That's the goal of higher education, isn't it? To expose young people with a thirst for knowledge and experience to people and places and things they would never ordinarily confront? We all want our lives to look something like this I think

and college is what's supposed to propel us on that trajectory through our twenties until we achieve another level of wisdom in our thirties, upon having children before we are ready and getting married because there is nowhere else to take a relationship after 5 years once you've moved in together and bought a dog and a car together.

I was very much on that path until I settled into a well-paying paralegal job right out of college that required long hours and very little critical thinking. My first assignment was to put 75,000 printed out emails in chronological order and remove the duplicates. It took four months and a piece of my spirit. A year later, I was charged with assembling the Plaintiffs and Defendants trial exhibits from a previous case into binders for review. Each side had 2500 exhibits. By this time I'd earned enough leeway in my position to make certain executive decisions. It was up to me, and me alone, to determine which set would go in blue binders and which set would go in black binders. The Defendants exhibits would go in the black binders, I decided, because the Defendants were bad and black is the bad guy color. This project took two months to complete and culminated in a knockdown, drag out scream fest in my manager's office during my review when she told me the main reason I wasn't getting a full raise was because the exhibit binder project took longer than it should have. Shit like this went on for close to four years.

You'd think at some point I might start to question my intelligence, my competence. Start questioning the wisdom of my post-college decision making. You'd be wrong. I reverted back to my pre-college ways. I grew more intractable with subjective issues of good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, smart vs. dumb. Because I'd graduated in four years from a good school and I was smarter than most everyone I worked with, I didn't just think I knew everything...I KNEW I knew everything. The fact that my intellect was stagnating and my intellectual curiosity had all but disappeared never dawned on me. Until I realized what the hell I was doing about a year and a half before I quit and went to law school, my trajectory looked like the S&P 500 after Black Monday.

That was five years ago. I've spent much of the intervening time on a personal intellectual reclamation project. Questioning assumptions. Trying things I'd once hated. Watching, listening, and reading things I'd previously refused to watch, hear, or read. I've been remarkably successful, I think. My head is screwed on pretty straight for a guy who still cannot shake the innate sense of awesomeness that roils around inside him. One of the only things that has not changed since those early days, however, is my absolute disgust with olives, pickles, and Brussels sprouts. Although, now that I think about it, even that's not true.

Green-lighting a second season for a fantastic show like this seems like a no-brainer to you and me, but it was not such an easy call for NBC. The show suffers from chronically low ratings, thanks to a phenomenon in network television I like to call "People are Fucking Stupid." Some, like executive producer Jason Katims, blame the corporate marketing strategy as well. Regardless, the producers and the network are doing whatever they can to ensure that FNL succeeds this fall.

After two-stepping across NBC's primetime lineup last year, the show's eagerly awaited second season is scheduled to air in the more drama-friendly 9pm time slot on Friday nights (imagine that!). In addition, the DVD set of the first season is set for release in August, a month before it's second season premiere. The support and promotion efforts do not stop there, however. Producers are committed to leaving no creative stone unturned, no matter how odious the creature they may find underneath. And therein lies the rub.

TV Guide is reporting that the producers of Friday Night Lights are entertaining the idea of casting Rosie O'Donnell in a small, potentially recurring role in the upcoming season. From the article:

FNL execs are wooing the ex-View lightning rod to appear in an episode this fall. "Rosie's a big fan of Friday Night Lights, as we know from The View, and we heard she was interested in being on the show," executive producer Jason Katims tells me. "Usually we don't do any stunt casting, but we have a character coming up -- six or seven episodes into the new season -- of a female soccer coach who is really angry about all of the school's resources going to football. It's a really funny character and I think she'd be perfect for it.

"There's a scene where she comes in to see Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and slams a dead soccer ball on his desk and basically says, 'You're the guy who gets everything!'" Katims continues. "It's a really fun scene, and it's the one time I'm thinking of stunt casting."

Rosie Motherfucking O'Donnell.

That's quite the way for a show to jump the shark. The big fat, sweaty shark. Have Bissinger, Berg & Co. shot their entire creative load in one season? I suppose it's possible. American literary history is littered with authors who only had one great book in them. There's no reason to believe some television writers can't suffer a similar fate. Maybe FNL was destined for a single season run. Sure there are still several unresolved story lines, but the Dillon Panthers did win the Texas State High School Football Championship in the season finale. Maybe "stunt-casting" a lesbian water buffalo is a good way to generate viewership in a show that has already peaked. Of course, I don't think that's the case at all. Friday Night Lights boasts some of the best writers in network television, with the capacity to develop intriguing story lines for several seasons to come.

That said, how on Earth does anyone with artistic integrity (or a soul) even consider this move? You have a critically acclaimed show with a large ensemble cast that has, within a single season, grown into something greater than the sum of its parts. And in the service of better ratings for a network that has no business canceling a show right now, you want to add the ignorant, divisive, loud-mouthed star of "Another Stakeout"? That's like a chef spending a year working out his cassoulet recipe and then, once he's perfected it, deciding to add a turd because the restaurant hasn't been as busy as he'd like and he knows that a turd will get people's attention. I don't know about you, but I prefer my cassoulet the old fashioned way: turd-free.

In that vein, I hereby begin my campaign to KEEP ROSIE O'DONNELL OFF "FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS". Everyone who cares about the quality of television and the fate of its greatest network show should sign THIS ONLINE PETITION to do their part. This is as much about Friday Night Lights as it is about any other great show. Would you want that abrasive sea monster sliming her way across your favorite show?

I didn't think so.

SIGN THIS ONLINE PETITION and forward it along to your friends who aren't fucking stupid.

When we got to the frame store and she unfurled the poster so the framer could take its measurements, I was pleasantly surprised. The artwork was sleek and cool, and the concert the poster was from took place at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. That alone gets it a pass, I suppose. What does not get a pass is how fucking expensive framing is. I honestly had no idea. Somewhere in my mother's basement I still have a couple dozen movie and concert posters from college rolled together with their corners torn to shreds by scotch tape and thumbtacks. Hell, the last thing I tried to frame was my sister when she was 11, for flinging plastic bags of dog shit onto our neighbor's roof (there's no way an 11 year-old girl has that kind of arm).

Admittedly, the frames The Girlfriend selected were awesome. One beveled black. One almost scalloped and rustic gold in color. No matting, just frames. And it cost more than Robert McNamara paid for his entire education at Berkeley in the late '30s. Is that a fair comparison? Probably not. I don't really care. The point is, it wasn't cheap. Once The Girlfriend finished signing away her pound of flesh to Shylock the Framer, we stepped out into the bright, breezy spring afternoon and decided on The Cheesecake Factory as a good enough place to stop for a late lunch.

Think about that for a minute.

It wasn't long ago that bald men could barely get in the door simply to interview for vacant head coaching positions. The conspicuous lack of bald head coaches on NFL sidelines has irked smooth-pated players and assistant coaches for years. It came to a head, finally, in 1997 when the San Francisco 49ers, led by an abundantly coiffed Carmen Policy, hired a young, similarly coiffed college coach by the name of Steve Mariucci; passing over, much to the dismay of players and fans, the team's legendary bald offensive line coach, Bobb McKittrick.

Subsequently, McKittrick fell ill with an aggressive form of bile duct cancer that killed him a mere three years later. Many close to both McKittrick and the 49ers front office blame the spread of the cancer on the effect Policy's snub had on McKittrick. Put plainly, it broke his spirit. When reached for a response, Policy said "Who are you? How did you get in my house?" McKittrick was unavailable for comment..

The ensuing furor in 2000 reached such a pitch that the league's owners, at the urging of Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, hastily passed the Jack Kent Cooke Rule whereby teams are mandated to interview at least one bald person for each available head coaching slot.

Of course the rule came under immediately scrutiny from traditionalists and those in football's hirsute, old boys club who felt they were being railroaded into offering employment to potentially less qualified applicants. If you can't hold your hairline, the thinking went, how can you be expected to hold your O-Line? Ridiculous on their surface, these criticisms gained traction with the hiring and firing of Mike Tice by the Minnesota Vikings. It was a setback that nearly cost Lovie Smith his opportunity to coach the Chicago Bears.

Yet here we stand. February 1, 2007. The Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears are in the Super Bowl. And they are being led into battle in front of a global audience for professional football's most sought after prize by two bald men.

And then there is the moment six seconds into this clip that should remind anyone familiar with the wonders of internet porn of a popular fetish called a creampie.

For those of you keeping score at home, including The Girlfriend, I had no idea what a creampie was until a friend of mine told me about it. You can ask him if you want. His name is Joe and he lives in Canada. But he doesn't have a phone, so don't try to call him.

Go ahead, run for the border...and then watch it ooze back toward you

To preface, I have a number of friends who were born and raised in various places throughout The South. A few of them have told me, only partly tongue-in-cheek, that in some spots deep in the heart of the Confederacy, kids are still taught that Jews are born with tails and horns. I never took them seriously until I witnessed for myself what transpires in these two videos.

Warning: the audio isn't synched perfectly, and it isn't 100% SFW, but it's still ridiculously funny.

"I don't know. They're your friends. Are they KFC kind of people?" In anticipation of The Girlfriend saying yes even though they were doing the South Beach thing in the run-up to their wedding, I reached over for my laptop to do a store locator search on the KFC website.

"I think so. They're from the Midwest. Fried foods are part of our heritage."

"Aren't they on a diet?" I queried.

"Famous Bowls are totally pro-South Beach." I wanted to believe what she was saying. So did she.

"Totally. It's all protein. Chicken. Corn. Cheese. Gravy." I counted them off on my fingers.

"Exactly!" she said, with the enthusiasm of an addict being actively enabled.

We wouldn't even acknowledge the mashed potatoes. Yes, they are the first ingredient to go into the bowl. And yes, they are the base upon which the rest of the Famous Bowl is built; but they are not its essence. They don't matter. The mashed potatoes are not what the KFC Famous Bowl is really all about. Their importance is thoroughly overstated.

This must be what it feels like to be a Holocaust Denier.

I plugged Candy and Billy's zip code into the website's store locator. Jackpot. There were 4 KFCs within a mile and a half of their house. We were surprised at first--since there isn't two of anything in our immediate vicinity--but then we remembered that they lived on the gentrifying edge of the hood in Southeast.

For those of you unfamiliar with the nation's capital, The District is divided into 4 quadrants: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast. Its four corners meet at The Capitol and were established where they were, as far as I can tell, for two reasons: (1) to give all the white people a nice big safe place to live and go out (Northwest) and (2) to give all the cabbies that hang out around The Capitol and Union Station the opportunity to fuck the rest of us right in the ass with the city's quadrant-based fare system.

Northwest, where I live, is the biggest quadrant. Southeast, where Candy and Billy live, is the poorest (blackest). No wonder there are so many KFCs in their area. I was tempted to do a Yahoo! yellow pages search for liquor stores and check cashing places in their zip code, too, but I thought that might be a little presumptuous.

Curious, I logged onto The Girlfriend's iTunes and clicked on "Celebrity Playlists" to see what I could find. The first person's list to catch my eye was Al Gore's. Like his wife, his list was short, phony, bloated, and boring. What a shocker.

Inspired by the unabashed smugness of the Democratic Party's Professor Emeritus of Incompetence, I posted his songs, his explanations, and my commentary below:

We left the restaurant arm in arm and cut briskly through the first truly chilly morning of the fall. We walked into the small bodega in search of champagne and orange juice. As neither of us had been inside before, and the only things we'd ever seen people exit with were wrapped in small brown paper bags, we were unsure if we would find either.

The store is incredibly small. It can't be more than 30' x 20' inside and, but for a narrow aisle that runs between the counter, the center display, and around along the beverage cases, every conceivable inch of floor space is occupied by something for sale. No matter where you stand it feels like something heavy is a mere shoulder's nudge away from collapsing and toppling over onto you. Picture an indoor track-and-field stadium where the grandstands extend vertically to the ceiling, the infield is a large double-sided display case, and the track is a narrow strip of dirty linoleum flooring wide enough for two anorexics or one disgusting homeless person wearing every piece of unwashed clothing he owns.

As you pull into your station of disembarkation, make eye contact with someone standing near the double doors who you think won't be getting off with you. As you exit the train and make your way toward the escalator or stairs toward street level, do whatever you can to maintain eye contact as long as possible. Then, right as you think the doors are going to close and the train is going to pull away, sneer at the person and flip them off.

Bonus points for running after the train and pressing your Bird against the train door window.

Double bonus points if you give them the Double Bird.

Triple bonus points if you miscalculate the train's departure*, the doors re-open, your target jumps out, and starts a fist fight on the platform.

Quadruple bonus points if you win.

Ask a Democrat what s/he's supposed to be and you elicit a chuckle that is followed closely by "I'm a Republican" at a volume intended to carry over to the other side of the room. Ask a Republican, and s/he tells you defiantly, "I'm a liberal. Isn't it obvious?"

I never expected anything even remotely creative to come from the D.C. crowd on this, the most pagan of holidays. When I got on the Metro this morning, headed to work, I could not have been more surprised. Half the people in my train car were dressed up.

The first celebrant I saw was a young guy seated by the double doors.

First, a cumulus cloud of the most savory of mashed potatoes is placed at the bottom of a remarkably sturdy plastic bowl. Atop the cloud, much like the angels and cherubs of Greek and Roman legend, roasted corn and perfectly fried bits of KFC original recipe chicken perch themselves resplendently. While I'm sure you would agree that this is a Vision unto itself, a judicious drizzling of golden gravy and a sprinkling of three shredded cheeses complement it like a sun shower at the end of the perfect picnic on a hot, summer day.

If BALCO was in the business of concocting monster fast food
combinations, this would be in their portfolio under "CH" for
"Christ that looks good."

Tucker Max - Internet celebrity, New York Times Best-selling Author.

Mark Ebner - Rudius Media blogger, New York Times Best-selling Author, poker fiend.

Andrew Breitbart - Runs his news website, New York Times Best-selling Author, West Coast editor of The Drudge Report.

Bill Dawes - Stand-up comedian, actor, and Rudius Media blogger (and the celebrity who lasted longest last month!).

Me - Somehow I register as an internet celebrity using this rubric

For more information including sign up bother Jordan Golson, he is the guy who runs all this shit.

Next month, the tournament will have all these people, but will add Paul Shirley, Maddox, TheBunny, and many more. As this grows and develops, they'll also get a site up where the results of each months tourney can be seen, and you can see how you did against the various celebs.

So you aren't too intimidated to join, understand that I am fucking horrible at poker. I have zero patience and take stabs at the pot like a blackjack player goes with an instinct on a particular hand. If I last more than 45 minutes it will be a fucking miracle. Sign up and have fun. Or don't and masturbate quietly in the dark, alone with the sound of your hand as it pummels your genitals.

Get sign-up information and more here: Internet Celebrity Poker - November 1, 2006 - 930PM EST

I grew up in Alameda, California. It's a small island town, geographically speaking, nestled against Oakland in the San Francisco Bay. When I was young it had a distinctive small town feel despite having 75,000 residents. It has a Norman Rockwellian Main Street (ours was Park St.) whose merchants host an art & wine fair each summer that draws thousands over the course of a traditionally very warm weekend. It has a cross-town rivalry between the two public high schools even though the schools reside on the same street and have students who have played soccer, Little League, and Rec League with and against each other since they were 9 years old. Unlike certain Orange County hamlets or Virginia coastal towns, Alameda does not boast a laundry list of famous citizens: only a few (Willie Stargell, Mrs. Fields, Jason Kidd, Jimmy Rollins, Dontrelle Willis, Simon Rex) of whom they are immensely proud. Mostly.

The He-Man lunch box incident that Monday was only the beginning. The torturous relationship became almost organic, taking on a life of its own. A rhythm. Twice a day, I found myself fending off an attack. Sometimes it was before school and lunch. Sometimes it was lunch and recess. Sometimes it was lunch and after school. Regardless, it always involved lunch.

I blame poverty and fetal alcohol syndrome, my mother blamed Joan and Danny's mom. We were probably both right.