Nothing But Iron: Four Play by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. August 26, 2009 It was the evening of second Packers preseason game.  I didn’t watch–I have committed to watch as many pedicures as NFL pre-season games–but I did see the sports highlights of Saturday’s Packers vs. Bills glorified scrimmage, and in Lambeau, everything is glorified, and that is called an introductory run-on sentence, with which I might open all my columns from now on because the literary technique is a lot harder to apply than you might imagine.  The most telling observation about these Green Bay highlights was that there were some.  Cool.  Or whatever kids say these days when they are excited.  But it’s early.  If a football season were a time line of all of history, the preseason schedule would be the part where the first land animal crawls up out of the ocean.  I am actually intrigued enough to maybe watch part of the next game, but I wonder, would you think it was weird if I just walked into the nail salon and stared for 15 or 20 minutes while they worked on your toes?  (I can assure you it feels weird to type that.)  To say the Packers looked like a well-oiled machine would be to use a simile that people use a lot when they think something is either working well or is well-lubricated or both.  So let’s raise our Packer mugs to more good work and sustained lubrication.    Even more interesting is the prospect that three teams, or even all four teams in the NFC North will be good.  I don’t mean good relative to each other, I mean good relative to NFL peers.  Now wouldn’t that be a novelty?  And on the subject of conference rivals and novelty, I gotta say, seeing Brent Favre in a Vikings uniforms is considerably more weird than the idea of a 48-year-old pedicure voyeur.  I could only look at the photo for a few seconds at a time.  First I squinted, I think to prevent eye damage.  Then I glanced sideways, but quickly averted my gaze.  Once the tremors subsided I looked again.  Then I couldn’t stop staring.  It was him alright.  Brett.  Favre.  In Vikings purple.  The image  was so unsettling I had to change into one of Kelly’s tennis skirts and a pair of old hunting boots just to out-weird the Favre image (link to photo–jk).  For those of you who don’t use text messaging, jk is phone vernacular for “just kidding”.  But don’t you wonder if I was jk about the photo link, or jk about the tennis skirt?  I’m going to leave you hanging, which of course is not intended as a visual reference to my purported wearing of a tennis skirt.  By the way, we all know Detroit will find the way to ineptitude. You probably think I am annoyed by the Brett Favre saga, which, like cockroaches before it keeps crawling up out of the drain.  As is frequently the case, you are wrong; this is absolutely great stuff, and I am not kidding.  Surely a case can be made for tiresome, burdensome and dumbsome, but think about the interest, emotion and opinion that Favre's latest re-unretirement has stimulated.  For me the inner conflict is intense.  That it involves both my favorite NFL player ever and the franchise that I loathe like a puss-filled boil on the wart of a bad hemorrhoid, or more specifically, the loathing that I imagine such an affliction would cause, is deliciously contradictory.  Ambiguity like that is uncommon and worthwhile.  As a Favre fan, I will wish Favre well on all but two or three (pending playoff pairings) days of the coming season.  If he surprises me and has a successful season it will only strengthen my respect and admiration.  I think (as opposed to know) that his body will soon fail to keep pace with his desire, and that even his desire, unless the Vikings finally have that ever-elusive dream season, may be hard to sustain.  I also think (as in know) that Favre doesn’t give a damn about what I think.  If the November 1 Vikings game at Lambeau arrives before Favre’s first hip replacement, I will cheer when he runs onto Lambeau Field.  I will cheer again the first time he throws an interception, and again when when our newly aligned 3-4 defense puts him on his back, which I hope is early and often.  Favre will be doing his job as a Vikings quarterback.  I will be doing mine as a Packers fan.   By the way, I ordered one of Sconnie Nation’s “We’ll Never Forget You Brent” t-shirts for my friend Brent Feller.  That shirt is genius. Plaxico Burress got a two-year sentence for shooting himself in the leg.  I think someone wanted to send a message to other NFL players to not do that.  That would be perfectly logical if it made any sense.  Sure, at first glance, one might think Burress’s sentence would be a stupidity deterrent to other players, but it doesn’t really work that way.  Most players don’t need deterrents, and the ones who do aren’t the type to learn from another’s example.  If I were the judge in Burress’s sentence hearing it would have gone like this: “Mr. Burress, you shot yourself.  If you ever do that again (looking him straight in the eyes) . . . it’s gonna hurt really bad.  I hereby sentence you 1000 hours of community service doing something that smells really bad, and wound served.” Michael Vick is back.  I don’t need to comment on the appropriateness of that, but I will register an opinion on some of the commentary.  Specifically I read an article by some guy who writes articles for a living that said Vick’s return will surely fail.  How do you know that, article writing guy?  You don’t.  Vick did wrong stuff.  He went to prison for that.  He is fortunate to have a chance to turn his life around.  I don’t think I benefit from cheering against him.   My tennis team, Busted Strings, finally made it to state.  Then it won state.  Then it won sectionals, going undefeated there, which is really quite phenomenal.  It’s now on to nationals in October.  Based on Kelly’s experience last year, that is really quite phenomenal.  I contributed to the cause in a subtle but significant way by deciding not to play this year.  I reasoned that my obligations as a summer basketball coach would pull me too far from the commitment it would have taken to help accomplish what the BSer’s did this season, and I was right.  Kelly asked me if I had any regrets about leaving the team just before its triumphant run.  None whatsoever.  This is partly because I have learned not to regret that which was not, and partly because I love coaching basketball and partly because playing at tennis nationals was never really a dream for me.  Playing without pain is a dream.  And I still want to dunk someday.  That aside, I am awfully damn happy for my former teammates and I wish them kick-ass good luck in Tucson.   I finally got a Facebook page.  I didn’t want to be the last person on earth not to have one.  Turns out I am not, because there is reportedly a 91-year-old guy named Edbert Crudmuffin who still communicates by sending letters from his primitive lean-to in Wyoming.  If you want to be his friend, send him a post card.  For those of you too young to know what a letter is–and no, it’s not just a character used in text messages–a letter is a form of written paper and ink communication, typically enclosed in an envelope, stamped and sent through the postal system.  I decided to get the Facebook page because the organizers of my 30th high school class reunion found it easier to keep tabs on people who were Facebook enabled.  Since I have never volunteered to be on the reunion committee, I thought it was fair to just do what they say.  It should be noted that I am not the typical technophobic Facebook holdout.  In fact I am more technosavvy than my kids, which puts me in the top 0.01% of old people or my kids in the bottom 0.01% of young people.  And why the hell does savvy have two v’s?  That is so wasteful.  V’s don’t grow trees, you know.   Here’s is my latest techno accomplishment:  I decided three weeks ago to join Facebook.  I typed in www.facebook.com.  Nothing happened.  Every other web site I tried worked just fine.  I thought it might be my firewall.  Nope.  Then I thought maybe the router was blocking it, as I have, from time to time configured the router to block Facebook–one of the few remaining sources of leverage I have over my teens, given that the withholding of food and water was not effective.  Through a series of high-tech experiments like trying to open Facebook on Kelly’s computer (it worked fine), I determined it wasn’t the router either.  I was stumped, a feeling that I hate.  Then, yesterday, while I was working on NBI, it hit me like a blue screen of death.  The host file.  The what?  The host file resides deep within the don’t-go-there part of your Windows\system 32 folder.  Most people who go there either never come back or they end up exploding their computers.  I am proud to say I have been there and back many times.  By inserting the Facebook URL into the file, I was able to block the site, except, consistent with Microsoft’s commitment to inconsistency, it didn’t work then, but for reasons I cannot explain, it worked perfectly when I myself wanted to access facebook.  I had to wonder if my kids had not somehow tricked me into sabotaging my own computer so their social networking site would not be corrupted by yet another grown up.  I opened the host file and sure enough, facebook.com was there.  I deleted the URL, saved the file, restarted my computer and voilà, I am socially modern.  The gist of this story is that I may not be smarter than you, but I am definitely smarter than myself, and if you tease me about it I will ignore your request to be my Facebook friend.    ____________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column.  This issue is dedicated to the author's impressively devoted friend, Peg, a Lombardi-era Packers fan who recently converted to Vikingfanism to worship her beloved No. 4, proving that Jupiter would be proud to have Favre’s gravitational pull.  The author is deeply indebted to Kelly for the unauthorized, but brief use of her tennis wardrobe even though the skirt was "a bit snug".  ©2009 DrTM Enterprises.  All rights reserved.