Larry Are You OK?

Something interesting happened to me last weekend. 

Amid NFL Wildcard action (for the record, there’s nothing “wild” about watching a sub 10-win team, with a quarterback fresh off the home insurance circuit square off against a Divisional winner whose most popular player is routinely mistaken for the retired identical twin brother of another guy that still plays), the International Bowl (congratulations to The State University of New Jersey, I guess), and Roger Clemens’ 60-Minutes Interview (ease up, my trainer injects me with B-12 all the time), I fell in love with an old friend.

For those of you who have been sleeping under a rock, NBC premiered “A New Breed of Gladiator” Sunday, January 6.  That’s right, American Gladiators is back!  Now a lot has been written about these Gladiators online, and I’ll be perfectly honest, the instant the two-hour premier ended (that’s right, Wolf, Toa, and Venom got as much airtime last weekend as front-running presidential candidates), I immediately started up my laptop with the intention of unearthing and compiling every available Gladiator fact.  With the help of NBC and fans across America, I, Greg Skipper, would become the Internet’s premier American Gladiators Blogger.

My work would be showcased across the Internet.  Journalists around the country would source me as they filled their silly “newspapers” with second-rate American Gladiator news and stories.  And from time to time, when Tony Kornheiser was on vacation was Bob Ryan was covering an away game, I would fill in on The Sports Reporters, and completely nail questions surrounding the physical and psychological demands of Powerball.

Of course, that’s all just a pipe-dream.  I’ve accepted that this will probably never happen.   So while the rest of America was out Googling “Gina Carano” Monday, I did some homework.

My intention with this post was to do a little tribute of sorts, to Larry Csonka.  Larry Csonka - Pro Football Hall of Famer, American Gladiators Analyst from 1990 - 1993, master of the Csonkastrator, I could go on forever.  That, however, was not possible, due to Mr. Csonka’s apparent, and quite specific, loss of memory.

You see, it all started when I made my way over to LarryCsonka.com to do some research, you know, the home of Larry Csonka.  Anyway, it was there, while reading his biography that I discovered some holes in Larry’s past.  The kind of holes that take away, say, 20 years of your working life.  The kind of holes that eliminate your work on American Gladiators from your own biography on your own website.

Some would argue that ole’ Larry probably thinks he’s too good for the rest of us these days.  After all, he’s no longer just a jock.  Not even just an ex-jock.  The guy travels around the country as a motivational speaker, owns and operates his own outdoor wildlife sanctuary in Ohio, maintains a seafood house in Florida, and stars in his own show on the Outdoor Life Network.  You might think the guy is too big for his own britches, but I don’t buy it.  Not the Csonk that would clown around with Gemini and Nitro after a successful go at “Breakthrough and Conquer”.  Nope, not that Larry Csonka. 

So Csonk, if you’re out there, there’s hope.  While I am sure your memory loss is a direct result of years of explosive collisions on the football field (a subject that I know little about, I rarely got dirty when I played), I can provide you with this bit of recovery advice.  Hit it Malibu…

The Baltimore Sun Finally Gets It’s Priorities In Order

One night a week for the past four or so years I have laced up the same sneakers I bought my senior year of college, met up with some friends from high school, college, and most recently, work and played basketball.  We travel all around the Baltimore metro area to play.  Sometimes we play in Glen Burnie, sometimes in Columbia, sometimes we drive out to Olney to run up and down a court for 40 minutes.  Once in a while, when we play poorly, or when we are playing so well that we feel we could make reasonable opponents for the Chicago Bulls of the 1990’s, we go to UMBC and get a couple of games with college kids.  They quickly put us in our place, making the 1991 - 1992 Dallas Mavericks a more reasonable foe.

At any rate, in our last week of action leading up to the holidays, the Baltimore Sun felt our basketball league was worthy of a rather lengthy piece in it’s Wednesday edition.  Moreover, captivated by the Pork Chop Express’ thrilling double overtime loss to the heralded Raptors, the Sun’s Jeff Seidel fell in love with my team and our “story”.  

Self indulging?  Yep.  Ridiculous?  You betcha.  Most excited I have been to open the Sun since my first high school touchdown?  Absolutely. 

With that, I give you the human interest story of the year. 

The Pork Chop Express

And for the record, that is not me in the picture - that would be Dustin Grant.  Enjoy…

Welcome

Thanks for stopping by.  I apologize for the mess, things are “Under Construction”, if you will. 

Starting and maintaining this blog is part of a New Year’s Resolution to myself.  The goal?  Simple.  I promised myself that I would start writing more.  I guess what I should say is, start writing again.  The truth is, a portion of last year’s list of resolutions included selling and buying a house, and when the curtain closed on 2007, I was successful.  I decided to take a step back in 2008.   I mean, you can’t sell your house and buy a new one every year, that doesn’t make any sense.  I have to believe that publishing some of my observations and hyperlinking to an interesting article or two, every once in a while, has to be a much healthier hobby than routinely arguing with real estate agents, lenders, contractors, and anybody else in between.  It’s a lay-up.  At least, that’s what my cardiologist says.

My hope is to get something positive out of this experience.   And by “something positive”, I obviously mean a cult  following online that ultimately leads to a nationally syndicated editorial column and a nightly news magazine supported by one of the major networks.  All this with the sole intention of transforming millions of free-thinking readers into mindless advocates of my completely contrived, if not stolen, rhetoric.

I kid.  Sort of.  But seriously, my sincere hope is that this blog generates meaningful conversation, or thought, or even just a laugh.  A laugh, for whatever reason, would be the greatest compliment.  People love to share laughs.

 Anyway, thanks again for stopping by.  Here’s to a great 2008… that was stupid.

 -Greg