Fully Operational

August 8, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 12: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

I used to never have nightmares. In the past year or so, that’s changed. I get them. Weird ones too. I guess all dreams are weird though. You’d have to be pretty boring to dream about normal things.

This past Sunday I had a nightmare. Only I wasn’t sleeping. Los Pollos Hermanos was having a great week, poised to go 3 and 0. It wasn’t just good to be Los Pollos Hermanos, it was great to be an American. Gabby Douglas was golden in the All-Around after the Fab Five won the team gold. Phelps bounced back for history. And NASA was about to pull off a Mission: Impossible-styled assignment with its Curiosity rover hours away from landing on the surface of Mars.

July 24, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 10: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

I didn’t pay much attention to my team last week because I was swamped with work and had some big events to look forward to as the weekend approached; namely, The Dark Knight Rises, two Dave Matthews Band concerts, and, of course, the season’s second episode of Breaking Bad. My mind was elsewhere. Besides, once the games start on Monday, Los Pollos Hermanos are on their own. There’s nothing you can do for them, really.

July 18, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 9: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

Last week was a short fantasy week for Los Pollos Hermanos, so we will keep this one fairly short and simple. Los Pollos Hermanos was the 5^th highest scoring team and managed a 2-1 record, powered mostly Teixeira’s massive three-day performance where he dropped 42 points coming out of the All-Star break. Granderson was almost as huge, throwing down 38 points in three days. Offensively, I received solid contributions by Ike Davis, Mike Aviles, Alex Gordon and Dayan Viciedo.

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July 11, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 8: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

One of my favorite movies is Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, about the famously awful, B-movie filmmaker. Johnny Depp’s performance as Wood is among his most astute. He pushes all the right buttons, there is just the right amount of abasement to go along with the mirth. And there is nothing mean-spirited about the way Depp and Burton handle this character. On the contrary, it’s clear they are as in love with him as Wood was of his movies; they make the filmmaker’s enthusiasm for cinema irresistibly endearing and – dare I say it - inspiring. You laugh at him, you love with them.

July 3, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 7: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

Last Sunday I dropped a bed of roses upon a freshly grounded bed of earth. I kneeled at the foot of this earthly bed, lowered my head and said a prayer in the shadow of the tombstone - the tombstone belonging to one Sir Lancelot Lynn. It has been real. It has been wonderful. It is over.

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Filed under: DCIAC Fantasy Baseball Ike Davis Lance Lynn Madison Bumgarner andre rivas dont call it a comeback dre rivas fantasy leagues fantasy sports fully operational fullyoperational

June 12, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 4: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

For those of you that are unaware, my fantasy baseball team, Los Pollos Hermanos, gets its name from the television show Breaking Bad. If you didn’t realize this, it means you don’t watch the show. And if you don’t watch the show, you are poison to me. Just kidding. If you read the Breaking Bad piece Goodman and I did last week, you may have noticed I have a rather unhealthy obsession with the show. Some people will eat your face because they sniffed “bath salts”. I might eat your face if you talk shit about Breaking Bad.

June 4, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 3: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

Being in last place comes with a lot of luggage. It’s the deepest hole to crawl out from because of all the weight of all the other teams ahead of you: the weight in points, the weight in wins, the weight a jump start in the standings gives them, the weight of injuries, the weight of slumps, the weight of losses. It’s so very heavy: the lack of scoring, the lack of confidence. The weight of every decision you make feels heavier than the one before. Do you start Jarrod Parker this week with two starts against Texas and Arizona? Beachy against Toronto? Something weighing on you there. You feel it all collapsing onto you. Everyone else’s baggage succumbing to gravity, while you struggle with your own.

May 29, 2012

Don’t Call It a Comeback 2: Notes From a Last Place (Fantasy) Team

By Dre Rivas

There is a great moment in that masterpiece, There Will Be Blood (which has been on my mind a lot recently since the release of the trailer to The Master, the director’s next film), when the oil derrick is set ablaze in an ill-fated accident. Our antihero is the great oil tycoon Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis). Plainview watches money burn before his eyes and though he is quite a serious man, he is not overly angry. In fact, he blasts his right-hand man, Fletcher, (played by Ciaran Hinds) for “looking so miserable”. Fletcher is dumbfounded… why isn’t Plainview more upset about the costly accident as the oil burns like a flamethrower all night and through the morning? It’s a wasted day, a wasted night of riches. How can Plainview, an otherwise serious man of short temper, appear to take this awful misfortune in stride? Before he can ask, Plainview explains… it’s the bottom line:

May 25, 2012

Fantasy Baseball: For Better or Worse

By Dre Rivas

Ladies, listen up. Because it’s time to reconsider an increasingly maligned sport called baseball. The old-school notion that women have no interest in the world of sports has clearly gone the way of Susie Homemaker, a picturesque male-prescribed fantasy that kept male egos in tact while sucking the life out of the their life partners. We’ve come a long way from excluding women from the sports world, telling them to enjoy their Pinochle game in the kitchen nook while the men drink their brew, laugh in ways hearty and true and – occasionally – suppress some pretty strong homoerotic urges

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