Blow up the Olympics

So my uninformed assumptions about the Olympics have largely proved correct. Nonetheless, I have found myself watching some of it. The swimming is great. The rest of it, eh. (Synchronized diving is a particularly stupid "sport," I've decided.)

But especially bad is the "women's" gymnastics.

Let's call this for what it is: "prepubescent girls'" gymnastics. It's obscene and shouldn't be an international sport, as Buzz Bissinger explained pretty convincingly in the New York Times. Worst of all is this Chinese "women's" gymnastics team, which clearly doesn't include a single athlete who would qualify as a "woman," under generally accepted principles of womanhood. They are girls. If any of them are 16 years old, I'm 25.

Go beyond stripping the Chinese of their team gold medal, which absolutely should be the result of their cheating. Get rid of the sport entirely. Or at least raise the minimum age of participation to 18 -- generally accepted as adulthood -- and enforce it by requiring documentation more substantial than a passport.

If it's going to be called "women's" gymnastics, require the participants to BE women. I'd feel a lot more comfortable watching them prance around in makeup and leotards.

Taking down the Olympics

I'm not a big fan of the Olympics. Honestly, I'll probably be paying more attention to preseason NFL activities and plotting my fantasy football drafts than I will to NBC's tape-delayed, inevitably obsequious and credulous broadcasts of the Beijing Olympics.

But I do enjoy an outraged rant about how the International Olympic Committee and its corporate partners have sold their souls (as if they had any, duh) by staging the games in a pollution-choked city where the government is apparently cracking down harder than ever on its political opponents.

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post delivers. Hey, if she wants me to respond by boycotting NBC -- no problem. As long as a football game isn't on.

We're #1

The University of Florida is the best party school in the country, again.

As a graduate of the place, I wonder how we don't win this thing every year.

In the news

Yet another edition of stuff I'm reading and enjoying.

• For some reason I like articles about crazy, indulgent parents and their spoiled children, a seemingly growing phenomenon. The Weekly Standard calls the country a "Kindergarchy." The article's long and tedious, to be frank, but I'm with this Joseph Epstein guy: What happened to just having kids and letting them grow up? Nowadays, they're pruned and pampered like showdogs, to the detriment of both children and parents.

• Going to the Olympics this summer? You might want to read up on how to use the local facilities. "Rule One: Exhaust all other possibilities." I started laughing hysterically at that sentence and didn't stop until the end of the piece. A friend of mine who's in the Marines was kind enough to send me a picture of one of these from Iraq; I'll be kind enough not to post it on the blog. Suffice to say: Nasty. And he reports that he did, in fact, have to use one.

• The National Enquirer claims to have caught former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) visiting his "mistress" and "love child" at a Los Angeles hotel. This story raises all sorts of interesting issues for us in the so-called MSM. First, is it believable? The Enquirer isn't exactly known for its truthiness. But in this example, they appear to have legitimately caught Edwards skulking around a hotel late at night where a female acquaintance of his was known to be staying, and where he was not a registered guest. Edwards had no ready explanation for his behavior and freaked out when confronted. Given all that, the second issue for us MSMers is: Should we pursue this as a news story? Edwards holds no public office and is no longer a candidate for one. I say it's a story because he is a public figure, though not an elected one. Third, how do you pursue such a story? "Illicit sex" stories are notoriously difficult to report. I doubt Edwards, his wife, or his lady friend are talking, and I doubt he'll be caught in circumstances like these ever again. So short of citing the Enquirer's work -- which most news organizations are loathe to do -- there are few sources to work with. That's why you haven't read much about it.
  

My brave quest to procure ... an iPhone

Readers will recall my regret last week over not lining up with all the other idiots outside my local Apple store on July 11 to buy an iPhone 3G the day it came out.

I'm happy to report that my quest is complete. I have acquired an iPhone.

It was an arduous, yet heroic journey. It began late on July 18, when I saw on Apple's Web site that the store at the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax County, Va. would have iPhones in stock the next morning.

I woke up at 7:15 on July 19, thinking the store opened at 10. I got there at 8:30. A line of roughly 250 people stretched out the door. The store had been open since 8. They sold out by 9, but thought they might get another shipment. An employee finally told the crowd at about 9:30 that "if you're in line here" -- gesturing to about where I stood -- "you're probably not getting a phone today."

I left, despondent. For the next two days, Apple's Web site showed that every store in Virginia and Maryland was sold out. But I read some message boards. People were saying that the Web site wasn't correct -- that stores sometimes got shipments early in the day, after the Web site was updated. You had to call.

On Tuesday, I called the Clarenden store. They had iPhones. The line was about 20 people long. I dropped what I was doing and ran to the Metro. I missed the train to Clarenden. Heartbreak. Plan B: I took the train to Rosslyn, then got off and flagged a cab to Clarenden. I ran to the store. The line was only maybe a dozen people long. The store employees told us that they only had one model in stock: black, 16 gigabytes. Exactly what I wanted. I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

An hour-and-a-half later, I bought an iPhone.

A friend of mine who's too smart for these stupid lines and instead ordered an iPhone from an AT&T store (delivery takes about two weeks) asked me for a review today. Here's roughly what I sent him; warning, it may bore you if you're not a gadget freak:

So it goes without saying that the iPhone is the greatest advance in personal communications technology ever, and it makes my six-month-old BlackBerry (top 'o the line at the time) feel like a goddamn pager.

It's an amazing feeling to have your music, your phone and your e-mail all on one device -- and to have an Internet browser and GPS thrown in there too, and to have it all run on a fairly quick network.

The good:

• Phone clarity is fine, much better than my Razr, and reception in DC seems to be pretty good. Deep inside buildings and elevators, the signal goes out, but everywhere else I have at least a few bars, including, crucially, my basement apartment.
• Music sounds fine, as good as any iPod, even on the tinny earbuds that are provided with the phone.
• The maps function works pretty well. For a while the phone was convinced that I was in Six Flags over Georgia, near Atlanta. Don't ask me why. I instructed it to look for me in DC a few times and that problem seems to have cleared up.
• The apps I've played with so far are okay. There are some crucial apps still missing, like a good chat client (AIM for iPhone sucks, apparently) and a voice recorder that allows you to download recordings. I haven't been blown away by any that I've downloaded, so far. I do have this funny one that makes use of the accelerometer to slide a pint of beer down a bar (called iPint), but I wouldn't say that it's real useful.
• AT&T's 3G network isn't broadband, by any means, but it's reasonably fast. NYT Website loads in maybe 15, 20 seconds; Google in maybe 5 seconds, tops.
• Safari browser is okay. Size is a severe limitation; even zoomed in on Web pages, it's difficult to read on an iPhone -- you have to constantly move the page around with your finger, AND you have to be careful not to click on any links or ads while doing so.

The great:

• Size and weight is perfect. Fits in a pants pocket fine, and feels great in the hand.
• The touchscreen is simply a piece of art. I could swipe through my contacts or my music all day long.
• The e-mail client is tremendous. Takes gmail or Yahoo!, both fine e-mail clients by themselves, and scales them down without losing any functionality that I notice, except for gchat. I prefer using Yahoo! mail on the phone, in fact -- it's faster than Yahoo!'s interface (one reason I'm trying to migrate most casual e-mail to gmail).
• Texting is easier on this thing than on any other phone I've owned. And the text interface is pretty cool.
• The phone can sync with my Outlook calendar and contacts at work, and with my music at home. Calendar and contacts work great.

The surprising:

• The keyboard is smarter than I thought. I had a lot of problems typing on it when I first got it, but either I'm improving really fast or the thing is actually somehow learning to adjust to my finger pokes and produce more accurate results. It's also got a built-in, on-the-fly spellchecker that works well, once you put your trust into it. I don't think I'll ever type as fast on iPhone as I can on a BlackBerry, but it's possibly not going to be as painful as I thought.
• Battery life hasn't been a problem. I intentionally ran the battery down to zero yesterday, and to do it I had to leave music running most of the day, even when I wasn't listening to it, and needlessly surf the Web and send e-mails even when I was sitting in front of my computer. 3G was on all day long, as was wireless network detection. It finally konked out at about 6:30 p.m., and it hadn't even been charged the previous night except while I was transferring music.

The bad:

• No Flash or Java. That means no StatTracker. [A little Java applet by Yahoo! that tracks NFL stats in real-time on Sundays -- ed.] Sucks.
• No copy-and-paste is a pain for things like filling out contact info.

The really bad:

• [Here, I went on a long and profane diatribe about a little problem I'm having with my employer's IT department, the upshot being that they inexplicably won't let me connect my iPhone to the company's Exchange server and thus I have to continue to use my BlackBerry to fetch my corporate e-mail when I'm out of the office. It's a real pain.]
  

So for the time being, I'm still stuck carrying two devices around. Major bummer.

In the news

A round-up of good stuff I read today. Enjoy.

• Comeuppance: I remember reading about this douche bag a few years ago and immediately hating him. Now he's broke, and that's awesome. No surprise; first expense he ditches is child support. Jackass.

• Would you buy a house from this man? One thing I love about mafiosos is how they always complain that they're just being stereotyped because of their name and their nationality and their appearance. It's never because they're engaged in slimy, criminal-sounding activity.

• Here's a story on people who are saddled with massive amounts of consumer debt. No doubt, credit card companies are largely evil, predatory enterprises that don't give a damn about their customers' financial well being. But I'd be a lot more sympathetic for people caught in the current economic downturn if they didn't do things like buy houses they couldn't afford or whip out the plastic every time they saw a knick-knack on QVC.

Enjoy, and good night.

Blown away

My 15-second review of the latest Batman movie:

"The Dark Knight" is the best summer action movie I've ever seen, and should at least be nominated for Best Picture in next year's Academy Awards (right now, it just barely beats WALL-E on my scorecard). Heath Ledger is a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor. Aaron Eckhart might deserve a nomination in the same category.

Also, it's nice to know that they'll never have to re-make the Joker-Batman movie again. Christopher Nolan's version is the definitive one.

Go see it, if you haven't already.

Bathe it, and bring it to me

I want an iPhone 3G. I want one so bad my teeth hurt. But I can't get one. Why? Because every single store in Virginia and Maryland is sold out of the model I want (16GB, black).

If I had known THIS was going to happen, I might've been crazy enough to do THIS last Friday:

Photo credit: ABC News

But I didn't. So now all those crazy fuckers have iPhones, while I -- who thought I was sooo smart for waiting a couple days, when I'd be able to stroll into an empty store and grab a new phone -- I'm sitting here with my thumb up my ass and a shitty, three-year-old Razr in my hand.

Don't I feel stupid.

God bless Southwest Airlines

I don't like flying Southwest much more than flying generally, but it's sure no surprise that they're the only airline not losing piles of money ...


Smart.

The alexwayne.com endorsement: Ray's the Steaks

That, dear readers, is the Ray's the Steaks "cowboy cut" ribeye. It is at least 28 ounces of muscle and fat and bone. It does not fit on the plate. It is not to be trifled with. It is delicious.

Washington is a city of steak. Most of our top restaurants -- places you've heard of, like The Palm and Charlie Palmer Steak (duh) -- revolve around beef. That's probably why there's so many fat men here.

But the best steakhouse in town isn't even in Washington proper; you'll find it in Arlington, just west (or is it south?) of Rosslyn on Wilson Avenue. Ray's isn't a secret, really -- all the local pubs have written fairly glowing reviews. But if you ask me, these reviews aren't glowing enough.

Ray's makes the best steak I've ever had. And I make a pretty mean steak myself. Yes, it's loud and there aren't any pictures on the walls to look at. So what. The service is better than most places in Washington, which is a town of shitty service. Add in the fact that it's relatively cheap -- like $30 for their best cuts -- and it's like the Greatest Restaurant Ever.

Okay, that's hyperbole. But still: if you come to Washington, and you want steak, forget Morton's or Ruth's Chris or Smith and Wolensky or whatever and just go to Ray's.

Only thing is, they don't take reservations. So here's what you do: Go by about 3:30 in the afternoon and wait for them to open. Walk inside and there'll be a nice woman with a pad of paper and a pencil standing at the hostess station. Tell her what time you want to eat. Come back a little before that time.

And be sure to do two things: save room for dessert, and take home leftovers.

P.S. Why the random post? Because my girlfriend is actually nagging me to blog more often. Sheesh. You'd think she'd nag me to go to they gym or something.

New York City in (cold) spring

Here's another collection of photos, this time preceded by restaurant reviews.

Over the weekend I visited New York City for the first time. (Yes, I'm too old to have never been to New York. Call me provincial.) I did what is probably the usual walking-eating-seeing tour ... hit the Empire State Building and the Met; wandered through Central Park at night and didn't get mugged; rode the #6 subway line; stumbled on a taping of a "Law & Order: SVU" episode. (Look for Robin Williams to guest-star later this spring.)

Quick reviews:

We stayed at the Club Quarters at Rockefeller Center. Small, but really quite nice, and well located.

Sarge's Deli in Murray Hill is fantastic. I never knew what New York deli food was about -- I figured big sandwiches and soups, ho-hum. Sarge's has all that, but also this crazy beef brisket on a potato pancake with gravy thing that probably upped my cholesterol 30 points. "Sarge's favorite," it's called. Sarge probably did not live a long life.

Hatsuhana (warning: annoying Web site) in midtown served me the best raw fish I've ever had, and I understand it's not even the best sushi joint in New York.

Swift in East Village is a cool little Irish bar. Apparently regulars are starting to turn on it because the bartenders don't give away enough free drinks, or something. All I know is after the bartender messed up my food order, he gave me and my buddy a free round without us asking. Nice.

Josie's on the Upper West Side is to be avoided. Their schtick is organic ingredients. Whatever. They made a decent steak for me, but the "smashed" potatoes sucked, and everybody else at my table left food on their plates. Here's a tip, Josie's: salt and butter are good things, even crucial things.

The Algonquin hotel is a fine place for a $16 cocktail. Some famous writers used to drink there. Comfy and quiet and damn near empty. Couldn't be the prices, I'm sure.

Ray's Pizza is probably not representative of NYC pizza, but we were on our way out of town and hungry. It served. (We went to the location at 8th and 51st; unclear whether it was "Original" or "Famous," but didn't taste like it.)

Some pictures ...

Central Park, just north of the zoo looking south

Seward Square, with the most famous building on Earth in the background

Central Park, at the duck pond on 5th south of the Met looking north

Some ski pictures, to leaven my half-drunken rants about modern journalistic practices

I've decided that I love skiing. (To clarify: In snow, for my Floridian/southern fans out there.) I'm not very good at it, mind you. But it's a blast nonetheless.

This year, I made two trips to a place called Whitetail, in southern Pennsylvania, and one to a joint called Timberline, in nowhere West Virginia. Here are some pics:

Whitetail is really more of a hill than a mountain. Surprisingly steep, though.

From the top of the biggest "green" slope (=easy) at Whitetail, clearish.

Same slope, in fog.


Base of Timberline. It's almost a genuine mountain.


Top of Timberline, looking over the Canaan Valley.


Top of Whitetail, on the second trip.
I'm about to ski my first-ever Whitetail "blue" slope (=intermediate), behind me.
I did not fall.

What is wrong with the public discourse?

This post is going to brush right up against -- but, I think, not quite violate -- the rules I've set for this blog.

(See to the right, about how I won't opine on Congress or the president, etc.)

So here goes:

Since when did presidential candidates have to bear responsibility for every last word that ever sprang from the mouth of anyone even tangentially connected to their campaigns?

For the last couple weeks, it seems like the only campaign "news" -- I use the word lightly -- drawing attention from us media is when some campaign flunky or another says something stupid. The result is predictable: a two-day story, followed by the person's "departure" from the campaign.

To recap:

First we had what's-her-name, some Barack Obama "advisor," telling a Scottish newspaper (aside: hell, I don't even know where to begin -- why is she talking to a Scottish newspaper, for starters) that Hillary Clinton is a "monster." Two-day story, and she quits the campaign.

Then we had Geraldine Friggin' Ferraro, making "news" for the first time since 1984, speaking some kind of gibberish that some people took as racist. Two-day story, and she quits the campaign.

Back to Obama, where we've got his former pastor, who apparently said some mean things about white people and Clinton on tape, quitting Obama's campaign. It's not even really clear to me that he was a substantial part of the campaign. But whatever, now he's off, and Obama is turning cartwheels "distancing" himself from the guy, as they say.

Who gives a shit about any of this?

There is some serious shit that we media could be discussing in our campaign coverage. Like I don't know, how exactly are Clinton and Obama going to make good on promises to withdraw from Iraq? Or how are any of the candidates, McCain included, going to get the economy righted? Or literally a hundred other serious policy issues, with health care and education and crime probably leading the list.

Instead, we're focusing on dumb statements by people who don't fucking matter, and forcing the candidates to waste time "denouncing" or "distancing themselves from so-and-so" or whatever. Seriously: Geraldine Ferraro is completely fucking unimportant in the scheme of things. And she's probably the most important of any of these people who have said dumb shit.

So I'd like all of this to stop, please. Unless it's the candidate him or herself saying dumb shit, I simply don't care. And I don't think anybody else does either. (Probably not even the reporters covering it.)

Worst. Local. Commercial. Ever.

I consider television commercials for local businesses an art form all their own.

In Washington, D.C., the local car dealer chain Eastern Motors has pretty much owned the genre, with a long-running series featuring players from the Washington Redskins lip-syncing the firm's theme song (At Eastern Motors / Your job's your credit, credit) and generally looking stupid. The spots feature all the hallmarks of a superior local commercial: dumb catch song, famous-for-the-local-area celebrities, senseless narratives and mildly offensive. Here's an example:



However, we have a new contender in Washington for worst local commercial. In fact, these guys might just have produced the worst local commercial EVER, anywhere.



For those of you not hip with the kids, the owners of the store attempted to set their diddy to the tune of "Back That Azz Up," by Juvenile. The spot obviously takes incomprehensible and offensive to whole new levels, but I think filming the lead actors/owners shirtless really iced the cake.

Hello again

Due to popular demand (i.e., my mom and my sister), I'm back.

Apropos of nothing, here is John Travolta's giant-ass airstrip near Ocala, Florida, where he lands his personal 707.

Photo by Marty Wayne aka Dad

Travolta's house is in the background, in the little square of trees off the taxiway.

I skipped work on Friday

And instead went up to the Skyline Drive to check out the foliage. Here are some pics:

Some kid, looking southwest, I think.


The creek at the end of Piney Branch trail.


Happy belated Halloween

On the way home, we hit a couple Virginia wineries.

The first, Grey Ghost, makes excellent chardonnay. This being Virginia, the reds were all heavy on the cab franc and overpriced. But the tasting was free (always a plus), the tasting room was beautiful, and the woman pouring, a daughter of the owners, was friendly and gave out some tips for a trip to Napa I'm planning in the spring. (Hit Sterling is the one I remember.)

The second, Unicorn, was quite a surprise. The place is pretty much a glorified industrial shed next to a mini-storage compound, and tastings are $5. But there are a bunch of wines, many of them rather unusual and quite good. Yeah, they had cab franc and it wasn't terrific, but they also make a red called Petite nacional that's one of the best I've had in Virginia. Nice and dry and spicy. And their dessert wine is simply the best I've ever had (an easy call for me, because I usually hate the stuff).

I apologize

I'm in a terrible dry spell, obviously, blogging-wise. Here is one excuse: I've been covering this at work. You might have heard about it. It's kind of a big deal.

(I found that Web site by Googling "alex wayne" and "schip," incidentally. I'm cited twice, which is kind of cool. Also, I've been on this show a lot lately; there are Web feeds and pod casts, if you're into that kind of thing.)

For the hell of it, here's a quick round-up of my pop-culture diet of late:

I'm reading George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. It's fantasy fiction, but it doesn't suck. Probably the best of the genre that I've read since Lord of the Rings, which says a lot about the genre.

I just defeated "God of War II" on the PlayStation 2. Fun game. Some annoying puzzles. It's slightly more difficult than the first "God of War," I'd say, because the designers took away some important moves from the first game that made fights easier.

I saw "The Kingdom" recently. I was largely disappointed; it's pretty trite. The last 15 minutes comprises a pretty spectacular action sequence, however.

The television show "Heroes" has taken a serious nose-dive, and threatens to jump the shark (just in case the phrase still requires definition).

My favorite new show is "Life," Wednesdays at 10. Takes your average crime procedural and turns it on its head, anchored by the work of the lead actor, Damian Lewis. Impressive stuff. NBC, however, did a terrible job marketing the show. (The new Wednesday show that NBC spent a lot of time and energy marketing, "Bionic Woman," isn't nearly as good. Though I do enjoy the Battlestar Galactica references, and the work of Katee Sackhoff, who regularly pwns the lead actress.)

Ever want to see me half-naked?

Of course you have. Behold the bronzed splendor that is me in a bathing suit. (Click on pics for bigger versions.)

Archaeology is in the blood.
(Our house is behind me.)

I mentioned that I was at the beach a couple weeks ago. Duck, N.C. Looks a lot nicer than the last time I was there. Still pretty much suburbia, though ... with sand and ocean.

And sand means ... sand castle time.

I am a drip castle architect.

Castle Wayne, in its monumental glory.
(Our house is to the right.)

Mostly, we did a lot of this:

Good Christ I wish I didn't have to work for a living.
(From left: Jen (obscured), Dan's back, Mark B., Kristin, Kimberly, Elisa, Fiona, Mark Y.)

Here's down the beach in the other direction:

Hurricane bait.

On the way home, we stopped here:

Kimberly on the Wright brothers monument, Kill Devil Hills.

And at a farmer's market / tourist trap:

I'd have made a GREAT redneck.

And now we're back here:

Not all of D.C. is terrible.

Are you ready to talk at length about some football?

Fantasy football, to be precise.

It's the most wonderful time of the year again, and I've got two fantasy football teams about to kick off on Thursday. In an almost certainly erroneous assumption that someone else might be even faintly interested in my teams, here are the rosters. If you slog through to the end, or just scroll down, I'll tell you who I think the 10 best players in fantasy football will be this year.

To say I'm excited is an understatement. To say I'm a giant nerd is also an understatement.

League One

My first league is mostly co-workers; I'm the commissioner. Twelve teams, each starting one quarterback, two wide receivers, two running backs, a tight end, a "flex" position (either a running back or a wide receiver), a kicker, a defense and five bench spots. Here's my team, Fred Taylor's Groin; the number in parentheses indicates the pick where I took them in our draft:

QB: Phillip Rivers, San Diego (67)
WR1: Donald Driver, Green Bay (43)
WR2: Calvin Johnson, Detroit (78)
RB1: Joseph Addai, Indianapolis (6)
RB2: Thomas Jones, New York Jets (30)
TE: Antonio Gates, San Diego (19)
Flex: Marion Barber III, RB, Dallas (54)
K: None, yet
Defense: Jacksonville (150)
Bench: Tatum Bell, RB, Detroit (91); Bernard Berrian, WR, Chicago (102); Michael Turner, RB, San Diego (115); Leon Washington, RB, NY Jets (126); Rex Grossman; QB, Chicago (139); Dennis Northcutt, WR, Jacksonville (free agent).

I liked this team better when I drafted it, on Aug. 19 (nearly three weeks before the season begins, something I'll try to avoid in the future).

Indianapolis and San Diego will be two of the highest-scoring offenses in the league, again, so I like Addai, Rivers and Gates. Beyond that, there's a lot of uncertainty.

Driver historically has been undervalued, but he's like 33 years old and already nursing an injury. Calvin Johnson is the hotshot from Georgia Tech that Detroit drafted second overall this year, but he hasn't cracked the starting lineup yet. Thomas Jones is also nursing an injury; glad I have his backup, Washington. Marion Barber III gets goal-line carries in Dallas and so scores a lot of touchdowns, but even though he's more talented than the starting running back on that team (Julius Jones), he's officially the backup. So annoying.

On my bench, I don't have much faith in Tatum Bell, who's probably going to lose his job sooner than later. Bernard Berrian might be great or pretty mediocre, probably depending on how awful "Sexy Rexy" Grossman plays this year. I picked up Northcutt after drafting a wastrel, Reggie Williams, who was supposed to be the starting wide receiver in Jacksonville but nearly got his ass cut in training camp for being lazy.

I didn't draft a kicker. Kickers are all pretty much the same -- except for one or two guys each year who manage to kick a bunch of field goals. Problem is, you can never predict who those guys are going to be; in each of the last two years, it's been someone who went undrafted in my leagues. So I'm going to pick someone up off the waiver wire on Thursday, who probably will replace either Northcutt or Bell (I was hoping someone would break his leg before the season started, to make that choice easier).

League Two

My second league is a bunch of friends, mostly from D.C. There's only eight of us, meaning it's a stacked league -- all the teams are very good. We start two QBs, three WRs, two RBs, a TE, a kicker and a defense, with five on the bench. Here's my team, Noodly Appendages:

QB1: Matt Hasselbeck, Seattle (37)
QB2: Eli Manning, New York Giants (60)
WR1: Larry Fitzgerald, Arizona (28)
WR2: Donald Driver, Green Bay (44)
WR3: Santana Moss, Washington (53)
RB1: Joseph Addai, Indianapolis (5)
RB2: Brian Westbrook, Philadelphia (12)
TE: Antonio Gates, San Diego (21)
Kicker: None, yet
Defense: Dallas (108)
Bench: Adrian Peterson, RB, Minnesota (69); Edgerrin James, RB, Arizona (76); Joey Galloway, WR, Tampa (85); Ronnie Brown, RB, Miami (92); Rex Grossman, QB, Chicago (101); Tatum Bell, RB, Detroit (117).

This is a weird league. In most leagues, including my work league, running backs are considered far and away to be the most important players to draft. They touch the ball the most of any position, after the quarterback, meaning more opportunities to score fantasy points. But unlike quarterbacks, who pretty much all score a lot of fantasy points in every game -- unless they're simply awful, like Grossman last year -- there is an elite cadre of running backs who score way more points than their peers. Plus, in most leagues you have to start two running backs and just one quarterback, further reducing the relative value of QBs.

Not in this league. Not only do we start two quarterbacks -- unheard of in most fantasy leagues, and of course something you would never see on any real football field -- we have to start three wide receivers, as well. I hate wide receivers; they're horribly inconsistent. Consider Santana Moss, my third wide receiver. In three games last year, he caught 17 passes for 364 yards and five touchdowns, including a three-touchdown game. But he had less than 50 yards receiving in nine different games, and caught just six touchdowns all year. He was my top receiver last year in this league, and he killed me. I'm not totally certain why I drafted him again, except that he's far and away the best receiver on his team and I expect Washington will be improved this year.

So anyway, what happens in this league is that quarterbacks and wide receivers are valued far more highly than in most fantasy leagues. The result is that many top running backs -- guys like Adrian Peterson, Edgerrin James, and Ronnie Brown -- slide to the end of the draft. I've seen all of those guys go as high as the second round in other leagues, including my work league. I'm happy to have gotten them so late in this league, although I don't have anywhere to play them, and if they wind up sucking -- highly possible, especially for Brown -- they'll have little trade value.

My only real holes on this team are my quarterbacks. Hasselbeck is old, as is the rest of his team, and Eli Manning is the crappy Manning brother. I'm hoping one or two of my reserve running backs is awesome enough to draw a better quarterback in a trade; if they aren't, I'm probably going to have a bad season.

The 10 best players in fantasy football

Keep in mind that fantasy football is a weird game, where guys who have tremendous value in real life (like offensive linemen) have zero value, and the guy who's clearly the best player in the NFL (Peyton Manning) is drafted, like, 10th or later in a lot of fantasy leagues.

1. LaDainian Tomlinson, RB, San Diego. A no-brainer; he likely set all-time fantasy football scoring records last year and could approach them again.

2. Steven Jackson, RB, St. Louis. Second to Tomlinson in running back scoring last year, but scored a lot of his points late in the season, perhaps too late to save some of his fantasy owners.

3. Larry Johnson, RB, Kansas City. Third in running back scoring last year, but is thought to have been a bit overworked and might wear out this year. He might also be awesome.

4. Joseph Addai, RB, Indianapolis. Splitting carries with another guy last year, he was the eleventh-highest scoring running back. He's got the Indy backfield all to himself this year and I expect him to be awesome.

5. Frank Gore, RB, San Francisco. In his first full (uninjured) year in the pros last year, he was the sixth-highest scoring running back. He's young and only getting better, but has a scary injury history.

6. Peyton Manning, QB, Indianapolis. The only player other than Tomlinson to score more than 400 fantasy points last year. The reason he's not ranked higher is because if you take him in round one, you're getting a subpar running back in round two.

7. Brian Westbrook, RB, Philadelphia. Twelfth-highest scoring player in all of fantasy football last year. If both he and Philly's QB, Donovan McNabb, stay healthy all year (a longshot), they will both put up tremendous numbers.

8. Willie Parker, RB, Pittsburgh. I drafted this guy in my second league last year, then stupidly traded him for a lesser running back and a receiver who ended up a total bust. (Burn in hell, Chris Chambers.) He's great.

9. Shaun Alexander, RB, Seattle. Two years ago, he was better than Tomlinson. Last year, he was hurt most of the year and killed any fantasy owner who drafted him (except for the guy who won my second league; I'm still scratching my head over that one).

10. Drew Brees, QB, New Orleans. Others might put Reggie Bush, RB, New Orleans, in this spot. They're crazy. Bush is sharing playing time with another excellent running back, Deuce McAllister. Brees, on the other hand, was the fourth-highest scoring player in all of fantasy football last year, and has a shot, I think, at surpassing Peyton Manning as the best quarterback in the game this year.

Administrative thing

I got a very weird (and long!) spam-like comment on the last post (now deleted), so I changed my settings so that you now have to go through a word verification thingamajig before you can post comments. Sorry 'bout that, but spam sucks.

We now return to our regular, irregular programming.