Bathroom Monologue: The Cutting Edge of Football

The following is an experimental product to be sold only to the most adventurous professional NFL team.

Do you think it’s odd that it’s illegal for a ball carrier to kick or punch the defense, which is empowered to tackled and injure him? Surely a few well-placed blows to the opposing team would greatly reduce the pain a Running Back suffers over the course of a season. Yet he is not permitted even the slightest physical altercation against attackers.

To my best scrutiny of the NFL’s rules, he is allowed to wear protective clothing. This includes armored chest pieces, thigh pieces and helmets, all meager, if well-intentioned, defensive gear for a collision with an attacker. But as the best Americans have often pointed out, the best defense is a good offense, and to protect the most important parts of your offense.

Consider the benefits of a chest plate covered in knives.

Not truly covered – only six protruding from the pectorals and shoulders would dissuade many linebackers from most high-speed physical contact. If tackled, the attacker would surely get the worst of it, but preliminary testing in high school football programs suggests an 86% decrease in general tackling. And good luck stripping the ball of a Running Back who’s impaled the pigskin on his left boob.

Detractors will say this is illegal, immoral, or ruining the game. They say this about every advancement in personal safety. I say if you’re going to dress like a Raider, then dress like you mean it. You’re protecting your players and keeping the NFL on the cutting edge.

Bathroom Monologue: Playing Pool

"I have a headache. Go without me."

"No, come down to the pool with us. Francis invented a new game. It's amazing."

"I don't know. What game?"

"We take ten Nerf balls. They're foam and full of air, so they float. And you make a triangle out of them, floating in the middle of the pool."

"Ugh, and Francis gets drunk and jumps on them?"

"No, it's way more measured. Everyone takes turns aiming the pool skimmer and knocking an eleventh ball at the triangle of ten. They scatter and bob all over the pool, usually towards the filters."

"So, it's like billiards? I like billiards."

"Exactly like billiards. You get a point for every time one goes into the filter. It's really fun to see if you can aim with the way the water sloshes around. Kind of zen. I bet you'd be good at it."

"I might try it. What's it called?"

"Oh, Pool Ball."

"Get away from me."

Bathroom Monologue: The Catch

The breath caught in Ade Akingbola's throat for the last time as the doctor explained his heart condition. Well, the second to the last time, and as he looked at x-rays and listened to possible surgeries, he calculated to not permit the true last catching of breath for a damned long time.

He explained to the others that they'd be losing their second-best shortstop. How he loved softball, and he'd still come, and still bring the home-made limeade, though he'd add less sugar from now on. That, too, was a loss.

More doctors, these cardiovascular elites called "specialists," explained that the condition was spreading to his lungs. Except "spreading" here meant "atrophy" or "corrosion." In a month, it was in his bones too. How did your heart rob your bones? By being too weak.

In a month the softball season started up again, too. By then he needed a wheelchair. A second wheelchair, actually, a motorized one after he could no longer safely move him. The effort, you know, was often hard on people.

The spring was too hard on too many people. Ade only had to visit the hospital three times a week; his friends had to lose at softball on four. He couldn't play shortstop, he couldn't even yell to support them. He could dump vodka in the limeade, though, and by Week Five, he strongly suspected it was helping more than their coach. They still lost – he'd been their second best shortstop because all but Nelson and Idrissa lacked reflexes – but they were cheerier about it an hour later. Sometimes they played morning games hung over, and no hangover changed how badly they lost. Sometimes they came closer to winning, sliding into first while trying not to throw up on the opposing team.

Ade watched every game from his mechanical chair, a sippy cup of water to keep himself hydrated and an iPhone full of cardio stats he had to monitor. There was, it appeared, an app for your heart turning against you. An app for it taking your lungs and bones with it.

He used the phone to count the unhappy winners. Team after team waddled off the field as softball season grew deep, complaining about their backs, frowning at their bats, squinting at their cars as though they hadn't played a game for several hours, as though softball had been a square traffic jam and the dugouts a miserable off-ramp preventing them from hitting their cars. God, Ade hoped he'd enjoyed playing more than all these winners did. He remembered himself having loved it, but also remembered complaining more than he liked, the mere memory making his breathing speed up, which he couldn't abide. Not if he wanted to postpone the last time his breath would catch in his throat.

Ade Akingbola found his lips smiling – had to raise his hand and feel his mouth to be sure of it, and moving his hands idly like that was no easy task anymore. He was fondling his own smile as a winning relief pitcher, who'd shut out Ade's friends for the last three innings, grimaced, spat chaw in the red dust, and walked for his Volvo. Ade pushed the switch to wheel backward, to get out of the miserable winner's way. The miserable winner wouldn't look him in the face; looked him in the chair, sure, briefly, before ticking his head away. Winning must have been so hard on some people.

Bathroom Monologue: Frankenstein's Monsters

When they heard what Frankenstein was up to the town put up quite a ruckus. Anyone without a flashlight (and there were quite a few, as they hadn’t been invented yet) lit a stick on fire and called it a torch. Dozens of howling fire-bearers in jockey shorts hustled up to the gates of Castle Frankenstein and beat on the doors until the Doctor showed his face.

“There is no — ” he started to lie, but was cut off by the town Point Guard.

“Germany hasn’t won the gold medal in basketball in years and we hear you’ve got a seven-foot undead countryman up there. Can he come out and play?”

“You can’t…” The Doctor paused. “Wait, you want to what?”

“We want to see if he can slam dunk. We’ve never had a player who could reach the net without a step-ladder, and that’s illegal in the Olympics.”

Dr. Frankenstein kept most of his body braced behind the door, but poked his face out to stare at the jockey-shorted rioters.

“You don’t want to kill him?”

“Listen,” said the Point Guard, “we aren’t very tall and we don’t bathe often, but we’re very technically sound.”

The Doctor put a hand on his hip.

“I didn’t know there was a local basketball team.”

“Yes, advertising is difficult without moveable type. We’re buying a machine on lay-away, but all we have right now is the letter A, and eventually we get bored of stamping everything with the same vowel.”

“So you don’t want to kill my creation?”

“Heavens no! We want to kill that insipid American team that wins all the time. President James Monroe drives the lane like it’s his doctrine. It’s terribly frustrating. That’s why we need your giant. Let’s see him bowl over a man stitched together from the best German bodies available.”

The Doctor laughed nervously. “Here I thought you were coming to kill the Monster…”

“Monster?” the Point Guard exclaimed and looked back at the crowd. Their faces lit up in unison.

Another in the crowd cried, “That’s brilliant! We needed a team name.”

The Point Guard thrust his arm in the air. “Here’s to Frankenstein’s Monsters!”

Then the jockey-shorted peasants began pumping their torches and chanting, “Mon-sters! Mon-sters!”

Except in German.

This story was originally published at Every Day Fiction.

Bathroom List: Seven Reasons Why Chess is Not Like Politics

1. The pleasant fantasy that you have only one opponent.

2. That the opposing forces in front of you at the start are all that will show up.

3. That the sides will have equal membership.

4. That all of your members will do what you say.

5. That the sides will take orderly turns.

6. That you will get to see everything your opponent does.

7. That anyone can only do one thing at a time.

Bathroom Monologue: Treat Our Troops Better Than Sports Stars

He is not wearing a helmet.

It was recently brought to my attention that soldiers make less than football players. By “recently,” I mean “every day,” and by “my attention,” I mean something closer to “preaching to the choir.” I believe if you substitute those in you’ll get a sentence almost as ugly as the war in Afghanistan.

What really came to my attention for the first time was how much the Military Industrial Complex would like turning wars so profitable that purple-heart winners were essentially pro-athletes. It is an enormous industry that creates riots almost as dangerous as sports. One imagines the leaders of the Military Industrial Complex would love to institute a draft, especially if they got the first-round picks.

That’s how we wind up paying our boys in uniform better, my fellow pacifists. College recruiters, high school recruiters, even talent scouts sniffing around middle school paintball games. NBA 2K13 and Madden? Pfft. Call of Duty already outsells both of them, so wait until we have rosters of real soldiers with stats updated every week. You’ll have to negotiate with the families of KIAs as to whether you can keep their likenesses online, but it can probably be written into their SBP.

It begins with better television access. If there’s Monday Night Football, then surely we can have the Wednesday Night Warzone. Three hours to storm an Al Qaeda training camp, filmed from the safety of satellite and helmet cameras. You can’t let the terrorists win – because if they do, they get a monetary bonus. Nobody likes a suicide bomber with gold teeth.

And teams! You’ve got the Army, Navy, Marines – they were the sixth team of SEALs, after all. If ratings drop, pit them against Blackwater, or any of our allies in the War Against Terror. Intra-conference wars should be expected in a regulation season. A station – much more commercial than the Armed Forces Network – devoted to arm-chair quarterbacking the peacekeeping mission in Sudan or Darfur or wherever Congress says we can send soldiers once it means creating jobs in the entertainment industry. We’ll get more weeks than the NFL, and unlike the current wars, newscasts won’t feel the need to gloss over losses or skirmishes abroad. It’ll be part of the Sports Round-Up.

We’re talking merchandising on every piece of equipment our soldiers need, and endorsement deals out the ass. Parents will never have to fear their enlisted kids are underarmed again, because companies will be killing each other to supply the teams. Every marine will get a signing bonus just for putting on a Halliburton micro-weave vest. They’ll be annoyed by the amount of gear they have to touch, don and sign – most of which they won’t use, but instead hand over for charity auctions. You know, to drum up cash for good causes.

Bathroom Monologue: "Mech Fighting" Added to Olympics

In what was either a legitimation of Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots or a robust embrace of the late Richard Matheson, this week the Olympic Committee announced that in addition to Sevens Rugby and Golf, “Mech Fighting” will be added to the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.

Grappling between human-piloted titanic machines has been popular for so long as they’ve been built, and truly before that, for as long as people could draw them into cartoons. With international standardized rules requiring all models feature butts they can be knocked onto, medical tests proving it was less hazardous to the health than Judo, and the overwhelming number of appeals from fans, the Olympic committee simply couldn’t keep it out, especially not if they wanted to keep Equestrian.

Still, Mech Fighting has its detractors. Some claim it will be too easy a competition to medal in, given how expensive a proper mechanized unit can be. Only a select few first-world nations can afford to build “medal gear.”

Every Sport is Derived From Tennis

The following geneology will reveal how all sports derive from Tennis. It's commonly known in the sciences that all sports are either descended from Tennis or Ping Pong. Which of these is the prime mover of sports is a futile debate, as Ping Pong is a cuter version of Tennis, while Tennis is clearly Ping Pong while standing on the table*. For the sake of this exercise, we will assume Tennis is the prime mover, because no one calls it “Ground Ping Pong,” but many refer to Ping Pong as “Table Tennis.”

Tennis is people separated by a net, whacking a ball at each other’s sides with a racket.

-Pairs Tennis is Tennis with more people; all other multi-person variants will be excluded

-Ping Pong is Tennis where you do not stand on the court*

-Badminton is slower, wispier Tennis

-Racquetball is Tennis where both players face the same direction

-Volleyball is Tennis with no rackets

-Pole-vault is Tennis where the goal is to get over the net

-Golf is Tennis with no opposition whatsoever and several clubs to defend yourself

-Fetch is one-way Tennis where the dog is your teammate

• Skeet-shooting is Fetch where the gun is your teammate
• -Bowling is Skeet-shooting with many targets and no ambition
              -Chess is bowling where the pins are skilled and fight back
• Checkers is Chess with no ambition again

• Baseball is one-way Tennis where the court is square and there too many people for so little to be happening
• -Cricket is more Baseball

-Football Europa/Soccer is Tennis without the net in the way, mostly with feet

• Football Americana is Soccer, mostly with hands
• Rugby is meaner-spirited Soccer
• Basketball is Soccer with an annoyingly placed goal, mostly with hands
• Field Hockey is Soccer, mostly with sticks
• Polo is Field Hockey that needlessly confuses horses
• Water Polo is Field Hockey in water
• Ice Hockey is Field Hockey, on ice
• Ice Soccer, sadly, does not exist

• Track is Soccer without anyone else in the way and no ball
• Nascar is Track in a car
• Equestrian is Track on a horse
• Swimming is Track in water
• Diving is Swimming without the follow-through
• Synchronized Swimming is Swimming where the goal is to not beat or lose to your opponent.
• Rowing is Swimming in a boat
• Yachting is Rowing if you’re rich
• Whitewater is Rowing in a boat when you can’t find a reasonable river

-Boxing is Tennis with no ball or subtlety

• Judo is Boxing with no manners
• Wrestling is Judo that starts on the floor
• Fencing is Boxing with swords
• Sumo is Boxing with no punching
• MMA is Boxing where you just hit them everywhere

Please let us know if you think we missed a sport. We hope to provide a holistic genealogy.

Bathroom Monologue: Too Big To Swim

“So they train their whole lives just so they can train for three years just so they can swim for two minutes, and the majority of the people who get to swim for two minutes will be deemed failures? This, my dear, is where depression comes from.”

“Wait, Alison Schmidt is six-foot-one?”

“I see we’re taking different revelations from the Olympics.”

“Six-foot-one?”

“It’s fine, Lita. I’m sure you could take her in judo.”

“I’m six-foot-one!”

“Sure, but you have more practice at judo.”

“That’s too tall to swim.”

“According to whom? Not the Olympic committee.”

“According to my swim coach who said you had to be slim and elegant!”

“You should take him at judo.”

“Wait, what did the guy say? Missy Franklin’s wingspan is wider than she is tall?”

“Is that rare?”

“Yes. Measure my arms.”

“Can’t I measure something else?”

“You’re never touching anything else if you don’t measure them right now.”

“What the lady wants, the lady gets. You hold this end of the measure, though. We’re not all giants like you… swimmers.”

“I can’t believe this! All I wanted to do when I was a kid was swim. You couldn’t get me out of the water.”

“Certainly your pipsqueak dad couldn’t.”

“Dad. All he wanted me to do was bake.”

“You’re an awesome cook! It’s why I’m wider than I am tall. But not so much wingspan.”

“So? How wide is it?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Say it.”

“This feels too much like when Jack Nicholson asks the surgeon for the mirror.”

“God damn it!”

“Seventy-four-ish. That’s, you know. That’s close to your height.”

“I could have been an Olympian!”

“What if they made an Olympic event for cakes? You could get the Gold Medal for flour. Well, I guess that’s already a thing, but—”

“Dad paid off that coach. I know it.”

“Maybe they were just dumb back then. I’m pretty sure when you were eleven, they still thought egg yellows were good for you.”

“If he was alive, I’d set his toupee on fire.”

“You could try out now.”

“I can’t try out now! These girls are, like, sixteen. That’s half… half my…”

“Please don’t give me that look like I’m supposed to finish your sentence. If I do, you’ll hurt me.”

“I had so much fun swimming. I wanted to do it more than anything, it was like flying in warm air. Do you even know how much I loved it?”

“No, because every time I go near water it’s for hydrotherapy. My leg makes the dream of the 200-meter backstroke a little harder to fathom.”

“I… hey, I didn’t… I just didn’t realize how much I missed it.”

“There’s a pool at the center. I think it’s ten bucks to mess around until closing time, if you want to do more than miss it.”

“You think?”

“I think ten dollars less sweets for me would do us both some good.”

Bathroom Monologue: Frankenstein's Monsters

When they heard what Frankenstein was up to the town put up quite a ruckus. Anyone without a flashlight (and there were quite a few, as they hadn’t been invented yet) lit a stick on fire and called it a torch. Dozens of howling fire-bearers in jockey shorts hustled up to the gates of Castle Frankenstein and beat on the doors until the Doctor showed his face.

“There is no—” he started to lie, but was cut off by the town Point Guard.

“Germany hasn’t won the gold medal in basketball in years and we hear you’ve got a seven-foot undead countryman up there. Can he come out and play?”

“You can’t…” The Doctor paused. “Wait, you want to what?”

“We want to see if he can slam dunk. We’ve never had a player who could reach the net without a step-ladder, and that’s illegal in the Olympics.”

Dr. Frankenstein kept most of his body braced behind the door, but poked his face out to stare at the jockey-shorted rioters.

“You don’t want to kill him?”

“Listen,” said the Point Guard, “we aren’t very tall and we don’t bathe often, but we’re very technically sound.”

The Doctor put a hand on his hip. “I didn’t know there was a local basketball team.”

“Yes, advertising is difficult without moveable type. We’re buying a machine on lay-away, but all we have right now is the letter A, and eventually get bored of stamping everything with the same vowel.”

“So you don’t want to kill my creation?”

“Heavens no! We want to kill that insipid American team that wins all the time. President James Monroe drives the lane like it’s his doctrine. It’s terribly frustrating. That’s why we need your giant. Let’s see him bowl over a man stitched together from the best German bodies available.”

The Doctor laughed nervously. “Here I thought you were coming to kill the Monster…”

“Monster?” the Point Guard exclaimed and look back at the crowd. Their faces lit up in unison.

Another in the crowd cried, “That’s brilliant! We needed a team name.”

The Point Guard thrust his arm in the air. “Here’s to Frankenstein’s Monsters!”

Then the jockey-shorted peasants began pumping their torches and chanting, “Mon-sters! Mon-sters!” Except in German.

Bathroom Monologue: When You Lose

“Kid, you’re in your first year, and he’s had eight decisions in his last nine matches. He’s taller by two inches and heavier by twenty-five pounds if he skipped breakfast. He’s never been choked out, and he’s only submitted once, and that was to the current champion. I don’t mean to douse your spirits when I say you’ll lose. You’ll lose. But you’re faster than him, and he leads with his right because his left elbow has bothered him in the last two matches. It won’t save you. Tonight, I’ll probably be taping ice packs to various parts of your body. But you can go out there and make a spectacle. Make people look at you. If you do something ludicrous, you’ll be replayed across Youtube and TV. It doesn’t matter if he shrugs off your spinning kung fu kick – in fact, if he knocks you out right after it, you’ll be a sensation. You never should have been put in this fight, but you can make sure everyone remembers you after it, and that’ll mean you keep your career.”

Bathroom Monologue: Can't Beat Them Audio Redux

To hear Nat Sylva narrate today's monologue, click here.

"Two years he’s turned us out of the playoffs. Their training camp looks even sharper this year. You’re going to have to do something more than trade for a draft pick. And I’ve got something to think about. Something to keep in your pocket, in your office safe. Something you should burn before November, whether or not we do it.

"I know a woman at an escort service. She's not from here or their town. I think she’s from Baton Rouge. We met once. She's… frightening in how persuasive she gets.

“We can hire her through an intermediary who will have no direct connections to you or our team.

"Now, if he's too good a few weeks into the season, we call an innocuous disposable cell. She'll single him out at a club. Get him alone. He's already had so many indiscretions that he practically has this coming. He’s had so many that whatever she claims, people will suspect. ESPN will discuss. Blogs will believe. The bruising will be artificial. The photographs convincing. The distractions? Perpetual. Even if her suit folds, he will miss at least one game against us. In all likelihood, he'll miss the season and wind up on a crap team next year, possibly in the other conference.

"It will cost us less than any of our defensive linemen make. Her life will be pulled apart by media and she won't care, because she doesn’t like her life. You wouldn’t agree to this if you did. With this money, she can make another one somewhere she likes better than Baton Rouge. And we hamstring the biggest team in our division.

"It's a thing you can do."

Bathroom Monologue: Can't Beat Them

"Two years he’s turned us out of the playoffs. Their training camp looks even sharper this year. You’re going to have to do something more than trade for a draft pick. And I’ve got something to think about. Something to keep in your pocket, in your office safe. Something you should burn before November, whether or not we do it.

"I know a woman at an escort service. She's not from here or their town. I think she’s from Baton Rouge. We met once. She's… frightening in how persuasive she gets.

“We can hire her through an intermediary who will have no direct connections to you or our team.

"Now, if he's too good a few weeks into the season, we call an innocuous disposable cell. She'll single him out at a club. Get him alone. He's already had so many indiscretions that he practically has this coming. He’s had so many that whatever she claims, people will suspect. ESPN will discuss. Blogs will believe. The bruising will be artificial. The photographs convincing. The distractions? Perpetual. Even if her suit folds, he will miss at least one game against us. In all likelihood, he'll miss the season and wind up on a crap team next year, possibly in the other conference.

"It will cost us less than any of our defensive linemen make. Her life will be pulled apart by media and she won't care, because she doesn’t like her life. You wouldn’t agree to this if you did. With this money, she can make another one somewhere she likes better than Baton Rouge. And we hamstring the biggest team in our division.

"It's a thing you can do."