The REAL Fantas(y)tic Four

Pardon the title...
So I've officially been absorbed into the world of fantasy football, last year it was yet again our good buddy Steve who got us into it, with a few teams, but only one that mattered, in a league of our friends that ended up with only 4 of us...In all honesty I can't remember who won, but the important thing was that in our head-to-head matchups I'm pretty sure Steve and I were dead even. So no bragging rights, really.
However, every conversation from August to February had something, if not everything to do with our respective teams and leagues in the fantasy world, and it really frightened me how much effort I put into picking the right combinations of players each week to defeat the other combination of players picked by another person. In the overall scheme of things, meaningless, especially considering that I knew none of the people I played against, other than Steve, so somehow those weeks we had a head to head were the most intensely researched and thought out rosters of the season.

Well clearly I got the bug, I even went so far as to draft a fantasy football (soccer that is) team knowing nothing other than Ruud Van Nistelrooy (sic) Wayne Rooney and that I shouldn't load my team up with only Man U players. Steve even lent his helping hand to that venture although I lost interest over the longterm and my squad definitely got the bejesus kicked out of them.

This raises the question, what could possibly lead me, who only watches soccer when others have it on TV already or I'm too tired to change the channel, would select a team to compete...there was no money involved, but it was a league of our friends from University, although they probably had a good laugh at Gavin's complete lack of knowledge of soccer and who was the shit and who was shit(e). Paul Hatcher's laughing comes to mind specifically, along with a shaking of the head and chastising me as a wanker all in good fun. (Paul if you read this, you would be right, I would be a wanker with no business in soccer alongside all the rest of you all but it was fun so I might even do it again!).
But back to where I was,,,what would make me do this? the sheer fun of laughing when others failed and when I succeeded, which in the soccer league was not often at all. Taking it back to the football however, I loved it, and even had a compadre to share it with when I started work at Trailhead, come every Monday morning Pete and I would compare notes on who'd played for us and how well or poorly we'd done, and it was a nice bonding for me with a guy who otherwise I might have taken a while to get to know, but football brought us together.

Well fast forward to tonight and my mum suggests a visit to our local corner bookshoppe, or in this case Megaplex - Chapters, where I had to choose from at least 4 different Fantasy Football guide magazines. I spent 10$ or 1 hour and 15 minutes of work income on a magazine to help me choose the team/players who I thought would be the ones to lead me to glory. Add to that my girlfriend opting to stay home and watch I am Sam on CBC, and I have just spent the last 5 hours nearly straight just reading this magazine making lists and adjusting the already existing teams I have...as we speak I am preparing for another live online draft, happy in the knowledge I have the first overall pick, and I will excercise that to pick none other than KURT WARNER.


Just kidding Steve, I had to say it. No I will opt for a much more obvious pick, LaDainian Tomlinson, Running Back for the San Diego Chargers, who before him were known more in Canada for being where Doug Flutie went after the Idiots in Buffalo thought Rob Johnson would be a better bet. So for having spent $11.49 after taxes, I went from thinking I would obviously pick Peyton Manning the saviour of last year's fantasy team, to realising it made far more sense to go for a running back, and the magazine's many articles and rankings led me to LT over other candidates such as Shaun Alexander (mad at his team for contract issues and not letting him get the rushing record last season); Priest Holmes (gimpy and due to break something soon, plus the guy's name is priest for christsakes); and a score of other hopefuls.

So unless you're into football to the same extent I am, this is a boring as all shit entry..but for Steve and whoever else might see it, I think you know what I"m talking about. Draft time in T-minus 15 minutes!!!

I'm going to go draft now, and I shall return to let you know how it all comes out.
PS. Thanks for the positive feedback Steve, the world, THEY (it) whatever, does need my ramblings.
Via Con Dios.
oh and let me in on one of your leagues this year again Johns, I can't enjoy it the same if I don't get to play you.

Adios Amigos.

And now for something completely different

Hey there gang

I'll have to say that Steve Johns is about 80% responsible for this blog being created, as I have no end of fun reading about what a geek he is. Then again he is a good friend of mine so we must share a great deal of that geekiness.
Indeed the real reason I am deciding to create one of these is mostly to reply to things steve writes, and if you knew of the nature of our spectacular year of Sunday afternoons from 2003 (I had graduated, Steve was doing....5th year I believe they call it) then you know we can talk ad nauseum about music, sports and life in general, surely a sign of a good friend when you're always able to talk about things.

Anyhow I digress...

It is July 27th today, a quarter-century ago, during, coincidentally, another epic heat wave in Kingston, I Gavin Charles Schwier was born after putting my mother through sheer agony for multiple hours, to which I have yet to hear the end of in one way or the other. I kid, its not that bad.
You might not care that its my 25th B-day today, but the reason I write it is b/c I just finished reading Steve 's(www.nwontario.blogspot.com) entry about how today was such a formative day for him 10 years ago, and in that piece of information, I too take gleeful idiotic delight in the coincidental events that take place in our lives. Steve's love of the Who, live theatre, Pearl Jam, and pretty much the being of who he is all began to take shape on this exact day Ten Years Gone (note the Zeppelin references Johns, I know you'll appreciate it).

Continuing on with that theme, I would like to take personal credit for Steve's courtship of The New Yardbirds (or as the world knows them, the most kick ass legendary rock band ever that I would sell all of my internal organs to see live circa 1971-75; Led Zeppelin). It was Steve who always was cuckoo for the Who, and I definitely liked and respected them, but was always a Zeppelin boy myself, which started with of course the unnamed 4th 'Symbols' Album, and continues to this day which still makes me buy Robert Plant albums and sit through some godawful 'World Music' shite just to get to some few good tracks, but yet I will never question the man or stop buying his albums even though I might not always love them. Anyhoo I'm definitely rambling but this is my cherry-popping entry here so why not make it last as long as possible, something not done as easily with the real-life one.

Steve definitely respected the Zep when we first met during Monday Afternoon Football where Widge and myself were late round draft selections to the Browns and Whites respectively...(ps. Browns, you boys STILL owe us a case of Beer, its been 5+ years) But it wasn't til post-grad work on Steve's living room couch @ 5 Birch, right across from my beloved domecile 6 Birch, that I discovered from the boy he wasn't all that familiar with the body of work that was Led Zeppelin. Well I loaned him a 'Q' Magazine Special Edition on Zep that still remains a tome of biblical importance, and with it his path was set to take his place in the line of awestruck listeners/fans who experience the extended works of Messers Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham (R.I.P.) Then it was like a light went off and steve finally blossomed into a full adult being (just kidding, that would be just a teeny bit pompous to claim).

So in summation, I do believe that all the Zeppelin in Steve's blog should be footnoted each time with a thank you note to me for pointing him in that direction.

Lemme know what you think Steve-o.

Cheers.