August 23, 2010
Not My Favre-ite
Brett…Brett Favre….why won’t you go away?
The Minnesota Vikings quarterback returned from yet another brief retirement, for his 20th season in the NFL. I can’t help but think of the end of the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when after the final credits roll, Matthew Broderick, as Ferris Bueller, emerges from the bathroom and says to the camera, i.e. the audience, ”Are you still here? It’s over. Go home.”
No doubt, Mr. Favre will one day be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I think when he’s inducted he should then be unindicted, then reinducted, then uniducted and reinducted. Seems appropriate…
Okay, I can understand someone changing their mind about retiring from the game and still feeling the urge to compete, but this is the third year in a row we’ve dealt with the “Will he or won’t he?” retirement question and frankly, it’s getting quite old, as is Mr. Favre, at least in professional sports terms.
He’s in danger of becoming “The boy who cried ‘retirement.’” When he does actually, finally, completely retire, who will really believe him? (Similar to the late comedian Dick Shawn, who, after doing a bit about a politician saying “I will not lay down on the job” made for a slow realization to those in the theater that evening that his last flop onstage wasn’t part of the act, but instead, a fatal heart attack).
This season proved to be an even more excruciating Farve-watch. He indeed seemed to finally be retired (praise be to God), when Viking’s coach Brad Childress sent three of Farve’s teammates, well had-been teammates who wanted him to once again be a teammate, to visit Farve on his ranch in Mississippi. Mind you, this is during training camp when the rest of the squad was working out in the hot misery that is August. Anyone who has ever even gone through high school football training camp in August can tell you that it is no picnic (even, I’m sure, in Minnesota).
Most likely the players that were asked to undergo the mission were happy to get away from camp for a few days, but I don’t imagine that the players who had to stay in camp were all that thrilled about not being the ones asked to go.
Hopefully, Mr. Favre hasn’t been always so non-committal in other aspects of his life. It would have made his wedding vows more entertaining.
“Do you, Brett, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I don’t. I do. I don’t…yes, I do.”
Favre injured his ankle last year in the final game against the eventual Super Bowl Champs the New Orleans Saints, requiring off-season surgery. That’s certainly a reasonable excuse for perhaps being undecided as to whether or not he felt up to the task of another season on the gridiron. However, if he’d given the Vikings a clear indication early enough, they could have perhaps taken that into consideration at the time of the NFL draft and drafted or traded appropriately.
Perhaps another inducement to return was the increase in salary from $16 million last season to $20 million with incentives, this season, because apparently when you only make $16 million a year, to need that extra little incentive (note to editors: if you want to increase my salary by $4 million dollars, I will be that much funnier, what with more incentive).
I guess that’s 20 million good reasons to want to come out of retirement.
As Stephen Colbert queried, “What hell is wrong with you? And what the hell is wrong with your family? Every time you spend ten minutes with them, you suddenly decide you’d rather be crushed by 300 pound linebackers!”
When Favre does finally retire, the standard retirement present of a rocking chair would seem most appropriate because like Mr. Favre, it goes back-and-forth, back-and-forth.
There’s a Country and Western song that asks the question, “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?”
Ostensibly a relationship song, little did the composer realize he was writing about Brett Favre.
So, once again sporting his purple number 4 jersey, Brett Favre will attempt to lead the Minnesota Vikings on another quest to win a Super Bowl; and once again it’ll probably end up with Brett Favre blowing it by throwing an ill-advised pass that will wind up in the hands of an opposing player for a game-clinching interception.
Like Brett Favre coming out of retirement, it’s something you can count on.
Posted by dmargarita at 2:35 PM
August 18, 2010
Enter Stage Left
Hello All,
Just to let you know that it's official, I will be the feature performer at the Enter Stage Left open mic on Saturday, Sept. 4. at 7:30 p.m., at the Ciao Time Restaurant. There's a $5 cover charge. Here's the info:
Ciao Time Restaurant
28 Main Street, Hopkinton MA 01748
508-435-0022
Thanks,
Dan
Posted by dmargarita at 9:44 PM
August 15, 2010
Kindergarten Kid$
Kindergarten wasn’t mandatory when I was a child, so I never went. Apparently, this explains why I’m poor.
A recent column in the New York Times cites a study by a Harvard economist named Raj “Bang-Bang” Chetty (Okay, I made up the “Bang-Bang” part), whose findings were the result of a study following 12,000 kindergarteners in Tennessee from the 1980’s to the present. Hopefully, someone did a CORI check on Mr. Chetty before he followed 12,000 kindergarten kids.
Mr. Chetty concludes that kids who learned more in kindergarten are more likely to go to college, less likely to become single parents (not having been to kindergarten, I don’t know if that’s a result of sex education for 5-year-olds) and make more money than students who didn’t learn as much. Surely, my parents didn’t know they were dooming me to a life of poverty and menial jobs at the time.
One aspect assumed to be a factor in the kids’ later success was the element of having good teachers. If I interpret this correctly, this means for the purpose of the study, they intentionally stuck some kids with lousy teachers. It’s kind of like when they’re testing a new drug. To find out if a drug is effective, they need two groups; one to e given the actual drug and the other group a placebo and the if the group of ill people getting the new drug gets better, the new drug is deemed effective…and if you’re part of the group getting the placebo, tough noogies (my spell check isn’t recognizing “noogies” as an actual word but you and I know better).
The article states that good early education “can impart skills that that last a lifetime — patience, discipline, manners, perseverance.” Yes, 5-year-olds are known for their patience, discipline, manners and well, I guess they certainly are known for their perseverance. Anyone who’s ever had a 5-year-old badger them into getting something can verify this.
The study says that test scores tend to even out by junior high, or middle school as they now call it, but that it’s later that the kindergarten effect comes back into play.
My fear is that one’s kindergarten record will now be a factor in job interviews. If you recall, you were always warned that the things you did would go on your “permanent record.” Most of us took that with a grain of salt, but now this study may prompt potential employers to dig deep into your background.
“I see hear that you did not eat paste and were very adept at coloring between the lines and were especially adept at naptime.”
Come to think of it, I’m still pretty good at naptime.
I imagine that the men in this study group, now about age 30, may use their proficiency in kindergarten as a pick-up line in singles bars.
“Hi, I’m Ted. I was quite a star at the Humpty Dumpty Kindergarten School back in the day.”
Clearly, that’s more impressive than the Jaguar that he drives.
A colleague of Mr. Chetty’s, a man named Emmanuel Saez, says that a good kindergarten teacher is worth $320,000 a year, that being the additional amount of money a class can expect to earn over their careers. When they start paying kindergarten teachers $320,000 a year, I will go back to school and get my teaching certificate.
Not that anyone expects teacher salaries to reach triple digits, but as the son of a teacher, I can tell you that they deserve it. If teachers start getting high salaries, perhaps they can get agencies and negotiate with schools like ballplayers negotiate with professional teams.
“My client would like a signing bonus, and a premiere spot in the teacher’s lounge.”
I’m not sure what difference modern medication, such as Ritalin, makes in the performance of these children. When I was in first grade, no one heard of A.D.D. The medical term use most frequently used was “space shot.”
Come to think of it, that term is still used occasionally.
Many people go back to school to improve their education, but I’m wondering if I can take an adult education kindergarten class.
After all, due to belt-tightening, I now have to eat paste.
Posted by dmargarita at 1:14 PM