matthearn.com

Argh. To expand on what I said on Twitter, rooting for the Eagles is a lot like going to a bar with friends, randomly meeting an attractive woman, hit it off with her, take her home, start making out, she takes off your pants, and then punches you in the balls as hard as she can and takes your wallet and runs. Every year the Eagles rope me (and the rest of the Delaware Valley) in, and then they not only lose, they waddle out to mid-field, take a big dump, and roll around in it.

Now: I’m no football expert. I never played the game, because I value my knees and concussion-free noggin. (My son, who is conservatively predicted (by me) to grow to at least 6’5″, will be steered towards baseball, basketball, and soccer, sports that might wreck your knees, but which don’t appear to lead to Alzheimers setting in at age 47.) So my grasp of football strategy is tenuous. However, I have one very important question: if you have a guy who is probably the greatest pure athlete in the league, doesn’t it behoove you to play him a little more often?

Michael Vick is an above-average passer, and runs like an eight-point buck. If he’s on the field, he has to be accounted for. I’m envisioning an offense where he’s sort of an “offensive rover,” always in motion in the backfield, sometimes lined up in the slot, sometimes next to McNabb. If he lines up at wide receiver, they have to put a corner or fast linebacker on him, right? So then McNabb audibles, and Mike trots over and stands next to him. Now the defense has to account for the fact that he might actually take the snap, and then what? Will he take off? Will he drop back? What’s McNabb going to do in that situation? Every play’s a trick play! And don’t forget Brian Westbrook’s back there too. McNabb can fake a hand-off to Vick, and then lob it to a wide open Westbrook streaking through the flat with blockers. I think this would be routinely unstoppable.

And of course, Vick played, what, 100 snaps all season? Argh.

Someday, I’d like someone to explain to me why it is that Americans think they have a right to never be scared by anything. Over the last few weeks, Gilbert Arenas has been waving guns around, and a guy tried to blow up an airplane with his crotch, and suddenly everyone’s losing their minds.

Arenas will probably do serious jail time, and may never play in the NBA again, despite the fact that nobody actually got shot. A couple of schmucks waved guns around, and because they’re black, the white establishment thinks “Boyz n the Hood” and drops the guillotine. To put things in perspective: Gilbert Arenas may end up in jail longer, for a victimless crime, than Michael Vick was for murdering dogs. (My feelings on Vick’s rehabilitation can be found here.) He may get an suspension from the NBA that’s longer than Ron Artest got for charging into the stands and beating up the wrong fan. I’m not saying that Agent Zero shouldn’t get disciplined; at the very least, he’s demonstrated that he can’t be trusted with firearms. So take them away, suspend him for a while, fine him, whatever. But let’s not take away his freedom and livelihood for merely frightening David Stern.

Along the same lines, in response to one idiot lighting his dick on fire, the TSA is enacting restrictions that make flying about as enjoyable as prison rape, and don’t do a damn thing about making flying any safer, and just makes folks drive long distances instead of flying them. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good road trip, but you’re more likely to die by driving from Chicago to New York than by flying. (Folks like to throw statistics around that say that, in 2006 for example, only 655 people died in airplane accidents and 45,316 died in car crashes, but that ignores the fact that the average American drives, what, a hundred times as many hours as he flies? So for each hour, I’d say the odds of dying in a plane crash are about the same as in a car crash. It’s certainly not the 2 orders of magnitude difference that flying enthusiasts say. The problem is that driving a given distance takes roughly 10 times as long as flying it, so for a given trip, it is an order of magnitude difference.) The problem is that news reports about brown bearded men trying to blow up planes scares people, and driving around in a 3 ton SUV makes them feel in control. So thanks, TSA, for killing Americans. You’re doing a bang-up job.

Dear America: you need to make a decision about whether you want to feel safe, or be safe. Locking someone up for a victimless crime (be it drug use, or “being stupid with a gun”) does not make you safer; every time you put someone in jail, he becomes far more likely to be a violent criminal than he was when he went in. So congratulations: you turned someone from “moron” to “mugger.” Just take his guns away, put him on probation, help him stop being an idiot. TSA: the odds of me blowing up the plane with my iPhone are remarkably low. How about we just agree that I can use it anytime I want, and I’ll promise to not pack C4 into my scrotum? Awesome. Citizens: sometimes scary stuff happens. How about you stop being such wusses?

Happy belated New Year! Did you make a resolution? Jonah Lehrer bets it falls apart!

Willpower, like a bicep, can only exert itself so long before it gives out; it’s an extremely limited mental resource.

Given its limitations, New Year’s resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. It makes no sense to try to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, or to clean the apartment and give up wine in the same month. Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year.

My own resolutions are unsurprising: I need to lose a whole bunch of weight, and I want to have a complete early draft of a first novel. I’m scared that the first resolution will be easier, given that I still don’t know what I want to write about.

I’m a little leery of setting an actual “weight” goal, because I intend to facilitate slenderization via dieting, a little cardio, and a whole lot of muscle-building. It would be foolish to say “I want to weigh 200 pounds” if I get myself crazy ripped and still weigh 235. I think what I’m going to do is set a goal of having a waist measurement the same as my inseam (34), which is a good long way off. I’m around 40 inches around now, so frankly if I get down to 36 I’ll be pleased as punch.

What are your resolutions? To be more awesome?

A flip of the beanie to Andrew for this’n:

Now. We all know that I love my iPhone. It’s like a tiny God. (For a time, I even named it “Cohen,” after the Jewish tribe of Aaron, those responsible for priestly duties, because it is my immediate and direct contact to the great infinite deity that is The Internets. Now it’s named the Admirable Crichton, after the notable Scottish polymath.) Most people feel the same way, and almost everyone, and certainly Michael Wolff, agrees that AT&T sucks.

Is it mere success, as AT&T seems to suggest? The iPhone is just too popular, straining its network. The fault, in other words, lies with consumer demand and great design, and not with AT&T and its resources and infrastructure.

But how come for the last two years I go dead in the East Thirties, on 57th Street and Sixth, on 72nd and Madison, on Bleeker and Lafayette, on the Williamsburg Bridge, and about a hundred other specific locations I’m too irate to remember now?

And more to the point, even if it is just success, what kind of crappy excuse is that? Am I supposed to be proud of you, AT&T, because you didn’t have the sense to foresee that the iPhone would be wildly popular, and expand your infrastructure to support it? You’ve got a lot of sack signing and exclusive contract with Apple, and charging me $170 a month for a two-phone plan, and saying “Hey, if everybody didn’t use their phones so much, it wouldn’t be a problem!”

Screw you, AT&T. And while I’m on a consumer rant, I’d like to give a big Eff You to the Claymont Steak Shop, a staple of North Wilmington for donkeys’ years. Apparently they changed ownership a few years back, and have been coasting on the reputation of the previous management. On Sunday we ordered some steaks and sides, and were told “15 minutes.” 10 minutes later, I made the 5-minute walk, and was told that the Strombolis were done, but the steaks were not. That’s a well-timed cooking operation. Even I know to get all the food done at the same time.

So I waited, and listened to countless other customers complain about how long things were taking, to which the blond woman with the funny accent who was throwing sandwiches into bags invite anyone who wasn’t happy to get their money back and leave. (I can only assume she was one of the owners, but it seems likely.) One poor couple insisted they’d been coming to the shop for years and had never been treated like this, to which Blondie replied that no one else was complaining, which was horseshit, since the only person not complaining was me, because of my overwhelming desire to not get my food spat in by some woman who may have a disease she picked up in prison in her homeland.

Hey Claymont Steak Shop? Suck it. If you don’t have the brains to foresee a big customer rush at 6pm on a Sunday during football season, and allocate resources appropriately, then I’m afraid you get to listen to customers whine about it. Also: when customers make reasonable complaints, such as “This is taking too long,” you apologize, and maybe offer some free fries or something. Saying “You can see how busy we are” is not a valid excuse. Lastly: if you’re busy, perhaps telling your phone clerks to let people know that the food might take a while might be the move. Because if they say 15 minutes, and I show up 15 minutes later and the food’s not ready and you’re being a crackhead whore, I’m going to write rude things about you on my blog.

If AT&T and the Claymont Steak Shop were an ice-cream flavor, they’d be pralines and dick.

</RANT>

‘Tis bettet to give than receive, says Scott Meyer:

Highlarious.

Andrew Sullivan’s filler-in-ers have been posting links to “depressing Christmas songs,” and of course how can you do that without Tom Waits?

So the other day I was poking around Amazon, looking for Christmas presents for my peeps and bopeeps, and came across Adam Lambert’s new album, which I would never buy. The album cover made me giggle, so I sent a link to my boy Brian:

(I believe the comment I made was, “In a related story, Adam Lambert is gay.” This was in bad taste, not least because I know a lot of gay men, and not one of them dresses like a chorus member from Xanadu The Musical.)

Brian, who is deft with The Photoshop, immediately produced this, which might be the greatest thing since the domestication of the pig:

I may actually end up having to record a bunch of Adam Lambert covers so I can release an album with this cover.

You like number games? Sudoku? Ken-Ken? Then take Numbrix to the house. You’ll be glad you did! Also you’ll be ensmarten’d.