The Quiet Storm opens up

One of the most satisfying aspects of following sports is identifying the team or player who defies the odds to achieve success. 

In the world of sports, where incessant hype and noise corrupt much (though, thankfully, not all) of what make the games and its combatants so compelling, the appearance of an individual whose profile cuts against the grain is a refreshing change of pace.

ESPN The Magazine recognizes just such a character in this excellent piece by Anna Katherine Clemmons, featuring the New Orleans Saints’ Marques Colston. 

Marques Colston

Colston, the pride of Hofstra University – ironically profiled during a week in which the Hofstra Pride learned that their football program was being eliminated immediately – is a cornerstone of the Saints passing game as their perfect season continues toward a potential Super Bowl appearance.

A 7th-round draft choice of the Saints in 2006 who helped lead the Saints to the NFC Championship Game that season while earning a 2nd-place tie for Rookie of the Year, Colston is on his way to becoming the most prolific wide receiver in New Orleans Saints history.

Possibly more impressive than his stats, however, is the path that he took to the NFL (a lifelong dream for him and his father, who passed away when Colston was 14) and the way that this man, nicknamed “The Quiet Storm”, has carried himself leading up to and during his professional career.

It’s actually a little surprising to see such an in-depth feature on a player who is the anti-T.O., but maybe ESPN is realizing that the heart and soul of the NFL is the good guys who don’t demand the spotlight and who take care of their business in the most professional manner.

You’ll find yourself rooting for Colston, if not the Saints, by reading his story.  Check it out. 

And don’t be surprised to find yourself paying a little extra attention when his receiving touchdowns – 7 more already this season – inevitably make their way into future game highlights.

Well, that was fun…

Just twenty-eight days to go.  Yes, four weeks from tonight it will be time to say goodbye to 2009 and, ostensibly, the decade that many of us will choose to forget.

Personally, I don’t think it was as bad as some of the pundits would make it out to be in this age of gloom-and-doom journalism, but Time magazine clearly does – giving thanks for the end of the ’00s in this week’s cover story, “The Decade From Hell”.

Andy Serwer makes his case for why the last ten years were a “lost decade” in the lengthy feature, which includes a photoessay of The 10 Worst Things About The Worst Decade Ever.

I guess I’ll subscribe to this national (international?) catharsis on one condition – that wallowing in the failures of the past ten years assures a different perspective moving forward. 

It’s tiring to be so dismal and pessimistic and, ultimately, the energy wasted in that exercise would be better served toward making a difference in our collective futures.

Perhaps it’s naïve, but there are still some who envision a better place on this Earth.  One of those, Ben Harper, contributed a song during this “decade of broken dreams” that should probably be the soundtrack while reviewing the lowlights of the ’00s.  And one that will hopefully be a mantra for the next 10 years and beyond.

Check out “With My Own Two Hands” here.  The lyrics are simple but poignant:

I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make a better place
With my own two hands
Make a kinder place
Oh- with my
Oh- with my own two hands
With my own
Oh- with my own two hands
With my own
With my own two hands

I can make peace on earth
With my own two hands
And I can clean up the earth
Oh- with my own two hands
And I can reach out to you
Oh- with my own two hands
With my own
With my own two hands
Oh- with my own
Oh- with my own two hands

I’m gonna make it a brighter place
(with my own)
I’m gonna make it a safer place
(with my own)
I’m gonna help the human race
(with my own)
(with my own two hands)

Look, perhaps things will get worse before they get better.  Serwer, the managing editor of Fortune, proposes in his piece that the potential is there to go either way, but that there are “some hopeful signs”.

Who knows?  The future is unwritten.

But that is the blessing here.  Before we (consciously or not) buy into a “top this” mentality, waiting for the next disasters to trump those from our recent past, maybe a philosophy of personal responsibility would be better suited to change what has gone wrong in recent years.

Much more will be written and discussed about this “decade from hell”, but unless there’s an intention to ensure an avoidance of a repeat performance in the future, it will be nothing more than worthless smoke and hot air.

Mmmm, Bacon – Now For Dessert!

Am I just particularly hungry right now?  Well, actually yes.  But should that lessen the interest in this new trend of adding bacon to dessert recipes?  Absolutely not.

Courtesy of Susan Russo (a/k/a Food Blogga), NPR has some great ideas for ways to use bacon – along with four fantastic bacon dessert recipes – in its feature, “Bacon Gets Its Just Desserts”.

If you’re not interested in learning about the recent history of gastronomical experimentation (bacon-and-egg ice cream, anyone?), at least consider this notion from the piece:

Marrying bacon with sweets such as chocolate, caramel and ice cream is a logical flavor pairing. Combining sweet and salty flavors has always been delicious. Paired sweet and salty flavors is why we love kettle corn, chocolate-covered pretzels and Snickers bars. From that perspective, chocolate-covered bacon and bacon cupcakes suddenly seem, well, right.

Yeah, actually, it does seem right.  If you agree, be sure to check out a few tips from the Kitchen Window commentary on adding bacon to desserts:

• Buy lean pork bacon. (Turkey bacon cupcakes? That’s just weird).

• Try smoked bacon. Hickory, apple-wood and maple-smoked bacon lend themselves especially well to sweet desserts.

• Keep the flavors simple and create a pleasing contrast of both flavor and texture. The idea is to make the familiar more exciting.

• Make sure the bacon is crispy and dry. No matter how good the flavor, no one wants a gristly bit of bacon in his cake.

• Have fun and be imaginative. Stressing over them defeats the purpose of making (and eating) bacon desserts.

As for me , I am ready to take on a batch of those Chocolate Chip-Bacon-Pecan Cookies. 

Susan Russo for NPR

Bacon for dessert?  It all seems so logical. 

Why in the world did it take this long for foodies to figure it out?  No clue, but now is a great time to start playing catch-up.

Handicapping the MVP race

Raise your hand if you had Brett Favre on your short list of MVP candidates when this season started.  No hands out there?  That’s what I thought.

But, guess what?  As Clark Judge of CBSSports.com postulates, Favre is right in it along with Peyton Manning and Drew Brees in what he calls a “three-headed MVP race”.

Peter King of SI.com has a vote and he has the same three atop his current list of MVP candidates.

Bottom line is that this has been a fantastic year for offensive football, with Philip Rivers and Chris Johnson sneaking into the discussion as well.  The voting takes place before the playoffs, which is really a shame, because to separate this group of players, you almost need to see who takes his team the farthest. 

Either way, the next two months of football are lining up to be a competition for the ages.  My guess is that if either Brees or Manning keep their teams undefeated to the end of the regular season, the MVP title will be theirs.  Should they both manage to do it, flip a coin.  And if both fall short, it just might be old man Favre winning MVP #4.

Just Johnson

The man with the common name – Chris Johnson – and no particular nickname that I’m aware of just might be the best running back in the game today.

Not sure?  Well, the Tennessee Titans featured back is destroying the record book and appears likely to become just the 6th in NFL history to reach the vaunted 2,000-yard single-season rushing mark.

Chris Johnson has been outrunning everyone this season

Dan Daly of The Washington Times has a great feature on Johnson, a late first-round pick out of East Carolina who some scouts had projected as a wide receiver. 

At age 24, Johnson is just getting started.  Don’t forget the name.

The most important Trojan victory of 2009

It’s been a rough season on the gridiron for the USC Trojans and most outside of Heritage Hall likely don’t feel too badly for Coach Pete Carroll and his current batch of student-athletes.

But you’ll find at least one reason to cheer for USC as you watch the one thing that they did get right this fall in Shelley Smith’s feature on young Jake Olson, which aired this weekend on ESPN. 

Truly heartwarming stuff in light of a tragic situation.  Check the video here.

The relevant Raider – on and off the field

OK, so the Oakland Raiders generally do not inspire much positive discussion anywhere – least of all in the blogosphere.  But one member of that organization should be much more well known despite the dreary performance of the team over the last 7 seasons.

Nnamdi Asomugha

If you don’t know the name Nnamdi Asomugha, feel free to blame the irrelevance of the organization and not this cornerback who could very well be the best in the game. 

Opposing teams just don’t throw at him – period – leaving his stat lines generally lackluster while those in the know disregard the statistics and focus on his genuine impact on the field.

Speaking of genuine impact, Asomugha’s greatest contributions might actually come off the field.  His philanthropic concerns and honors are plentiful.  Those efforts recently earned him the honor of joining the 2010 Dream Team for Public Service.

And this CNN feature profiles Asomugha’s interest in helping talented and motivated inner-city kids move beyond their surroundings (in the case featured for the story, literally Skid Row) and on to a college education.

In the end, Nnamdi Asomugha may never taste the playoffs or escape the Black Hole that is the Oakland Raiders.  But how great is it to see him giving back in ways that ultimately mean so much more?

Culinary delights (in print)

Intimidating – that’s the problem with too many cookbooks.  Why bother picking up a cookbook if the process of re-creating the recipes proves too difficult for the novice to master?

Ah, but NPR has seemingly solved that dilemma with their list of “The 10 Best Cookbooks of 2009″.

T. Susan Chang describes the choices thusly:

This year’s cookbook instructions are detailed and sure-handed, so you’ll feel confident even taking on those fiddly little jobs you usually leave to your good friend Joe, the Trader.  If you’re the kind of person who’s believed all along that a book can teach you to do anything, congratulations! You were right. With these books you can, if you want, make your own bread, your own pasta, even your own dumplings. If, on the other hand, you thought you were the kind of person who could never produce a picture-perfect mushroom tart, guess again. That competent soul is only a few well-described pages away.

Not sure that the “picture-perfect mushroom tart” is the hook here, but the general concept of providing instructions to allow the layperson the opportunity to experience new taste sensations in their own kitchen without going to cooking school definitely works.

And if the end results are half as good as the descriptions accompanying the ten cookbook selections, then your personal library just might need a little more space to accomodate these excellent new options.

Turkeys, Detroit, and bad football

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Hope you enjoyed that timeless Thanksgiving tradition.  You know – watching the Detroit Lions lose yet another nationally televised turkey bowl.

This year’s affair – a 34-12 loss to the Green Bay Packers – makes it 6 straight losses for the Lions on one of the nation’s most cherished holidays.  Oh, the humanity!

Why do the Lions have this game anyway?  The Mitchell & Ness blog has all the scoop on this 75-year tradition here.

There has actually been quite the backlash building lately from the masses tired of watching yet another Lions’ blowout loss before feasting on their turkey and stuffing.

Taking the opposite view, Michael Rosenberg of SI.com makes a passionate plea for the masses to leave his annual Lions’ game alone.

Me, I’m ambivalent, I guess.  There is an outside chance that the Lions could someday be relevant again.  OK, scratch that.

But, still – in a league (and world) devoid of so many long-lost traditions, I say let Detroit have its game.  The good people of Michigan don’t have much to cling to anymore.

Losing the Thanksgiving Day tradition of watching their Lions lose would truly be the final indignation.

Up, up in the air

I wouldn’t imagine that there are too many coming across this post who might remember the day – May 6, 1937 – that the short-lived original era of passenger zeppelins came to an end with The Hindenburg Disaster.

But everyone has seen the famous newsreel footage of the fire and crash in Lakehurst, New Jersey along with Herb Morrison’s famous radio report (“Oh, the humanity!”), broadcast after the fact and for years thereafter.

In fact, most of us probably have no reference point for the rigid airships other than the foursome of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones – obviously known as the original supergroup Led Zeppelin – and their debut album cover, featuring the Hindenburg.

Turns out that Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin was the first to establish passenger airline travel 100 years ago last month and the concept of selling tickets to fly in a zeppelin is coming back around again.

The Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei has been offering passenger travel in Germany since 2001 (with over 60,000 customers, according to their website) and, here in the States, a newcomer called Airship Ventures is doing the same up and down the California coast.

The Los Angeles Times blogs about the return of the zeppelin to L.A. skies with a piece on Airship Ventures that will make you want to get up in the sky with them and exorcise the images of the Hindenburg forever.

They have actually flown over 5,500 ticketed passengers in their 246-foot zeppelin, called the Eureka, and are adding additional sightseeing rides to their scheduled routes.

The view from inside the Eureka

It looks like an incredible experience, though (not surprisingly) carries a steep price tag.  As an example, $199 gets you just 30 minutes of flight time.  $950 per passenger allows you two hours in the air.

But, hey, if you’re having a small birthday party or wedding – the zeppelin carries up to 13 passengers – and have the $5,500 for the chartered flight, then by all means get yourself up in the Eureka.  How about that for a destination wedding?

So now you can add a zeppelin ride to your “bucket list”.  Grainy newsreel footage and breathless radio broadcast not included.