Eat a Bean

It's football season, and that means lots of not-quite-legal gambling around the office and not leaving the house on Sundays, unless it's to go to a bar with projection TVs and Sunday Ticket, or, in my case, to go to work and wish you were at a bar with projection TVs and Sunday Ticket.

And beer specials and wings and nachos and oh, God, I'm gonna cry.

But, while I trade fun and chicken wings for Clif Bars and a paycheck, I'll still join millions of American males in living vicariously through my fantasy football team.

My primary league is through ESPN. I'm convinced that the only reason we're using ESPN is the commercials with hot girls in them, because the interface is piss-poor, and I feel like they're constantly trying to sell me something. And it's not like Yahoo!'s $10 upgrades. They want me to spend close to $100 to become an Insider, subscribe to ESPN the Magazine and upgrade my team for live stats and - here's the real kick in the teeth - injury reports.

So, unless I pay $29.95 (or the low, low price of $19.95 if I pay $39.95 a year or $6.95 a month for Insider and the magazine), I won't even know if my injured players are going to play any given Sunday.

But if I wanted to drop a bunch of money on fantasy football, I'd be in a league that had cash prizes. One guy I know is in a league that charges $100 to get in and $5 for every transaction.

While that sounds nuts, the winner gets a phat wad of cash, and everyone in the league is forced to take it seriously.

My other problem is that I hate taking anything seriously.

It is, on that note, that I unveil the logo for my fantasy team, the Philadelphia Eat-A-Beans:

You'll notice the irony right away: the bean looks like he's going to eat you! Wooooooo! More irony: it calls Philadelphia beautiful! Woooooooo!

This team commemorates the fact that I've got Donovan McNabb (who, for all you sports-illiterate readers, is the quarterback for the Eagles, which is the team from Philadelphia), and that the best TV comedy in this summer that was almost thoroughly devoid of good television, is called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Don't listen to the people who say Starved is better. That show's just an interesting gimmick with uncomfortable plots. Always Sunny is a laugh riot with compelling characters and a bar. Regardless, FX is the only network that is bringing it this summer, although Fox is promising new Family Guy this Sunday after football.

All you classic Big Yellow Nasty fans worried about me turning this into a sports blog: I hope you appreciate that I worked in some pop culture analysis right there at the end.

Coming next time: the origin of "Eat a bean!" or Mac turns the bar into a biker bar, and Dee falls for the leader of the bike gang. Meanwhile, Dennis continues his affair with the girl from the coffee shop, but can he bring himself to tell Charlie?