Downward Spiral Fantasy Football League - Meet the Players

Downward Spiral Fantasy Football League - Meet the Players

You probably already got an automated e-mail from Yahoo! reminding you of your draft time tomorrow night (Thu 9/1 @ 8:30pm). Well, now you’re getting an unautomated e-mail from me. Just so it feels more real. And just so you know who you’re up against:

“DustinMadeMe” a.k.a. “Evil Joe” Experience Level: Rookie Motivation: I made him. Football History: Wavers back and forth between being a Redskins and Ravens fan. Will likely have Kelly run his fantasy team for him. Dustin History: Hosted our wedding at his house. Good guy. “Evil” nickname slightly misleading.

“Dustin Made Me Too” a.k.a. “The Wife” Experience Level: Rookie Motivation: Promised she would join if Evil Joe did. Football History: Is from Texas. Has heard of it. Makes me shut it off whenever possible. Dustin History: Still agreed to spend the rest of her life with me back in May.

“ExcessiveCelebration” a.k.a “Tone-Def” Experience Level: Beginner (played once 10 years ago) Motivation: Got married last year. No excuses anymore. Football History: Played center for the “Good Guys” men’s football team in our heyday. Was a part of the 1998 historic ZBT collapse that still apparently haunts me. Dustin History: Let me live with him for 3 years. Unsuccessfully tried to teach me how to be an adult.

“HobNoGood” a.k.a “Tom’s Better Two Thirds” Experience Level: Advanced Motivation: Needs reason to spend time away from Tom. Football History: Has been with Downward Spiral since beginning. Last in 2006. First in 2007. Streaky. Dustin History: Very little. Knows my last name. Have conversed on the facebook.

“Justincredibles” a.k.a “Six Four” Experience Level: Advanced Motivation: Habit, Apathy Football History: Has also been with Downward Spiral since beginning. Second in 2006 and 2008. Can’t win the big one. May have cheated to get my bro-in-law out of the playoffs in 2006. Strangely is a Vikings fan. Dustin History: Once almost put a hole in my floor by getting bodyslammed by two guys both weighing over 400 pounds each.

“Mike Vick in a Box” a.k.a “The Best Man” Experience Level: Rookie Motivation: Curiosity, Isolation Football History: Lives in Indy. Waited on Reggie Wayne and Marty Schottenheimer. Different days. Dustin History: I got drunk for the first time on his 21st birthday in a tent in Santé Fe. Was the best day of his life.

“P-City Allstars” a.k.a “Perpendicular Keith” Experience Level: Advanced Motivation: Doing me a favor to make an even # of teams Football History: Played safety on Touchdown My Pants for 6 seasons. Had kid. Retired. Dustin History: Let me live with him for a year. Invented 11 ping-pong paddle grips together. Bailed me out of jail.

“Pump Fists Not Gas” a.k.a “Jersey Girl” Experience Level: Intermediate Motivation: Personal rivalry, Vengeance, Seeking painless connection to Ohio Football History: Lost the last two championship games to a superior team. Dustin History: Also from east coast. Spent two tragic years in Ohio together. Besides John Trainor, the only other person I convinced to do a stand-up routine.

“Vicktorious” a.k.a “D Rec” Experience Level: I do this for my job Motivation: Introducing game to friends, Reason to make Jenn watch football, Arrogance Football History: Called Jenn in the third quarter of the Eagles/Giants game last year to go look at a house. Saw DeSean’s TD return at Outback hours later. Dustin History: Most.

“Wads of Cows” a.k.a “Boatwad” Experience Level: Intermediate, Participates regularly in live drafts, Often tries to draft players already on other rosters Motivation: Joining old friends in new league, Insatiable need for attention Football History: Hosts Superbowl parties with TV on mute. Wears Patriots jersey. Will draft Tom Brady too high. Dustin History: Owns a boat.

Try to get to the room 10 minutes early if you can in case your watch stopped 10 minutes ago. You may actually have to physically click on something that says “draft central.” It’s not hard. Or don’t worry about it at all if you plan to autodraft. But plan to delete annoying messages from me much like this one once a week or maybe never again depending on how much time I have. Good luck.

Ranking the 2010 Best Picture Nominees

Ranking the 2010 Best Picture Nominees

For the second year in a row, the Oscars have gone with a 10-nominee field for Best Picture and a 2-host system. They still have no idea what they’re doing since Billy Crystal stopped hosting 7 or 10 or 13 years ago. But I like the 10-nominee format, despite the fact that the 5 not also nominated for Best Director will never win. These five movies should just be called the “Special Recognition Category” and there would be no winner. Thanks, Inception. You were brilliantly smart, visually ground-breaking and super entertaining. You get ringside seats to see The Social Network and The King’s Speech duke it out for the prize that you won’t get.

I made it a point to go see all 10 movies before the Oscars this year for reasons I’m not sure were very important. I guess I just wanted to pretend to be informed and sound snootier at an Oscars Party this year. Which I’m not going to. And sounding snooty to Jenn isn’t nearly as fun because she already knows I’m full of shit. But anyway, I ranked the top 10 Best Picture nominees in order of how good I thought they were, not who I thought would win. I asked Jenn to do the same so we could get the woman’s perspective and stole some info from Rotten Tomatoes to see what the snooty critics thought too. And yes, I was nice enough to compile all that info here on one blog post that no one will ever read.

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Dustin's Rankings Inception The Fighter The Social Network Toy Story 3 Black Swan 127 Hours True Grit The Kids Are All Right The King's Speech Winter's Bone

Jenn's Rankings Inception Black Swan The Fighter The King's Speech True Grit The Social Network Toy Story 3 127 Hours The Kids Are All Right Winter's Bone

RT.com Rankings Toy Story 3 (99) The Social Network (96) True Grit (95) Winter's Bone (95) The Kids Are All Right (94) The King's Speech (94) 127 Hours (93) The Fighter (90) Black Swan (88) Inception (96)

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1. Inception – It’s possible I’m being swayed by the brilliance of Memento and the Prestige, but this would probably still be my favorite movie if it was directed by the Farrelly Brothers. That’s a lie. Anyway, this is the kind of intelligence that people don’t put into movies anymore. He takes a concept and follows through with it with absolute precision. If you analyzed the dream within a dream concept of time, I’ll bet that it all adds up to what it’s supposed to, whereas most writers or directors wouldn’t care if there were little plot holes. Chris Nolan has done what I had hoped M. Night Shyamalan would. Except Nolan follows Memento with the Batman movies and a few other great movies, capping it off with Inception. Shyamalan had Unbreakable and then a bunch of shit (Lady In the Water? Really) that continually discredits The Sixth Sense. Transition from small budget intimacy to multi-million dollar blockbuster complete.

2. The Fighter – Apparently Mark Wahlberg has pigeon-holed himself into sports movies based on real-life events back in the 80s. But this one was more than a sports movie. This was more about addition than it was sports. I loved Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech but Christian Bale did the best acting job I think I have ever seen with his role in this. About 45 minutes into the movie, we find out that the HBO cameras shooting the documentary aren’t making a film about Christian’s comeback at all, but a movie about crack addition and it hit me like the reveal in the Sixth Sense. And that entire sequence played over Good Times Bad Times was awesome. You could feel the movie turn. I’m not sure how much of this was actually based on a true story, but that stuff doesn’t matter as much to me. This was great for many reasons. Go see it.

3. The Social Network – I’d have to check again, but I think this might be the best dialogue in any movie I’ve ever seen. It was fast, it was fun and it was smart. I was pleasantly surprised by this and I don’t think they made Mark Zuckerberg out to be an ass at all. Just a really justifiably arrogant and brilliant guy. I can relate. I just don’t think a movie about facebook can really win the Best Picture. If so, facebook has officially taken over the world. Congrats.

4. Toy Story 3 – This is an excellent movie when watched through the perspective of an anthropomorphic toy. But when viewed through the perspective of a college student’s emotional development, it’s a rather sad tale. Still, I cried once at the end. And then I REALLY cried at the REALLY end.

5. Black Swan – This is the most critically acclaimed movie I will ever masturbate to. Wow. And it’s artsy and has ballet in it, so it’s OK. But wow. And honestly, Natalie Portman deserves this Oscar. What a fucked up character that she pulled off perfectly. And the whole ballet thing too. Those weren’t lookalikes. At least not all of them. The Fountain, by Aronofsky was one of the worst movies I’ve seen. This was much better. Pi was somewhere in the middle, as it usually is.

6. 127 Hours – Well, I reported on this movie at length already, but it’s worth seeing. Once. I think it was only nominated because somebody had the guts to make a movie which 75% of it was in one place stuck under a rock.

7. True Grit – Because it’s the Coen Brothers, I think I wanted to like this movie more than I actually did. It was fun in parts, but it was a remake of a movie that already exists and it was slow and boring for most of the movie. I don’t think it’s going to start a western revival. Hailee Steinfeld was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, despite having about 10-15 minutes more screen time than Best Actor nominee Jeff Bridges. They imagine this was because they wanted her to be in a category she could actually win. Can they do that? Aren’t there any fucking rules? If so, why not nominate her for Best Animated Short?

8. The Kids Are All Right – I need to start with the title of this. What the hell? Really? And they didn’t even play the Who song? I really liked that there was a movie about real life functional lesbians raising children. And I liked the message that life is hard. But they never really wrapped up the father’s character and I’m not sure what the point was. With the lack of a point comes the feeling that this was more like a series of things that happened rather than a plot. But cheers to the LGBT community.

9. The King’s Speech – I was tricked at first too. I was enamored by the performances of Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. But after peeling that away and reflecting a bit, I really didn’t like this film. It took London’s – nay – the world’s darkest hour in history and made it about a man with a stuttering problem. It was uplifting to deliver the news that the world was ending. Hitler was a legitimate role model for a few seconds. It’s about triumph over adversity and I love that concept of trying to make yourself a better person, and it drove the point home by including all the elements that normally go into a formulaic underdog sports movie. Cheesy montage workout scene longer than any in The Fighter leading up to a climax of an ending on the grandest of stages. And the worst was the beginning of the second act when the writers forced an argument between player and coach to create drama. History has met formula in a triumph I couldn’t care less about.

10. Winter’s Bone – People aren’t just good or bad. They have different motivations that may blur the lines between what is conventionally right and wrong. There. I saved you 2 hours of your time. You’re welcome. Oh, and the deep south is fucked up. Like you needed me for that one.

Inside the Head of a Performer IV: The Remount - Part 1

Inside the Head of a Performer IV: The Remount – Part 1
Logic, Luck and Love

I’ve apparently written over 7,000 words on the first five-day run of Logic, Luck and Love last summer. Don’t worry. I no longer have that kind of time on my hands.

Sold out show. Atlas Theater. 250+ people in the stands at $22 each. I’d seen this large a crowd before at the Funny Bone in Cincinnati. But those people were there to see Adam Ferrara or Steve Trevino. I just had to tell five minutes of dick jokes and hand off the microphone to the people that the crowd really came to see. This time, I was Adam Ferrara. Or at least one of four Adam Ferraras.

So yeah, I was nervous. I was fine – actually feeling good – until the day before when I got a text message from Jenn (performer) saying she was just starting to get nervous. That text was a virtual computer virus because I caught her nerves just from opening the message. But it didn't really hit me until the day of.

Half an hour to show time. That’s really when it hit me. Kevin was trying on shirts and talking to Molly about something unrelated to the sheer terror of performance storytelling. I couldn't listen anymore. I went to the other section of the green room to reinforce my rib cage so my heart would be less likely to burst completely out and onto the ground. Unfortunately the three beer rule doesn't apply to theater. Not when I have other people counting on me. I don’t know why not, really. Seems sort of idealistic for no fucking reason now.

It was time. Ten minutes to curtain (a business term I've since picked up). Time to go upstairs and pace around backstage and try not to piss or shit myself. I can’t specifically say that I’ve never been this nervous, considering this is an immeasurable variable and knowing the fallibility of human memory, but I had started chewing Kevin’s fingernails.

I peeked out from behind the curtain at the growing crowd. There are several parts of my opening monologue where I need to call out people in the audience and connect with them through eye contact so I could project my desires onto them. They don’t need to be too specific, but I need one to not be obese (“no fatties”) and another to be female (“the willingness to perform certain… sexual… acts”) – preferably hot – and I’d like to know before I walk out there where I can look to find these people. After the rehearsal, I wasn’t sure how far I’d be able to see into the crowd. It got pretty dark out there and since I was first up, my eyes would have no time to adjust.

ANYWAY, I peeked from behind the curtain, something Kevin does often, but the two ladies see as unprofessional. And then I saw the middle section third row. From right to left (how I saw them) was Ashley (my cousin’s girlfriend), Johnnie (cousin), Uncle John, Aunt Joyce, Jenn (fiancée), Meatwad, and his date (or so I assumed and was wrong). I owned that middle section third row. And something honestly unprecedented happened.

I had a sense of calm. I got this. This show is going to be awesome. And easy. I had been walloping my lines into my gray matter all week long and I felt a confidence I hadn't ever felt before. In anything. I probably never had any material that I had rehearsed even a tenth as much as this stuff. And as opposed to last summer, I wasn't just done writing it the week before. I stopped the constant rehearsing of the opening act I’d been doing in my head for the last 25 minutes. I knew I’d be fine out there. Not only that, but I knew I’d be able to be in the moment out there, talking to the crowd. Not thinking about the next line as I’m saying this one. Thus making it more real. I felt a cocky. Which happened to be good for my character. This was better than OK.

Amy came up, said some stuff, introduced us, and I was ready to go. The music started. Quietly. Too quietly. Something was wrong. We were on opposite ends of the stage. Both sides missed the cue but thankfully we came out at the same time. And when we walked on stage, there was a wave of applause. That had never happened before. This was going to be easy.

(to be continued tomorrow (hopefully))

And In Recent News...

And In Recent News...

Hello again to my loyal following and all apologies for my most recent unplanned sabbatical. My life gets busy like this at this time every year for several reasons, but this year more than most. To catch you up, here’s why I am so busy:

· August 30 – New semester started. As I work at a college, the beginning of the fall semester is unequivocally the busiest time of year. (Ed note: He doesn’t know what “unequivocally” means)

· August 31 – I am teaching a freshman seminar class again this semester. My co-teacher hasn’t quit yet this time, so I’m already feeling a lot better about it.

· September 1 – I start taking my class. I am officially going back to school to earn an MFA in creative writing and began by taking a class in “Personal Essay,” which is pretty much what I have been writing for the last 15 years. You’d think that the presence of a class like this would equal more website updates (Ed note: He still refuses to call them “blog posts”), but that’s not necessarily the case. Last time I took a writing class, my head got so messed up, I couldn’t figure out how to write for my website for months.

· September 3 – I proposed to Jenn. My fiancée. She accepted. We then flew to Barcelona for a week. It’s a hell of a day when flying to Spain is the second-most interesting thing you do in a day. (More on this later)

· September 9 – The NFL season started. I’m not saying it’s important in the scheme of things, but this is a list of what is occupying my time, and I’m not a liar.

Other crap has also happened that I will talk about when the time is right, but suffice to say that I’m busy. I will, however, try to upload a picture from Barcelona each day, if for no other reason than to recapture this awesome trip which now seems like a distant memory. But until then, welcome back! (That was mostly for me)

Baby's First Photo Shoot

This is the group photo we decided to use for our 2010 Capital Fringe Festival show, Logic, Luck and Love, scheduled at Goethe Institut on the dates listed on the right column of this very web page. Kevin plays the gay guy, Jenn plays the straight gal, Molly plays the gay gal and I've been typecast as the straight guy. And in DC, that was the toughest role to cast. We were all supposed to dress like our characters and apparently my character is an unshaven, unkempt visor-wearer who doesn't read e-mails all the way through to find out why he's supposed to come to rehearsal dressed in his stage attire. So this was my first ever professional photo shoot and I hadn't even showered in 2 days. Thankfully it wasn't one of those cameras that picks up scent. Anyway, I certainly expect you all to come to one of our showings, especially because I know only Tom and my girlfriend read this. Tom, please bring a date. Thanks.