FINAL APPEARANCES OF THE SEASON:

Friday, August 29th, 7:00 p.m.: Barnes & Noble, Christiansburg, VA

Tuesday, September 2nd, 3:30 p.m.: Bull's Head Bookshop, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

Oboyoboyoboy.

Fantasy football season is upon us.

I admit it, I've become addicted to this little pastime over the past three years, and this fall I've let the addiction become worse by participating in not one but two FF leagues, both run by friends from my Chapel Hill days. My original league, the Fantasy League of Gentlemen/Gentlewomen, organized by Dan Sipp, enters its third year of existence with all the participants grown more savvy. We all gathered online for our live draft on Tuesday night, and predicting who'll be the big winners this season is just about impossible. I drafted eighth of the ten owners, which isn't necessarily bad, because that meant I drafted third in Rounds 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. (Last year I drafted tenth, but got to go first in the even-numbered rounds, and I put together the regular season's best team.)

The short version: I got the running back I'd targeted with my first pick, Stephen Davis. I believe he's in for a big year now that he's with the Panthers, who for years have wanted a powerful back to hammer into their opponents, chewing up the clock and letting their talented young defense (which I also drafted) rest. The roster for The Fighting Coelocanths 2003:
*Quarterback: Brett Favre,
*Running Back: Stephen Davis, Tiki Barber
*Wide Receiver: Eric Moulds, Amani Toomer
*Tight End: Doug Jolley
*Kicker: Jeff Reed
*Defense: Carolina Panthers
*Bench: QB Drew Bledsoe; RBs Charlie Garner & Michael Pittman; WRs Rod Smith, Robert Ferguson & Kevin Johnson; TE Christian Fauria; DT Baltimore Ravens

It's a veteran squad, not terribly flashy, but the players are tough and talented, and I feel good about my picks. We'll see how they work out in a league where the Screaming Boiled Lobsters and the Peace Corps have some scary guys in their lineups.

I feel even better, however, about the automatic draft that the Yahoo computer ran for me in my second league, J. Michael Beard's own Number Crushers. This is a crazed league in which each team fields no fewer than twenty players every week--more guys than I have on my entire FLOGG roster. To draft his team, each owner must rank players 1-200, and is then automatically assigned players one at a time by the computer. I picked fourth of eight owners, but of course had no way of knowing who I was drafting until it was all over; conceivably, I might have ended up with eight kickers on my squad.

What I got, however, was a promising team with a defense that is simply--dare I say it?--superb. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you The Scrub Jays 2003 roster:
*Quarterbacks: Tommy Maddox, Kerry Collins
*Running Backs: Priest Holmes, Ahman Green, Stephen Davis
*Wide Receivers: Hines Ward, Plaxico Burress, Joe Horn
*Tight End: Alge Crumpler
*Slash: Amani Toomer, Rod Smith, Jerry Rice (Note: the three slash positions may be any combination of one TE, two RBs, and three WRs)
*Kickers: Matt Stover, Olindo Mare
*Defensive Line (inc. linebackers): Zach Thomas, Takeo Spikes
*Defensive Back: Ronde Barber, John Lynch
*Defense (any): Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp
*Bench: WRs Ashley Lelie, Santana Moss, & Kevin Johnson; DL Greg Ellis; DB Champ Bailey

Yes, the defense is heavy on Buccaneers--with good reason, as they were the dominant defense in the league last year--which means I'll have to do some juggling when they have their bye week. It'll be worth it, though, to put a defense of that power on the field every week but one. The quarterbacks are perhaps a bit iffy, but both have excellent receivers and had magnificent passing stats last year. The Jays' power, however, rests elsewhere. Not only do I have a good D, I don't think any other team can match my trio of starting running backs, and my wide receivers are so good that for the moment Jerry Rice is #6 on the depth chart, for god's sake.

Since more than half the NCers also play in FLOGG, I'm sure I'm going to be hearing all sorts of comments from both groups for the next few months. And if Stephen Davis and Amani Toomer get hurt, you'll be able to hear me crying about it from across the state line.

Meanwhile, I'm packing up to go south for these last two readings; I'll be back on Wednesday for the WFS opening faculty party, and we'll be jumping into our first faculty meeting on Thursday morning. I don't know if I'm ready for that, but I'm definitely ready for some football.
5:00 AM

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FINAL APPEARANCES OF THE SEASON:

Friday, August 29th, 7:00 p.m.: Barnes & Noble, Christiansburg, VA

Tuesday, September 2nd, 3:30 p.m.: Bull's Head Bookshop, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

So, about that tree frog...

Tree frogs make up a biiiiiig portion of the biomass in South Carolina. On any given night, there may be up to a dozen of the little guys clinging to the windows surrounding my parents' front door. If there's a light, the bugs come, and if there are bugs, the frogs come. Actually, the bugs come even if there's not a light, so the frogs come pretty much everywhere.

I suppose, then, we shouldn't have been surprised on Wednesday afternoon when Dad announced that he'd heard one in Mom's Suburban. It was cowering down beside a plastic milk crate in the back, and since we were parked to let my grandmother out of the car, I took a moment to extract the little amphibian, who promptly leaped out of my hands and onto my shirt--and then my arm, my pants leg, the ground, the Suburban's rear tire, and finally the ground, at which point he hopped off out of reach underneath the car.

I've had tree frogs land on me before. When my family and I were camping on Ocracoke Island in 1970 or so, we had one invade our tent. He wasn't doing anything awful, just making too much noise, so we did our best to chase him out. He jumped from the tent pole into my mom's hair, and from there squarely onto the bridge of my nose.

I think he was more surprised than I was, honestly. It can't feel good to realize that what you presumed was a safe, solid, perch is in fact merely a small, fleshy protuberance right above the gigantic maw of a carnivorous creature that does not want you on its body. I had just enough time to note the surprising warmth of a frog's belly against my nose before he jumped off, bounding onto my brother's leg in the process, and was finally chased out of the tent for good.

Alas, none of this experience did any good that night. Mom was driving us home from the Savannah Sand Gnats' 11-8 loss to the South Georgia Waves and I was in the shotgun seat. We were roughly ten miles outside of the city when Dad, who was in the back seat, loudly announced, "There's another one in here!" We didn't know that there was a whole lot we could do about it in the pitch dark at 55 miles an hour in the middle of the Jasper County marshes, so the six of us gave a mutual shrug and turned our thoughts elsewhere, watching the spanish moss swaying gently in the headlights, listening to the hum of the air conditioner, slipping toward sleep...

It was at about that moment that something cold, slimy, wiggly, and invisible landed on my bare thigh.

I am occasionally reminded of what Kassandra knew all too well, that foreknowledge doesn't do a hell of a lot of good. I may have known that there was a tree frog loose in the car, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier to welcome the sudden sensation from just below the hem of my shorts. Perhaps because of the air-conditioned environment, as opposed to the warmth of a sun-baked tent, the cold-blooded creature felt to me like an ice cube against my skin, and my nerve impulses decided to act without bothering to inform my brain first. I jumped as high as my seat belt would allow and cried out, "Frog!" or "Jesus!" or some heretical combination of the two, and everyone in the back seat (Dad, the kids, Kelly) had a good laugh at my expense. Mom was too busy driving to get many giggles out of it, but she did suggest I try to catch the frog.

I would have cussed disgustedly and told Mom there was no way in hell I could do that in the pitch dark at 55 miles an hour in the etc., etc., but I realized that the frog had jumped off my thigh and landed on the passenger side window. I cupped my hand over him with minimal fuss and called for someone to hand me a cup. Dad handed one forward, a plastic Sand Gnats cup that had been full of beer until very recently, and I slid it over the frog as smoothly as possible.

Now, of course, I had the cup pinned against the window, with no way to know what the frog was clinging to, window or cup. The only way to get him out for sure would be to lower the window; he'd have to cling to the cup if the glass started moving under him, right? Unfortunately, Mom was continuing to barrel along toward Beaufort, and I couldn't in good conscience send a frog flying into the night at a speed higher than he'd ever reached in his life. She didn't want to pull over because there were cars behind her. I pointed out that a) I couldn't hold this cup against the window forever, and b) if we pulled over, the cars could go around us. Eventually, either my logic or the fear of the frog jumping on her thigh was persuasive, and she pulled off into the verge. I lowered the window, reached as far out as I could, and shook the cup vigorously, dislodging both the frog and the beer backwash in which he'd been quietly soaking for some minutes.

We made it home without further incident. I'm hoping the frog is OK, though I'm sure he's having a weird time getting used to his new environment, and I have to wonder what the frogs there think of him. After all, he appeared out of nowhere, stinking of booze, spinning an impossible tale of giant creatures, bizarre captivity, and strange electronic transport devices. He'd be on the cover of the amphibian equivalent of the Weekly World News right now if only we'd given him an anal probe, or maybe introduced him to Bat Boy.
10:05 AM

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