While I would love to sit here and chat up the fact that I went 2-0 with my picks—and even 3-1 when you take into account my predictions for the totals—the whole point of this blog is to laugh at how ridiculous it is when we take ourselves too seriously. But as you come to these pages repeatedly, you realize that all I am doing is using the beauty of words, usually adjectives to dress up the simple fact that we are all just humans—of various adjectives of color, nationality, and race—living out a string of days here. And, why many idiots use these adjectives as a reason to push others away, using them to create wars between races (adj: color) imaginary lines to fight over (adj: nationality, religion) and codes of behavior for things that happened when all of us were sperm, (adj: white guilt) I simply like to use them to help us poke fun and laugh at ourselves


You see, much like Van Gogh who—if you look at his earliest paintings were quite literal—you have to become an expert at the tools of construction before you can learn to bend the rules—and that is what I try to do every day. I learned this through dealing with my own personal tragedies and loss and it is once we experience ultimate sadness we stop feeding it with our fears and learn to laugh in its face. That is why so many of my jokes poke fun at race, religion, and history as they are all rooted in the fact that at the end of the day we are all humans, period trapped on the same blue spinning marble and you can look for all the reasons you want to make us different from our differing locations, color, and political affiliation’s of Team Edward or Jacob—but in the end that is you looking for reasons to make us different rather admit at the root of it we are all the same.

So why am I telling you this? Because I want to make you realize that all of these jokes basically come from me trying to squeeze that basic tenet of what I believe life to be in every moment—laughing in the face of pain as much as it is crying with tears of joy—the tears we saw on the face of Vernon Davis last week as much as we saw him yesterday—as much as he wanted to cry—stoically supporting Kyle Williams. That is why we love sports so much—because they are a microcosm of what goes on in the universe every day—the struggle to simply survive and share the experience of being alive—no matter what emotion that brings.

And that is why I want to fondly remember Joe Paterno today—and while you can go all over the web or to any paper today to hear amazing stories about the man—like how he played QB for Brown from 1946-1949—when Brown QB’s weren’t allowed in the NFL—or that after Paterno turned down an offer from the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969 to be their head coach they were forced to settle on some dude named Chuck Noll—I am not that guy. I am here to tell you about the aforementioned living out the string of life thing and why the very fact that he passed away yesterday—in my opinion—all the more proves he wasn’t aware of what was going on in his program.

Many smart minds—and myself—pointed out back in the summer when he was dismissed that this would probably kill him and it did. Simply put, The Nittany Lions program was Joe Paterno’s life’s work, it is what his soul attached itself, it was the equivalent of Van Gogh’s painting—the one thing he could sink himself into entirely and forget how ridiculous the cycle of living and dying can be. It’s the very thing Camus likened life to in his “Myth of Sisyphus.” In the story a man was condemned to push a rock up a hill and, the moment it reached the top, it would roll immediately back down and he would be forced to push it up the hill again for all eternity. But it was Camus who said in the moments his character was actually pushing the rock rather than focusing on the absurdity of it—that he felt most alive as he relished the feeling of the rock in his hands and the strength in his legs as he pushed it up the hill. Like Sisyphus’s rock, Van Gogh’s painting, and my comedy—we find a reason to be alive in the simplest moments—as Joe Paterno did with his football program—until his rock was taken from him. Jerry Sandusky did that to Joe Paterno with his unmentionable acts and scandal. And this is completely my opinion but I can see it no other way then this: had Joe Paterno really known what was going on in his program—and that his program and life’s work had been ruined—he would have retired if not died 20 years earlier.

People will debate to the end of time what he knew and what he did not—but based on all all I believe—I know in my heart he knew little of what went on there and that Jerry Sandusky and Mike McQueary went to bed every night knowing exactly what they were allowing to occur. And that is why I weep for joe Paterno today knowing he went to his grave as saddened for his victims in the Penn state scandal as much as he did for what Sandusky did to his child—the Penn State Program—as well. Rest in peace Joe Paterno—I will never let what you did directly for countless young men be sullied by the indirect connections you had to people you trusted to simply do what is right.

Okay… back to our regularly scheduled bathroom humor tomorrow