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Summer is weird, man.
Summer is this three month stretch of time that just don’t totally make sense. Hard as you may try, there’s no routine to summer… no normalcy. There’s no Monday through Friday grind. There’s no weekend. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything. Summer in your early-to-mid-twenties is just a constant haze of sun and water and booze and sweat and sunburns and poison ivy and horrible food.
Oh, and sand. Fucking sand. So much fucking sand. I have sand in my hair. I have sand on my bed. I have sand in my shoes and on my clothes and in every conceivable orifice of my body. It’s fucking EVERYWHERE. It just… it doesn’t go away.
At this age you spend the summer in a constant state of exhaustion. You’re fluctuating between irresponsibly drunk and cripplingly hungover with no real center ground to get your footing. I haven’t truly slept or truly been awake since the Friday before Memorial Day. If one end zone is a normal night’s sleep and the other end zone is a normal healthy fully awake day then I’m operating on a scoreless summer. Maybe I cross midfield. Maybe I get the offense close enough to kick a field goal. But there sure as fuck haven’t been any red zone opportunities to speak of. I’m kind of just floating at midfield between the 40’s, going three-and-out and hoping my defense or special teams can make a play. And no… they’ve yet to make one.
That’s me. That’s what I’m working with right now. Portrait of a blogger/bartender/model who’s spent his whole summer in a share house with no air conditioning and limited basic cable and shitty internet, living like a lonely degenerate in between impossibly overcrowded weekends. Sure there’s a beach across the street… a beach where I can take long walks and reflect on how much my college degree has gone to waste because of this preposterous idea in my head that making jokes and writing hot takes on the internet is a good way to make a liv—
WAIT… College!
COLLEGE! I went to college once. Sure I went to college and underachieved my way to a diploma but hey, I still went to college. A college down south that was and still is really good at football and that should have won the National Championship last year (I still can’t believe we lost that game) and IS going to win the National Championship this year (more on Clemson tomorrow) and wait…OH MY GOD wait… does… does football… does football start… *furiously rips open the calendar app*… OH MY GOD IT’S SEPTEMBER!!!
OH MY FUCKING GOD YES.
FOOTBALL IS ALMOST BACK. HOLY FUCKING SHIT YES.
Football is almost back. Football is back… *checks calendar again*… TONIGHT.
Football is back tonight OH MY GOD FOOTBALL IS BACK TONIGHT.
Football is back and real gambling is back and fantasy football is back and DraftKings is back in New York this year and OH MY GOD YES. Football is back and summer is (basically) over and holy shit that couldn’t come soon enough.
Summer? Summer and the heat and the sweaty hangovers and the complete lack of watchable sports can get the fuck out of my face.
Look, I love basketball, it’s still my sport. It’s my day one. My first love. My baby. What the NBA has done with their offseason… between the end of the Finals and the Draft and Free Agency and Summer League and the National Team… is remarkable. The NBA is truly a year-round sport, and that’s awesome. But outside of those WILD two weeks of free agency, it’s just not enough to fill my sports appetite.
And I love baseball. For all it’s flaws and the endlessness of the season and the endlessness of every game, baseball is still great. But from May through August I just can’t get myself up to get invested and really care for more than a half-inning at a time. It’s just too slow and too trivial in regards to a 162-game season.
And yes… I love the Olympics. I love them more than most people do. Having volleyball and gymnastics and swimming and track and all the weird random sports on my TV for twelve hours a day was a godsend for this last month. Same goes for the World Cup when that’s on. But real talk, I can only care so much about sports I’d pay zero attention to otherwise.
I love ‘em all… but they’re not football.
They’re not drunk College Football Saturdays watching five games at the bar at once.
They’re not NFL Sundays on the couch watching your team and another game AND the Redzone channel all while trying to keep tabs on the 50 different players you have going in Fantasy or DraftKings that day.
They’re not that desperate attempt to bet yourself back to even on Monday Night Football.
They’re not Tuesday MACtion for the boys or that Friday Night Pac 12 Game on at the bar that you get invested in once another girl gives you the Mutumbo wag.
And they’re certainly not the “wet-the-beak” irresponsibility of putting too much on a godawful Thursday Night Colts-Titans, Arizona-Washington State parlay because fuck it, Football is on and you’re going to watch it.
Football is still the king. And as you get older and real life smacks you in the face and you need things like sports to get you through it all, the two months between the end of the NBA’s Playoffs-Draft-Free Agency extravaganza and this NCAA Opening Weekend give you a greater appreciation for just how much you need it.
Summers tend to get worse as you get older. First you stop going to camp and start working a job in high school. Then you just want to get back to college. And now you’re weighed down by real life responsibilities that make summer just another couple of months where the weather is warmer – even if you’re just a fucking blogger like me sitting shirtless in the living room. Summer is fun but honestly summer just fucking sucks. I’ll trade my bathing suit and tan for a flannel and a brisk wind any day of the week, because that means that sports are officially back. College Football tonight and NFL next week. Playoff baseball in a month and NBA tip off right after that.
Summer can kick rocks. I’m too old for this shit anyway.
Football is back baby. IT’S BACK.
Now let’s go lose all our money.
(Clemson Season Preview and Week 1 Picks tomorrow. WE BACK)
Okay… the football blog is done and I’m probably going to repost what I’m about to write in a separate blog later.
But while I have you all here for the first time in a few weeks, there’s some stuff I’ll be rolling out on What’s The Action the next few weeks that I wanted to preview now…
Snapchat.
Go Follow What’s The Action on Snapchat at @whatstheaction1
The biggest complaint I personally have about Snapchat is that there’s just soon much stuff on there. People filming 140 second stories on a goddamn Tuesday. People snapping entire set lists from a concert. Five people sending you the same thing. Absolutely meaningless shit. Shit that I’ve been guilty of myself, admittedly.
I get that people don’t want to fill up their stories. I don’t want to do that. What I want is to use this as a tool to hopefully get more people on the site. Five snaps a day, somewhere around 30-40 seconds total, that’s it. I mean… that’s definitely not a promise, so don’t hold me to that. But that’s what I’ll try to do as I get this off the ground.
Instagram
Go Follow What’s The Action on Instagram at @whatstheaction11
I’ve had this instagram for a while and just never really done anything with it. Part of that is not being able to directly link to the blog. Part of that is not totally finding the right use for it. And yeah, part of that was laziness. That’ll change this fall. I know what I’m doing now. Go follow me on the gram.
Advertising
If you have a start-up company and want to get your name out there, I’m all ears. Sponsored Posts, Banner Ads, Advertising Reads on the Podcast or the Video, whatever. I know how hard it is to get a company off the ground and if I think we can help each other, I’m all for it. Email me at ham@whatstheaction.com.
The What’s The Action NFL Podcast
Year two of the What’s The Action NFL Podcast will be SIGNIFICANTLY better. Which, truthfully, isn’t saying much because year one was a disaster. Never knew what to make the format. Never knew how long it should be. Never had any real structure. Never had a set day and time to release it. Never could decide between just video or just audio or both. Never found the right tone. For our first year I thought Consoli and I had some moments that really worked and were genuinely funny and entertaining. But overall it was a mess. All of that is going to change. We’ve fixed all of those problems. We know what we’re doing. It’ll be shorter and funnier and well-prepared and an absolute must listen week in and week out. And next Thursday morning when Episode 1 is released, you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Video
Okay… this is the big one. I’ve been tossing around the idea of daily video in my head for a while. There’s some obstacles to doing a video blog on a daily basis. 1) I’m not good at editing video. 2) My face is just… I mean I think you know where I’m going here. 3) It’s not easy to make entertaining videos. Whether it’s written or off the cuff… it’s hard to create content like that by yourself.
After a few months I’ve come up with my solutions. And by solutions I mostly mean “Fuck it, just do it you pussy”
- As long as the content of the video is good, nobody really cares how crisp and how well-edited your video is. If it’s good content, it’s good content. Which remains to be seen from me, but you get my point. I’ll get better at editing and splicing in clips and overlapping in audio and [enter generic video guy term here] as it goes on. I’m not good at learning things like that until the pressure is on and if the physical video quality sucks every day then the pressure will be on. I’ll figure it out. What’s important is that I think I can make a good video.
- What I lack in looks I make up for in expressive reactions and sarcastic tones and my weird obsession with doing accents and voices and shit. I talk my blogs out as I write them, and sometimes (a lot of the time) I can’t get across my reactions with just the written word. I didn’t go to journalism school or major in english. SORRY. I’m a “show it” kind of guy. I’m very sarcastic. I make more hand gestures than a drunk Italian. That kind of stuff is great on video when done well.
- This is the toughest part, obviously… but it’s the part I’m most excited about. I think the thing I do best is take some random little story or news or whatever and just run with an insane take. I’ll get worked up and I’ll ramble and most of the time, I think it becomes something funny and/or entertaining in the blog. Writing that out is fun. I love it. What I think will work well is writing those things out and then screaming those insane/wild/unexpected takes into a camera. Setting a loose script and rolling with it. If I didn’t think I’d be good at that, I wouldn’t put my face out there. No, I don’t think it’ll be great immediately. But if you give me a few minutes a day to hopefully provide you with some entertainment I promise it’ll be a must-watch part of your day soon enought.
That’s it for now. Snapchat and Instagram and the Podcast will get going next week after we’re all done destroying my body this weekend. The Daily Video will follow soon after. Big things coming.
Enjoy Labor Day Weekend. Drink a million beers and eat a million hot dogs and play a million beach games and also maybe try to stay safe. Fun starts next week.
What's The Action 