PARIS—Hola, Sportstrotter amigos. How’s it hanging? I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but the lines on the field don’t paint themselves here at Sportstrotter-MGD Stadium.

I’ll tell you where I’ve been the last couple weeks: holed up in my tiny apartment, with the heat on (winter starts early here in Paris), half-dressed and huddled under a desk with my laptop, obsessively reading the news and trying not to piss myself. With a virulent mixture of abject, tremble-inducing terror and maniacal, Joker-esque amusement, I’ve been following along at home as the world self-destructs. Economics, politics, society, science, culinary, environment — you name the topic, and one undeniable truth pervades: we’re fucked.

Worse still: a Cubs pitcher recently threw a no-hitter; the Buffalo Bills are 3-0; even the Yankees, ever-fueled by Steinbrenner’s billions, missed the playoffs this month. If that’s not a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t know what is.

Yes, friends, these are exciting, historically dire times we’re living in. To talk each other off the ledge, we’re first of all going to need something to talk about. Something we both care enough about to have a reasonable, informed discussion on. Anchower? Sports? The Bush Doctrine?

That’s one thing I’ve discovered, reading so much news: if you’re on the ledge with US Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin, you might want to steer clear of the topic of world affairs. As James Fallows pointed out earlier this month on his Atlantic blog, Palin’s swing-and-a-miss on identifying the Bush Doctrine in an interview with ABC’s Charlie “Charlie :)” Gibson spoke volumes about her ignorance of even the most basic conversational points of the last eight years of United States foreign policy.

‘It is embarrassing to have to spell this out, but for the record let me explain why Gov. Palin’s answer to the “Bush Doctrine” question — the only part of the recent interview I have yet seen over here in China — implies a disqualifying lack of preparation for the job ….

What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the “Bush Doctrine” exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years.’

The best part of Fallows’s post, and the only reason I reference it in this space, is that the example he used to illustrate his point about basic conversational knowledge of a topic was … sports talk radio. “Mention a name or theme – Brett Favre, the Patriots under Belichick, Lance Armstrong’s comeback, Venus and Serena,” writes Fallows, “and anyone who cares about sports can have a very sophisticated discussion about the ins and outs and myth and realities and arguments and rebuttals.”

For instance, Condoleezza Rice — coincidentally one of the architects of this mysterious “Bush Doctrine” – has repeatedly mentioned her desire to one day become commissioner of the NFL. Now, let’s say presumptive commissioner Condi gives an interview to ESPN’s Stuart Scott, who asks her, “if you had been in Roger Goddell’s place, how would you have handled the 2007 Spygate investigation?”

She can take any position she wants on the question. I’d like to hear it — especially because any jabs made towards Bill Belichick would be implicit critiques of her pal Dick Cheney. Hey, don’t tell me the similarities between those two men aren’t frightening.

But if Condi clearly demonstrates in her response that she has no idea what Spygate was, we have to wonder if she’s really as passionate or as qualified to become overseer of the NFL as she says she is. If she has no idea what Scott is talking about … next.

So, in that vague spirit, I bring you a scattered, rambling list of my thoughts on the most compelling goings-on during the last several weeks in the sporting universe. No crib notes. No elaborate context. Just sports talk. If you’ve been following along at home, these should initiate some sort of emotional reaction or opinion in you. If not, well, I guess you’re not qualified to be vice president of sports. You sure are good lookin’, though

• Was anyone else watching last Saturday’s Schadefreude-tastic Miami-New England game, and pulling for the Dolphins to reach fourth-and-goal on the Patriots 3-yard-line with 12 seconds left, so that they could call timeout and send Ronnie Brown out there to walk untouched into the end zone for his sixth touchdown of the day? And hoping that after that, Fins coach Tony Sparano calls for a two-point conversion? I would have lost my mind.
• Karma to the Patriots: “Don’t think we’re even just yet. You still have debts outstanding. What do I mean? Well, Bob Kraft still owns his stadium. And his house. I’m just saying …”
• I’ve always loved the Ryder Cup. Couldn’t get enough of it. Every two years I was glued to the TV from Friday morning till the last putt on Sunday. But I didn’t watch a single minute of it this year. And it’s not just because Tiger wasn’t playing, or because I get every NFL game streamed live to my computer in HD, or because the competition wasn’t on cable in France (Canal+ is France’s villainous-monopoly equivalent of DirecTV in the States). I think it’s because, in a way, I’m changing. I’m growing up. Somebody save me.
• Remember the (marginally racist? Naw, I think it’s safe) joke from a couple years ago about how it was a sign of the apocalypse that the best golfer was a black guy (Tiger) and the best rapper was a white guy (Eminem)? Now that we have Anthony Kim, and Em’s entered the Witness Relocation Program, can we change the joke to how crazy it is that the best golfer is Asian and the best martial artist is white? (And yes, this item was a blatant excuse to link to Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos)
• The French press seems surprisingly excited about Lance’s comeback. Maybe they’re just running out of recognizable cyclists to accuse of doping?
• Speaking of Lance’s comeback, who advised him to sign with a Kazakh racing team that wasn’t even invited to this year’s Tour de France because of the team’s history of doping scandal? Would we think it was a good idea if Lindsay Lohan came out of rehab to star in the Amy Winehouse biopic?
• Alberto Contador has to be feeling a lot like Chad Pennington. The only difference is that Contador is really, really good at cycling. And I’m sure teams with better rosters than the Miami Dolphins will be inviting him to jump ship from Astana.
• If I’m Robert Kubica, and I’m 14 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the driver standings, and I’m riding his bumper with 15 laps to go in this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, I’m turning on my high-beams. Maybe even flicking them on and off, constantly. What, you don’t like that, Hamilton?
• Another question regarding Singapore, F1’s first-ever night race: are we sure that Clooney, Pitt and Damon don’t have some devious plan to shut off the city’s entire power grid in order to pull of some sort of overly elaborate, crazy casino bank heist? Can somebody make sure that Don Cheadle isn’t in a brown van down the street with a big pile of tubes-and-wires that’s going to shut down the city’s power grid? How come cinematic bank robbers can always get their hands on these city-power-shutter-downers, and actual people can’t? If I’m John McCain, isn’t that power-bomb a better, less obvious ploy to keep Sarah Palin’s debate from being seen by the American electorate than his current plan?
• Big props to twelve athletes who announced plans this week to donate their brains to science (after they die, I presume), to help advance understanding of the effects of concussions on long-term neurological function. Two of the athletes – NFL linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski and NHL defenseman Noah Welch – were star athletes at Harvard while I was an undergrad there. I’m sure there’s a self-deprecating joke to be made here about the Harvard brains being too small to be dissected by modern surgical tools, but I’m just so impressed by these athletes to make that joke. And also, my puny Harvard brain is too small to pull it off.
• Does the fact that my NFL sleepers (Buffalo and Tennessee) are a combined 6-0 make up for the fact that my AL sleeper and my World Series pick (Seattle and San Diego) are a combined 120-198 and own two of the three worst records in baseball? No, it doesn’t? Well, all I can say after re-parsing that sentence is, “Thank god for the Nationals!”
• And finally, when the world gets a little too scary, it’s important to let off some steam. That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow night when I head down to the Park des Princes to cheer on Makelele, Hoarau, Landreau and the rest of PSG as they try to continue their solid start to the season versus Grenoble. Allez Paris!

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Posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 2:33 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.