You know what’s absurd? That Atkins guy? He died from slipping on a potato.

The only thing harder than figuring out my cholesterol level is trying to calculate the NFL’s QB rating formula. My cholesterol? If you told me I had a level of 500 I wouldn’t know if that was good or bad, high or low. Change it from 500 to 50 or 5 or .05 and I still don’t know any better. If you don’t know the range of values or have some idea of how they are distributed, the number is meaningless.

Same with the NFL’s QB rating formula. The formula is primarily based upon four factors:
• Percentage of completions per attempt
• Average yards gained per attempt
• Percentage of touchdown passes per attempt
• Percentage of interceptions per attempt

Here’s how you calculate your very own QB rating.
Take completion percentage and subtract 30. Multiply by .05. The result is a point rating.
If the point rating is less than zero, count it as zero.

Next take passing yards divided by passing attempts and subtract 3. Multiply by .25. Again, if the rating is less than zero, count as zero. If rating is greater than 2.375 count as 2.375.

Next take touchdown passes divided by passing attempts and multiply by .2. Again, if the number is greater than 2.375, count it as 2.375.

Finally, take the number of interceptions thrown and divide by passing attempts, then multiply by .25. Multiply by .25 and then subtract that number from 2.375.
Again, if the final number is less than zero, treat that number as zero.
(see Leaf, Ryan, http://www.nfl.com/players/playerpage/12506)

To complete the formula, take those four numbers, add them, divide the total by six and then multiply that result by 100.
Make sense? I didn’t think so. Here’s what’s even weirder. A quarterback can complete 30% of his passes for 3 yards per attempt and still maintain a QB rating of 0.

Does this really matter? No. But it still annoying the heck out of me. I’m just saying.

I like jersey girls.

Not the movie and not some chick from Exit 27 – I like girls that wear jerseys.

Imagine a bar. Any bar. A woman walks in. Any woman. If she enters and sits, the guys in the place will wonder who she is, if she’s waiting for someone, is she wearing a wedding ring, will she kick my ass if I say the wrong thing, et al. It’s natural to do that; we all do. She might be just popping in for a post-work drink. Maybe she’s meeting friends or a date. Maybe she’s an edgy drifter looking to bash someone’s skull. Probably one of the first two.

However, if she’s wearing a jersey, a Tiki Barber Giants jersey or a Chad Pennington top or a silver and black Mark Van Eeghan retro #30, everyone in the room immediately assumes she either knows what she’s talking about or knows someone who does and they like that.

Yesterday I wore my Jets jersey. The bank teller wanted to know if I thought it’d be the year for ‘his’ Jets. Today I wore my John Randle Vikings jersey. Two guys in a car parked outside the bookstore yelled out “Vikings! This is our year!” and drove away happy.

You adorn yourself in a football jersey and, like magic; you emerge from your cocoon of a home with a family. A family of strangers, of outsiders. A family of people who you might not even speak to on the bus or waiting in line. People who would normally have nothing do you with you and that’d be okay on your side. But walk into that same room and wait in that same line wearing your Chiefs jersey and every other Chiefs fan sees one of their own, a like spirit. Immediately the talk begins with favorite games, players, stats and stories.

“We’re you at the overtime game last year?”
“Did you go to that game when it was so cold?”
“How many games have you seen?”

The laughs come quicker and the feelings don’t bruise so quickly. Jabs that might result in a punch to the face instead are taken as light banter and friendly jest. If the guy next to you has been through the same hell you have felt, seen the same heart-breaking losses and aggravating penalties, if that woman you didn’t know three hours ago is cursing the referee with the same zeal you exhibit – you’ve found yourself a Jersey Girl.

I want to live in a lavender house full of boobies.

Okay, wait, let me explain that one. My girlfriend asked if I’d live in a house that was painted lavender on the outside. I said “Sure, know why? Because guys don’t care about that sort of thing.” She asked what we do care about. I told her “What’s inside? Like, furniture and stuff.” She suggested that I also want a house full of naked women.

True enough. I care more about naked women than the color of my house. However, in all fairness, there’s precious little I care less about than that. Blue house, white house (or eggshell, ecru, whatever); it’s just not important to guys.

Now jersey colors – that’s something that matters. You need colors to rally around. Colors can be very important, especially in game apparel. Every year, in every sport, at least 5 teams change their jerseys, usually for the worse. For example,

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I mean, you can’t decipher the logo, and that color? Mustard? In fact, it’s worse than mustard, brown mustard at that. Where were they going with that?

The real problem there is, naturally, money. A new jersey means one more thing the die- hard fan thinks he or she must have in their closet or in their child’s or spouse’s closet.

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The Red Sox alternate, just like the alternates for the Twins, the Indians, et al, look like beer-league unis. Jerseys that someone’s kid designed. Jerseys designed in the dark. By someone who knows nothing of fashion. And is color blind. And hates sports. And fans. And me. Yes, me specifically.

The classic uniforms are exactly that, classy. Pinstripes. Red, white and blue. Simple blue and white for Penn State. The best uniforms are the ones that exercise something the modern ones can’t touch – simplicity. No multi-colored sleeves. No elaborate plans.

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You know, maybe it’s just the color yellow or orange. These don’t look like the best tops I’ve even seen. I don’t think anyone really wants to take the field looking like this.

Do we need a ban on the color orange? The Broncos’ orange jersey was actually red.
Who wears orange? Nobody, and with just cause. It’s just an absurd color for anything other than a pumpkin and nobody wants to be thought of as a pumpkin, believe me.

So they Red Sox finally win. Will the fans now shut up?

Honestly, I think people care more about the Sox fans shutting up than they do about the team winning the Series. We’ve tolerated this behavior only because we sympathized with the number of close calls, near misses and desperate letdowns. We’re sorry they suffered for such a long time, because we suffered with them.

Now their suffering has ended. And so must ours.

Shut up already. No more whining about how long it’s been, about Yankees payroll, about Buckner or Schiraldi or Dent. No gripes about anything of any kind. You’re the champs of all baseball so start acting like it.

If a team wins the World Series, their fans should be banned from complaining for a decade. In fact, if any team wins a title in any league, they should be required by lay to shut their traps for ten years. No Marlins jokes about their first title team being dismantled by an idiotic car salesman. No Rams comments about injuries or free agency. No Yankees complaints ever. No hockey team should ever (that includes the current labor strife) moan about a lack of success, attention or salary increase.

Boston, New England, the whole region – we’re happy for you. Honest we are. Now zip it. Not a word. You went 80 years without a title. I don’t care if you go 8 or 80 more before you get another one. I just don’t want to hear another crybaby moan from any of you. I mean it. You won. Enjoy it – in silence, please.

I don’t understand time travel.

Not in the usual way, the science of it. I just don’t understand why it is when someone writes a time travel story for television or science fiction that they always travel back to some pivotal moment. They travel back to Nazi Germany or the JFK assassination.

I want someone to travel back in time to a normal, regular day. That matters more to me.

I want to travel back in time and …

…see myself in the first grade, see what I was like.
…see if people talked about me when I left the room.
…see if I talked about people when they left the room.

I want to wander around my home town, see the old stores, what stories I remember.

I want to see the cars changing styles, moving forward in time. And clothes, and music.

I don’t want to mess with the time line, create a paradox or some crazy accident in the future. Time travel should be a strictly hands-off vacation. This tour is for onlookers only. Please keep your hands inside the ride at all times.

I like thinking of strange foods.

There’s no blue food. Blueberries are purple and nothing else is blue. Weird.

You can buy cream of chicken soup, but not cream of monkey. There are lots of monkeys, right, and they’re bigger than chickens so one monkey could make a lot of soup I think.

Maybe Bundt cake shouldn’t have been named after the inventor of it.

$3.79 for a chai tea? Honestly, how does it cost four dollars to make a cup of tea?

Scones, muffins and bagels are all the same food, just in a different shape. Buy the cheapest one, eat it and shut up about it.

There should be a Nobel Prize for the guy who invented the sneeze guard for the buffet.

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this is a test

The 1998 movie ‘Armageddon’ is unremarkable. Actually, it’s remarkable in how unremarkable it is. I guess that makes it remarkable. Wait, no, its not… oh, screw it.

The line I like is when Owen Wilson says “The thing that really gets me is people who think that Jethro Tull is just a person in a band”.

That got me to thinking…and you can imagine how dangerous that can be. There’s a ton of bands with names in them, but how often is the name in the band an actually person?

I’m not talking about something obvious like Jimi Hendrix Experience. Bands with names.

There is a Greg Kihn in the Greg Kihn Band. But no Alan Parsons in the Alan Parsons Project. There’s no Sawyer Brown in the country band, no Ezra is Better Than, and remember T’Pau? Shock of all shocks – they aren’t Vulcan. No Eve in Eve 6 and there aren’t even six people either. We won’t find an Alice in Chains or in anything else; same goes for the chains with Jesus and Mary. None to be found.

Chemical Brothers? Not brothers, nor are they named for, mixing, or measuring chemicals.
There’s no Molly with a hatchet. In fact, no Molly with an axe, scythe, sword or any chopping/hacking instrument. Ever heard of Gus Gus? Well, no one named Gus has.
Save Ferris? Turns out there is no Ferris.

Ben Folds Five? Yes, Ben. Brian Setzer Orchestra, yes. Indigo Girls? Not named indigo, don’t especially wear that color either; however, yes, they are girls. Dave Matthews Band? No-brainer. Bush? Not named after the President, but you’d have been surprised if they were – it isn’t like we’re all rocking out to the eclectic tunes of The Rambling Dukakis Masters.

The Partridge Family? That’s a toughie, since they weren’t actually named Partridge, weren’t a real family and, to be honest, weren’t a real band either. Neither was the Monkees actually a band nor were they simian, though it’s possible you’d get more entertainment if they were.