’s me) who had no idea what he was doing.
Fun fact: as nerds, we were of course sitting at a gaming table in someone’s basement as we did this. Totally appropriate.
So anyway, if you want to hear Barrington’s side of the story from the infamous Episode 5 Debacle, you’re in luck! If you want to hear my words get a little more slurry as time goes on, now’s your chance! If you think I remember half of what’s on here, you’re out of your mind!
I need to figure out how to make this a drinking game.
So, here is the last bit of ado: thank you to John and Lori for the use of the basement, and to Kyle for the use of the voice recorder. And also thanks to Christian’s wife and mine for letting us get all bromancy for a couple of hours unsupervised.
Here it is. God help us all.
Oh and I should probably add: NSFW (occasional potty mouths, constant levels of man-crushing).
Web Series Review: Realm of LARP
“Nerd Culture” is taking over. Face it, Brosef, with your “Sun’s Out, Guns Out” tank top and oversized shades and flip-flops. The Tyranny of the Bully Era has ended, and popular culture has embraced everything that used to get some poor skinny kid wedgied and stuffed into a locker. Comic books? Only the highest grossing movies at the box office. Computers? Yeah, I think they’ve gone a little mainstream. Video games? You get the point, Mr. Straw Man, so suck it. Even things like tabletop role-playing games are no longer an automatic ticket to Nerd Hell, thanks to offshoots like World of Warcraft making the concept approachable, and having someone like Vin Diesel come out and say they’re cool also helps, because you go ahead and call Vin Diesel lame, then let me know when you finish fishing your forearm out of your own throat.
Now, not everything that geek culture embraces is mainstream yet. Cosplay? Slowly but surely getting more accepted, thanks to the exploding popularity of Comic-Con and the other hugantic cons (that’s “conventions” for those unfamiliar with the term) out there. Anime fanatics? Well, some things still deserves wedgies. (I kid, I kid. However, Dragonball Z and a lot of popular anime is some of the worst dreck I’ve ever seen in my life. Yes, Princess Mononoke and Akira and Ghost in the Shell are incredibly beautiful and moving pieces of art, but most of the big-eyed panty-flashing’ tentacle-rapin’ underage-girls-who-are-“eighteen” kung-fu superpowerfulragefestin’ anime shit is purely awful in every way. But that’s neither here nor there.) There’s another geek staple that still isn’t embraced, and it’s near and dear to my heart, as I’ve said before.
LARPing.
Smoke Detectors Can Kiss My Ass
This is my brand of smoke detector. I hope it dies in a fire.
“Smoke detectors save lives”. So says everyone and everything on the internet. Every day, a smoke detector saves umpty-bumpty lives while simultaneously providing a much needed ornamental flair to the otherwise drab ceilings of our homes.
I hate them ever so much.
Father’s Day Thoughts
Warning: This post is probably as personal and serious as I’m likely to get on here. It won’t be very funny. It will, however, be genuine. You been warned.
Father’s Day is coming up. For many people, it’s a day to give their father a suitably crappy gift and give the old man a hug. I see a lot of ads and sales and heart-warming hey-ain’t-Dad-great stories and I think that’s pretty cool. For a lot of other people, Father’s Day means not much at all. There’s a load of deadbeat dads, kids who don’t have their fathers in their lives, dads who abandoned their kids and whatnot. For some, Father’s Day is a reminder of someone who abused and terrified them. Not such a great place to be.
By Popular Demand: The Aravan Guide to Parenting
God I fucking hate kids.
A few weeks back, I provided some really awful parenting advice as part of my series about weight loss (sample: “Show your kids the back of your hand”). I included the caveat that no one should listen to any of my advice about anything ever, but then a weird thing happened. People, people with children, people with actual living human beings under their care and guidance, thought that I should write the parenting guide I’d jokingly referred to.
Well, OK. Let’s do this thing.
Because why the hell not? I’m a parenting expert, because I don’t have any squealing little brats that I constantly coddle and gloss over the sociopathic and demented shit they do. I mean, I was a kid once, I HAD parents, so I’m as much an expert as the next guy. I can see the forest for the trees and all that shit. Actually, I’m probably more qualified to be an expert in bee-eating than parenting, but whatever. As long as you don’t actually listen to a single thing I say ever, you’ll do fine.
My Advice About Losing Weight: Fourthly, Your Brain
It’s all in your mind.
This is a series of posts about losing weight. I broke them up so that I don’t produce an 8,000 word post you won’t read. Instead, it’ll be four or so posts that you most likely won’t read. I’m OK with that.
The first one had the intro and dealt with the basics. Read it first for a better feel for the context. The second one was about Calories Eaten. The third one was about exercise, burning calories, and yoga pants.
OK. We’ve talked about the basic premise – burning more calories than you eat – along with calories and exercise. Now, it’s time to get to the important part.
But but but diet and exercise ARE the important part! They’re the ONLY part!
Yeah, no. Not at all. All that stuff is great, and can be vital to the process of getting fit and healthy and all that. But more important than the physical aspects of weight loss is the mental aspect. See, if your mind isn’t behind what you’re doing, forget it. It’s over. That’s why I don’t buy any of those “tips” that talk about “fooling your body into thinking you’re full”. Eating crunchy bread (/wanking motion), chewing your food extra slowly (/roll eyes, wanking motion), drinking 87 glasses of water during dinner (/wanking motion into Spider-Man gesture) – all of those things designed to “fool your body” aren’t going to work, because your brain knows the trick. The reason why we eat too much and don’t exercise enough isn’t because of body signals. It’s our brain saying “I can totally eat this large pizza. I want to eat this large pizza. I will eat this large pizza.” Most of us don’t even know what real, actual hunger feels like. But our brains sure as shit know that when we’re bored, an ice cream sandwich is a great answer. Our brains make us fat.
It’s a pretty powerful little bastard.
But that power can be harnessed for good. In fact, it MUST be harnessed for good, or you won’t succeed. This post is all about the Mental aspect of fitness.
My Advice About Losing Weight: Thirdly, Exercise
I hate treadmills so much. Maybe you don’t.
This is a series of posts about losing weight. I broke them up so that I don’t produce an 8,000 word post you won’t read. Instead, it’ll be four or so posts that you most likely won’t read. I’m OK with that.
The first one had the intro and dealt with the basics. Read it first for a better feel for the context. The second one was about Calories Eaten. It also has invaluable parenting advice that is best ignored, like the rest of my advice.
A quick word about advice before I move on. All advice is pretty much worthless when taken in whole. My advice about taking advice is this: take what you like, chuck the rest. Chances are very good that you can take the exact opposite path of my advice here and lose weight, because the only truly useful advice I have is to Do What is Right For You. The rest of it is mostly stuff that worked for me and might be of use to you. Also, quit wasting money on diet books. Use that to buy a food scale.
Moving on.
Calories Burned
Ahhh, exercise. The bane of many a weight-loss plan. Some people LOVE exercise. Most people dread it and hate it. Why is that? I think it’s because the people who love working out are – wait for it – doing something they honestly enjoy. And that in a nutshell is my advice about exercise. Find something you like to do that involves moving your ass, and you too will love to exercise. If you hate running, don’t run. Don’t listen to the people who tell you that you should run because running is the best exercise ever. They say that because they like to run. If you hate to run, then doing Couch to 5k is a bad idea. You will hate it, resent it, and stop doing it.
That’s the big fat secret to exercise. Find something you like. Do that thing.
My Advice About Losing Weight: Secondly, Calories
Eat salads if you like them. I don’t. So I don’t eat them.
This is a series of posts about losing weight. I broke them up so that I don’t produce an 8,000 word post you won’t read. Instead, it’ll be three or so posts that you most likely won’t read. I’m OK with that.
The first one had the intro and dealt with the basics. Read it first for a better feel for the context.
Calories Eaten
I was going to label this section “Diet”, as in the overall picture of the food we eat, but that word is banned. See, the key to long-term weight loss isn’t a diet. It’s not about detoxing or juicing or eating a grapefruit for breakfast every day (ahh, the 1980’s) or some “paleo” bullshit or low-carb or Nutrisystem or meal plans or any of that utter bullshit.
But they work!
OK, sure. Short-term, a diet works just fine. I know. I used to jump on the Atkins diet and lose 20 pounds in a month or two. I loved that diet. I ate that way for over a year at one point. So look at me, contradicting myself! OK, not really. The reason why diets and meal plans and all that shit don’t work is because they don’t simulate real life. Sure, you can starve yourself on the Water and Salt Tablet Diet to lose 15 pounds for your wedding, but I guarantee that during your honeymoon you’ll gain it all right back, plus 5 pounds more. Then you’ll look back at your wedding pictures and see yourself 20 pounds lighter, feel fat, and eat a quart of ice cream. Unless you plan to change your life after you finish the diet, you will gain the weight back. It’s what happens. Plus your significant other will get to makes cracks about how much weight you gained after the wedding and make you want to shiv them. You might want to avoid life in prison.
Winter in Derenemyn 