• Pairs of Slip-on Shoes Being Worn: 17
• Level of Tension Between Jim Harbaugh and Pete Carroll: 6 out of 10
• Number of Coaches Who've Spoken to Marc Trestman: 0
• Number of Coors Banquets Jeff Fisher Had at Last Night's Bob Seger Show: 4
"WheelsUp ... Back to Cali on a business trip," the Cincinnati Bengals' Vontaze Burfict (born in Los Angeles in 1990) tells his 4,862 Twitter followers on Thursday. Between "WheelsUp" and "Back to Cali," he types three little Emoji airplanes, like a 15-year-old girl, but still: This is a pretty casually badass way to refer to a road game against the Chargers. There is, suddenly and improbably, something badass about the Bengals. They land in California having won three straight. Perhaps they walk through the San Diego airport in slow motion, wearing sunglasses, Battles Without Honor or Humanity looping in their heads, pulling rollie suitcases full of newfound purpose and confidence.
As for me, I head into Sunday badly in need of another win. It has rained for — this is a rough estimate — 97 days in a row. Hello, seasonal affective disorder, my old friend. Every day I listen to Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," and it does. Randy is a prophet. Randy understands me. My entire existence in Los Angeles has been trackable on the Randy Newman spectrum. First I was all *, and then I was all **. I walk around my house (which, like all houses in Los Angeles constructed before 1996, is made entirely of drafts and spiders) wearing a Lebowski sweater unironically and eating peanut butter out of the jar like a raccoon. Even though you automatically fail at the Internet the minute you read the comments on anything, I read the comments on last week's football column and passive-aggressively favorite the ones that question my qualifications as a writer and a husband and the veracity of my professed emotional investment in the ups and downs of the Cincinnati Bengals.
Let's just sum up this guy's week real quick: negged the President of the United States and the First Lady's lack of comfort with public displays of affection and called David Stern's proposal to have Team USA be made up of players age 23 and under "stupid." Barack, Stern. Ether. He probably told all those kids in the picture above that they would never amount to anything. And he will probably spend the rest of his life making sure of it. So if you're one of the kids in the above picture: I'm sorry. Also?
