squidbag

Demons

Reading a book about Kurt Cobain's legacy right now, and I have happened upon a part of it that deals with the recurrent fact that Aberdeen (where he's from) and surrounding small burgs have not wanted to erect statues or name anything after him because "won't somebody think of the children" and "what kind of message does that send about drugs?"

You know, guys - he made music, too.

Why this is relevant right now? Why THIS, of all things (okay, there was also a copyright thing I had to deal with) pulled me out of a three-year break from blogging? Because I feel like there's an obvious parallel to our current series of escalating (or swirling) situations. Should Kurt Cobain's drug use and suicide and poor-decision-making skills fuck up our relationship with his music? I would land in the "decidedly not" camp, where I would prepare Pennyroyal Tea and for any other recent camp arrivals. But is it that easy?

People don't want to watch the Netflix House of Cards because Kevin Spacey's recently been outed as a career Uncle Touchy Rapist Dickhead. Granted, he's a sexual predator, and while his victims have every right and responsibility to speak out, shouldn't his other actions be able to stand on their own? Does this have more to do with what we imagine (him diddling unwilling guys off camera during the production of Se7en) than his actual performances? I think it does. I think he pissed in the pool of his own performances, and now we don't want to get in any more. I don't know if that's fair, and I don't really care if it is or not. Everyone's going to have to deal with this in their own way.

I do NOT think that it is an endorsement of someone's past behaviors to experience their art, though. Unless their behavior kind of fucks up the whole basis upon which you were evaluating them and their output, the two should be able to be separated. Not every act carries every other act with it. Know how I know? Hitler is worse than Jeff Dahmer. You can look it up. He is. Stalin, for some reason, is only worse than Hitler depending upon who you talk to, but at least there's a metric in place there. So, yes - for matters of egregious and inarguable evil, we have matters of degree. We just do. Otherwise, "worst shooting in American history" would be a meaningless fucking phrase. By that same token, it is not necessary to evaluate someone's whole life based on one event.

Let me clarify: Spacey and Weinstein and O'Reilly and the President are obviously sexual predators. They keep doing the same things, over and over again, forcing themselves on others as part of a sexual power dynamic - so, yeah, defining their entire output through gross-tinted glasses is certainly fair, and probably logical. Do that if you see fit. And if you're a victim? Well, you know better than anyone else, so no one's going to tell you what to do. Also - the zeitgeist of people coming forward (blogs say "zeitgeist," it's a thing) to force what one can only hope is a paradigm shift (also "paradigm shift") in the patriarchy (that one's not funny anymore) is ultimately a good thing, so whatever pushes that up the mountain, good on it.

However. One act does not define a person. If it did, Mother Teresa would be only a racist, while Dr. King would be only a philanderer. Gandhi would be only a misogynist, and most American soldiers would simply be hired murderers. By contrast, Charlie Manson would be a musician, Jim Jones a preacher, and Hitler a landscape painter. You could pick one single act of any other kind committed by any of those people and define them by that. "That Gandhi, what a cloth-maker," is simply not a thing that people say. People are all the sum total of all of the things that they do, and we all have to weigh that out. Context is hugely motherfucking important. People who meet me now think I'm both better & worse than people who have known me for a while, because they're working off of a limited data set.

I say all of that to say this: Don't let actors (or anyone else) fuck up your enjoyment of their output. They did a job, that job is done, and it's a separate act from all the other stuff they've done. Learn to ruefully shake your head and appreciate and/or judge things in a full context. This is a part of growing older. You can enjoy NFL football and hate criminality, concussions and morons. You can like Heinlein's writing and acknowledge that he was a fucking terrible human. Everyone's got a hard-on for Agatha Christie again right now, but WOW at the racism in her books. Her mysteries are awesome, but I can see how black people and Indians would categorically turned off by them. I don't let Tim Allen's cocaine-dealing and Republicanism fuck up the Toy Story movies for me, and you shouldn't either. If you can't get around something, fine. We can sympathize. But if someone else can, you probably ought not judge.

NFL-uva A Problem

I don't know if you know this, but when you go on Facebook, take to comments fields and indeed, interject into actual IRL conversations stuff like "Abolish Football," you sound like an ignorant and hypocritical reactionary. I have this on good authority, too - mine.

Those of us who enjoy the game understand as best we're able that you wouldn't miss it - you don't "get" it and you never have, and this is the time of year that you get to feel superior to people who insist on watching a game. You don't "get" football in the same way that I don't "get" fashion, cat videos, reality TV, religion, blueberries and people who "don't read." "Getting" something is often a transcendant and ephemeral experience that is impossible to quantify for someone else. The act of even attempting to explain it renders the explanation useless. This much I understand. I also understand that when a thing is broken, our society conditions us to throw it away rather than fix it, and that this is perhaps not always the wisest or most responsible course of action, no matter what you reflexively fucking opine.

The NFL is indeed horribly broken - the culture of domestic abuse, so long the subject of studies and research, has now been captured in actuality on film and in photos, perpetuated by homunculoid creatures like Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson. The NFL's decade spanning cover up of the long-term affects of concussions and other head injuries to players (as chronicled here and here in League of Denial) was, perhaps, criminal, and certainly immoral. The way the organization inconsistently and laughably "enforces" its own rules - Sean Payton and Bill Belichick, I'm looking at you - erodes any faith the average person has in fair play at a high level. Most teams pay their cheerleaders minimum wage or less - exposure (no pun intended) is meant to be an intangible perk of the job. Insensitivity predominates: the Redskins steadfastly refuse to change their name, and no one's even talking about the Chiefs. To round this out, some quick names from recent history would include Pac-Man Jones, Tank Johnson, Michael Vick, and Plaxico Burress.

Some teams seem to have bigger problems as a franchise than others: Peterson's Vikings had a big rape party on a boat a few years back, but we have short memories, so no one's talking about that anymore, while Rice's Ravens had another famous Ray who may or may not have been a murderer, depending upon who you ask or what might have been in the backseat. Tennessee's Titans had a QB who threw his shoulderpads at fans, and there's also the murder of Steve McNair, shot by his mistress. The beloved Packers had the virulently anti-gay (and possibly racist) Reggie White, and let's not forget (no matter how much he'd like you to) Brett Favre's molestation charges and dick pictures. The Steelers still have a maybe-rapist at QB; the Cowboys have Jerry Jones. I'll just leave that last one for you to consider.

(As a quick aside: those of you upset at the appeal of Ray RIce's suspension? We're mad at the NFLPA, which is the Players' Union, not the NFL itself. Focus. Breathe.)

Teams aren't the league, though, even if the league is ultimately responsible for their (the teams and the players) behavior on some level; if the McFood down the street screws up your EggMac, Big Mickey doesn't care; it's the franchise owner who needs to work out the kinks in the production line, or he gets penalized. The same is true of players - they fuck up and we run to the NFL. Why? Why aren't we mad at the team first? The franchise? The owners and the coaches? Skipping the chain of command is illogical and counterproductive - I don't write the President over potholes.

So the league needs to make changes. Real ones, not whitewashing. Abolishing the NFL, or even football, (aside from getting low marks because of its inherent "never gonna happen" status) seems like a cheap and poorly thought-out workaround from what we really should be doing, which is teaching our (society's) men how to behave. You can't complain that we live in a culture where all the rules for not having rape happen are directed at women instead of the DON'T RAPE PEOPLE rule we should teach all men and everyone, and then let players off the hook for being criminal assholes by abolishing the league. Make the league clean up the mess, make players fix themselves and be accountable or they can all face crippling fines. If they go Chapter 11 because they can't clean up their act, good - but it will take a long time for that to happen, and in the meantime, a lot of women's shelters get funded.

Also: there've been 713 arrests in the last fourteen years of NFL players. Most of those are for domestic violence. In a given season, there are about 1700 active players in the NFL, most of whom are not fucking up. (Since we live in America, the fact that they have not been arrested or indicted means you are obligated to assume that most of them are not fucking up.) On the whole, the NFL employs about 15,000 people per season, directly, and that doesn't count the people who have jobs at various venues, or in any of the other industries associated with American football.

Abolishing the league because a great many - but not most - of the people in it are morally bankrupt man-children is like killing the guys on either side of the one who steps out of line. It's extremist. Is that who we are? If you watch The Simpsons, are you tacitly endorsing Rupert Murdoch & by extension, FoxNews? If you buy a General Motors vehicle, are you okaying potentially fatal cover-ups? If you're a Catholic or Muslim, does that mean you're fine with everything people in those groups do? By living in America, are you saying that you're okay with everything your government does? OF COURSE NOT. You're taking the bad with the good because wrecking the whole system, while sometimes the answer, usually isn't. Punk's great until you want to put out an album.

Replacing Roger Goodell is a sound move - he's a tool. He could probably be replaced with an automated "CYA generator" that just runs on a laptop and spits out hype and half-assed "solutions." He's obviously only concerned about PR (and money), and moves only when it benefits him (with money), so he needs to move on, now - I'd like to see the NFL run by a woman. Not a token figurehead - a woman in actual charge of football, making league changes.

Presidential Football Dream

So, last night I had this dream.

There was a huge open lawn space upon which someone had scrawled a hasty gridiron and thrown up some rudimentary uprights. It was for football, and I, and some random acquaintances and friends of mine, had the honor of playing the sport of kings with a number of American historical political figures, mostly Presidents.

Reagan's not as good as you'd think, it turns out. Obama runs the ball like crazy, but then so does Teddy Roosevelt. And JFK. Lincoln's a great QB; makes sense, all those years of splitting rails giving him upper body strength and his height gives him reach and command of the field, while the debates with Douglas have instilled in him the quick thinking you need from a team leader. Ford and Nixon can both play, but Ike's nothing special. You've never seen a nose tackle like Taft, though McKinley was right in there. I remember seeing Truman and Grant on the sidelines, chatting with FDR. Alexander Hamilton was keeping score and Barry Goldwater was calling plays for one side. Henry Kissinger and John Madden were doing commentary.

Offspring was playing their half dozen or so songs I know while the game was happening. There was a little raised stage near one of the endzones, and they were set up, just running through this six song set list, over and over. I'm not particularly fond of Offspring.

You think this is a geeky dream, but just wait.

During "Come Out and Play" I was in the midst of trying to tackle Bill Clinton and bring him down before he could score when Al Gore got in the mix for some unknown reason. It was totally illegal - there was definitely a horsecollar in there - and since I already had a pretty good lock on Slick Willie and just needed to put my weight into it I kept with the play, but from within the dream, I began to instantly analyze whether or not maybe this little scrum represented Gore's need to separate himself and his post-Washington legacy from the negative aspects of the Clinton White House.

And then I woke up.

Penn State

An old axiom: "You will regret that which you did not do far more than that which you did do."

Probably true.  I'll bet Joe Paterno regrets not chasing down the allegations of rape happening in the showers of the Penn State locker room.  I'll bet he really regrets it now that he's out of a job, asked to fuck off and has his "legacy" ruined beyond repair, but that's attrition, not contrition.  I learned that in Bible school and also from Morgan Freeman.  What he should have done is trusted that his linebacker coach, Mike McQueary, was telling him something that was so urgent and so important and so completely fucked up that it needed to be looked into right now and stopped immediately, instead of whatever it was he did do, which I can't find anywhere, but what must have been a sort of "passing the buck" up the chain of command.  Meanwhile, a predator systematically raped kids for years.  Good job, guys.

I get that you're attached to JoePa and stuff because football, especially college football, in the United States is like a religion, and as such, often makes blinkered, unthinking assholes out of people.  And because he's been around since fucking LBJ was in office, and has 409 victories.  Right.  And one colossal fucking failure, the failure to remember that you work in a school, and as such, are charged with the education, protection and fostering of children, even if some of them aren't strictly minors.  The football program IS NOT more important than the school to which it's attached, no matter what you think, and the fact that we act like it is in this country is one of the reasons we as a society just might be in decline.  Bread and circus, folks.

In fact - and this will be hard for some people who really love it to accept - football, in and of itself, is not important at all.  When it inspires and tells stories or has heroism inherent, then, yeah, it's doing something.  But it doesn't matter, not any more than a TV show or a comic book or a cookie or a rose or gentle wind on an autumn day.  Might be nice, but pretending that it matters makes us into something less than people.  There's nothing wrong with enjoying football, but ultimately, the word "game" in there should be a BIG clue - it's an amusement for most, a recreation for some, but not important - at all.  Sorry.

And JoePa?  Well, the great and powerful and venerated Joe's kind of a crotchety asshole.  You might even have seen something like this coming.  He lost his temper and did something to a ref that the law would call "assault" back in 2002, and made light of an alleged sexual assault on campus in 2006.  And then, of course, there's this, which is hardly a phenomenon confined to Penn State, but taken with everything else, well - it makes kind of a pattern.

What I'm more than a little confused by is the lack of outrage over McQueary having ACTUALLY SEEN what was happening and not having stopped it or called the cops himself.  You know what qualifications are required to call cops over something like that?  A pulse, a spine and a brain.  That's it.  McShithead's apparenlty lacking in one of these important categories.  Now, of course, the university Prez is fired and Paterno's gone - but McQueary's on "paid administrative leave?"  What the fuck is that about?  Any Penn State riot that misses burning down that guy's fucking house is a pointless riot.

Now of course, we're past the "Penn State Is Emotionally Retarded" stage with the riots, and we're into the other half of the Penn State brain holding candlelight vigils for the victims.  While I'm glad that they seem to have (sort of) moved past the idocy stage, with all of the campus moodswings they're into right now, I think you'd need Dramamine just to go to class.  You know 'class?'  Those things they have at colleges that aren't football?

 

A 9/11 Remembrance

I'm doing this this morning because this is what you do.  I don't really know what else to do, and I've already done this, this, and this, which is basically just like what I'm about to do, so if you go read it, you'll either be really bored or catch me in an inconsistency.

Ten years seems no more significant to me than one or five or seven years, so I'm not sure why the media's erect right now except for the fact that we, as a culture, find nice round numbers satisfying.  Ten years ago, on a chilly Tuesday Wisconsin morning, my wife Christie woke me up with a phone call about a plane hitting one of the Twin Towers.  (Christie has subsequently awakened me with news about the Columbia, and about Johnny Cash's death.  I try to always be up before her now.)  This was before everyone could tell you exactly which tower was which with a glance, and when they still had them in establishing shots in shows like Friends, or anything that happened in New York, and when the Coup was going to release this, and the Spider-Man poster had the reflection of the WTC in the eye of his mask.  So she didn't tell me which tower it was because she didn't know at that moment.

As I recall, I don't think she actually woke me from a sound sleep, I think she just got me out of bed, where I was soaking up morning quiet. The mood was good before that morning - four friends of ours had married recently, and Christie was really amazingly pregnant and would be giving birth soon.  I recall standing on our rug - the one Max would eventually pour white paint on - and watching the coverage of the attacks.  I still went to work, but I did nothing productive or of consequence all day except watch primary Big Three network coverage on my old TV with the stickers on it and rabbit ears sitting on the edge of the work table with not enough extension cord.  Truth be told, that day is part of the reason I keep hanging on to that TV.

We had a discussion group that night - which was supposed to be a Comics Night where adult friends of mine sat around and read comics at one another - and I eventually put an American flag out in front of our house.  I was not then, and have not really ever been a nationalist, but I did feel two things: one, it was the quick, available symbol of the time, and remembrance of the dead was paramount, and also I was deeply, internally offended for the 3000 people who had the promise of what I believe America to be about - the right to live free from other people's oppressive beliefs, a promise that rarely pans out like I think it should - ripped away from them.  I displayed the flag then for the same reason I hold Captain America as my favorite superhero - it's all about the idea, the promise and the responsibility.  My flag came down, as did many, when we saw how it was getting exploited in a post 9/11 world.

The next 17 days for me is kind of a blur - I remember getting the newspaper on the 12th and holding onto it, knowing that it would important, and doing likewise with TIME magazine and Marvel Comics' fundraiser issues.  I basically bought one of those for every person I knew who I thought would want one.  I remember the absolute certainty that we would end up going to war over this, no matter what, and the outpouring of support and brotherhood from the rest of the world.  Yeah, remember that?  I remember when TV football was insane with 9/11 stuff, and when it was inescapable.  For a long time.  At the end of 17 days, my world refocused completely with the birth of my son.

Now, I'm looking forward to the rebuilding, which I posted a picture of at the top of this blog.  I want my family to be able to go there when everything is opened up and see what there is to see when we put things back together.  Destruction takes only moments.  Building takes a long time, and is usually worth it. I look forward to seeing the results.

June Days

It's been a challenging series of highs and lows the last few days, and the rain falling like a hysteric's tears over the lightning outside would comfort me if I thought the intention to wash it all away might possibly be behind it.  C's asleep on the couch with the remotes and a giant bottle of soda, wrapped in a blue comforter while Max half-snoozes at 43 minutes past midnight watching the first couple of Harry Potter films in reverse order.  Abby's crashed in the general chaos of play that is Max's room, and I'm taking a short break from finishing The Hunger Games, a book I'm enjoying a lot more than I thought I would.  The escape is necessary.

We went from the heady time-burning and pleasantries of an out-of-town visit straight into C's final NiH performance of the year, and one at which she spoke emotionally and elegantly on rights and reasons.  I once again worked stage left, and it was harder than it has been in times past, but also more enjoyable.  The next day, our guests moved on, and we helped a friend move out of his current situation and into a better one.  Much sweat and joy was experienced.  Last night we also had our 16th anniversary dinner, which was a welcome respite from the rest of the world, and much needed time together.  Also, it made me miss a Stanley Cup game it sounds like I'm glad I missed.  The good feelings continued into this morning, and then the day went to shit.

Beginning with failure errands (mostly) and ending with family tumult, the back three-quarters of today uniformly sucked, and I'm glad they're now in the past.  I'm tired of outpouring and am thinking of simply retreating to my rooms with a stack of books and large glasses of water.  Until Monday, which is the newest source of household friction; the WBC is coming here on Monday, and we can't seem to agree on an approach to our counter-protesting.

I've had "an incident" with them before, so I know what NOT to do, but...

Just The Good Part

I had dinner guests last night and was not watching the first game of the finals for Lord Stanley's Cup, (why does no one play for Lord Stanley's jock?) but for those of you like me, who missed the first 99% of the game, this is all you need to see, this instant that soaked hundreds of Canuck pants with beer and urine. Now you're caught up.

Moving Mom

Psychologists have something called the Holmes and Rahe stress indicator, which like all really valuable scientific tools quantifies the seemingly unquantifiable through the assignation of somewhat random numbers.  It's useful for determining how close a person is to major health catastrophe brought on by the stress in their life.  A quick look at this will explain exactly what happened to my mom on Saturday during what was supposed to be her move from Chattanooga to Murfreesboro.

On Friday night, my son went to a birthday party, and my wife and daughter went camping.  I used my first time by myself in months to clean my house for 2 and half hours and watch BASEketball, which I had not seen in years.  Max didn't even get in until 10, and I don't think either of us was really out until 11:45 or so.

Cue Saturday morning, which now seems like an eternity ago.  I got up at 7, got ready, got Max up and dressed, and we met my mom's friend Crystal and her mom in the parking lot of our apartments at a little after eight.  After an ATM and breakfast for Max stop, Max went to hang out with his grandfather all day.  They hit three stores for Free Comic Book Day, got Chinese lunch, played Monopoly and Max went to a school cookout.  So he had an awesome day.  Not so, the rest of us.  Crystal, her mom and I made the drive to Chattanooga in what seemed like much less than the typical 2 hours and change because we were getting along well and joking around.  We got to my mom's house at about 10:40 CST, and she was mostly packed - we only moved stuff for a little while, odds and ends and last minute items.

Not long after this, my mom had to lie down on the floor, and without going into any details, we ended up in short order calling EMTs who picked her up and took her to the hospital.  There began - for us - the long wait to find out what was wrong.  Essentially, what was wrong was that my grandmother's not been well, there's been no power since the tornadoes, the water's been off for 24 hours, my mother's not been eating or drinking properly, and some of her normal medications didn't care for that so much.  So, the ER, followed by the ICU.  She is still there, undergoing tests and observation, but she's much better and her blood pressure's near where it ought to be now - she hopes to be in the 'Boro by Tuesday.  After much waiting (during which I finally ate a BLT and called basically everyone while watching a lot of TNT's Saturday line-up) I visited with her for a couple of hours yesterday evening before deciding that the most helpful thing to do would be to take the 22 foot moving truck with all of her worldly goods in it and bring it to Murfreesboro.

Before I could do this, I had a physical altercation with a security guard, helped murder a trashcan, and had to get one of my mom's soon-to-be-former neighbors, RIck, to help me get the damn truck off the mountain.  Rick was awesome.  Last night, between 9ish and 11ish CST, I drove the moving truck over Monteagle (my iPod saved me with an excellent mix) and back here, missing the playoff game and parking the truck in everyone's way outside.  I came home and crashed hard.

Got up early this morning, about 6:30, and helped Max and Abby ready the eggs, pancakes, strawberries and coffee that went with the Mother's Day gift, card, and video that they had made on Thursday.  My lovely wife got to sleep until 10, then enjoy about two hours of Mother's Day before we got word that we could move my mom's stuff into her apartment here without her signing stuff.  We got keys to the place, cut the lock off the truck, and started really getting stuff in there at about 1:45.  Special thanks goes out to Ron, who helped me kick off the process, Nathan, from C's chorus, Laura Dove and Mike, Steve and Randy, and Christie for helping me get it all in there by 4:45. On the first hot, breezeless day in over two weeks, natch.

We wrapped it up (I printed Steve another copy of the thing I'm working on) and everyone seemed to be crashing pretty hard - I, for one, didn't move from my couch for almost 2 hours.  When I did, I walked the dog, squared away the final stuff in my mom's place, gave her keys back to the front office, went to grocery store, returned home for my wallet, went back, bought food, and then had my car be weird to me.  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!  Not the alarm - a consistent sound that goes forever.  I had to pull the battery cables off.  The kids and I had a good laugh about it once it was over, but what the hell was that?

The coda to a bizarre and exhausting weekend.  I crash now.

Halftime Fantasy Death

After Cher, Jr. fucked up the National Anthem, I didn't see a bright musical future for Super Bowl 45.  I was going to just mute, but got overruled.

Let me start by saying that there are Black Eyed Peas songs that I like.  But not lately.  Lately, they seem to have become a vortex of American pop culture on auto-flush, sampling things and remixing things that have only been out of the public senses for a few years.  Not long enough.  When you remix Dick Dale, and we all know it's only because Tarantino stuck his music in some movies, you bend the culture in an uncomfortable way.

I realize that the Peas in their current incarnation are a business calculation - a product designed to be mainstreamed and marketed to the widest mass of music-buying lifeforms, and that stealing hooks from other works and rapping - sort of - over them,  is a tried and true formula, and people lap that shit up and shell out dough.  That realization does not help me in dealing with the Peas, especially when they show up and yell their shit wearing Tron suits in the middle of the big game.  I was sincerely wishing for an electrically based wardrobe malfunction that would suddenly kill them all, and take the absence of such as further proof of the non-existence of God.  Slash was probably secretly thanking himself for the pre-game bump of heroin and counting dollar signs while the Neon High School Band formed arrows and hearts and shit on the field like a Robert Klein comedy nightmare.

Who is the worst of the Black Eyed Peas?  Well, I used to like will.i.am, he's lefty, and has flow, except for, it seems, last night.  He's a fashion guy, and was arguably the best thing about Wolverine: Origins.  Fergie's a hottie, and can sing, but it's easy to forget both of those things when she screeches like a harpy from the 50 yard line.  The fact that she was a Girl Scout and a champion speller go a long way towards redeeming her in my book.  Then there's Applehead App-For-That, and if it weren't for singing shit in Tagalog, triumphing over being blind, and kicking the ass of a pretty hard life, I'd be inclined to hold his dumbass name against him.  That leaves Taboo, the dancing rap ninja.  He gets my vote.

Still, at least you can say that the NFL got what they paid for.  Another lowest bidder triumph!

Shut Up Now, Vince Young

Good-bye Vince Young.  You're gone.  You're history.  You're out of here, and you represent 12 million plus dollars that the Titans franchise can spend on things that might actually help the team, something you've utterly failed to do in half a decade.  So it's time for you to do the one thing that would have saved your job as starting QB for our team: SHUT THE FUCK UP.

It's not that you're a bad player.  When you can follow the rules, concentrate, keep your fucking mouth shut and lead your team, the Titans do all right.  Not as well as we did in the 2008 season when you were benched for driving around town with a knee injury threatening bad behavior and Kerry Collins took the team to 13 and 3, but you do okay, too.  No, not a bad player.  A person of poor character, ruled by his emotions, and who does not have the wherewithal to lead a team.   And so you're done, and now, characteristically, you are going to whine about it to anyone who will listen, this time about how Coach Jeff Fisher never trusted you.

The USA Today article (amusingly labeled with the word "content") says that while Young accepts his firing (When was the last time you got a choice?  "You're fired!"  "No, I don't think so."  "Oh.  Well, we'll see you tomorrow, then.") he complains that Fisher never trusted him, skipping right over the fact that he was benched early in his career with the Titans for rule-breaking, misbehaved on and off the field, and never did much of anything to earn trust, something I guess he thought came for free.  Regardless, Jeff Fisher put up with a lot of shit from you - compelled no doubt, by many wins and Bud Adams - but reached his limit when you threw your little November tantrum after losing to the Redskins.  You can't cuss out and refuse to deal with the coach, dickhead, and this time, it cost you millions, and the opportunity to stay here and play football.  And Fisher?  He's staying.

Me?  I'm just hoping for a drama-free winning 2011 Titans season.  Bye-bye Vince.  I'm sure you think it's everyone's fault but yours.  Try and keep your mouth closed at your next job, yeah?