And Then There Were Four

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Playoff Week 1

Round 1 saw our little corner of the world turned topsy-turvy, as the three top-seeded teams and a former champion/perennial spoiler were pitilessly eradicated by an assortment of malicious Cinderellas.  In the end, grief counselors had to be bused in, and our League’s brightest and best were reduced to pointing out exactly where on the doll their opponents had touched them.  
Sunday’s violence had the sudden and unexpected feel of a penitentiary-shanking: The Dingobros literally clawed their way into the playoff bracket and ate the baby of a stunned first place Hellfire Club, and the Salukis squeaked out a 4-point win that put a brutal and definitive end to Gonk’s Revenge.
In the two playoff matchups that remained unsettled until Monday, both the Duestakers and the Turduckens hoped to make up 9-point deficits in the Bears-Vikings game. The Duestakers bet their paycheck on Adrian Peterson‘s knee and lost, granting a reprieve to a thankful N.O. Brass, while the Turduckens, high on 26 points courtesy of the Bears Defense, stepped deftly around the battered remains of Team Dayment and breathed their own sigh of relief.
Several other matchups took place in the unfortunately–named Consolation Ladder – across the tracks on the seedy side of the League – where, in terms of raw enjoyment, the proceedings are typically on par with a time-share seminar or a gathering of Greek Orthodox widows.  The dismal reality of life in this reverse-image of the playoff bracket was summed up on these very pages back in 2008 (note this year’s coincidental Round 1 re-matching of the four teams mentioned):

It’s not as easy to muster excitement about what passes for Round 1 action in our League’s hobo-camp of a consolation ladder; a virtual Island of Misfit Toys where the losers are left behind to scrounge up whatever comfort they can from cheap liquor and the flaming debris of their tragic seasons.  Here we find the accursed Wackers lining up to pummel Mental Garbage for a second week in a row, while Dayment and the Turduckens square off against each other like winos armed with broken bottles.  What is the point, you may ask?  It has something to do with the Loser’s Code, something that’s not easily understood on the sunny side of the street.  It boils down to simply not wanting to be the worst of the worst.  These ragged clubs may stink like Satan’s butt-rag, but they’ve still got enough heart to go down fighting like Chupacabras.

Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom

Skundered!

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 10

An Irish friend once shared the story of a neighbor who went to a pub to see a girl he was seriously smitten with.  He downed pint after pint to steady his nerves as he waited for her to arrive, and when she finally did, he barfed all over himself while trying to ask her out.  As my friend sadly put it, the young man was skundered. 

It’s hard to think of a better term for what happened to the Turduckens in Week 10, as they were viciously deposed from their newly-assumed 1^st place-perch by the Dingobros, a lower-middle tier sleeper with a taste for blood and the derailed aspirations of haughty opponents. This wasn’t the only dramatic upset to rain down on Our Beloved League in Week 10: Dark horse HellFire Club stomped the Duestakers like a female protester at a Rand Paul campaign appearance, but the Duestakers somehow managed to cling to 2^nd place.  And, perhaps most astonishingly, the last-place Lakeviewers FUBAR’d the once-mighty Salukis, who tumbled to 6^th place in near-complete disgrace.  

Some insiders refuse to buy into the drama surrounding these upsets, pointing out that it all boils down to a bit of shuffling around; Week 9’s top six teams are still Week 10’s top six teams, they say.  There is no question, however, that the week’s biggest winners were the aforementioned HFC, who jumped from 5th to 3^rd place in the blink of an eye, and Gonk’s Revenge, who, with the relentlessness of a Terminator, completed their seemingly-inevitable climb to 1^st place by beating the tar out of the N.O. Brass—an outfit fatally compromised by bye-week holes and impaired-judgment, reportedly due to mixing box-wine with over-the-counter cold medicine.

In other action, Token Female was eighty-sixed by a roid-raging Mental Garbage, while the Wackers scored a freebie-win by virtue of their matchup with the Pulled Hammies, our League’s answer to passing GO in Monopoly. And finally, facing off against the ascendant Dayment, the Blue Devils pulled yet another colossally-flawed offensive scheme out of their toxic catbox of a strategic repertoire, with predictably-tragic results.

We all have to remain on guard against losing focus, with the playoffs a mere four weeks away.  A lot can happen in that amount of time, given our current 5-team 7-3 cluster tailed closely by another 3 who are only a game or two behind them.  The only thing we can be sure of is that dreams will be shattered and lamentations sung by the unlucky six whose seasons end short of the playoffs.  That bracket’s gilded gates will surely slam shut, locking them in the mausoleum-like gloom of our consolation ladder, where their eyes may eventually adjust to the darkness, but their hearts never will.

More Fun Than Rectal Bleeding

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 8

There’s not much to say about what happened in Our Beloved League in week 8.    Overall, it was the kind of scene that just leaves everyone feeling uncomfortable, like interpretive prayer-dance, or watching Glen Beck go on an extended crying jag.  

Most of us chalk it up to what old-timers call the Bye-Week Blues.  For the unlucky among us this translated into low scoring of the sinkhole-variety, as we watched our second- and third-string starters stumble around on the field like they’d been smoking ditchweed.  But one or two matchups were still worth a look-see.

All eyes were on the newly-crowned Duestakers as their fall from 1^st place-grace came at the hands of a bitter Gonk’s Revenge, who back-daggered the Duestakers as if they were a bastard-pretender to the League’s throne.  Proverbs teaches us that pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall, or something along those lines. The point is, a mere taste of hubris proved devastating to the 6-1 Duestakers, who now have one more bell that they’d like to unring.  And while you have to give credit where it’s due, ESPN’s projection of the Duestakers as the underdog in this matchup looks a little less impressive when you consider the fact that Revenge scored 185 more points than the Duestakers in the first seven weeks of the season.

Among the other scores that were settled on Monday night, the Blue Devils managed to expand and nail down their slight-lead over DingoBros, while Token Female dragged the Wackers back into the pit from whence they crawled, and 10^th place Mental Garbage managed to eke out a breathtakingly-humiliating 1-point win over 4^th place N.O. Brass, whose owner was reportedly so despondent that he holed-up in his attic with a laptop and a 12-pack of Meister Brau.

Elsewhere, in an act of sudden, arbitrary brutality rarely seen outside of correctional institutions, 7^th place HellFire Club gave 5^th place Dayment the kind of horrendous whooping that makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a Mormon picnic.  The 2^nd place Salukis inflicted similar damage on the 13^th place Hammies, in a win that called to mind playground bullying and left most observers shaking their heads.  The 3^rd place Turduckens provoked the same reaction when they callously phoned in a cheap victory over last-place Lakeviewers.

In the end, Week 8 brings us past our regular season’s halfway point, and is as suitable a vantage point as any from which to reflect on what, if anything, all of this means.  For most of us it’s simple: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being something cool like Shark Week or a winning PowerBall ticket, and 1 being, let’s say, rectal bleeding, the 2010 fantasy football season would fall somewhere right in the middle, along with oatmeal and folk dancing. 

Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom

Lamentations of a Halloween Nerd

I know I’m at risk of reading too much into something that matters disproportionately to me, but I’ve been troubled by what appeared to be a significant drop in house and yard decorating in my community this Halloween.   In terms of outdoor decor, my town has always been more Christmas-oriented, but in past years you could always find at least a few houses on every block that put up orange lights, or a scarecrow, or a jack-o-lantern, or something.  But this year was different; you could drive from neighborhood to neighborhood on the big weekend and see nothing but darkness.

I tried to take comfort in the fact that the Midwest was buffeted by several consecutive days of near-record high winds last week; it’s possible that many people either took their decorations down, or decided not to decorate at all, because of the wind.  But the lady who cut my hair today offered a simpler and darker explanation.  She was talking about how the economy was affecting people; that more than one man cried in her chair while describing this impact on their families and lives. Her theory is that people are just depressed; they’re having a hard time getting in the holiday spirit at a time like this.  That’s a sad explanation, but it makes more sense than the wind. And it makes me wonder what Christmas is going to look like in my community this year.

As for me, Halloween is an obsessive calling.  I’ll keep lighting up my little corner of the world until the kids stop coming or until, in some bleak future, religious extremists are finally able to outlaw Halloween along with homosexuality and immigration. I can’t help thinking that—especially in times like these—the world needs haunting.

2010 Haunt-inventory (outside items):

Giant Spiderweb for garage

Giant Spider (the right eye needs to be re-wired)

Jack-o-lantern covers for the garage lights

Light up Happy Halloween sign for garage

Light up witch sign for garage (shorted out)

Wooden Zombie Danger Level sign

Zombie torso and head to go with sign

Light-up skull and hands (2 sets)

6 ft. cardboard coffin

Orange LED lights for bushes on side of house

Purple LED lights for bushes in front of house

Pumpkin lights for bush by driveway

Cornstalks wrapped in orange LED lights by driveway

7 pumpkins (only had time to carve four)

Baby-skeleton hung in wire fish-trap cage

Small ghost on a wire in front of house

Ring of five ghosts dancing around front tree

Large 2D skull lights for front tree (2)

Assorted disposable spider webs in bushes (6 or 7)

Zombie groundbreaker with moving head (broken by middle-schoolers)

Skeleton groundbreakers (2)

Foam tombstones (7)

Small seasonal signs on stakes (5)

Small zombie warning signs (4)

Witch figure with lighted, smoking cauldron

Fog machine for cauldron

Large werewolf figure with moving head

Large dog-cage for werewolf

Large witch-queen figure with lighted eyes

Throne for witch-queen

Large strobe-lit monster cage for living room window

Monster figure for cage

Skull lights and skull mini-border fence

40 foot wooden cemetery fence

Skull-topped gate-posts with lighted eyes (2)

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 7
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Take off the turban, remove the crown. It will not be as it was: The lowly will be exalted and the exalted will be brought low. A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin! -- Ezekiel 21:26

Like a slow-orbiting comet or the McRib sandwich, truly epic upsets don’t come around very often; and when they do, it’s an occasion worth noting with appropriate solemnity.  Such was the case in Week 7 when the 12th-place Wackers’ put a DavidVs.Goliath-style Kybosh on 2nd-place Gonk’s Revenge.  It was an outcome that no one expected, and was all the more dramatic because the scales weren’t tipped until the last 60 seconds of the game. A loss like that is like diarrhea on prom night, and an ominous indication that, should such trends continue, Revenge may be on their way to ending the season sleeping under a bridge and using muscatel as hand sanitizer.

This stunning development alarmed the genteel and privileged elite, comprised of a handful of top teams who, up until now, have contentedly-jockeyed for advantage from week to week without facing any real danger of dropping into Our Beloved League’s vulgar middle-tier.  Gonk’s Revenge plummeted from 2nd- to 6th-place in the blink of an eye, while the Duestakers snatched the coveted 1st-place-crown from the bruised and scarred forehead of N.O. Brass, whose Week 7 fortunes plummeted along with those of their beloved Saints.

Elsewhere, the Gridiron Goddess had a particularly cruel laugh at the expense of the Blue Devils, who lost out on an unlikely 39-point explosion by a benched receiver over the weekend, but nevertheless marched gamely into Monday night facing a 75 point deficit against the Turduckens. However, it became clear in the first quarter, after Eli Manning posted negative-four points, that the Devils would be unable to seal the deal. 

On the poor side of our League’s tracks, Mental Garbage posted the week’s high score of 158 -- fully 28 points over their projected total -- allowing them to defeat the unfortunate Lakeviewers and shamble from last- to second-to-last place.  Many of us have puzzled over how, with overall strategic competence on par with Carl from that movie Slingblade, Mental Garbage still manages to outscore most of the League on a recurrent basis.  While some suggest they may be retarded like a fox, Vegas oddsmakers are treating this as a genuine case of fantasy sports Savantism.  Whatever you choose to call it, several of our teams might benefit from a dose of that kind of high-octane Gump-mojo at this point in the season.

Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom
Ojo Del Tigre!

EMERGENCY BULLETIN

--Alert Level ORANGE--
Displaced Aggression Team Owners,
Please be advised: In response to heavy and extreme negativity caused by the results of last week’s matchups, ESPN has placed the entire Displaced Aggression league on Orange Alert status until further notice.  Your Commissioner has been safely removed to an undisclosed location – possibly for the remainder of the season – where, hunkered down like a Jihadist in Tora Bora, he will continue to issue periodic League Updates and answer vital communications.
Direct contact is not recommended, but care packages containing antacids and Irish Whiskey may be forwarded via the League Office. 
---End of transmission---

TEA PARTY MOMENT: AUSSIES LOSE WHITE PRIVILEGE

I never really thought of myself as bigoted or xenophobic, but it dawned on me recently that I'm prejudiced against Australians.  I'm not going to try to soften this by claiming that some of my best friends are Australian, because they’re not.  In fact, I can’t remember ever actually meeting an Australian, although I did briefly work for a woman with a Boston accent so thick that some Chicagoans thought she was from Australia.  Hate is too strong of a word.   It’s not really even that I dislike Australians as much as I’m scared of them. They’re not like us; something just feels off.

There could be any number of valid reasons for this revulsion; their alcoholism, their loudness, their penchant for cruelty towards marsupials, not to mention their Aborigine-murdering/penal-colony roots.   For me it comes down to this: Australians have an amazing talent for imitating us, while genetic differences prevent us from reproducing their accents as convincingly.   Think about it; American actors always sound amateurish and cheesy when they do Outback Steakhouse voice-overs, but how many Australian movie and TV actors can you name off the top of your head who can effortlessly slip into completely-authentic American accents; Nicole Kidman, Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, that guy Jason from True Blood, the list goes on and on. 

I mean, honestly; did you even know that these people were Australian when you first saw them?  I sure didn’t, and finding out the truth left me feeling violated and mistrustful.  I'm starting to look at people in my daily life differently, wondering if, just maybe, they might be Australians too. I can’t help thinking about all the people who I always just assumed were American. People who, in some cases, I’ve known all my life; People I have allowed into my own home!  And what about our government, for God’s sake; for all I know, the President of the United States could actually have been born in Australia!

Here’s my bottom line: If Australians want to come live here, fine.  But is it too much to ask for a little transparency on their part?   I understand we can’t "violate" their civil rights by making them display some sort of identification on their outer-clothes (my idea was for it to be a large, red “A”), but can't we at least force them to speak in their own accents while on U.S. soil?

You can judge me if you want to, but first ask yourself; can you really trust an Australian the way you could trust someone of a less-suspect heritage, like a Canadian or a New Zealander?  You tell me.

THANK YOU, SANTA KITTY!

Pointless Haikus (or I Know What You Did Last Summer)

I.

I am out of shape.

My shirt barely covers me.

Need a size larger.

II.

Stoned by 10 am;

I can’t talk on the phone, but,

I cut the lawn well.

III.

My wife doesn’t fart,

But she does get the vapors.

It smells like a swamp.

IV.

I’m starting to think

My dog is smarter than me.

My wife’s not surprised.

V.

I like my job.

I like vacation better.

I sigh and return.

The Worm Has Turned

Displaced Aggression League Report – Week 5

A terrible wailing reverberated across Our Beloved League in Week 5 as the Gridiron Goddess wept and screamed for a sacrifice, sending shivers of horror through the seven teams jockeying for dominance at 3-1.   And, although each of us knew that the awful Reaping must eventually begin, no one wanted to be one of the several goats that it took to finally satisfy her.  In the end, the 3-1 cluster was torn asunder and our mightiest team was counted among the casualties.

After nervously watching a 60-point lead dwindle to just 5 in the final minutes of Monday night’s game, the Turduckens were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief and mount the head of 1^st place Gonk’s Revenge onto a pike.  In a near-repeat of this insolent dethroning, the 2^nd place Salukis were able to withstand a stunning onslaught by Mental Garbage, hanging on and making it to 1^st place, as Grandpa would put it, by an arse-hair.  

Week 5 was as much about redemption as it was about regicide; the 0-4 Lakeviewers and Dingobros, hacked their way to a Monday night victory against Dayment and pummeled the clearly-shaken Wackers, respectively.  And, while posting a competitive point total for the first time this season may have given Dingobros reason to hope that the worm has finally turned for them, this downward spiral is familiar territory for the Wackers, whose owner has reportedly degenerated into a modern-day version of General Custer; stomping around his bunker and calling play after demented play, seemingly oblivious to the fantasy season crumbling around him. 

Elsewhere, the Duestakers eked out a razor-thin win over the Pulled Hammies, a team rendered rudderless by an owner who continues to make boldly-misguided lineup choices without any apparent sense of shame or irony, the way a morbidly-obese shopper might place a can of Slimfast next to their cheesecake on the checkout counter.   

Meanwhile, Hellfire Club, another resident of the League’s 3-1 tier, was matter-of-factly taken apart by the 1-3 Blue Devils, while N.O. Brass split out of 3-1 the opposite way, defeating Token Female and moving into 2^nd place; all the while displaying an insightful strategic approach that many observers find to be, frankly, un-American.  Nuance might go over well in parts of Europe and maybe even Canada, but not in a country where one quarter of the population believes that their President is secretly Muslim, and that Old Testament notables could have ridden around on dinosaurs just as easily as on donkeys.

Finally, a cautionary note for any team that has yet to face Gonk’s Revenge (i.e. the Salukis in Week 6): don’t be fooled by Gonk’s drop to 5^th place; at 3-2 they still have scored more points than any other team in the League – nearly 50 more than the newly-crowned Salukis.  It will almost certainly take more than a mid-season loss to grant the True Death to this vampire.
Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom

Oh, The Humanity!

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 4

Recent estimates put the cost of dementia within the developed world at $604 billion for this year, and after last week, many observers have come to believe that the poor coaching and team management on display in Our Beloved League may account for a significant portion of that total.

While it appeared on paper that six of our seven matchups were still unresolved as of Monday night’s game, dumb luck and colossal point-deficits made it obvious that few of these were actually up for grabs: The Pulled Hammies trailed by 89 points as they faced off with N.O. Brass, while the Blue Devils carried a 97-point deficit against Gonk’s Revenge, and the Wackers trailed the Salukis by an astounding 115 points going into Monday night.  Unsurprisingly, none of them even came close to turning the tide as New England wore down the Dolphins, and the disgraced Wackers and Hammies racked up embarrassing point totals of 47 and 34, respectively.

The bells of disappointment tolled even louder for Dingobros and the Lakeviewers, whose early-season records seem to be playing out like Greek Tragedy as they slide to 0-4.  This is particularly vexing for the poor Dingobros, who came within 4 points of clawing their way out of this quicksand.  And the Lakeviewers, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, keep waking up to the same soul-crushing outcome, over and over again.  It’s beginning to seem like the mere act of putting forward a starting lineup sets them up for inevitable disappointment; as if they were committing to a social engagement during Shark Week, or feeding Indian food to a St. Bernard.

The picture is no less murky for many of our Winners; the bizarre stratification resulting in half of the League’s teams jostling with each other at 3-1 belies the 148-point range between 1st-place Gonk’s Revenge and 7th place Mental Garbage, in total points scored-to-date.  The real struggle for supremacy appears to be shaping up between Gonk’s Revenge and the 2nd place Salukis – themselves 73 points ahead of the next-highest scoring team and 3rd place contender, N.O. Brass, a Young Turk outfit that put itself on the map through a combination of brute force and rat-like cunning.

Interestingly, no fewer than ten of us racked up totals that were 20 or more (sometimes many more) points shy of our ESPN projections going into this week’s matchups, which begs the question: Whither ESPN’s Gurus? It’s not uncommon, as a season progresses, for ESPN’s own point-projections to become the subject of controversy and complaints.  And, while having online experts lead us off a cliff from time to time is a sadly-familiar experience, this year’s projections seem to be diverging from reality as dramatically as our national political discourse. 

October finds many of us viewing these fantasy prognostications with a suspicious and squinted eye, the way Baptists look at Unitarians, or my wife looks at me when I promise to deal with the bathroom sink that’s been partially-clogged since Easter.  The value and veracity of this data is no longer presumed the way it might have been at the start of our season; aspersions have been cast, bona fides questioned, and insinuations made.  Only the weakest among us are still drinking ESPN’s Kool-Aid at this point.

This means, of course, that we’re on our own.  We’ve gone Rogue and crossed over into uncharted terrain; the edge of the map where, in olden times, learned men would scrawl ominous messages like “Here Be Dragons,” and “Doom Awaits.”   At this point the only rational course of action is to turn up Hank Williams loud enough to drown out the pleading voices of our loved ones, and hunker down in front of our computer screens while we let this sickness run its course.

Respectfully Submitted,

Commissioner Tom