Half Past Dead, Literally

"I pulled into Nazareth, was feeling 'bout half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head
'Hey mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?'
He just grinned and shook my hand, 'No' was all he said"
--The Weight, The Band

I'm still not done, but wow, I don't think there's any way I could be more fatigued at the conclusion of a Monday through Friday period than I am right now. Since I'm so fond of statistics (see the Kobe-LeBron comparison of a few days ago), lets compare a few numbers right now:
- number of hours I've slept since Sunday night (five nights): 20 (that includes a whopping six on Sunday and 14 total from the other four days)
- number of hours I've been at work since Monday morning (five days): 84, which includes four 18-hour marathons in succession and a relatively light 12-hour walk in the park today
A healthy ratio of work to sleep would be 1:1, getting in those banker 9-to-5 hours in the office to go with eight solid hours of slumber. A more realistic relationship would be 1.5:1, maybe nine hours of work and just six of sleep. So somewhere in the 1-1.5 would be good, and 2:1 would probably be considered unhealthy. Where, then, do you stick 4:1?????? That's even more absurd to write and see in print than it has been to live it in this surreal five-day period.
Fortunately, I've been able to get a lot of good work done in that time (I should hope that given 18 hours to do something, most of us would emerge with a quality product), and although we're back in at 7 tomorrow morning (and again at 5 on Sunday), it's with a positive outlook that I depart the office tonight (I have to stay at my desk until one final thing feeds out; just keeping half an eye on a monitor and writing until that occurs). The previous was a very long sentence, full of parenthetical references (the kind that appear in a place like this) and even a semi-colon (most people don't use them correctly or at all; they should learn). Apologies.
I'm probably too fried to think straight right now, but I laughed a lot at the following excerpt from Sports Guy's ESPN.com chat the other day. I had mentioned in an earlier blog my own desire to "straighten" myself out after talking in such depth about LeBron and the other stars of the NBA, so this was quite relevant:

Tim (Columbus, OH): Have you asked LeBron out on a date yet? Has your man crush fully developed?
Bill Simmons: Come on, I'm not even 1/100th as bad as Eric Neel - he's done everything but make LeBron a mix tape.

Mix tape? That's funny.
On another note, I've decided to let the ridiculous work week coincide with some ridiculous facial hair growth. Call it a playoff beard if you must; it's a tribute to the current lack of an NHL presence on the sporting landscape and a visible reflection of just how haggard these 84 hours (and counting...) have left me. It's certainly not a full beard--not even close--but it's more than these 27 years have ever seen, that's for sure. Of course, I don't think I even shaved until I was a junior or senior in college, so that's no surprise.
Sports thoughts for the weekend: If UCLA can upset Washington again (after seeing the shellacking those Huskies applied to SC last night, I'm not at all confident in that possibility), the Bruins' season is saved and is right back on track. The momentum lost in that horrible No-Cal weekend was regained in the amazing come-from-behind effort against those Trojans and maintained last night with a win over Wazzu (though I only caught about three minutes of it during my edit session), so they need this one to keep it going. With freshmen playing so much, it's tough to maintain any level of consistency, so we've got to expect the up-and-down deal for a while. Hope: squeaking out a win. Realistic projection: a three-point halftime deficit that turns into a blowout loss.
A quick television viewing suggestion: catch tonight's Best Damn, if at all possible (on at 11 and 12 on your local Fox Sports Net affiliate), or if not, try the re-air Monday at 7 a.m.--it'll be worth it, I promise. Terrell Owens, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Burt Reynolds and Emmitt Smith all on location in J-Ville with our guys (a group that includes the affable Michael Strahan as a guest host this week). Good stuff.
Funny, funny story from Jacksonville about this Patriots beat writer who got fired for basically cut-and-pasting a Peter King column and submitting it as his own. Now if one is going to plagiarize, I would venture to say that the most widely-read and respected guy in the entire industry might not be the guy that you want to rip off. If you're too lazy to write your column, steal it from another local guy somewhere (pretty much every newspaper is accessible on-line; that shouldn't be a problem), but not from Peter King. It's like a musician asked to play an original song for a record audition and busting into a Beatles tune, or Dubya trying to pull off the Gettysburg Address and claiming it as his own (to be honest, the latter might not be too far off). Doing something that stupid, it won't take long for you to get figured out. Have a little common sense, buddy. Evidently, this kind of work was a pattern, as pointed out by a guy on the Sports Law Blog (I think I have a sibling who might find some interest in that site). It's hilarious to read the excerpts and see how little actual work this guy was doing. As the editor of the sports section of a weekly community paper, and one who has to patiently edit the moronic scribblings of numerous youth coaches every Monday night (I need to come up with a fresh batch of quotes, like right now), I take offense to this dude's lack of respect for the institution of sportswriting.
Here's a couple of gems from last week's youth roundup to close out the evening (the feed is over; I'm gone):
- "Zachary Johnson hussled with 11R/7pts. Justin Jenkins sunk 8pts/5R. Alec Mikailian made a fast break and basket in the 4th. ending up with 2R/3pts."
One comment for each horribly-written sentence: 1) "Hussled" is not a word. Please use a spellcheck, sir. 2) While your abbreviations for points and rebounds might be a convenient way to type, the word "sunk" will never apply to rebounds, and, quite frankly, doesn't apply to points either--baskets, maybe, or battleships, but not points or rebounds. 3) One doesn't "make" a fast break. One runs the break, one executes a fast break, and one can even finish on the fast break. Magic Johnson may have made a fast break or two in his day, and Steve Nash is a possible "maker" of fast breaks in today's NBA, but I assure you that Alec Mikailian, no matter his possible merit as a hoopster, has never made a fast break. Sorry, Coach.
- "The Lady's Clipper's continue to play teams tough and are improving with each game."
That's an excellent use of two apostrophes in your team's name, Coach, both of which, quite frankly, are UNNECESSARY!!! Your team name is the "Lady Clippers," obviously a reference to Kerry Kittles and Marko Jaric (I like Corey and Elton; I'll leave them out of it), so it doesn't require any apostrophes when you just state the name. If you're trying to say that the lady owns something, go ahead. She can own the Clippers--women like Marge Schott and Georgia Frontiere have owned franchises, so it's possible (though looking at those two names, I hope my franchises are never owned by women--has there ever been a good one? I mean, Georgia, Marge, the one from Major League? Not good...). It's also possible that the Clipper owns something, as in "the Clipper's broken jump shot" or "the Clipper's awful pass." However, I think you just meant to state the team's name, tell us that they're playing teams tough and improving with each game (some pretty good insight into the story on my part, if you don't mind me saying). In that case, please refrain from such blatant inaccuracy in your punctuation. I wish I had e-mail addresses for all these people so I can send the numerous corrections back to them after I've spent my endless hours editing.
Okay, the rant is over, the video feed is over, and I'm actually going to be home at a decent hour tonight (probably just in time to pass out and try to catch up on all that lost sleep)...If I don't ever wake up and this ends up being my last blog, hopefully you'll understand why (and hopefully you'll miss me, too)...Peace.