The Triple-Option Largesse Recommends Innovative College Football Offenses

Like most Americans, I enjoy watching football on Sundays but nowhere near as much as I do on Saturdays.  What keeps me tuned in on Saturday afternoon?  The tradition? Yes.  The rivalry?  Yes.  The passion?  Yes.  These intangibles absolutely improve the viewing experience, especially in person, but football played on a college field, to me, is much more interesting than that played on a professional one.  College football offers a variety of team philosophies and approaches. From Hawaii’s four WR spread to Georgia Tech’s (formerly Navy’s) Wing –T, any style of football you can imagine is played on Saturday.  On Sundays, with the exception of the wildcat, you will see roughly the same style of game.  Although not generally partial to any logic resembling “different is better”, I think it applies here, augmenting both performance and viewing experience.

The Looping Largesse Recommends Caddying for John Kanzius

A few weeks ago the CBS news program 60 Minutes did a twenty minute segment on a man named John Kanzius.  Mr. Kanzius was an American inventor, a self-described autodidact (look it up), and, in all likelihood, the wealthiest man to ever live in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Mr. Kanzius also took it upon himself to treat his own cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) by building and using radiation machines in his barn, much to the chagrin of his doctors.  This is how we do in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Some call it poverty and a crisis of health care.  I call it ingenuity and man-strength.  This particular version of man-strength is unique to Erie, Pennsylvania.  If you don’t believe me go see for yourself or take a trip along the interweb superhighway to learn more about Mr. Kanzius.  Neither disappoints.

The Largesse Recommends that Jon Stewart be Very, Very Careful

Now that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is back from its annual late-summer break, it seems like a good time to reflect on how it’s been doing in the ten months since the election.  You may remember that this period of time that was supposed to mark the end of humor for the comedians, Stewart very much included, who made their bones on the awe-inspiring hypocrisy of the Bush administration and ended up marking the point at which serious studies began concluding that Stewart was, as his commercials have always mockingly stated, “the most trusted name in news.”

The Brotherly Largesse Recommends Infighting

Some time ago my friend Notorious spit fire in the direction of Good Will Hunting.  See here.

Lot of venom there.  Lot of venom.

It’s time for the Largesse version of Point-Counterpoint, without any real points or counterpoints.

So, because I care:  The Largesse Matter-of-Factly Recommends Good Will Hunting

Beware of people who reference Barbara Delinsky and Hawthorne in the same breath.  I’m here to protect you from such nonsense and remind you that you’re better than that.  Delinsky is a higher form of art than the vapid Hawthorne, whose overrated pieces of shit have somehow pushed themselves to the top of most American literary top-ten lists.  It’s fucking nauseating.  And I’m not even remotely kidding.  Anyone that sees Hester Prynne as more complex, more interesting, or a higher form of art than any of the cougars Delinsky chronicles in her bestsellers is absolutely out to lunch.  Give me Twain.  Give me Hemingway.  Give me writers who care about character development.  Give me writers that care about humor.  Give me writers that actually know how to showcase the human experience.

Give me Good Will Hunting any day of the week.

The Discerning Largesse Vigorously Denounces Thomas Ian Nicholas

1999 was a fine year.  Apple introduced the Power Mac (again, I think), Y2K preparation was fierce, Wayne Gretzky played his last game, Stephen King was run over by a car, the realization of Prince’s dream was achieved in that we literally partied like it was (and in) “1999” and of course, we watched “American Pie” one thousand times.  How good was that movie?  If you’re like me you might remember feeling quite fond about this movie despite the presence of Thomas Ian Nicholas, the man who we would like to vigorously denounce for the next few hundred words. Look him up. I did and I was shocked to read that he fronted a band named “T.I.N” for many years while soaking in the glow of his post American Pie suckiness. I have yet to download T.I.N., but I’m guessing that they sounded like a cross between childbirth and Blink-182. This guy blows. God, he’s so goddamn irritating.

The OCD Largesse Recommends Hand Sanitizer

Big ups to the people at H1N1 for raising awareness about the awesomeness of hand sanitizer.  Good lord do I love me some bodily cleaning products that showcase the glory of ethyl alcohol; that shit is pure antiseptic.  I mean, like, real pure.  Don’t light a cigarette after touching this shit because your hands will burst into flames.  I’ve tried it and once the alcohol burns off your hands things grow slightly uncomfortable for the epidermis.

The Well-Rested Largesse Recommends Reformatting

(Yawn)

Oh hey.  Thanks for checking in.  Man, I am still so tired from all of this vacation.  Obviously, I was able to hit some pretty exotic spots during my time away.  You can do that when you’re important and large like me.  I mean, I stay domestic as shit when I vacate but it’s still pretty glamorous.  Whatever though, you don’t need to hear about my expensive jaunts from coast to coast, what’s important right now is that we’re back and we’ve got some serious things to talk about.  I know you love it when I talk tough so here goes: us, whatever this is between us, what you expect from me as an artist and as a life coach, needs to change.  But like, not in a dialectical, growth-is-life-or-whatever sort of way; I mean real behavioral, categorical change.  I can’t be there for you like I used to.  I just can’t.  You’ve changed so much and I’ve changed so much, I mean, what we had this summer is not reality.  I can not be there for you every day like I used to be.  It’s asking too much.

The Largesse Recommends Vacation

We’re taking a little break as the summer draws to a close, but you can continue your education by checking out the archives in the meantime.  Maybe we’ll do a little best-of.  We just don’t know.  We don’t know if we’ll have enough time.

Be awesome to one another.

The Fantasty-Inducing Largesse Recommends Keeper Leagues

As our ages inch upwards and our verticals inch downwards, we at The Largesse find the need to compete grows as we get older.  Most of us are now much closer to coaching Little League than we are to having played it, and this time of year is a cruel reminder of what could have been if we had just kept our foot on that bag or taken the bat off our shoulder in that final at-bat and reached the promised land of Williamsport and ESPN.  With our newfound maturity, we seek out new ways to release our competitive energies; from golf to our salaries, everything means everything because we don’t really have more “official” outlets anymore.  We were raised to play sports, most of us (Alistair throws like a girl, but don’t tell anyone), and now that our skills have peaked and deteriorated before anyone else even recognized we possessed them, we are off in search of a way to declare our primacy and belittle those closest to us.  We play, of course, fantasy football.

The Spiralling Largesse Recommends Dialectics

No, not the book, Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard, although that shit is pretty wild too.  I remain haunted by the exploding volcano commercials of my youth pimping Mr. Hubbard’s book on the modern science of mental health.  Look no further than Tom Cruise to properly appreciate all that this “science” has done for mankind and its perpetual search to understand irrational behavior.  Rumor has it that Notorious is embarking upon a literary journey of Mr. Hubbard.  Under no circumstances can that end poorly.  Me on the other hand, I’d prefer to throw haymakers at the Travolta family and cozy up with a glass of dialectics, a far superior philosophical paradigm.  In fact, consider this the first effort to secularize followers of dialectics (insert: picture of an avalanche tumbling).  Fuck volcanoes.

Dialectics is a philosophical construct that attempts to explain how two people with differing opinions can reach common ground through dialogue.  I know what you’re thinking: “um, advantage Dianetics” (aliens, volcanoes, auditing, cybernetics, etc.)  But don’t be fooled by L. Ron’s shiny engrams; dialectics is everything that Dianetics is and more.  And real, so like, there’s that.  Dialectics is concerned with issues far more complex than irrational human behavior.  Rather, dialectics attempts to explain change.  That’s right, it’s a field of study actually devoted to understanding the process of change.  Go ahead and try to explain change today if you have a few minutes; then try to explain human behavior using Xenu and the First Wall of Fire.  Let me know which one is harder.  Xenu is bush league compared to Plato and Socrates.