"Yeah, But Still." - A Reasonable Explanation for the Sixers Win Last Night

Last night, the Philadelphia 76ers upset the defending-champion Miami Heat, 114-110, in their home opener at the Wells Fargo Center. Considering the Heat are favorites to win the NBA Finals again this season, and the Sixers are a young, rebuilding team, this was a particularly stunning result (not to mention the fact that the game took place in front of what will likely be the largest home crowd the Sixers have all year), and the unseasoned Sixers had a right to be thrilled.

Naturally, such a result demanded explanation. No, rookie point guard Michael Carter-Williams’ historic near quadruple-double and Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes each making 10 shots from the field couldn’t have been enough. Surely something happened to LeBron James, Chris Bosh and the Heat, something that caused them to lapse into mortality for huge chunks of Wednesday’s game.

I’d like to take a moment to address and present a counter-argument for each of these potential explanations for why the Heat currently have a worse winning percentage than the Sixers this season.

1. Dwayne Wade sat out this game as a precaution. If he had been rested and ready to play, the Big Three would have overwhelmed the Sixers.

Answer: The over-under for Sixers wins this season was 16.5 according to Paddy’s Power Sportsbook (most sports books set it at either 16 or 16.5 for the Sixers). Only three teams in NBA history have finished with less than 17 wins in a full regular season. Vegas was essentially daring gamblers to bet on the Sixers being the fourth team ever to lose that often, and in doing so potentially challenge the all-time worst record mark set by….well…the Sixers, in 1972-73. To put it in short, the 2013-14 Sixers were expected to be really bad this year.

2. The Heat were playing one night after opening their season at home against the Chicago Bulls, their toughest competition and most bitter rival in the Eastern Conference, and then traveling up to Philadelphia overnight for this game. They were exhausted.

A: I mean, really bad. The Sixers were 34-48 last year, good for the 19^th best record in the 30-team NBA. So what did they do in the offseason? Well, their head coach, Doug Collins, resigned to return to a career in TV broadcasting; their GM, Tony DiLeo, was fired after 20 years with the organization in various roles; and new GM Sam Hinkie traded the team’s best player, 23-year old point guard Jrue Holiday. When you consider a 23-year old basketball player to be a little long in the tooth to play for you, you know your team is going to lose a zillion games.
They also let go of Andrew Bynum, which...I mean...Jesus...I don't even wanna talk about it.

3. LeBron James isn’t fully in shape for the season yet. He took some preseason time off for his honeymoon that he normally would’ve used to train, so…

And you know what the Sixers got in exchange for Holiday? A draft pick in next year’s draft and big man Nerlens Noel, a college star who probably won’t play at all this year as he recovers from ACL surgery. The whole idea is to be as bad as possible this season so the Sixers will have a high pick in next year’s draft, which is expected to be one of the best in decades. In the meantime, though…MAXIMUM SUCKITUDE.

4. The Heat were probably looking ahead to Friday’s game against Brooklyn and…

You know how most teams have a salary cap, a limit on how much money they're allowed spend on players each year? There is also a salary floor in the NBA, meaning teams are required to spend at least $52 million on their players, and the Sixers weren’t meeting it by the time the season started. While teams like the Heat panic over whether they’ll be able to fit LeBron and his teammates under the salary cap next season, the Sixers are doing the equivalent of swinging by the Dollar Store at the last minute to prepare for a cocktail party at the governor’s mansion.

There’s no real penalty for this, fortunately– they’re just required to pay their existing players a little more each to reach the floor, meaning each of their terrible basketball players is getting even more money to be terrible.

5. I feel like you’re not even addressing my points right now.

Yeah, Michael Carter-Williams had a splendid game, but he’s a project player and will probably take some time before he’s consistently good. The dude is more raw than the chuck steak sitting on the floor of a Food Lion freezer. (Feel free to borrow that one, Rick Reilly) In his last year of college basketball at Syracuse, MCW shot 39.3 percent from the field, which would’ve been good for 123^rd-best in the NBA last season.

That’s not to mention the rest of the team, who finished 22^nd in the league last year in shooting percentage. For those who don’t follow basketball closely, it should be noted that “making shots” is a sought-after skill that many would consider crucial to a team's success, as the objective of the game is is to make more shots than your opponent does.

6. This is kind of rude. I mean, you did ask me to do a point-counterpoint with you, and you’re ignoring everyth-

And poor Marc Zumoff. He’s entering his 18^th season as the Sixers’ exuberant play-by-play announcer, and never has he sounded more resigned to a woeful season of basketball than before last night’s game, trying in vain to hype up a squad that will likely score less than…um…some guy who isn’t very good at picking up women at a bar. (Boom!)

Seeing the Sixers come onto the floor with the correct uniforms on probably would’ve been enough success to warrant Zumoff’s typical ecstasy last night, so it’s safe to say the breakneck 19-0 run the Sixers started the game on whipped him into a frenzy. He was shouting and screaming about the crowd “RISING UP!” like it was Game 7 of the Finals, probably figuring he won’t be needing his voice for the next 81 games anyway. At least then, we'll still have Molly Sullivan. Sweet, sweet Molly Sullivan.

7. You’re not even talking about the team anymore. I’m leaving.

Zumoff has it right, though. Why not celebrate? All the wet blankets who kept comparing this Sixers win to the Eagles’ first win this season under Chip Kelly (which was not exactly a good indication of things to come) weren’t breaking any news to Sixers fans. We all know the team is going to suck this year, and suck hard. It’s only a matter of time before MCW starts flinging behind-the-back passes into the stands, Tony Wroten’s reckless abandon begins to hurt the team more than it helps, we hear the PA announcer say the words, “Now entering the game for the Sixers: Kwame Brown!” (NO NO NO NO NO), and the team’s only veterans with any sort of equity (Thaddeus Young, Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes) are either traded or let go in favor of more draft picks or salary cap space.

8. Oh look, "The Talk" is on. Let's see if Sharon's any better at staying on point than you are...
Did I mention we're STILL paying Kwame Brown to play basketball?

9. We get it. The Sixers are really bad, and the Heat are really good. So what? It's one game.

Given the extraordinarily low bar most of us had set for the team (it’s basically just laying on the ground), our expectations for a game against the defending champs was something along the lines of “don’t lose by more than 20.” Instead, we got a remarkable debut for MCW, who will hopefully end up being our franchise point guard for the next 10+ years; stifling defense against the best basketball player in the world; an exciting, up-tempo game from several young, unknown players hungry for a chance to prove they’re more than roster filler; a special night honoring one of the best players in team/NBA history; and, of course, a chance to play the theme song to end all theme songs.

10. Oh God, no, please, don’t-
ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIXERS! TEN NINE EIGHT SEVENTY SIXERS...

A Day in the Life of a Newark Resident Without a Car

I drive my car pretty much everywhere I go. This is because I don’t live in China. I live in AMERICA, where the only thing we’re killing faster than our own will to live is the ozone.

I have a 2005 Honda Pilot with about a gazillion miles on it and whose horsepower best compares to a rickshaw pulled by a dozen doped-up squirrels. Of course, you don’t own an SUV for its gas efficiency; you own it for the amount of people/junk you can cram into it. Since my average weekday takes me from my home to my office to (sometimes) the gym to (occasionally) the grocery store to my home once more, I usually don’t cart around other human beings, so the extra seven seats plus trunk space are primarily dedicated to junk food, cases of bottled water, throw blankets, footballs, basketballs, orange cones, scattered glow sticks, hand-me-down tweed jackets my uncle gave me three weeks ago, campfire skewers from a camping trip I took in May, a bottle of mouthwash,  golf clubs, bags of garbage, 25 pounds of raw ground beef, the entire collection of “Sanford and Son” DVDs, about seven or eight raccoons, and Jimmy Hoffa.

I took a trip to Ohio/Western Pennsylvania this weekend and, knowing that driving the Pilot the entire distance would not only accelerate its inevitable demise but also singlehandedly cause the Keystone Pipeline debate to reopen, I chose to rent a smaller, more fuel-friendly mode of transportation, and was thus assigned a Toyota Yaris by the God of Car Rental, Hertz.

As I returned on Sunday night after putting the Yaris through an absolute beating, I thought about a column of Bill Bryson’s I read recently. Bryson’s been a recent discovery of mine…and by that, I mean my esteemed co-blogger and my brother have been telling me about how awesome he is. Bryson spent one of his columns in the late 90’s lamenting how residents of his town would drive to stores mere feet apart from each other, rather than getting out of their two-ton metal contraptions and burning a couple calories.

Bryson’s affinity for the simplicity of small-town living hit me in the right spot, even if Newark, DE bears few similarities to Bryson’s town of Hanover, NH (though I have it on good authority Newark also has a grocery store and at least handful of trees)

So when I returned my rental car to the Hertz about a mile and a half from my house, knowing I had an errand or two that needed attending to, I decided I’d take the scenic route home and get to know Newark on the strength of my tattered sneakers.

The first thing you notice about doing your errands by foot is that you have to do them by foot. Like, walking. The whole time. I’m going to sneak in some boasting here: on Saturday, I completed Tough Mudder in Belmont, OH with my brother and my friend Reezo, and I’ve been virtually incapable of basic motor functions since. My first few steps were not-so-gentle reminders of the gauntlet I’d run about 48 hours prior. You fool. What are you doing? This is nonsense. Just walk home, sit in your nice, cozy, air-conditioned monstrosity of an automobile and bang out your errands in about 20 minutes. Heck, why even walk home? They have cabs here in town. Hey, that guy with the big white van sitting outside the Toys R Us looks like he’s got plenty of room in his ride and nothing to do. You’ve got options.

Yet, I continued.  I needed a haircut, a new pair of running shoes, a bunch of bananas, and an excuse to not sit around my house watching ESPN all Monday morning and afternoon.

On the way to my haircut, I found a row of about four or five eye doctors on Main Street, the major street running through the University of Delaware’s campus, more known for brick-exterior bars and takeout food than anything considered remotely adult (though if beer and pizza aren't “adult,” I definitely don’t want to be one). About two months ago, I’d tried to set up appointments with a primary care physician, a dentist and an optometrist for the first time since moving to Delaware, with no luck. I’d gotten some curt receptionist every time I called one, who very quickly advised me that no, they were not, in fact, accepting new patients at this time, so could you please get off my phone because this episode of Basketball Wives I’ve got cued up on my computer isn’t going to watch itself.

I entered the second one I saw, strolled to the front desk, and asked the woman at the desk if the office were taking new patients, to which she surprisingly answered, “Yes. When would you like an appointment?”

We exchanged information, by which I mean I told her my name, address, date of birth, social security number, insurance provider, favorite color, worst fear, fondest memory of my childhood, expectations for the upcoming episode of “Breaking Bad,” and number of times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night with a charley horse in my right calf, and in turn, she let me know how much my co-pay would be.

I handed her my insurance card, and before she even had a chance to see the information on the front of the card, she asked whether I worked for Bank of America or Capital One. (This was after I had to convince her I was not, in fact, currently attending the University of Delaware, even though I had time in my life to show up at an eye doctor’s office at 10:30 AM on a Monday) There are hundreds, thousands of employment opportunities in the Newark area, but thanks to Delaware’s relaxed big business laws, the only ones of consequence are with credit card companies. I felt momentarily insulted that this woman, a complete stranger not two minutes ago, felt confident enough to pigeonhole me. Then, that moment passed, and I sheepishly informed her I worked for Bank of America.

After scheduling my appointment, I continued down Main Street and across four lanes of Capitol Trail traffic to College Square, a shopping center with vast parking lots and little else. Among its relatively few shops was a Hair Cuttery, though, so I walked in, chatted with the barber Catherine about our thoughts on Newark, beaches, and reality television, and went on my merry way. This put a thought in my head: Catherine hadn’t done any sort of styling to my hair, just washed it and hacked it off. Yet I felt compelled to call her a “hairdresser” or a “hair stylist” simply because it was Catherine and not, say, Carl, doing the work. I looked it up later and learned a “barber” is one who cuts men’s hair, but is gender neutral with regard to the person doing the actual cutting. It still feels weird to me for some reason, though, the same way I’d feel like calling a male a “hair dresser” was wrong even if they were cutting women’s hair. I’ve decided I will avoid this problem in the future by cutting my own hair off with a hatchet.

After doing a little more exploring (there’s an emergency pet hospital just two miles from my house, which will be very convenient if I ever acquire a pet), I got lunch at Jake’s Wayback Burgers, a local chain with the best hamburgers and milkshakes in the area, reading the Delaware County Times in the process and noting how the paper’s baseball writer was quite fond of stating that a player had “but four home runs this season” or had played in “but ten games” since the All-Star break.

Next door was D&S Music, a guitar repair shop that also sold second-hand guitars, picks, straps, and songbooks. I walked in wearing my Philadelphia Flyers T-shirt and, using a Visa credit card (only after finding my American Express card wasn’t accepted at this particular establishment), purchased a set of picks and a Dream Theater guitar songbook from a middle-aged man also wearing a Flyers T-shirt, in what I believe will go down in history as the whitest transaction in American commerce.

On my way back to Main Street, I came across the Newark Free Public Library, hidden in the shade of a row of trees. I already knew about the library, but hadn’t graced it with my presence in a few weeks, so I spent 30 minutes reading “Plato in 90 Minutes,” then checked it out, along with another book on religion and three CDs.

I stumbled across an actual barbershop, peppermint color scheme and all, on my way back down Main Street, which will throw a wrench into my aforementioned “hatchet to the head” method of cutting my hair. Just a few shops down was Bing’s Bakery, a classic bakery with enough frosted goodness to wreck even the most steadfast of health nuts, a class of folk  which I am proud not to consider myself one of. If you’ve never been to a bakery outside of the paltry five-by-ten area of your local Acme with no more than a basket of Italian bread and a closet of stale donuts on display, you are cheating yourself out of some truly decadent desserts. I limited myself to a small cannoli (the cashier’s recommendation) and a chocolate cake-like French pastry square laced with raspberry sauce. 

I was now wandering around Newark with three books, three CDs and two desserts, which means I was probably being followed by the police the rest of the day. At the very least, I got several confused and worried looks from the college students who weren't preoccupied with finding out whether they were even headed in the right direction to reach their new classes or dorms.

Next, I crossed the street to a natural/organic foods store, where I bought my bananas, a bag of lima beans and a box of “Puffin Cinnamon Cereal.” You may recognize this cereal as the only one at your local grocery store with a puffin on it, a box usually surrounded by several other cereal boxes with much happier-looking, sugar-crazed animals on the front. I tried the organic cinnamon cereal later, and concluded the main difference between Puffin cinnamon cereal and say, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, is that CTC is made with “cinnamon,” while Puffin’s cereal is made with HOLY SHIT CINNAMON YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW MAN.

I asked the cashier, an older, white-bearded gentleman, for an extra bag for my books and such, which he gladly obliged. I’m convinced this was because he was wearing the type of straw hat you’d see Harold Hill wear in “The Music Man,” which seems to automatically make its wearer 15 percent friendlier. (Is there a name for this hat? I can’t figure it out) As I loaded my books in a bag, he noticed one of my library books, How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom.

“Good subject,” he said, gesturing towards the book.

I looked down and saw which one he was referring to. “Yeah, it looks interesting,” I replied. “It’s about how religious and non-religious people need work together to protect freedom of belief and live more peacefully.”

“Imagine if you had that in the Middle East, if it weren’t dictated by dogma and extremism.”

I nodded. “It’d be a whole different ballgame. Well hey, if it’s any good, I’ll come back and let you know.”

“Good deal.” He then discounted me about 15 cents on my bananas because they looked “like they’re at the end of their shelf life.” I will sing the praises of Internet shopping all day and night, but I haven’t had any quick talks on faith and current events or received any discounts on my items for no apparent reason from Amazon.com. That’s as good an argument to support small business as anything.

My checklist was almost complete: I’d gotten everything I’d needed and more, save for the sneakers (I’d “cheated” on my small-town afternoon and used my iPhone to determine the nearest sneaker store was seven miles away, something my calves weren’t feeling at the time). I was ready to return home until I spotted a sign for “Captain Blue Hen’s Comics.” The Blue Hen, for the uninitiated, is the mascot of U.Del’s various athletics teams, but more importantly: there’s a real-life, old-school comic store in Newark? I had to see this.

I’m no comic book junkie by any means, so I figured I’d just see a few of the classics and novelty items and be on my WAIT A MINUTE IS THAT THE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG-MEGA MAN CROSSOVER SERIES I NEED IT.

Sadly, they only had a few issues of the 13-issue mini-series available (more would be coming in a couple weeks, the manager told me), so I simply bought issue one, along with a comic called “Key of Z,” written by Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez. The store manager gave me the prequel issue of the Sonic-Mega Man series for free as a gift, and with that, I was walking home with the most eclectic collection of trinkets, books and snacks this side of the Schuylkill River. (If only the farmer’s market were around that day, I probably would’ve brought a whole raw chicken home with me, too)

As I walked back home, past the beat-up town homes now occupied with college students and the small church and parish daycare that gave Chapel Street its name, I reflected on my day. I was an economics major in college. I know the benefits of big businesses like Wal-Mart, and the advantages that impersonal online shopping present for consumers like me. I love getting groceries delivered to my door, because I’m lazy as hell. The rational part of my brain knows this is all, for the most part, good.

The other half of my brain that spends $5 on cannolis and pastries, though, felt gratified to spend a day in the fresh air and sunny, 75-degree summer weather, seeing the sights of my small town, stumbling upon its secrets (like a segment of the United Church of Christ hidden in a run-down concrete building that’s certainly seen its share of back-alley drug deals, a kung fu school, a sign for the Newark chapter of the Rotary Club – more on that at another date), and actually talking to the folks selling me their wares. I’ve never really understood the appeal of being a “regular” at a bar, store or otherwise, but you know what? Maybe I would like to go back to that organic grocery store and talk to that cashier about my religion book. Maybe I’ll go to a barbershop and not just take whoever the next person is.

In the meantime, I’ve got a half-melted French pastry to take care of. And I’m doing it with two hands all over its sloppy exterior, because I’m an adult.

Let's Lift Our Glass to Charlie, He's the One Who Brought Us Here

On Friday, Charlie Manuel ceased to be the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.

He didn’t quit. For damn sure he didn’t quit. “I never quit nothin’. And I didn't resign,” the folksy skipper insisted during his farewell press conference Friday afternoon. Not his farewell game, mind you, nor his farewell address to the fans before his last home game, neither of which he was afforded. His farewell address to local baseball scribes and camera crews.

Beside him sat the man responsible for ending arguably the most successful managerial tenure in franchise history, Ruben Amaro Jr., who shed a tear while announcing the coaching change, insisting this was the hardest decision of his time as general manager. This is true in the sense that blaming someone else for your own failings is probably at least marginally more difficult than tossing a Koosh ball at an office door basketball hoop and signing Ryan Howard’s biweekly paychecks that would bankrupt most small African nations, activities that take up a majority of Ruben’s time.

I could use this space to mention how the team has taken a step back in terms of playoff performance (or lack thereof) every year since Ruben assumed the role Pat Gillick abdicated following the team’s 2008 World Series win, but I won’t. I could talk about how Ruben hanging the millstone known as the Ryan Howard contract around the team’s neck, backing up a Brinks truck to Jonathan Papelbon’s house, or trying to fix an old, bad team by adding more old, bad players hamstrung the team’s success for years to come, but I won’t. I could mention that the Phillies are the only team in Major League Baseball that doesn’t employ a single analytical statistician, and how Ruben throwing just one college dropout with a working knowledge of Excel and a general understanding of how to navigate baseball-reference.com a bone could have kept him from (or at least slowed him down before) making most of these decisions…but I won’t. (Michael Baumann already handled the more rational take on this anyway)

Instead, I want to talk about October 29, 2008.

I was in my friend Kevin and Stanczak’s dorm room with three or four other friends of ours, fixated on a small television set showing Brad Lidge warming up in the ninth inning of the fifth game of the World Series. As it was with your standard college dorm, any gathering consisting of three or more people was standing room only, but by that point, everyone was on their feet anyway.

This was Night 2 of Game 5, because the first six innings were all the Phillies and Rays could get in on Monday night before Citizens Bank Park turned into a Vietnam jungle.

So there were three innings between the Phillies, currently up 3-1 in the series, and a World Series crown. By the ninth inning, we'd seen Geoff Jenkins and Jayson Werth come up with huge hits, Rocco Baldelli equalizing the game with a solo home run, Chase Utley throwing out Jason Bartlett at home on a beautiful fake-out move, Pat Burrell earning his first World Series hit, and Pedro Feliz inexplicably knocking in a go-ahead run in just two and a half innings – not inexplicable because it was a particularly difficult pitch to hit, but because it was Pedro friggin’ Feliz who hit it.

Now Lidge was preparing to lock down a 4-3 Phillies lead. In pretty much every game since this one, a Phillies closer entering a game with a one-run lead usually meant fans were going to head home later that night ready to pound a fifth of Jack or strangle their dog or something. But in 2008, a one-run lead in the ninth inning was about as sure a thing as you could get in baseball when Brad Lidge was tossing his worm-killing slider. Lidge was 47-for-47 in save chances to that point this year, counting the postseason, and the Phillies had yet to lose a game that year when taking a lead into the ninth inning.

After Dioner Navarro fought off a one-out, two-strike pitch with a single to right, though, and after Fernando Perez came in to run for him and promptly stole second off Carlos Ruiz, the inner Philadelphian was coming out in those of us in Kevin and Stanczak’s room. Oh hell no. This is how it’s gonna happen. This is how we start to unravel and the friggin’ Rays scrap their way back and win this in seven games. First it was the rain thing, and now this. This is it. Where’s my dog? Where’s the Jack?

This is how Philly sports fans operated before Charlie Manuel, before 2008. We were bested perhaps only by Cleveland and Seattle in the “Murphy’s Law Sports City” contest. If the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers or Sixers had a chance to blow a big game, chances are, they’d search high and low to find a way to do it. We almost prided ourselves in our masochistic devotion to teams destined to break our hearts.

Particularly in this showdown between Manuel, a simple “players’ manager” whose familiarity with “strategy” was likely limited to “that weird ol board game Grampa had in his storage shed next ta tha buckshot and fertilizer,” and Joe Maddon, considered the most progressive and strategically savvy managers in baseball, it seemed likely Maddon was going to will his team to victory on the basis of his many lineup and defensive changes, as he swapped out the next batter, Baldelli (who, again, already had a homer that night) for Ben Zobrist, who had better success against pitchers like Lidge.

But Manuel, like he did so many times the following year (to the detriment in the team in many circumstances), stuck with Lidge. And two batters later, after Zobrist lined out to right and Eric Hinskie struck out on three pitches, the Phillies were, to put it colloquially, world f***ing champions.

And we went ballistic. We ran up and down the halls of our dorm in celebration. I called my friend Vince and screamed at him while he was at work. I called my dad and screamed at him. I called my girlfriend and screamed at her. We sprayed champagne anywhere that had a rug we could ruin and drank the rest.

We'd won for the triumvirate of Utley, Howard and Rollins, for career journeyman Matt Stairs, for the long-maligned Pat the Bat and the resurgent Jayson Werth, for ace Cole Hamels. And we'd won for Charlie, who, having lost his mother just a few weeks prior, added another layer of humanity to the celebration.

At that point in my life, Philadelphia major sports teams had one a total of…*recounts in head*…one championship. That one. And it came at a time when my devotion to sports was at an all time high.

I still love sports, still love watching my teams, but things have changed just a bit. With my entry into the so called rat race, I don’t have as much time to look up every news story on every team and keep up with every stat for every player like I did when I was in school. I was talking football with my pal and podcast co-host David Bennett a few nights ago and claimed Cary Williams, new starting cornerback for the Eagles, had one career interception to his name, which is unequivocally wrong. Nowadays, while I still strive for a career in sports media at some point, keeping up with sports is already becoming…well…like actual work.

And things are only going to progress further in that direction. Bills have to be paid. Families will have to be started. Homes will have to be purchased, and settled on, and closed upon, and refinanced, and sold. I’ll know more about my son’s OPS on his Little League team than I’ll know about the starting shortstop for the Phillies in a few years.

Even if no Philadelphia sports teams win another title as long as I live, though, I’ll always have 2008. We’ll always have 2008. I realize I don’t recall the 2008 Series fondly simply because my team won the whole damn thing or because the guys on the team were likable or fun to watch, but because I loved the people around me at the time, and I loved the celebration.

So thanks, Charlie. You made that happen. You were never the most brilliant tactician, and many of your bullpen moves the past several years made about as much sense as an MGMT music video, but when you had the right guys around you, you made sure they were happy and made sure they knew you had their back, which, for teams as talented as the Phillies had in 2007-2011, was as important as knowing when to bring in your lefty specialist or make a double switch (or when to bring in your backup infielder as a reliever)

Now, the longest-tenured coach in Philadelphia is Flyers walking orange tie Peter Laviolette, who’s been with the team for all of three-and-a-half years and could very easily be on his way out with another poor showing this coming year. Andy Reid, who was coach of the Eagles for more than half my life, is gone, and with it memories of my dad and I watching games in our den at my old house on Township Line Road with equal parts joy and horror at what we were witnessing. (The day Matt Bryant kicked a record-tying 63-yard field goal to reverse a Donovan McNabb-led comeback left the two of us speechless for 25 minutes)

Gone is Sixers coach Doug Collins, who was here three years but at least made the team interesting for two of them. Gone is Charlie, manager for a third of my life. Holy hell.

But  I can say this at least without fear of contradiction: Charlie, you will never buy another drink in this city as long as you live. It's the least we can do.

With Ears Wide Open: Listening to Every Creed Song Front to Back

So how about this Scott Stapp guy, right? What a crazy dude he is!

Okay, Scott Stapp hasn't been in the news for a while now. Stapp and his band Creed have become a joke, a point of reference when discussing how awful some mid-late 90s rock was. If Nickelback weren't still relevant and popular, Creed would surely still be everyone's go-to punchline band.

A few of my friends have crafted a list of songs they want Stapp to do covers of, with the ultimate goal to mail them to Stapp and convince him to come out with a cover album entitled "Stapp Infection." The list includes everything from "Your Song" by Elton John to most anything in Sarah McClachlan's discography. When I go out to karaoke night at the bar or play a gig, they ask what/how many Creed songs I'll be singing this time. These jokes never, ever get old. Really. Whether that's a testament to how funny Creed is or how immature we are is something I'm not particularly interested in investigating.

I have no clue how I originally thought to listen to every Creed and Scott Stapp song front to back, but I think it started when I went to the Exchange in Pittsburgh and bought a slew of $1 CDs, including two Creed CDs and Scott Stapp's solo album. Originally, I grabbed them because, you know, wouldn't it be, like, totally hilarious and ironic if I actually bought a Creed CD, guys?

Since I had more than half their music, though, the possibility became very real. So with a ton of housework and errands to do on Monday, I decided I'd be accompanied by the dulcet tones of the Stapp Squad. Front to back. Every Creed song, and all of Stapp's solo album, in one afternoon. (I am leaving out music from Alter Bridge, the band everyone in Creed except for Stapp formed when they broke up, for reasons that I'll explain later)

I decided to do this alone. This was a risky choice, because while I'd be sparing my roommates and friends from the trial that was to follow, I'd also have no one around if I eventually had an aneurysm or collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Still, this was my struggle and I would not impart it on any others.

To keep record of my task, I decided to keep a running diary, Bill Simmons style. And away we go...

11:35 AM – “Come on men! Nobody lives forever!”

11:40 – I forgot that Scott Stapp was basically trying to be Eddie Vedder back in the day. The long notes he holds on “Torn” tipped me off to this immediately, and now I’m going to notice it all day. This would be cool if I were a bigger fan of Pearl Jam. Also, nothing like opening your CD with a song that works at a slower pace than most 80s power ballads.

11:48 – I do a couple quick calculations and determine that the average Creed song is just about 4 minutes, 30 seconds long, which is bizarre because I’ve yet to find a Creed song less than 27 minutes in length.

11:51 – Curveball here on “My Own Prison,” where Stapp describes the scene in a courtroom, and eventually, a cage, except for the twist is, the person on trial is him, and he hasn’t committed a crime, per se, but he’s on trial for his sins in front of God or his mom or Steve Wilkos or whoever does these kind of things. Time to start drinking.

12:00 – Mark Tremonti is in that Wes Boreland class of pop musician who’s stuck in a shitty band, but gets individual praise for being one of the not-as-shitty parts of it. Critics begrudgingly gave praise to Boreland despite agreeing to be in Limp Bizkit and for wearing this all the time. Likewise, Tremonti got credit for putting fair-to-middling riffs alongside Stapp and the mind-numbing rhythm section.

I bring this up because I just heard a decent guitar solo on “Pity For a Dime” and I’m pretty sure Stapp was like “Well, that’s just about enough of that bullshit” and banned it from happening again after this CD came out. Now Tremonti solos like a madman in Alter Bridge, which is basically Creed with a better lead singer who also happens to be on the opposite spectrum of Stapp religiously. Alter Bridge also happens to be ten times better than Creed. Go figure

12:30 – Just took a 15-minute break to watch Donovan McNabb’s retirement speech, which was phenomenal. Back to the real action, though.

12:46 – “One” is the most Pearl Jam-y song on here, mixed with a healthy dose of angst that made Papa Roach go “Yeah! That’s what we’re going for! That!”

12:55 – Okay, let me level with you for a second. “What If,” from the bazillion-time platinum album "Human Clay," was the first Creed song I heard that wasn’t “Higher” or “With Arms Wide Open,” and I still kind of like it in that “I could see a pro wrestler using this as their entrance music” way.

1:10 – We’re now at “Wrong Way,” where the band loosens up with some dub-inspired upstroke guitars and horns, bongos, and a general lighter feel that truly…ahhhhhhh, just kidding, it’s another slow, grinding “grunge” rocker! Wooooooo! I can’t feel my toes anymore.

1:21 – There is no difference in the last five songs I’ve listened to. At least I think it was five. I’m starting to lose grasp of the concept of numbers. I just shouted “STAPP!” loudly in my empty house to remind myself I have a mouth.

1:22 – WELL I JUST HEARD

THE NEWS TODAY

SEEMS MY LIFE

IS GONNA CHANGE

I CLOSE MY EYES
BEGIN TO PRAY

THEN TEARS OF JOY

STREAM DOWN MY FACE

MY WIFE BOUGHT JAMESON

AT THE LIQUOR STORE

WELCOME TO MY FRIDGE

NOW LET’S DRINK ALL OF IT

MY WIFE BOUGHT JAMESON…

1:25 – Apparently, the kid Stapp had who inspired “With Arms Wide Open” is named Jagger. Carry on.

1:28 – CAN YOU TAKE ME HIGHER

TO A PLACE WHERE I HAVE WEED

CAN YOU TAKE ME HIGHER

TO A PLACE WITH HENNESSEY

1:35 – I’m going to start playing the “Guess The Next Line” game now to see if I can figure out what Stapp’s going to rhyme. “Tears” rhymes with “years,” by the way, in case you were interested in writing a song where you’re shedding tears over all those years, or if you’re looking back on all those years and thinking back on all those tears, or if you’re….

1:39 – Another change-up on “Inside Us All,” as Scott decides to write a song about how it feels to be alone. Powerful.

1:44 – A song started fading out with 51 seconds left, leaving 17 seconds left on the track when it finally went silent. Unrelated: I’ve started pretending to be Scott Stapp at home talking to his wife in the same voice he sings in to entertain myself.

1:45 – My iTunes track list says a song called “Young Grow Old” is the last song on “Human Clay,” but – SUCKER – it’s a redone version of “With Arms Wide Open” with more orchestration, more Stapp harmonies, and more vodka for me.

1:51 – Alright, so "Bullets" is a decent song too. Whatever.

1:55 – Some bizarre chant opens up the next song on the docket. I switch back to iTunes to see it’s a song entitled “Who’s Got My Back?” Simultaneously, I notice the song is eight and a half minutes long. I begin to cry.

2:05 – “Signs” is an awful song. Downright terrible, pontificating dirge. I wrote that down and made a note to come back to it later to include a joke. I still don’t have one.

2:07 – As I continue my extensive Creed research, I find there were a lot of publications who considered them a metal band, which I guess is true in the sense that they’re not a barbershop quartet, or a NASCAR pit crew, or a box of oranges, and they're definitely more similar to a metal band than they are those other things.

2:10 – HOLD ME

I’M SIX FEET FROM THE EDGE AND I’M DRINKING

MY NAME IS SCOTT STAPP

AND I DRINK A WHOLE LOT

THIS JOKE’S PRETTY FUCKED OUT AT THIS POINT

2:34 – I think I’m in a coma.

2:38 – Dangerous times in the household as Scott Stapp’s solo CD comes on. I feel like I’m supposed to give some advance notice to the neighborhood, or get a license to do this or something.

2:43 – The second song on Stapp’s solo CD is called “Fight Song.” I definitely want to fight someone right now. Or strangle a parakeet.

2:51 – If I told 16 year old Matt that I’d be spending a Monday afternoon at age 24 listening to a Scott Stapp song with a spoken word bridge, he probably would have said “This creep says he’s me from the future! Police! Get that psycho!”

3:05 – Okay, I recognize “The Great Divide.” I watched the music video in high school on VH1 or something. I’m pretty sure he was in some arena where the roof opens up and he looks at the sky a lot. I refuse to look it up to confirm this.

3:08 – My roommate Ki just walked on me sitting shirtless in a leather chair in our living room alone with the blinds drawn listening to Scott Stapp, and long story short, I’m homeless now.

3:15 – The song “You Will Soar” just came on, which means it’s FINALLY the time to remind you that this exists.

3:17 – And this.

3:18 – Stapp “Why are we overcome with fear? What if I told you fear wasn’t real?”
            Ki – “That’s fuckin’ heavy.” (continues eating soup)

3:20 – There’s a full gospel choir, piano and orchestral arrangement on the last song of Stapp’s solo CD, which is fine, except for it just reinforces the fact that Stapp would be the worst Baptist church worship leader ever.

3:21 – So now we move to Creed’s latest CD – they reunited in 2009, if you didn’t know. And now I get why everyone gives Mark Tremonti all that credit for his guitar playing and songwriting, because the first song is infinitely better than anything on Stapp’s solo CD, during which I nearly fell asleep four times. “Overcome” sounds a lot more like Alter Bridge, and therefore, like an actual rock song, as opposed to something stuck in “Creed World.” (Similar to how the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been stuck writing songs in PeppersWorld for nearly ten years, except worse)

3:28 – Seriously, this is actually not terrible.

3:42 – Aaaaaaaaand I’m bored again.

4:37 – Okay, so I went out to the store for a bit and listened to almost all of the second half of “Full Circle.” It’s definitely better than the prior four CDs, which means that I was able to ignore big chunks of it as opposed to actively noticing how bad it was. The major difference is the band is actually writing rock music as opposed to writing “Creed” music, which means that, even though it’s still pretty dull and gray, at least it’s not the same shade of dull and gray every….single….song.

I’m now up to the final track, “The Song You Sing.” Four minutes. I can do this on my own, guys.

4:38 – *unscrews cap on bottle of Woodford Reserve, pours*

4:41 - *deep breath* Okay. We did it. All four hours and 12 minutes of Scott Stapp-related music has received a spin today. I thought I wasn’t going to make it once Stapp dropped the “What is wrong with the world today?” question we’ve heard eleventy billion times in rock music, 95 percent of which have come from Creed songs.

But I pressed on. Because much like the man Stapp claims to keep at the center of his world, I sacrificed myself and did this all so that you never have to.

Women, Amiright?, or How I Learned to Embrace Online Dating, Then Promptly Stop Embracing It

Breaking news coming out of the “WABWW” situation room: Dating is kinda bullshit sometimes.

Lost amidst all the life/body changes and the social class warfare and the awk-warrrrrd-ness and the, you know, education of high school and college is the fact that, as a young person interested in meeting someone else of a corresponding sexual preference, you’re surrounded by prospects every single day. Furthermore, with so many different classes, activities and situations in which to meet your peers, there’s a new cast of characters every day to interact with. And there is literally something going on every weekend (Dances/mixers! Plays! Football games! Al-Queda meetings!) designed exclusively for you to meet new people, or to ask someone to go with you.

Unfortunately, you also have all the social savvy of a drunken hyena, which often derails the looooooove train before the train even comes to the first bend in the tracks– or, for the more tentative among us, keeps us from even trying to leave the station. Meeting girls/guys, asking them out/getting them to ask you out, and maintaining any semblance of a long term relationship is tricky enough when you’re not going through all those ch-ch-changes. (Also, not having a car kinda sucks, too, so protip: get a hold of one of those)

Combine the interpersonal inexperience with the abundance of opportunities, and dating in your educational years is like fishing on Lake Michigan with a pole made of taped-up twigs and sewing thread. And by the time you graduate college and hit the working world with your shiny, new “Pike Pick ‘Em 5000” and your fancy new motorboat, all the fish are gone.

Well, they’re not gone, just much harder to track down. Now you’ve got a job (hopefully) and bills to pay. (Technically, your studies were supposed to be your full-time job before but…I mean…come on)

Now you’re not meeting fresh-faced, similarly-aged folks every day, but a variety of grizzled, grumpy co-workers from all over the age map with at least one kid and at least one spouse, whose only interest is putting their head down and grinding through each work day while engaging in more verbal interaction with the dollar-store bamboo plant on their desk than with any other living thing within a 20-foot radius.

How are you to meet new friends now, let alone someone of the opposite sex (or same sex – hey, we live in a progressive society, man) whom you’d like to take out on the town sometime? You could just stay/reunite with your college/high school sweetheart, but you two could have become very different people in the last few years. (Also there is usually the pre-requisite of having one first – no guarantees)

You could meet someone at the bar or the club, but bars are best for hanging with a couple buddies and catching up/watching the game, and clubs are usually too loud to actually interact with people anyway. (But hey, if “no verbal communication” is a huge factor in who you’re looking for, by all means)

You could ask someone out from work, but dipping the pen in company ink is a minefield. What if it doesn’t work out and you have to see the person every day afterwards? What if someone at the office finds out and it creates a conflict of interest? What if you work at a sewage facility? What if you're a priest?

Then, there’s that last bastion of blind dating bliss – online dating.

My friend and I met a couple in Baltimore last summer who’d met on OKCupid, a popular and supposedly effective free dating site, six months prior and swore by it. Albeit with an extremely small sample size, meeting people online has at least proven to be somewhat successful. It’s become a popular enough option that dozens of niche dating sites pop up every day: Farmers Only, Christian Mingle, Black People Meet, IJuggleChainsawsForALivingAndIHopeYouDoToo.com, etc.

For better or worse, social media is society’s new method of communication and keeping in touch, so while you’re “liking” every status with a Justin Timberlake reference in it or sharing the overused meme du jour, why not try to meet someone who ALSO likes Justin Timberlake and sharing overused memes?

So a couple months ago, my roommate and I made an OKCupid profile for another friend of ours (because we’re dicks) and, after seeing what it entailed (bragging about yourself and hoping someone bites), I gave it a shot for myself.

It’s a bizarre environment. Logging on, you are bombarded with pictures and percentages – generally, how strongly the site believes you and the person in the photo next to those numbers are connected. Profiles are generally variations of “I like to have fun! With my friends!” and “Don’t message me unless you have something interesting to say…or if you like to try new things, like I do!” You answer questions to improve your compatibility scores, which range from “Would you prefer good things happen to you, or interesting things?” to “Can you count to four?” You also get to see the last time someone logged in, which means other people are well aware that you’re logging on at 2 AM on a weekend after getting drunk and watching Meatspin for two hours.

The end result of all this: a few messages to total strangers, and little else. (Also, my ex from high school found me on it, which was....yeah)

Maybe online dating just isn’t for me. Maybe I’m just not looking for something like that right now. Naturally, though, the real answer was that I wasn’t being superficial enough.

A friend of mine told me about Tinder, a mobile app that connects to your Facebook profile, picks up on your likes and interests, then presents you with  photos of other Facebook users (not your friends, mind you, but total strangers who happen to live near you – so you do need to give it your location as well). Beneath the pictures are three buttons – a “yes” and “no” button, and an “info” button for people who actually want to go beyond the picture and see what one or two things the person enjoys. If you click no, it casts that person away, never to grace your screen again. If you click yes, it saves your answer and then connects you to that person if they find you as attractive as you find them (which is also determined through the yes-no thing above)

On the one hand, pretending physical beauty is not a major part of dating is pious nonsense. Attractiveness is almost always the first thing you notice about someone. You don’t have time to find out whether someone else likes slasher films or poetry or football, or knows how to fix cars, or how healthy their soul is, before your eyes/brain have determined whether or not they can fixate on that mug of theirs for longer than five seconds without pounding the “ABORT MISSION” button and averting your gaze elsewhere.

On the other hand, Tinder takes all the fun out of acting like a pompous asshole because it’s exactly what “The Facebook” used to be, or what “Hot or Not” was like for those of us with little to no interest in paying attention during computer class at school. If someone’s hitting you up on Tinder, it’s strictly off the basis of your looks (or, the looks of your model friend who also happens to be in your profile picture, which you’ve done just to confuse people).

It also fuels your desire for acceptance and drives you insane if you don’t get it. Why haven’t I gotten a message yet? Doesn’t anyone else find my picture studly and beautiful?  What’s wrong with me? I HATE THIS SHIT.

Even though there's nothing inherently bad about meeting people this way, it's obviously not for everyone, myself included. While the whole point is to find someone you're compatible during the few hours you're not working/eating/sleeping/watching "My Little Pony," something about using algorithms to find my "soul mate," or even a date for a random Friday night, seems weird to me.

It's cliche, but I do consider myself old-fashioned in this category. I like meeting people organically, getting to know them organically, finding out if I'd like to hang out with them more organically. It's more exciting and fun than booting up my laptop for five minutes a night and seeing who Deep Thought has rounded up for me.

So I think I’m done with online dating, at least as a serious option. It’s fun, but it’s basically just Twitter/Facebook with an extra dose of inadequacy. From now on, I’m back to just straight chillin’, homes, letting things just happen, meeting friends – and meeting women – the old fashioned way: by going back to what worked for me in school.

Why Losing Your Mind Over the Rolling Stone Cover is Total Horseshit

That's all.

One other thing: Enough complaining about how the cover makes him look like a rock star. The whole point of the Rolling Stone article is to document the progression of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from young Chechen immigrant to terroristic madman. This means looking at him like a human being without actually empathizing with him. For weeks after the bombing, many of us (myself included) were bombarded with details of the plot itself, all the while wondering, "Why? Why did they do it?" The article attempts to answer that. Hence, after months of pictures like this (and yes, I know these specific images came out today, but you know what I mean), we get one where he looks like a normal person.

WIth that said, Rolling Stone is still garbage. Carry on.

Kids Playing Sports! Everyone Look!

I read a lot like I drive: I’ll start at a nice, safe pace, paying attention to little details and retaining all the information being thrown at me*. Then, about ten minutes in, I’ll start going faster and faster, my brain will stop sucking up the info, my eyes will glaze over, and before you know it, there I am flying off the Ben Franklin Bridge with three missing wheels and at least four dead pedestrians in the backseat after flying through my windshield. (I’m a dangerous reader)

*-I also used to speed read before an exam in college much like I speed to work now when I’m late: I crank some Queens of the Stone Age, drink about 15 Dr. Peppers, blaze ahead with no regard for human life… and before you know it, there I am flying off the Ben Franklin Bridge with three missing wheels and at least four dead pedestrians in the backseat after flying through my windshield.

Point is, my reading patterns are sporadic; it can take me five minutes to bang out “Fountainhead” or five weeks to get through the foreword of “Everybody Poops.” (I’m assuming it has a foreword – otherwise, I feel really dumb about how my college thesis went)

So while I haven’t forgotten about this (we’ll get back to that sooner than you think), I’ve also been catching up on a backlog of magazines I’ve received over the last few months. You know, the intelligent stuff. This includes ESPN The Magazine, which I’ve been receiving intentionally or otherwise for about six years. For the most part, ESPN the Mag specializes in theme issues nowadays. The Money Issue. The Athletes Take Over Issue. The Check Out These Nekkid Pix Issue.

This past month, we got to the “Kids in Sports” issue.  Adorning its cover is Dylan Moses, a 6’1”, 215-pound running back from Baton Rouge, La. who’s been sitting on scholarship offers from LSU and seven other schools for a little over a year. He starts his day at 4:30 AM with 400 pushups, 800 sit-ups, 10 minutes of jump rope and a mile run.

Dylan is 15. He received his first offer in 8^th grade.

In 8^th grade, my biggest decision was whether to spend my Saturday afternoons playing basketball or video games, and I was pretty bad at picking between that. By my senior year of high school, I was barely able to pick what college I wanted to attend with my family asking me about it daily, let alone dozens of journalists and several rabid fan bases.

The article cites a handful of other examples of barely-teens being asked to make decisions most high school seniors dread – where to go to college, who to trust their career training with – because they happen to run like gazelles and throw footballs across different area codes.

This has not-so-secretly been happening for years. ESPN has made signing day, the day most top high school recruits choose which college campus they’ll be gracing their presence with, a nationally televised event. T.J. McConnell, former point guard for my alma mater Duquesne, signed with the Dukes two full years before graduating high school. He’s now at the University of Arizona, transferring after his sophomore year.

This really started with LeBron James, though. There were plenty of high school basketball players who chose to forgo college and enter the NBA Draft before the league began to require players be one year removed from high school before declaring. Some, like Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, became superstars, while others, like Kwame Brown and Darius Miles…didn’t.

But none of them received the attention LeBron did. Many writers wondered if he shouldn’t be allowed to declare for the draft after his junior year of high school. James agreed, petitioning the league to allow him into the 2002 draft despite having not finished high school.

Instead, LeBron was forced to wait until the 2003 draft, when he was selected first overall by his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Seven years later, LeBron left the Cavs for the Miami Heat in a nationally televised event known as “The Decision,” a 75-minute ESPN program exclusively devoted to announcing where LeBron would play the next year.

It’s amazing – simply amazing, I tell you – that a player who received nonstop media attention since before he could drive, who was referred to as “The King” before he was allowed to vote, who had his first slew of shoe deals and sponsorships before he could legally take his first sip of alcohol, managed to grow into an out-of-touch egomaniac.

LeBron has dealt with near constant international attention better than most physical prodigies. This is far from a scientific study, but is it at all possible that giving extremely young athletes an unbelievable amount of media attention could be bad? Could inflate their big heads, or cause them to collapse under pressure?

The easy response is to blame the media, blame ESPN, but there’s a reason they keep producing issues like this and covering signing day – we dig it. We marvel at it, and the media supply what we want. If we ever stopped watching, they'd stop broadcasting it. (This is why I also roll my eyes whenever people bitch about some of the garbage ESPN airs, or when a league has a lockout. Stop watching or buying the product if it pisses you off so much. Hit 'em in the wallet. Arrange an actual boycott)

Maybe I’m totally off base and I’m just becoming a grumpy old man. Maybe I’m just ashamed that 15-year-old Dylan could most certainly beat the stuffing out of me in any athletic endeavor.

I’m simply wondering if it’s worth marveling at a phenom for a few minutes with the knowledge that they’ll likely never live a normal adolescence. Particularly with YouTube and Twitter and the like, it’s more likely than ever that these actual “diaper dandies” will be overexposed to the point of stunting their maturity.

Ah, who are we kidding? Let’s watch this two-year-old shoot a basketball.

To: Heat. From: Matt. Subject: F*** OFF

The summer solstice comes on Friday, June 21 this year. According to “scientists” and “officials” and “everyone else,” this is our annual indicator of the start of summer, which, with all due respect, is bullshit.

For about two weeks now, I’ve spent my nights super-glued to my bed, sweat fastening my skin to the fitted sheet on the rare occasion my fitted sheet has actually lived up to its name, or to the mattress itself for the lion’s share of my evenings, when my fitted sheet curls up in some corner of my bed as if recoiling from my never-ending perspiration.

On any given day, my body runs about as hot as your standard diesel engine. When the temperature skyrockets here in the Northeast, the only places I’m capable of sleeping comfortably are a freezer chest or someplace 80 feet below the floor of our basement. (I’m working on making that room happen. Trust me, the sub-basement has serious Mitt Romney-type potential).

I will always take exercising in the cold as opposed to the heat. You can always layer up to combat the cold. While most people get starry-eyed at the prospect of living in Southern California, South Florida or some other tropical locale, my mouth starts to dry up just thinking of living someplace where the average temperature rests “comfortably” at 75.

So no, I’m calling shenanigans on this whole nonsense about summer starting in late June. This isn’t an outright denouncement of the season of bands, beaches and boozing, though; simply the small sliver of time I spend each night pretending I care about how I perform at work the next day by getting my 40 winks.  Come summer, that usually gets cut to somewhere between 10-15 winks. I’m typing this from my bed right now and it’s only a matter of time before I’ll need a spatula to help peel my skin off my laptop.

The biggest problem, really, is the lack of ways to counter the heat. Yes, even in a first-world nation in a relatively modern home complete with luxuries such as “electricity” and “windows,” I have proven terrible at combating high temperatures.

I’ve tried…

Wearing less clothing: Unfortunately, I don’t fit into my old pair of Daisy Dukes anymore, so no dice.

Opening a window: Not effective, plus it lets in even more of the sound of the enormous freight train that comes by our house every night right around 11:30. This train has to be five miles long. It never ends, and it’s louder than an electrocuted herd of goats.

WHOO WHOO HERE COMES THE "FUCK YOU" TANK ENGINE RUMBLIN DOWN DA TRACKS

Air conditioning: No, hold on a minute, I'm not done with this train. It rolls by at 2:30 AM too and I swear it tries to outdo its prior decibel production. It's the locomotive equivalent of Justin Verlander: instead of wearing down as the night goes on, it actually gets stronger as it works. If I could see the damn thing, I am positive every one of its cars would be extending me a pair of anthropomorphic middle fingers at me the whole way by, too. Jeebus, Mary and Joseph.

Anyways. Oh, the air conditioning unit. The oasis in the desert. When it works, it’s like manna from heaven. When it works. Which, at my current place of residence, it does not.

At my old apartment in West Chester, the centralized air conditioning was sparsely used for a few reasons. One, my two roommates were extraordinarily cold people, which didn’t mesh well with my brick-oven body, so they didn’t see having the air on as a cost-effective maneuver. (Having the heat blasting all winter, though, was a necessity, of course)

It didn’t help my case that our air conditioning barely worked there, either. On the rare occasion it did operate, it took five hours to get the room to a noticeably lower temperature. The air conditioning became one of those things we told friends we had so they’d actually come over. Every time they’d ask if the air was really on, one of us would “check on it” by flipping a couple switches and knobs on the thermostat aimlessly with a confused look on our face.

Of course, the usual work-around for this is…

A fan: Nothing beats a fan when you’re looking to blow hot air all around a room. Much like the Catholic Church, fans don’t solve a problem, they just move it from place to place and hope nobody notices. (I'll see you in hell, guys)

My aforementioned roommates in West Chester let me use their desk fan in my room at night to counter the sweltering heat, which basically only stung my skin and dried out my throat. (Yeah, I know)

There’s one option I haven’t tried: a cold shower before bed to cool down. But what’s the fun in that when you could…

Just jump in a tub of ice water and sleep there like a normal person without a brain condition.

Yeah. That’s better.