eager captivity

The time Kirsty looked at his breath froze in her lungs. Her heart threatened to beat out of his tight chest. Those knees which was precarious to begin with would have given way, if not for the giant hand that reached across the stile to Grip her elbow, and draw it through the device.
"Kirsten," his deep, heavily accented voice caressed her face as he bent over to brush chaste kiss on her cheek. Few people need to bend to kiss her, but this discretion. "This is for you," he said as he handed her a bouquet of colorful flowers.
"Kirsty," she stammered to a loss of their attempted introduction.
His lips appeared in the corners, but she could not exactly be called a smile. More like who looks her cat Thomas gave her when he tried to handle it in giving him another treat. "No, Kirsten's your name on my tongue, and that's what I'll call you."
She brought the flowers to her face and inhaled the exotic but subtle aroma. She could see that they are not your typical flower shop selection. "Thank you," she finely managed to whisper.
He nodded, "You are welcome. They are my mother's green house. She thought you might like some sign of our homeland. Artic wild flowers have always been his passion. She says they kept her sane while dealing with my father, uncles and all my brothers. "
This was the most that Sven has been revealed about himself in all his months of correspondence. It should be reassuring, made the people more human, but only deepened his mystery. Her heart stuttered for a moment and she considered going back around, trying to catch the train to London before it left the station. She was in over her head, and she knew it.
But with those icy blue eyes staring at her, she could not find the strength to say a word. Much less to pull his arm from his firm grip, turn and go back through the station. Running back would be a good plan, she thought, as he drew his against him and wrapped his arm on his shoulder.
"Coffee, yes?" he said. She nodded as he led her out of the station and on the main street. Tilbury was just like any other small port near the channel, non-descript. Dead almost, but after the hustle and bustle of London, held quaint appeal all its own. They walked in silence for a few minutes until they came to a chip shop. Sven stepped back and held open the door for her. "I'm sorry. It is not much there."
Kirsty smiled weakly and nodded at his words. She turned and looked back at the station, designed for something. As if something had warned her to run, run now. But she dismissed it. The man may not look exactly like his photo but appeared normal enough. She is paranoid it was.
The next hour went quickly, two cups of coffee, a decent conversation and laughter than she could ever remember on a first date, not that this was a real date, more like old friends meeting for drinks she supposed. Except you do not spend the whole time sneaking glances at your friends, wondering what they would look like naked, what they would be like in bed. No, but Sven was surprisingly easy to talk to she was still intensely nervous. "
I guess I let you get back to work, Sven. Catch the next train back to London," she stammered to study his hands around the plain white coffee mug. "It was a pleasure meeting you though."
He frowned, the movement sent a deep creases in his striking face. He was not handsome in the traditional sense. Almost forty, his skin was resisted by his labor, small tracts of wrinkles on her mouth and across the forehead. His hair was longer than she thought, falling just below her shoulder blades. His lips, that she could not stop looking at when he spoke it was surrounded by goatee and mustache. But it was those eyes still that Kirsty could not forget.
Not only the intense shade of blue or the twinkle when he laughed, which she received the impression he did not do nearly enough, but something more. Intelligence, of course. Authority, by the way. But something else also. Pain, perhaps.
She needed to stop thinking about that man needed to go home, to find some decent chap and establish as his mother said. No mysterious men, who reminded her of her Viking ancestors. Rough fishermen, who brought her exotic Artic wildflowers, had no place in her orderly life. No matter how much her body ached to feel his touch. Have him do any of the naughty things they discussed in those emails. 
"No," the only word was spoken in a low, calm voice, but that required obedience. "I'll show you the boat."
Kirsty knew that she would have to discuss. I knew that she would have to manufacturer her escape now. But the truth was that this man is still fascinated by it. Maybe seeing him in his natural environment would offer her some closure, some of the answers to this mystery that drew her like the proverbial moth to a flame.
View into the depths of those intense eyes, she thought, a very hot flame and I was going to get burnt. But still found herself nodding her agreement. He held her jacket as she worked her arms in it. His hand brushed briefly against the side of the chest, and she expired.
It came from a pathetic, miserable little whimper. She lost her eyes in embarrassment. When she finally found the courage to look up at him, Sven was smiling, but not just any smile, a smile that made her want to destroy for this station. 'Come in,' said the spider to the fly, she thought.

2011 All ACLB Team Safeties

NEIL: ED REED & PATRICK CHUNG
I really, really wanted to include LaRon Landry here and in retrospect maybe I should have, but I know Raven will write about him and I want to let him have the full stage with that one. I mean, how could I not a love a dude who is probably legit insane and who has a pet monkey? LaRon Landry was damn near made for me. And yet, he is even closer to Raven Mack’s heart and I don’t want to steal his thunder. If anyone is going to wax retarded about Landry it should be him and not me.
And besides, I did want to honor these other two dudes and so I figured this gave me a good chance to do that. Ed Reed is kind of an obvious choice. I will admit that. He’s here for no other reason than he is an awesome football player, and while that may be disappointing (or a welcome relief) given the convoluted reasons I have used to put dudes on this team, it’s something that just had to be done. It would be disingenuous to leave him off the team just because I can’t make up some silly bullshit reason to have him on here. I mean, there a lot of great players who I left off this team for one reason or another. Sometimes, I just think the guy is kind of a shitty dude and I don’t want to honor him in any way even if he is a great player. There are a lot of dudes like that out there. And sometimes, it’s for some weird, trifling ass reason that only makes sense to me. Take Troy Polamalu for instance. You would think he’d be a natural here. I mean, he’s Polynesian, which I love, he has long ass hair and he’s a great player. Great. But the thing is, is that a couple of years back I heard him do an interview with Terry Bradshaw and the dude sounded like Michael Jackson. Seriously, his voice was, uh, kind of womanish. That is not in and of itself a bad thing. I love women. You kick ass. But when I think of Troy Polamalu, I don’t want to be thinking about Michael Jackson, you know? Michael Jackson was a creepy fucker. He just was. And so I can’t honor somebody who reminds me of that. It’s just the way it is.
So, you see, it’s all too easy for me to find reasons to keep guys off this team. I do that a lot. And so when a guy like Ed Reed comes along who doesn’t really do anything for me all that great, I immediately start looking for reasons why he shouldn’t be on this team. But honestly, I can’t think of one. And since he’s a damn fine football player and a former Miami Hurricane, perhaps the most Armchair Linebackerish football program there has ever been, he should be on this team. The fact that I can’t speak against him is testimony enough to his kick-assedness. I have no great love for him, but I have no great disdain either – or even a little disdain for that matter. In terms of my heart, there is a sort of ambivalence about Ed Reed. In terms of my head, there is nothing but respect. And it is out of this great respect that I select Ed Reed for the Armchair Linebacker All-Pro team.
That leaves Patrick Chung. Now a lot of you might be wondering what in the hell he’s doing here. After all, he’s not a great player or anything. He’s a decent player and little more. He’s kind of a boring choice, but he has one thing that nobody else on this team has: he is a descendant of none other than The Great Willie Young. That’s right. Don’t ask me how I know this, but It would seem that Chung is directly descended from The Great Willie Young via The Great Willie Young’s marriage to the daughter of his Chinese compatriot, The Somewhat Okay Wu Pei. Now, I realize that Patrick Chung is not actually Chinese. I don’t think so anyway. If I recall, Chung is a Korean name. So don’t get all bent out of shape and accuse me of some racist ass THEY’RE ALL THE SAME TO ME bullshit. That’s not what’s going on here. No. The reality is that many, many, many years ago – over 1,000 of them in fact - The Great Willie Young and Wu Pei’s daughter, the lovely Yi Xian Shu Guang, had married and as the result of this union, The Great Willie Young had several glorious children. When these children grew, they themselves went on many great adventures because they were endowed in part with the blood of The Great Willie Young. Sadly, though, and much to The Great Willie Young’s heartbreak, because of the mortal blood of their mother (who was herself half immortal thanks to the blood of her father, Wu Pei), they were subject to old age and the eventual death that all mortals must face. Even though they were technically ¾ immortal, the ¼ mortal blood aged them and eventually took them from this earth, just like it did their mother. Where their spirits went, if there exists some special heaven for their kind, nobody knows and it is said that to this day, The Great Willie Young can be seen speaking to the echoes of their spirits, communing in sadness and grief with what is just the hint of a memory and little more but this is all threatening to spin off in its own strange direction so perhaps I should get back to the main point, which is Patrick Chung.
Anyway, The Great Willie Young was forced to take his leave of his children before they expired because he could not bear to witness their final, ignoble days. He locked their memory in his heart along with that of their beautiful mother and he moved on to new adventures, to new lives and to new ages of man. But his children, those half Chinese/half Willie Youngese children, grew to be great lords and ladies and before they left this mortal plane they fathered children of their own who then begat their own children and so on and so on through the ages. One of these scions of the House of Young found himself fighting a great battle across the Yalu River which separates China and Korea. During this battle, this young prince came face to face with a savage Korean warrior, the champion of its people. The two fought for days amidst the snow while their compatriots fell all around them. They fought day and night until finally they were alone, just the two of them locked in mortal combat. It was obvious that both were of a great and ancient blood and neither would yield. But the prince of the House of Young’s blood was greater on account of his glorious ancestor and he eventually overcame the Korean champion, knocking him backwards. The great prince stood over his foe and placed his sword to the Korean’s heart and as he began to pierce the skin, a cry from the Korean rang out. The prince was startled, as this was the voice of a woman! The prince tore the helmet from the Korean champion and sure enough there was a beautiful Korean princess staring back at him. She was breathing raggedly, beaten but not conquered, and he loved her instantly. He withdrew his sword and bowed to her, but because of her own great pride, she took this opportunity to drive her sword through his belly and leave him bleeding to death on that field.
The young prince knew he was dying and yet he looked at his killer and he declared his love for her. She stared down at him, confused and was immediately struck by the horror of her deed. She knelt down, still stern of face, for her pride was unyielding even in the face of great sorrow and she acknowledged his love. After all, he was a handsome prince, filled with the blood of that handsomest of princes, The Great Willie Young and as we all know, no woman can resist the charms of that blood. And then she lay next to him and remained by his side for the many hours it took him to die, for again, that blood sustained him well beyond the limits of an ordinary mortal man and it granted him a measure of piece while he took his leave of this savage world. And while they lay together, they talked and they lived and they loved a lifetime’s worth and time slowed for them and became irrelevant. Eventually, the prince closed his eyes for a final time and willingly went into that great mysterious light which takes his kind and the Korean princess wept. And yet she knew that something of her prince still lived inside of her and nine months later she gave birth to a child, and it is this child who sired the line which eventually produced Patrick Chung.
So there you have it, the legend of Patrick Chung’s immortal blood. It is but a trace, and yet it is still in there, driving him towards an echo of the greatness of his great ancestor. He may seem like just an ordinary man, and he himself probably doesn’t understand the nature of his gifts but we know the truth, and the truth is that Patrick Chung is greater than ordinary men because through him flows the power of The Great Willie Young, and that is why I am proud to include him on this team.



RAVEN: ED REED & LARON LANDRY
Neil is exactly fucking right - I am going to include Laron Landry. But first let us speak further of Ed Reed. There is no other football player in the NFL who looks more like he is about five years into a 20 year plan to look like one of Fred Sanford's best friends than Ed Reed. He has the homeless man beard, the bug eyed look that is simply the result of being such a dark-skinned dude with beautiful almost twinkling bright eyes. He seems like the chillest dude on earth, just by looking at him. Seriously, there was always the one homeless dude who you knew was smoking crack with your dollar donation to his cause, but he just seemed so goddamned chill, you couldn't resist. And he'd recognize you, and call out, "Hey Potna, what's goin' on today?" and you would feel good about this crazy man calling you "partner" in mangled but happy speech. That's Ed Reed in years, except he is a successful millionaire dude instead, yet still looks like that.
Why is he successful? Because there is no better ballhawk in the NFL. Early on, in the shadow of Ray Lewis, Reed was a headcracker, like any great safety. But he has transitioned into the one guy on an NFL field defensively who can turn a game around. This is probably partially due to his early times in Baltimore where the defense had to win games, so they might as well throw six up on the board from time to time to help their own cause. But you put that on the field with an offense that is actually competent beyond Brian Billick's ego strut, and what you have a formidable motherfucker.
On top of all this, as he was doing just these very things last season, he was doing it under the duress of his brother having run from the cops and disappeared/drowned in the Mississippi River. Like it's one thing to have tragedy strike where someone dies suddenly, but to have your little bro running from the sound of the beast, take a desperate dive into the biggest river in America, and then not show back up, that's some heavy fucking shit. And yet Ed Reed was there for every game, still making huge plays, still showing mad heart, no matter how heavy it was, and fucking shit up. It is actually impossible to imagine, at least right now, a new defender coming into Baltimore and not playing two levels better than he would anywhere else with the one-two locker room presence of Ray Lewis/Ed Reed in the house. That will come apart at some point in the next year or two, but for now, it is as solid a defensive structure built around high-quality middle management as you will find in the NFL.
Oddly enough, Laron Landry's brother Dawan shares the secondary space with Ed Reed in Baltimore. But Laron Landry is on another level than his bro. Laron Landry is a fucking monster, and as a Redskins fan, you cannot help but be haunted by the potential of the ghost of Sean Taylor, especially as Landry has developed into the meat and potatoes hybrid he has become. Area 51 (Taylor's 21 plus Landry's 30) could've been one of the most devastating defenses the NFL ever saw, like a pair of Ronnie Lotts running around decapitating motherfuckers, taking the ball, and scoring six points or at least multiple turnovers per game. Except fate didn't let it go down that way.
As it stands though, Laron Landry took a big step last year, the same step I saw Taylor take the year before his death, where simply being a human missile on the field was tempered with an eye for the football, and trying to collect fumbles or picks instead of just concussion notches on your belt. Don't get me wrong though, Landry still drops his head and goes brain first like a heat-seeking Scud a few times a game. But he stopped losing sight of his responsibilities in the process so often, and started to grab some stray footballs in the process. Up until straining his groin (or whatever the fuck it was) last year around midseason, he was being talked about as a potential NFL MVP on defense. That's big talk, something that doesn't happen with the Redskins much.
I hope the motherfucker stays healthy this year, and keeps putting that meat and potatoes mentality into the defense. A lot of what he is learning now is what Sean Taylor learned before him, and it's just so sad, as a fan for a team with little to be happy about, that we didn't get to see Area 51 reach it's full potential. Usually this can be accepted because of stupid free agency or guys deciding they don't like their team anymore and going primadona or something. But whatever, the past is the past. Laron Landry is a fucking monster still, and just because he doesn't have a twin monster helping him give opposing receivers tyrannosaurus rex arms, it doesn't mean he still can't be a game-changing monster in his own right. Which I guess was the one shining moment last year as a Redskins fan, that Landry at the beginning of the year started to fully step out of the shadow of the ghost of Sean Taylor, and started to be, "fuck... Laron Landry," in his own right.


TOMORROW: Kickers & Punters

Week 6: I Am Conflicted

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or, in this case, 16 football seasons.

So this week, the San Francisco 49ers continue the 2010 Crushing Disappointment Tour by playing host to their cousins and cross-bay rivals, the Oakland Raiders. The 49ers are 0-5 and currently running away with the "biggest disappointment of 2010" award, their head coach quickly turning from "beloved charismatic leader and difference maker" to "overmatched motivational speaker who can yell at people but can't actually coach and needs to be fired now!" (such is the nature of sports fans; a winning streak means the team is inevitably super bowl bound; a losing streak means everyone involved is an incompetent and embarrassing failure who needs to be fired then tarred and feathered while they're cleaning out their desk); their starting quarterback a former #1 overall pick and heir to the franchise's unsurpassed Quarterbacking Legacy turned public whipping boy and effigy for organization-wide shortcomings and fan frustration (to the point where he was booed after every single play and the fans openly chanted for his backup to be put in the game, but this is an essay I'm saving for a later week), and an owner who has inherited the team from his business-savvy but football-foolish parents and gone from "spitting image of his uncle, the great Eddie DeBartolo who's gonna turn the team around just like Eddie did!" to the guy who is angrily tweeting at reporters that his 0-5 team is still guaranteed to win the division this year. No, really, he actually did that.

It takes a massive effort to out-dysfunction the modern-day Oakland Raiders, but that's the one competition the 49ers have managed to win this year.

The Raiders, for their part, come in at a 2-3 that truly could and should be 3-2 if kicking field goals truly were as easy a task as most NFL kickers make it appear to be and all NFL pre-game show "expert" pundits smugly assume it to be. No small feat for a team that has spent the last seven seasons being a woeful punchline for those same smug pundits, especially considering they've managed this without a single professional-quality offensive lineman, as ACLB's official Raider correspondent Harpo has routinely pointed out. They even broke their 13 game losing streak against divisional foe the San Diego Chargers last week. There's signs of life in The Oakland Coliseum these days; though of course they've spent so long discouraging even their fearsome fan base that every one of their 3 home games this season has been blacked out; The Relevance Revolution Will, Apparently, Not Be Televised.

So anyway, this week the battle of the bay is on us, as a rare 2-team NFL market squabbles amongst itself as it does once every four years in a game that matters. The 49ers and Raiders, for as much they accentuate their differences from each other in their marketing and as much as their respective fan bases insult and stereotype each other as being from different walks of life -- as if NFL teams truly did still represent communities and cultures and ideologies and weren't just the bunch of millionaire mercenaries toiling for billionaire corporate overlords we deep down know them all to be, because they've priced us out of even attending their home games live and attempt to charge us shakedown fees to tailgate on "their" property even though those stadiums were built with OUR tax dollars...but that is definitely an essay for another time -- but anyway for all their aesthetic and superficial differences, the 49ers and Raiders are almost a perfect mirror image of each other. Both teams have glorious pasts, filled with Super Bowl victories, Hall Of Fame Players, iconic uniforms, and international fan bases that spawned long before the league decided it needed to "cultivate new markets" overseas with a token regular season game in London.

More recently, of course, the franchises have mirrored each other in misery. Both last played a playoff game in 2002 (oddly enough, both teams' last playoff game involved getting their ass kicked by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Like I said, mirror images). Both teams have since embarked on the worst stretches of epic futility either franchise has ever experienced (the Raiders have established a new NFL record for consecutive seasons of 11+ losses; the 49ers started this season with a record of 33-67 in their last 100 games, a precise .333 winning percentage; that's 2 out of every 3 games for six years.) Both organizations venerate their glory days and insist their return is literally Just Around The Corner because, as it turns out, it's a lot easier to do that than to hire football-smart General Managers to run your team effectively in the modern NFL and build a glorious, or even respectable, present. To further illustrate that point, both teams were retarded enough in recent years to send Jeff Garcia packing when he was at least twice as good as any of the QB's they kept instead of him.

And, as you readers can probably infer from the title of this entry if not the content, the teams are finally similar in the fact that I'm a big fan of both. While the 49ers will always be first in my sports-fan heart, having earned my loyalty during my childhood when they were the NFL's version of the old British Empire; spanning the globe, colonizing (and plundering) and dominating teams across the league like so many underdeveloped African or Southeast Asian Nations, adding Super Bowls to the trophy case left and right as though they were more rubies and emeralds in the Imperial Crown, and basically being that one really obnoxious team that fans across the rest of the nation either jumped on the bandwagon in an attempt at front-running or utterly reviled for either squeaking by or crushing their favorite team in the playoffs again and again and again year after year after year. Meanwhile the Raiders were growing out their beard to turn heel and represent Los Angeles for 13 seasons, but upon their return to the Bay Area I converted my basement into a bedroom and made room for them, too. I'd heard and read about their lore as a kid, too, and thought it would be cool to have them back and have TWO good football teams to watch regularly, even though it quickly turned out that just because the Raiders were back in Oakland, they weren't really the Oakland Raiders anymore (and haven't been since, but I'm treading on Harpo's territory now).

This is my brain. This is my brain on Football, only both the angry yelling
and laughter at the absurd are both uselessly aimed outward at an indifferent world.
Any Questions?

Fast Forward to today: instead of getting two GOOD teams to watch regularly, I am stuck watching two shitty teams bumble their way through a macabre dance in which they attempt to out-embarrass each other; one on my TV and the other on sketchy internet streams on my computer because they're blacked out (again), putting gray hairs on my head and foul words on my tongue. For me, Sundays invariably consist of watching Six Non-Stop Hours of Shitty Football. Since 2003 I have, in effect, watched 14 consecutive seasons of constant losing, busted draft picks, incompetent management, poor coaching, and worst of all opposing fan bases pathetically trash talking each other (when fans of a 6-10 team talk shit at fans of a 4-12 team, it comes off much like when the two Special Ed kids in school challenge each other to a fight on the playground at recess), with all signs pointing toward upping that total to 16 by this December. This would be bad enough, but it is made all the worse not only by how good these teams used to be, but the fact that this was SUPPOSED to be the year the 49ers finally dragged themselves out of that quicksand of sucktitude and were a respectable, nay, even good team again, because their pre-school division was Theirs By Default. Not the same as Theirs By Birthright like it was in the 80s and 90s, but damn it, close enough.

So, with my dual loyalties, naturally I hoped that by the time this game rolled around at least one team would be in such a favorable position they could afford to lose this game, thus I could pick a side safely knowing that both teams could come out ahead. Instead, the opposite is true; both teams badly need this win and thus, no matter what, at least one of them comes out of this game with Zero Hope. It's like Sophie's Choice, only with football. Oh, and except that even the "winner" of this game is effectively doomed anyway and is just delaying the inevitable for a couple weeks by claiming Local Bragging Rights, especially the 49ers. So the choice is utterly irrelevant and no one will be saved anyway. So, not really like Sophie's Choice at all, then. Nevermind. They're 0-5 and, despite what Jed York and Mike Singletary would love to tell you, they are not winning the division this season. All they can really do by winning this game is bury the Raiders at 2-4 right now, instead of allowing the Raiders the privilege of burying themselves in a couple weeks. If the 49ers lose, The Raiders will get to pretend for a while longer at 3-3, while the Niners themselves will be, at 0-6, in a hole so deep and awful and without hope and light that we fans can only laugh at it, them, and ourselves, to continue the process of self-abuse; wanting the team to finish as poorly as possible so as to get that #1 draft pick, booing the starting quarterback off the field and demanding his backup start playing even though every single one of us knows that David Carr cannot possibly be any better and is in all probability an inferior athlete who is even more lacking in confidence than Alex Smith and will thus fuck things up even worse, mock the head coach we thought was the bee's knees last season, and demand management blow the team up even though there's a lot of good parts who don't deserve to be blown up and it would be foolish to throw away plus we hate management and ownership and don't trust them to rebuild the team properly anyway since after all their lack of skill or even enthusiasm in that department is what led to this team being so shitty in the first place.

Sadly, even if the 49ers finally grab a win this week, I won't really be able to enjoy it. While I'm not much of one for predictions (that's an entry for another correspondent, as Neil's predictions posts in re: his beloved Lions are far more thorough and entertaining and sometimes even semi-accurate than I could ever manage), I will say I think the 49ers will win this game, but I feel I must preface that by saying my two reasons for for anticipating a 49er victory are:

1) When this game rolls around every few seasons, the 49ers invariably win out in my heart; the Raiders are a close second but the 49ers are the clear #1, and I can't help but root for them at all times.

2) While the 49ers are the masters of falling way behind and pulling off the 3-points-short comeback, the Raiders are grand masters of blowing slender 4th quarter leads even to shitty teams. Furthermore, I have suffered through enough Raider football over the last seven years to know they cannot be counted on to play two good games in a row, and until they prove otherwise, since they actually won last week I must conclude they are due to come in to Candlestick and lay an egg so big even Alex Smith can't fumble it away.