(Not) Metal Up Your Ass Friday, Sponsored By Callaway

I present to you a pretty terrible song* from an even worse movie**, sung by a man who knows the proper pronunciation of "Mill-e-wah-que":



Nice lyrical stylings, Alice.

*The song is off Cooper's "Constrictor" album, which also apparently had a track called "Teenage Frankenstein". I am tad curious now to hear that one too.
**Friday the 13th Part 6 was another abomination in the series. Jason Vorhees was killed off in the fourth film, didn't appear at all in the fifth installment, and then as you might remember gets electrocuted at the bottom of Crystal Lake to wreck havoc in this cinematic masterpiece.

Fair and Balanced

G:TB's editorial staff has had its issues with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. For starters, what kind of name is Chris Christie? And his education policies spurred one of our heretofore apolitical team members to minor political celebrity. Generally speaking, we're not fans. But unlike too many of our elected officials, G:TB is not afraid to praise those with whom we disagree when it's warranted.

Christie's vocal defense of his appointment of Sohail Mohammed to a Superior Court judgeship should be required reading for members of both political parties. His refusal to kowtow to the pernicious bigotry that passes for patriotism in many circles right now deserves a hearty huzzah.



Now go fix your school system, big fella. You don't want Almighty Yojo making up songs about you.

Culture Up Your Ass Wednesday

My daughters are, like many children, really interested in art. I've had lots of conversations with them lately about what constitutes art, especially as technology vastly expands artists' ability to create. My wife is still angry with me for telling the girls about Andres' Serrano's 'Piss Christ', in no small part because my oldest girl brought it up in front of her Sunday School teacher. (At least I've kept Robert Mapplethorpe's later work from their attention. Our church is pretty progressive, but that might raise some eyebrows.)

It was with the perspective of a child, then, that I encountered The Heidelberg Project, a 25 year-old effort that's turned two blocks of inner-city Detroit into a colorful folk art installation. Artist Tyree Guyton, a native of the neighborhood, mixes found objects, sculpture, bright paint, and words to "demonstrate the power of creativity to save lives." In addition to continually adding to the work, Guyton and his team offer tours and work with local children to demonstrate a different vision for their largely blighted community.

The City of Detroit tried twice in the 1990s to destroy the project razing buildings in both cases. And each time, Guyton picked up the pieces and kept at it. Now it's a protected landmark, and one of the city's leading tourist attractions.

In the first installment of another recurring feature destined not to recur, Tyree Guyton is G:TB's first Artist in Virtual Residence. He couldn't join us in person today, but his people did send word that he's humbled and flattered by this prestigious honor. More of his story below.

The Goose Bump Test (A Music Post)

I fumbled on a Twitter response via my (not so) smart phone to @batogato yesterday, who mentioned that The Cave by Mumford & Sons was stuck in his head, in the hopes of echoing his thoughts that it was indeed a good thing to have such a song wormholing through one's noggin. I wasn't ultimately motivated to share my cyber thumbs-up when I returned to my desk. I think yesterday's ambivalence is fueling today's dose of motivation, so I'll dig in on a topic related to that song.

Iit is worth reiterating the comments how fantastic The Cave is. While today's musical landscape is littered with countless folk singers and bands that can impress on some level with their chops and songwriting ability, most show an utter lack of balls, which is my biggest issue with folk music. I believe there is such a thing as folk with edge. Or balls. Steve Earle has that. So do Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams, Neil Young and Loudon Wainwright, among others. To give some context, Jason Mraz most certainly does not have it. Nor do Jack Johnson or Pete Yorn. One band that certainly has this edge is Mumford & Sons. The band plays with an intensity that overpowers most of their peers.

At my desk yesterday, The Cave came on and caught me in a moment in my workday when I was totally in the mood to zone out for three minutes and bask in my enjoyment of something that wasn't related to Microsoft Office. I started thinking about how much I dug the tune, which segued (as it usually does) into wishing I had the ability to compose and/or sing something of an equivalent emotional amplitude. It was at that moment that I got literal goose bumps. I have no idea if this happens to anybody else. It's not something you bring up with a colleague at the water cooler. But there are times when I hear a song for about the 40th time that I officially realize how epic the tune is. I don't know if it's happened for more than a few dozen times in my life, the latent appreciation for a song's true power. But I do know it's a good thing. And it's not a gay thing (I think/hope. Not that there's anything wrong with it).

Other bands have done it for me in recent years with a tune or two. Band of Horses, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket, Broken Social Scene, Modest Mouse, Feist and a few others. Hard to remember all of them, but easy to remember if a song makes the leap into Desert Island status.

So with that said, I am now going to be entirely self-indulgent and link this post up to the YouTube machine with a few songs that have hit that mark for me. A couple are well-known, a couple a little more obscure. Some are better when you're drunk and some are better when you're alone and contemplative, but all hit some mark. The reasons why these songs are so meaningful are utterly personal, often partly indecipherable to me, and usually difficult to explain to others. But I think that all in all, they are pretty kick-ass rock and roll songs. I hope you enjoy.

Hark Upon the Mace

William & Mary and Richmond play the South's oldest football rivalry every autumn, meeting for the right to keep the Capital Cup on campus for a year. The Tribe narrowly leads the all-time series, which commences for the 121st time on November 19th in Richmond. The Capital Cup was cleverly known as the I-64 Trophy from 1990 - 2008, before Binkie Trinite Trophies created the just-slightly more creatively named new prize.

Old Dominion has a slightly less storied football rivalry with the alma mater, carrying an 0-1 lifetime mark into this season's contest in Williamsburg. That hasn't stopped the two schools from naming the contest. And in the tradition of the folks that brought you the Griffin, W&M and ODU will play the annual "Battle for the Silver Mace" as part of an overall athletic competition between the two schools. Says here that the Tribe had better get the Monarchs now, 'cause they're building a really strong program down on the southside.

In the academic competition, the schools will...sorry, that's not very nice of me.

(Photo of Igor's predecessor as Norfolk's mayor, Paul Fraim, with the Norfolk Mace.)

Mondays hurt, so does the truth

I didn't do much this weekend. Hung out with the family. Played a little basketball. Spent a fair amount of time tweeting with Geoff. Enjoyed a few beverages. And downloaded a shit ton of music.

I'd been pretty delinquent in this area of late with all the other "things" going on in my life, so this was a welcome and necessary exercise. What I downloaded isn't really the point of this post. In fact, there isn't a point to this post. It's Monday. I guessed that, with the Doofus Overlord already drunk down in the Conch Republic, we'd be in need of some filler. And, as often happens when you're downloading new music, I stumbled upon a few songs that rank among my all time favorites that had somehow slipped from my regular consciousness.

Two of these (no longer)forgotten classics are titled "The Truth". They each feature one of my favorite less known MCs (J-Live, Brother Ali). Both of whom have unique backgrounds for rappers. Each song also comes from a compilation type album.

So it stands to reason that they're pretty similar, right? Hardly. While both come from the so-called underground hip hop genre, they couldn't be more different in terms of style, tempo or energy. Hopefully Dave will at least mildly approve of this G:TB musical selection.





Enjoy your Monday. Print out this morning's MMQB and read about the greatest weekend in the history of offseason sports transactions for 15 minutes while you're on the can. Yeah. That'll make it all better.

New Music Saturday

It's way too hot to do anything that requires effort, so we offer up some Louisiana-tinged bubblegum pop to take your mind off the ungodly temperatures. Here's The Givers' 'Up Up Up' for your toe-tapping enjoyment. Tiffany Lamson's cute-in-all-the-right-ways vibe doesn't hurt, either, not one little bit.

Klinsmannnnnnn!!!

If he can teach our young strikers to finish like he did, we'll all be very happy with the new US Men's National Team Coach.

Breaking News

G:TB's network of correspondents comes through yet again, sending us this exclusive footage of the Redskins' war room immediately after the team traded Albert Haynesworth to the Patriots for some leftover sandwiches and a lottery ticket. Dan Snyder's the one in the tails:

Manliness: A Continuum

The Almighty Yojo recently wrote about masculinity and proposed that it could be defined along a continuum. I think that there are many dimensions to masculinity and that it is therefore difficult to define in a linear fashion. I am, of course, too lazy to come up with a multi-dimensional model for anything, let alone something as arbitrary and subjective as manliness. So a continuum we shall have.

Manly archetypes include the warrior, athlete, hunter, engineer (as in guys who can build or fix things, not Dilbert), and stud. Manly attributes include strength, courage, honor, and mustaches. Manly inanimate objects include fast cars, scary guns, loud motorcycles, brown liquor, yellow beer, sports apparel, and big speakers.

There are many other manly archetypes (father, husband, frat guy, lecher), attributes (toughness, shoulder hair, flatulence), and possessions (boats, stripper poles, taxidermy). This makes a quantitative analysis of manliness too difficult to undertake, so I will present my own personal continuum of masculinity along with a rationale. I don't profess that it is perfect or even close to accurate, and I wish others would admit the same when undertaking a similarly imprecise exercise.

Accordingly, I'm not going to come up with some masculinity points system (although points are huge), tally up the scores for various people, run some bullshit nonparametric analysis, and tell you who the manliest guys are (p < 0.05). Instead I'm going to rely on the aformentioned archetypes, attributes, and possessions, as well as anything else that sways my opinion, and present to you a continuum. I will not include any women on my continuum. It would be funny to include a female sturdily-built athlete, domineering political figure, or TV personality, but women are women and deserve their own continuum. Which I would like to see Dave assemble. There has to be a maximum and minimum to any continuum, and I was tasked with creating a continuum including both people and actions. The most male thing you can do, definitionally, is put to your penis into a woman's vagina. But "banging chicks" seems like a pretty lousy maximal point for the continuum. In fact it is nothing more than the midpoint of the continuum -- having sex with a woman is manly, but any man can do it (except for Raffie Palmeiro and Jake Barnes) so it seems like it's really only an average manly activity. And people perform more than one activity so in the aggregate they can be very masculine even if they don't have sex with women. For example, Robert DeNiro's priest character in Sleepers (but chastity is not masculine, more on this later), or Gareth Thomas. So the extreme ends of my continuum will be anchored by people, not activities.

The bottom of my manliness continuum is set by RuPaul. I don't put him at the bottom because I suspect that he's gay. Gay men can be very masculine (Gareth Thomas is tougher than anyone on the G:TB staff). I put him at the bottom because he hits none of the manliness factors. Here's an ad he did for Viva Glam cosmetics:


He also released this music video.



RuPaul is about as feminine as a man can be. And I mean that as a compliment, since he's a drag queen. I cannot picture RuPaul fishing or cleaning a fuel injector. I can't even picture him wearing something other than makeup, a dress, and high heels. Thus he anchors the bottom of the continuum.

If you want to argue that RuPaul isn't the world's least masculine exemplar, go ahead. At that point you're splitting hairs. It's like arguing over who's the world's tallest midget. No one wins.


The other end of the continuum, the epitome of masculinity, is Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV, the main character from "Magnum P.I.". Magnum is a Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran who kills someone almost every episode (warrior); played quarterback (RFQB?) at the Naval Academy, once trod water for 24 hours, and surfed regularly (athlete); he can fix cars and helicopters, pick locks, and dissemble and reassemble firearms blindfolded (engineer); and he gets a different woman every week (stud). He drives a Ferrari, wears his dad's hand-me-down Rolex, lives for free on an estate in Hawaii, has unlimited free access to his buddy's helicopter, and drinks for free at the King Kamehameha Club. He owns a gun, a Detroit Tigers hat, and a rubber chicken. He's so manly that they named extra-large rubbers after him. He has tremendous amounts of chest hair and one of the most famous mustaches of all time, behind only Chaplin, Hitler, Marx, and maybe Fingers.


I'm sure many of you disagree. That's fine, get your own continua. But you can't put someone like Derek Jeter or Joe Namath at the top of the continuum. They're stud athletes for sure, but neither ever killed a man and I doubt either one of them knows how to replace an oil filter (though Namath had a good stache). Ted Williams likely killed many people in World War II and Korea and he was the best hitter ever, but he wasn't much of a stud and he played for the Red Sox, the least manly team in pro sports (hence the "Pink Hat" nickname for their fanbase). That said, Jeter, Namath, and Williams are pretty fucking manly and unlike Magnum they really exist. In order of manliness I go Williams (war hero/fighter pilot status carries a lot of weight, especially since he volunteered for Korea), Jeter (impossibly impressive list of unattainable women; name-checked by GFK, Lil' Wayne, etc.), then Namath (loses points for the fur coat and pantyhose ads).

Other strong candidates for the top of the manliness continuum are the Duke Boys, Bo and Luke Duke. They are moonshiners (outlaw, another great male archetype). Luke was a Marine (warrior) and a boxer (athlete). Bo was a stock car driver (athlete) and got lots of tail (stud). Both can fix cars (engineer) and are so proficient with a bow and arrow that they can use them to make outhouses blow up (hunter). They have a cousin so slammin' that bootie shorts are named after her and they live in Georgia so they have no qualms about tappin' it. They have a buddy named Cooter. They're so manly that Waylon Jennings wrote a song about them and even took the time to narrate their life. Their uncle has a still in the barn. And they tear around in an orange 1969 Dodge Charger with the doors welded shut. American muscle cars are masculine as hell.

They lose out to Magnum because you need both Duke Boys in combination to reach Magnum's level of manliness. They also have a rebel flag on their car and that's bullshit.

At first blush Don Draper is exceedingly masculine. He bangs January Jones and every other woman he meets (stud). He's a decorated war hero (warrior) and according to my wife he's in fantastic shape (athlete). He hits on his mother figure's teenage neice (lecher). He drinks brown liquor and smokes unfiltered cigarettes with abandon and has such a preposterously high tolerance for drugs and alcohol that he is almost immune when someone slips him some roofies. He drives giant convertible American cars with V8 engines. He's perfectly tailored and seamlessly smooth. He's smart and cool and always comes up with the right angle to save his advertising firm.

But I think Draper isn't too manly in the aggregate. He isn't really a war hero (he's a deserter), and in fact his entire identity is a lie. He lost his mojo in season 4, ultimately resulting in the "Sad Don Draper" meme. He cheats on his wife, sexually harasses his secretaries, lies habitually, and treats his co-workers like peons. This is not masculine behavior. Women can do this type of stuff and it doesn't fit into any of the admirable masculine archetypes. Draper is still somewhat to the right of the continuum's midpoint (i.e., putting your penis into a woman).

The Sean Connery version of James Bond looks like Draper with a gun. He's a warrior, athlete, and stud who drives around in an Aston Martin killing Communists and other evildoers. Manly props to Sean Connery -- not only was he the best James Bond, he also was Mr. Universe and has a black belt in karate (athlete). Subsequent Bonds watered down the brand, making 007 less manly and thus falling behind Magnum. And he drinks vodka, which is a little fay compared to the Dukes' moonshine or Draper's rye.

Falling to the left of the midpoint are the Jonas Brothers. They are famously chaste, and chastity is not a masculine attribute. Jay-Z tooled on them in "On To The Next One" stating "No I'm not a Jonas Brother I'm a grown up, no I'm not a virgin I use my cajones." That's pretty harsh stuff. They don't drink, smoke, or do drugs; although these activities aren't limited entirely to men, self-destructive behavior is a masculine trait and it would help move them to the right on the continuum if they would get acquainted with the business end of a bottle of beer. They're from Wyckoff, NJ -- not sure which way that cuts.

AC Green is similarly situated along the continuum for the same reasons. Sure, he was a good athlete and he had a mustache (albeit a weak one), but he was famously chaste. He waited 38 years to lose it. That's just not a manly thing to do. He also participated in this video:



AC's lack of skills 'pon de mic don't help him move up the continuum. Ironically, Barry Sanders had a kid before he was married so he doesn't practice what he preaches when it comes to bringing the ruckus.

The "bring the ruckus" sketch is very masculine:



The act of bringing the ruckus is very masculine too -- not only does it involve putting your penis into a woman's vagina, it also involves making that ass tapdance. Very manly stuff.

Tim Tebow and his chastity are also unmanly. His proselytizing doesn't help him move up the continuum either. Sorry Mark.

Tom Brady is surprisingly effete. He's arguably the best quarterback of his generation, he has an unlimited free supply of Audis (and he has the good sense to drive an S8) and three Super Bowl rings, his wife is one of the most beautiful women in the world (and she makes something like $25 million a year), and everyone in New England loves him. I was at a party in Jamaica Plain one time and my friends were talking about Tom Brady's baby mama drama. One of the women said "You don't tell Tom Brady to pull out" and all the other women stuck out their lower lips and nodded their heads in vertical approval. I would trade places with him in an instant. But he isn't very manly. He's been known to wear a hairband and shave his armpits. But the thing that boots him way to the left of the continuum is: he wears Uggs. He's the official Uggs spokesman. Peyton Manning annoys me because I constantly see him hawking wares on my TV, but at least it's normal stuff like DirectTV or Gatorade. Uggs? UGGS?!? Are you fucking kidding me? You could get any endorsement deal you want, and you sign with Uggs? According to the press release:

Brady said he was excited to be joining the UGG family. "I have worn and loved the UGG brand for a long time," Brady said.

I guess he knows what he's doing, given all of the foregoing, but he doesn't rank highly on my continuum.

I can't think of too many artists (writiers, musicians, painters, etc.) who are exceedingly manly. Many rock starts get lots of trim, but making music isn't an especially masculine profession and rock stars who wear makeup aren't manly at all. In my view, the manly artists are always geniuses who battle drugs and/or mental illness and who commit suicide. Kurt Cobain, David Foster Wallace, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Vincent van Gogh, guys like that. I'll throw Jackson Pollock in the mix too even though he didn't kill himself. TR will likely take umbrage and cite the fact that porn star Savannah said that Greg Allman was the best lover she ever had. Umbrate away. Greg Allman can bring the ruckus and drink a lot, but can he fly a helicopter or make a 1969 Dodge Charger jump across a river? I don't think so.

Dave asked me to address seven activities, which I shall rank in order from least to most manly. A common trend across activities with high manliness quotients is stupidity. By that I mean very manly activities are also often very stupid. You'll see what I mean.

Streaking is not manly. Women streak all the time, like Erica Roe. Streaking was, in fact, invented by a woman (Lady Godiva). It's such a gender-neutral activity that it doesn't even belong on the continuum. It's like breathing. Streaking isn't all that stupid because if you convince a woman to go streaking with you you might end up putting your penis in her vagina later, which means it's a smart thing to do (assuming you want to get laid). So it's a smart activity that can lead to a manly activity, but it isn't manly in and of itself.

The Iron Man triathlon isn't very manly either. Women do it all the time (including the zsister-in-law). Sure it's tough. Sure it's insane. But it isn't stupid so it isn't particularly manly.

Tabasco shots are slightly manly because they're stupid. But I can see a certain phenotype of woman enjoying Tabasco shots because she'll be surrounded by and receive lots of attention from men while she does them.

Tearing down a fence and ripping out a stump are tied at "quite manly." These acts aren't stupid as a general matter, although if you undertake them by yourself without the aid of a Bobcat or similar device you're being stupid and/or cheap. I rank them as quite manly because women don't engage in these activities. A handful of women out there might do this, real Ma Ingalls types (or W&M co-eds nicknamed The Stump Puller), but overall this is manly stuff.

Eating the Grande is very manly. Only women who are competitive eaters would do this.

Ledge diving is manly as hell. Only men would do something this stupid. Scratch that. Only drunk 22-and-under men would do something this stupid so it involves both stupidity and drunkenness. Thus ledge diving is a quintessentially masculine endeavor.

Cars pepper the continuum. Body-on-frame SUV's are manly because you can attach a winch to the front and do some serious froadin. Unibody SUV's are not manly because they are really just minivans with doors that open outward instead of sliding back. Any car with eight or more cylinders is manly. Manual transmissions are manly, automatics are not, and those "tiptronic" style fake-shift-it-yourself automatics are atrocious. Saturns are the least manly cars ever because you couldn't haggle over the price, you had to take whatever the sticker said. Knowing how to buy a car, especially a used car, is manly. If you bought your Saturn used then your Saturn is somewhat manly even though it's made out of Tupperware. Station wagons are more manly than minivans but not by much. For the record, I drive a station wagon with an atrocious fake-shift-it-yourself transmission (i.e., a car that isn't very manly) but I bought it used so it isn't as bad as it could be.

Someone asked me to put the Village People on the plot. That person is a pain in my ass. The Village People are six guys who dressed up like manly archetypes so that they could perform disco music, and disco is some of the most unmanly music of the past 50 years. You only hear their songs at sporting events, weddings, and bar mitzvahs, i.e., events notorious for bad music. No one says "I'm going on a long car trip, I better make sure I have some Village People tracks in my iPod." (I can't wait for Igor to tell me why I'm way off base on this. Here's a premptive retort.) I have no evidence that they actually are as manly as the costumes they wear so I have no idea where to plot them. And there's six of them, so even if I did know how manly each guy was, how would I plot them as a gmish? So the Village People are not plotted on the continuum.

And here's the continuum.


(Note that this is plotted on a log scale.)
(Also note that "Being miserably chaste" slots in between Ted Williams and ledge diving.)
(Also note that Gheorghe Muresan's Gheorgheness was too potent a confounding variable for him to be plotted.)

In Praise of G:TB's Friends

While we firmly believe that the content we provide here is more than enough to keep most right-thinking Americans (and the occasional Romanian) entertained, we do venture out from time to time to keep tabs on our friends. CAA: Life as a Mid-Major's Michael Litos consistently drops science about Colonial hoops, but he outdid himself this week with a proposal that would get league play off to a raucous start.

The idea: The CAA New Year's Bash, a "season opening hoopapalooza" that brings all 12 conference teams to one location for games on December 30 and January 1. Simple in concept, genius in terms of generating interest and excitement. (Genius may be a bit strong; would you settle for very, very cool?)

The CAA currently kicks off league play with a single, out-of-place game in December. The standings then freeze for three weeks or so until teams come back from Winter Break with a four-games-in-eight days frenzy. The Bash would mitigate the negatives from both while giving hoopheads a New Year's destination and the league an opportunity to showcase itself during a fallow period for college basketball.

Litos offers Philly as a site for the event. I don't hate the City of Brotherly Fuck Off as much as I used to, and it's a useful sop to the league's northern outposts, so I see the logic. And Philly's got great restaurants and nightlife, if you can ignore the locals. I've already pledged the entirety of G:TB's advertising revenue to the project, so we'd likely get a chance to sponsor a cocktail hour, or provide lanyards.

The only negative I see is that the idea's too good for the CAA to keep to itself. But that first year will be a doozy. Who's coming to Philly with me?

A non-Zman post

So I was reading an article the other day where someone was extremely fired up about visiting the Sesame Street set. It got me thinking...if I could have any TV set of all time as my permanent residence, what would it be...and it sure seemed like an open Gheorghe conversation to me.

So, hopefully, it's OK someone other than Zoltan or Almighty YoDave posted, because I present to you my top four choices. And eagerly await your responses in the comments.

4. Barney Miller - I'd get annoyed with all the desks, but to have the opportunity to hear Abe Vigoda whine for hours on end is worth it.

3. Golden Girls - The kitchen that embraced Blanche, Rose, Dorothy and Sophia would be a welcome respite.

2. Kramer's apartment...with the Merv Griffin set inside - I mean, come on. You'd have Japanese dudes sleeping in your dresser, and a talk show in your living room? Sign me up.

1. Taxi - Louie De Palma. The Reverend Jim 'Iggy' Ignatowski. Tony Danza starting his tradition of only playing guys named Tony. The untouchable Andy Kaufman as Latka Gravas. Can't be topped, in my humble opinion.

Official G:TB Punter Interns, Gets None

Remember Zoltan Mesko, official G:TB punter?



In a tremendous display of Gheorgheness, Zoltan got himself an internship at a private equity firm during the NFL lockout. Judging by the sound of her voice in the NPR broadcast, Zoltan did not parlay his status as an NFL baller into some summer lovin' with his cubiclemate. Which is also quite Gheorghe.

And now that the NFL lockout appears to be over, he shall continue to be our official punter in 2011.

Music Month Continues: Sometimes There's A Man . . .

The Almighty Yojo has whipped up another collage of sound for your listening enjoyment, and if you're not careful, you might learn something (that's actually not true). This song was inspired by a man named Percy Harrison Fawcett-- and when I use the word "man" in reference to him, I am referring to his character, not his gender. Do not be fooled by his rather soft-sounding name (we might say the same about G:TB contributor Whitney . . . but we might not). Percy had some serious testosterone coursing through his body; just take a look at his mustache.

I learned about Fawcett's adventures while reading a book called The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon Forest. I highly recommend the book, but it will make you feel like a pansy (except for Iron-man Danimal). Fawcett spent a large portion of his life traipsing into uncharted reaches of the Amazon, confronting hostile cannibals while searching for lost cities and treasure. Most of the men who accompanied him died, and he eventually vanished in somewhere in the jungle, never to be heard from again.

This raises the question: what does it mean to be a man? While most of us aren't as profoundly macho as Percy Fawcett, there does seem to be a vein of bravado that runs through all of us men; though each man's particular expression of machismo occupies a different spot on the masculinity continuum-- whether it be the epic adventures of Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild) or the mundane daring of Tony Hawks (Round Ireland with a Fridge) or even the quest for "More Power!" of Tim "The Toolman" Taylor.

But there does seem to be a common thread among these various endeavors: women generally don't do shit like this.

There are exceptions, of course-- the book The Wilder Shores of love: The Exotic True-Life Stories of Isabel Burton, Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, Jane Digby, and Isabell Eberhardt recounts the lives of four rather macho and adventurous women-- but I think in this case the exception proves the rule: it's hard to find women this cavalier.

The manly streak that unites us doesn't seem to be particularly advantageous to our survival; in fact, the war, violence, fighting, stunts, piracy, gambling, crime, gluttony, substance abuse, hazing, and generally retarded behavior that men participate in every day is certainly detrimental to living a long and stable life on planet earth . . . but maybe machismo, like the peacock's tail, helps with sexual selection . . . in other words, if these behaviors don't kill us, they might impress some woman-- she might consider such excessively stupid behavior as a sign of virility and thus allow us access to what Laertes refers to as his sister Ophelia's "chaste treasure."

But I doubt it. The truth is this: there's something wrong with men, and this song celebrates it.

Sometimes There's A Man by The Density

Thanks to all my colleagues for contributing words of wisdom-- especially Stacy, who had a lot to say on this subject, perhaps because she dates the manliest of men: Ed.

Thanks also to Al Pacino, Mr. T, The Dude, Mickey Rourke, Sylvester Stallone, Sterling Hayden, Kevin Costner, Cheech Marin, Will Ferrell, Mark McKinney, and Kevin Spacey.

Sometimes There's A Man

What does it mean to be a man? Does anybody know?
Do you have to walk in the jungle all alone?

Do you have to frequent prostitutes? Drink cheap beer until you puke?
Baby . . . I think so . . .

What does it mean to be a man? Does anybody know?
Do you have to heft a rock to throw?

Do you have to bet it all on the river card? Get in a bar fight to prove you’re hard?
Do you need hair up and down your back? Grow a beard like a lumberjack?
Do you have to build a shed behind your house? Repeatedly cheat on your spouse?
Do you have to mastermind a genocide? Kill a bunch of people in the country side?
Do you have prove yourself on the football field? Travel to the Yukon to club a seal?
Buy a gold-plated Rolex watch? Grab your balls and adjust your crotch?
Do you have to buy a gun and hunt big game? Get real drunk and feel ashamed?
Swear you’ll never do it again . . . get up the next day and repeat the same.
Do you have to build an atomic bomb? Seek revenge like in Wrath of Khan?
Do you need to disarm an IED? Urinate behind a tree?
Baby . . . I think so.

Where did it go? Where has it gone?

You're feeling so low. Your essence is gone.

What does it mean to be a man? Does anybody know?

Do you have to kill the whole pigeon flock? Merge the company, buy the stock?
Kill the guards with a stolen Glock? Learn to lay a piece by Bach?
Escape from chains by picking a lock? Put your wedding ring in hock?
Laugh real hard at Red Foxx and his dummy son Lamont . . .
Baby . . . I think so . . .

A few rabid fans asked me if I could include the best lyric that didn't make the cut, and I'm happy to oblige them:

Do you have to write a thick book like Norman Mailer?
Or step into a pitch just like Don Baylor?

P.S. I am hoping that Zman writes a sequel to this post, where he actually creates a "masculinity continuum" graphic.

If you tackle this, Zman, I would like to request plot points for the following: 1) ledge diving 2) completing the Iron Man triathlon 3) Tabasco shots 4) streaking 5) tearing down a fence 6) ripping out a stump 7) eating "the grande" at La Tolteca.

One of These is Not Like the Others

Celebrating new music by a pair of my favorite artists this month, and one from an old standby that hit me in a good place as I was rambling along the Eastern Seaboard this week. Both Old 97's and They Might Be Giants released new records this week, and while neither record breaks much new ground, fans of both will be perfectly happy to add these new tunes to their catalogs.

And I was sorta blown away by 'The Road' from Emmylou Harris' new album, Hard Bargain. Yeah, that Emmylou Harris. Go out and help the economy grow, boys and girls. Lord knows our friends in the Tea Party are counting on you.

If this video had muppets it would be the ultimate Gheorghe post

Some Thoughts Regarding the Run and Shoot That Have Nothing to Do with Mouse Davis

I lived in Arlington, VA for three simultaneously fantastic and miserable years. I grew to love a few of the area’s provincial aspects, including the John Thompson Show on 980 AM. Much like Steve “The Schmoozer” Somers, Thompson has a great radio voice, although the two sound completely different. Thompson makes a low rumbling noise, slowly and deliberately drawing out the vowel sounds.

Most, if not all, of the DC-area folks who read and write here seem to dislike the John Thompson Show, probably because they have different expectations than I when it comes to sports talk radio. Thompson knows a shitload about basketball, so when he gives an opinion it carries a lot of weight with me. Thompson admits that he doesn’t know much about any other sport, which may be a reason why others around here don’t like him. But I find it refreshing.

I remember an episode of the John Thompson Show where Thompson talked about learning from other coaches. He said that he learned a lot by talking to football coaches, because football and basketball have a number of similarities, including that one position has the ball in his hands on almost every play – the quarterback and the point guard.

Channeling his inner John Thompson, Mark recently opined during an editorial meeting that run-first quarterbacks are a lot like shoot-first point guards, and that he wouldn’t want either on his team. This inspired me to take a look at some numbers and see if this holds up.

First we have to figure out who the run-first quarterbacks (“RFQB”) are. I ran a search on pro-fooball-reference.com for all quarterbacks with 2000+ attempts since 1990. Due to the peculiarities of their search engine, I had to go back and fill in the gaps for players who started their careers before 1990. This also means that the search didn’t include players who had more than 2000 career attempts, but fewer than 2000 attempts after 1990, guys like Joe Montana and Phil Simms.

The search gave me 61 players. I then divided their number of pass attempts by their number of rushing attempts. My logic was that PFQB will have a small ratio of passes to runs because they run first. Here’s what I got:
 


(If you want to get a better look at all of the pictures in this post, right click on the picture and open it in a new tab. I'm too stupid to figure out how to properly size them.)

This looks about right to me. The guys who seem like they should be RFQB have the smallest ratio of passes to rushes, and the guys who can’t run have a higher ratio. As an aside, I started with a search going back to 1920 at the start of this nonsensical project and got too many players to cleanly fit in a graph. Including those extra players didn’t change much, but there was one massive outlier. Joe Namath has a staggeringly statuesque pass/run ratio of 52.99, which is 20 more passes per rush than the second highest (Ken Stabler with 32.14). Vick is also a major outlier going back to 1920. The only players with a ratio within 2.5 P/R of Vick are Kordell Stewart, Randall Cunningham, Steve Young, and two guys named Tobin Rote and Greg Landry.

Here’s how the numbers look graphically:





What I found interesting is that there appears to be two types of players with a low ratio: guys who run the football well and guys who aren’t good pro quarterbacks. I suspected that guys like Carr, Mirer, and Peete have so many rush attempts because they couldn’t find an open receiver, got shook, and ran for cover. Surprisingly (at least to me) there’s a pretty linear relationship between yards per carry and the pass/rush ratio (R2 = 0.72!) so guys like Carr, Mirer, and Peete really can be considered RFQB. This makes sense – if you’re good at running, you run more often:



Based on the foregoing, I will (somewhat arbitrarily) define RFQB as QB’s with a pass/run ratio of less than 9.0, giving us: Vick, Stewart, Cunningham, Young, Garrard, Culpepper, McNair, Harbaugh, Hostetler, Carr, Blake, Garcia, Gannon, Brooks, Mirer, McNabb, and Peete. Brunell, Elway, Banks, and Plummer miss the cutoff even though I think of them as “mobile” QB’s, if not RFQB, so the 9.0 cutoff clearly isn’t perfect. Luckily this isn’t a Ph.D. thesis and I’m not getting graded on it.

Now that we identified the RFQB, we need to figure out how good they are. Passing TD and INT alone fail to take into consideration the benefits and risks of RFQB, namely rushing TD and fumbles. So I made graphs for total TD (passing and rushing) and total turnovers (INT and fumbles):





I don’t think there are any majorly serious trends here. I also graphed total TD vs. total turnovers:



This graph shows that Jeff Hostetler is a tremendous outlier and the most boring QB of the past 20 years. Daunte Culpepper is the statistical opposite of Jeff Hostetler, even though they are both RFQB. Rick Mirer, Tony Banks, David Carr, Rodney Peete, and Trent Dilfer suck. Steve Young is superhuman (especially when you consider that he played before the current pass-friendly rules), while Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, and surprisingly Jeff Garcia are really good.

And I draw these conclusions with because I undertook the monumental effort of calculating the win percentage for all 61 quarterbacks evaluated (pro-football-reference.com gives you a win-lose-tie record but not a winning percentage) and found that (not surprisingly) the ratio of total TD to total turnovers is somewhat tied to winning percentage:



So then I plotted the total TD:turnover ratio against the pass:run ratio:



This is a pretty random distribution. Passer rating vs. pass/run was pretty random too, although the highest rated QB’s are not RFQB, except for Steve Young:



At this point in the analysis I wised up and realized that the simplest way to answer the question at hand was to make this graph:



This looks like about as random a distribution as you’ll get. You can win lots of games with a RFQB, and you can lose lots of games with a RFQB. The same is true for immobile QB’s. So my conclusion is that there’s nothing wrong with RFQB.

There are a lot of flaws with this analysis. For starters it compares complete careers with incomplete careers. Michael Vick didn't get old and slow yet and I imagine that his pass:run ratio will increase over the course of his career. If you only look at the first eight years of Randall Cunninham’s career, his pass:run ratio is 4.47. As he got older and slower he ran less and threw more. From 1997 to the end of his career his pass:run ratio more than doubled to 9.46 (although still very low). This makes sense given that he could throw to Cris Carter, Jake Reed, and Randy Moss or hand off to Robert Smith.

Which leads into another flaw inherent in almost all football analyses: it doesn’t take into account the quality of the QB’s teammates. Check out Tom Brady’s numbers in 2006 compared to 2007:



2006 was a good year for Brady but 2007 … laser show. The main difference between 2006 and 2007 (in my inexpert opinion)? He threw to Randy Moss and Wes Welker instead of Reche Caldwell and whatever was left of Troy Brown.

The same can be said of Kurt Warner. Look for yourself. He was a Hall of Fame caliber QB with Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, and Marshall Faulk or with Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin, and Edgerrin James’ ossified corpse. He was merely average with Amani Toomer, Ike Hilliard, and Jeremy Shockey.

This analysis doesn’t include playoff numbers and it doesn’t include any sort of clutch factor, so Tony Romo looks better than he is and Ben Roethlisberger doesn’t look as good as he is.

I’m sure you can find other flaws, if so feel free to point them out in the comments.

And as a coda to this diatribe, passer rating doesn’t have much to do with winning, except at the extremes:



We have three losers with bad ratings, six winners with high ratings, and a blob of everyone else in the middle.

Stay tuned for Part II, Shoot First Point Guards.

I've been gone too long

Summer Dave and Mr. Zmom have dominated this space of late, but thought I should jump in here with this doozy. It's as Gheorghe as it gets:

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Kudos to Shlara, who I believe sent me this yesterday. It can also be found here.

Seasick Steve is back

Seasick Steve is back with Jack White. And Alison Mosshart. And some guy named John Paul Jones.

Fashion Is Stupid (New Jersey Edition)

I have only won a contest once in my life.

This is not a complaint . . . I like the fact that I have only one contest victory under my belt, as nothing is easier to remember than the things you've only done once. My "only done once" category includes, but is not limited to: riding in a hot air balloon (in the canyons of Cappadocia), eating the "thermo-nuclear" wings at Cluck-U chicken (they made me cry like a baby), and getting bubble gum stuck in my pubic hair (you don't want to know).

I've never won a door prize or a fifty-fifty or an NCAA pool. I've never won anything significant in the lottery, and my largest lottery win-- fifty dollars-- wasn't really a win at all. To explain: G:TB contributor Whitney received twenty lottery tickets  for his nineteenth birthday (one for good luck) and-- with his usual munificence-- he decided to give me one. And, of course, the one he bequeathed me was the only winner, putting me in the awkward position of "earning" some cash that I didn't really deserve. We quickly decided to spend it on beer. Problem solved.

My other attempt at winning the lottery was more absurd, but also fruitless. My sophomore roommate (G:TB founder Rob) and I had a tradition: once a semester, we would clean our room (our room was monumentally dirty-- we lost a lizard and a microwave in the tides of filthy laundry and garbage) and we would take whatever loose change we found in the wreckage and play the lottery with it. We never won.

This would all be water under the bridge, and I would be deemed lucky in love, but unlucky in contests, aside from the fact that I live in New Jersey. And New Jersey is having a pretty serious problem. And the contest I won just may contain the solution to that problem. Let me provide some background:

William and Mary has a small radio station. A station small enough that occasionally Random Idiots made the playlist. A station small enough that we could use it as a jukebox. This was before digital media, and CD's cost money. Sometimes it was easier to call WCWM and simply request the new song you wanted to hear, rather than shell out the cash for it. The request line was never busy, and the DJs were always excited to receive a request. They took the Pink Floyd lyric "Is there anybody out there?" quite literally.

So we knew that fucking number.

So when the nice young lady on the radio said she was going to give away a couple of tickets to the Duke of Gloucester Street Movie Theater, and that she was going to conduct a creative contest in order to determine who would receive these tickets, we were ready to participate.

It was radio, so I imagined that the DJ looked like this:

But it was William and Mary, and so she probably looked like this:

So the DJ told us to imagine that the Surry Nuclear Power Plant-- which is located across the James River from Jamestown-- had just melted down, and that a terrible toxic nuclear cloud was floating east towards Williamsburg. How would we get away? The routes off the peninsula are limited and the traffic would be abominable. So what would we do? She said she would take answers for an hour and the best answer would win the tickets.

It is sad for me to report that my brain has never worked faster than this moment. This was it, the high point of my cognitive career, the fastest my mind ever processed a problem into a cogent solution. It's been all downhill since.

I dialed the number from memory, so quickly that the DJ seemed nonplussed when she picked up the phone and  I breathlessly said, "I'd like to submit an answer to the contest."

"Okay?"

"Hanging in my closet, there is a body suit made of living cockroaches. I have sewn these cockroaches together in case of such a disaster. If the reactor melts down, I will don my suit of living cockroaches and walk off the peninsula. If the radiation is too much for me and I pass out, the cockroaches will walk for me. Or swim. And, of course, cockroaches are 100 times impervious to radiation than humans, so the suit will protect me from the toxic cloud."

The DJ said, "Wow. I'm not taking any more calls. You win."

I wish I were recounting this anecdote for entertainment purposes, but sadly, this is not the case. There is a tritium leak at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Lacey Township, New Jersey. Authorities are worried that the radioactive waste could contaminate the Cohansey aquifer, a significant source of drinking water for residents of South Jersey.

I live in central New Jersey and the leak is far enough from my home that I don't feel the need to move, but, unfortunately, we vacation every summer for two weeks in Sea Isle City, which is dangerously close to the reactor. My family is going to need some sort of protection from radioactive waste. Since we will be at the beach,  I would prefer to make us suits of a more appropriate animal . . . perhaps starfish (sexy) or crabs (funny) or jelly-fish (translucent and super-sexy) but none of these creatures have the resistance to radiation of the German cockroach. So roaches it is. I've already caught a number in the cracks of the seats of my Jeep, and I hope I can sew something fashionable enough for my wife to wear with pride and style.

Since it's Analogy Month here at G:TB, I'm trying to see my cockroach suit as something more than a comfortable, form-fitting suit of insects designed to protect me from radiation. I think donning the cockroach suit is an apt analogy for living in New Jersey. We don our metaphorical cockroach suit every day here in The Garden State, when we venture out into the densely populated, toxic world around us, and it helps us survive the sarcasm, the traffic, and the stench of the Edgeboro Landfill. But
it's worth it, because the food is great and the beaches are awesome (and if you are wearing your cockroach suit in one of New Jersey's fabulous ethnic restaurants, then it doesn't matter if you spill some of your dinner on your lap, as the roaches will clean it up for you, and if you are wearing your cockroach suit at one of New Jersey's fabulous beaches, you will have extra buoyancy in the water and as a bonus, the roaches will protect you from being stabbed by a stray syringe).