Why I'm An Idiot

On Monday night, for the first time in my life, I knew without a doubt that I was the poorest, worst dressed and least talented person sitting at my table.

Let me explain. I was enjoying my salisbury steak in the press lounge, waiting for the hurricane outside to stop so the Steelers and Dolphins could start on Monday Night Football. I looked to my right and saw Ron Jaworski. I looked to my left and saw Boomer Esiason. I looked at my reflection in the window and saw my shirt I bought from Burlington Coat Factory. I looked down at my khakis and saw that they were soaked in the worst possible spot.

No, I don't have trouble holding my bladder, I'm just an idiot.

I have always been under the impression that umbrellas are for women. I feel soft when I use one, like the kind of guy that takes a shower with a loofah. So I left mine in the car, ignoring that I had a fifteen minute walk to the stadium. When I finally did arrive I looked like I was just given a swirly by the high school bully and he scared me so much that I peed my pants.

But back to the table. I didn't want to get up for a couple of minutes so I just laid low and chatted it up with Jaws and Boomer. We compared the positives and negatives of the 3-4 and 4-3 defenses, exchanged numbers and had a great time.

Not true at all. Actually I took out my pen and pretended to take notes on scrap paper, as if I was important. But listen, no one who wears black baseball socks because they don't have real dress socks was ever important.

Instead, I decided to text message my friend to get the spread on the game. Now I don't condone gambling at all, but when your pants are soaked and you feel more out of place than Dick Cheney at a gun safety seminar, I think it's OK. But being the law abiding citizen that I am, I decided against it. So I definitely didn't call my bookie. And I certainly didn't place a bet on under 39. And in no way did I win when the final combined total was only three.

Needless to say, I was in a good mood after the game. The Steelers won the game, I hit the under - I mean, if I would have bet - and my pants had completely dried.

So if you take anything away from this story, you can never be too manly to use an umbrella. But if you decide not to, you will probably place a bet and win. If it were legal. Which it's not. So don't.

Get Into the Groove

Today I, Meredith Mayforth Constant, went to the gym.

What, you're not impressed? Is that not a spectacular enough statement for you? Does my trek to the gym not satisfy your attention grabbing intro needs? And who are you to talk? You are on the computer right now, reading my blog. Scrolling doesn't count as arm exercise. Neither does reaching for that second glazed donut. Yup, I saw that too.

Maybe the above statement would seem like more of an accomplishment if you had seen how much food I ate over my Thanksgiving break. I might as well have had an IV filled with turkey, pie, and yodels hooked up to my body the way I ate. The fact that I could walk to the gym is a bloody miracle.

Moving right along, while at the gym (and I do a lot of thinking on the elliptical as you will come to find) I remembered that I had a blog to write today! After a moment of panic, both from realizing that I had some serious blogging to do and a near slip off the elliptical (those things are dangerous don't laugh), I took a break in thought to change the song on my IPod or rather, to play it again. I am going through a really embarrassing ABBA phase and for some reason "Fernando" is the only song that gets me going. This led me to the question: What do pro athletes listen to while they are working out or getting ready for a big game? So that was my question which led me to the hypothesis that, if I, a super hip blogger listens to awful music working out, than other athlete's must have just as embarrassing playlists. I did some research to test my theory and here is what I came up with.

Oh, and I won't even wait to tell you the results, I was totally right. While some athletes have respectable tunes playing in their headphones before game-time, others, should think about hitting the next button.

Tennis Star Maria Sharapova- Before reading her favorite "pump up" music, I would have guessed something along the lines of Gwen Stefani or Nelly Furtado and, turns out, I was completely correct. Way to be predictable Sharapova. One thing that makes me a little worried though, why is a song titled "Promiscuous Girl" pumping you up Sharapova? Or are you just mixing up songs that you use to get in the mood for other activities? (Note: I am not slandering Sharapova's good name. I am simply saying that every girl deserves some loving and if this is the song that gets her in the mood than so be it. It just shouldn't be on her game day playlist).

Basketball Player Carmelo Antony: Another shocker, Carmelo likes RAP MUSIC. Oh my gosh a young male basketball player likes rap!? Who would have thought?

Hockey Player Ryan Smith: He enjoys listening to, and I can't believe I am writing this, Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl." Yes, I can't believe it either. I'm actually shocked into silence.

Basketball Player Chris Bosh: He listens to Mozart and Beethoven to get in the mood? Wait I couldn't have read that right, oh wait, yes, I did. I'm still doubtful that male basketball players know any music besides hip-hop but if it is true, congrats Bosh for breaking the stereotype I had for basketball players, just make sure and keep your headphones to yourself in the locker room.

An Anonymous Bruin's Player: I swear, I found an article where they referenced this guy several times and still wouldn't give away his name. Anyway, this "man" gets ready for games by listening to......Cyndi Lauper's "Girl's Just Want to Have Fun." First of all, that is the worst song in the world. Second of all, I am a female and that song doesn't even get me pumped. And finally, I think the final question the Bruins should be asking is, how the heck has a woman been playing on the team for so long without anyone noticing?

There you have it folks. Athletes have embarrassing playlists just like everyone else. So go to the gym and blast "Fernando" or any other song that could have you laughed at and you tell those snickering gym patrons that if Ryan Smith can listen to "Jessie's Girl" than you can do whatever you please.

Note: The research for this blog was found at http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/198568.

Barry Bonds - My Man Crush

The time has come to let out the truth. Time to tell everyone something that isn't easy to admit to lately.

I'm a huge Barry Bonds fan.

Sure, he might be an ass hole. But so are you. He might have taken some illegal medication, but who are we to judge? One time I had a headache and took three Tylenol instead of the FDA recommended dose of two. Experience.com never put an asterisk next to my name.

Living in Pittsburgh, as I'm sure you are all aware of by now, I became a fan of Bonds when he played for the Pirates. And I followed him even after he left.

That's why it hurts to see him being indicted. We don't know how good we had it. We saw the best baseball player of not only our generation, but maybe of all-time, break the biggest record in a game that revolves around records. But still, everyone seems to be happy because he has become the face of the steroid era. The king of the cheaters. As if bringing him down will end this steroid witch hunt. But it won't. He wasn't the first to use steroids (allegedly), and he won't be the last.

The fact is he was great even before his head grew to the size of a bowling ball (maybe he was a late bloomer?). He won two MVP's before he was on the Giants. He won five straight gold gloves before the strike in 1994. He was the first ever to reach 400 hr/400 sb by 1998 (Game Of Shadows insists he began steroid use in 1999). Anyone who says steroids or HGH or koolaid or whatever it was made his career just fails to see the whole picture.

But I don't think race has anything to do with it either. I would argue more people hate Bonds because of his greatness than they do because he is a juiced up black man. I hate Tom Brady, but it's not because he is white. It's because he is so damn good. And he has so many hot groupies. And he is rich. And his life is better than mine. You know, the normal reason to hate a man.

Face it, if Barry wasn't being indicted, and he signed as a free agent with your team this winter, he would automatically make them better. He'd bring more fans. Hell, he might even get you into the playoffs. Then he will become one of your favorite players, too.

Odds are that won't happen. His career probably is over, and all that will be left of it will be the eight hours a day ESPN will dedicate to discussing Bonds, steroids and the Hall Of Fame.

So I'll miss you Barry. And remember, if someone in jail asks if you want help injecting yourself with steroids, DON'T BELIEVE THEM. That was a cheap shot, I was just kidding. You know I love you.

Thanks For Nothing: A Thanksgiving Themed Blog

It’s that time of year again, time for a themed blog.

Actually that’s a lie, it seems like every week around here at experience.com is a theme week. “Save the Environment!” themed blog week, “Halloween Spoooooky” themed blog week, the dreaded “Post Pictures of Cute Orphaned Puppies” themed blog week (well that one hasn’t actually happened, but when it does, I am putting my foot down. A cold heart such as my own cannot be swayed by a drooling doggy, but present me with a kittie, and I may just cave.)

But now, you guessed it; it is time for the “Thanksgiving” themed blog. And this time we have Jen to blame.

Who is Jen you ask? I actually have no idea. She is one of the Finance bloggers who thought it would be a super idea to blog about Thanksgiving. What does Finance and Thanksgiving have to do with one another? I don’t know, but apparently Jen has something big up her sleeves. But, and this is directed at good ol’ Jenny, you know if you are going to throw out that “themed blog” idea, that Meredith is going to gripe about it in her blog. It’s happened to Jenna, it’s happened to Andrea, and how it’s your turn missy. It’s not that I don’t love you; I’m just being fair. Besides, you write a finance blog, which most likely means you know something about money, which also means you will be making more of it than me in the future. So don’t worry, you’ll have your revenge.

Onto the festivities!

In my attempt to relate sports to Thanksgiving here are my “Top Ten Reasons Athletes Really Love Thanksgiving.”

10. Now, Alex Rodriguez can finally afford to buy his family a proper Thanksgiving dinner, because his former $252 million dollar contract with the Yankees was just not cutting it.

9. With their 8-1 record, the Celtics actually have something to be thankful for.

8. Barry Bonds can rest easy knowing that prosecutors will be too busy feasting on stuffing and candied yam’s to work on their latest case against the Slugger. Oh wait that’s a lie; they are probably working overtime to land his steroid using butt in jail.

7. Lance Armstrong finally has an excuse to make out with a girl old enough to be his daughter: mistletoe. Oh wait that’s Christmas, wrong holiday.

6. Nothing goes with cranberry jelly like a line of cocaine. Just ask Martina Hingis.

5. Luckily for Michael Vick, I hear the turkey is great in prison.

4. Because with an off day on Thanksgiving Tom Brady has time to spend with Gisele, or Bridget, or whoever his newest baby momma is.

3. Maybe all it takes is a good meal to wake Red Sox management up and re-sign Mike Lowell.

2. Because now the United States has two things over Cuba: a better baseball team, and a day of feasting. Oh and I guess that thing called a working democracy.

1. Women’s basketball games may have an audience for once; the eleven people who are too stuffed to change the channel after their Thanksgiving meal.

Some Serious Advice For Once

I've talked about the benefits of being a sports writer. Going to the games, talking to star athletes, getting yelled at by men (and sometimes women) who are twice your size.

But what I haven't talked much about are the negatives. And what a better time than now, when I am currently experiencing one of them.

When you are in college, no matter what your major is, you have to write so many papers you lose count after the first semester. And if you are an English major, you can triple that amount. That means that some of the stuff you write won't be your best work. And trust me, I wrote plenty of papers that I hope no one ever gets to read. On a side note; my junior year at Pitt my roommate and I had a bet that I couldn't incorporate something about baseball into every one of my English Literature papers. I succeeded, somehow finding a way to compare Moby Dick to Cal Ripken Jr. What can I say, it's a gift.

But anyways, sometimes you will have several papers due at the same time, forcing you to wait until the last minute to do one of them. Or in my case, you think you work better under a tight deadline and wait until the last night anyway.

Well in the real world, that rarely works.

You might feel completely fine putting forth a C effort in a pointless Lit class for a 40-year-old student teacher who probably still lives in his parent's basement (damn you Professor Lopez.) But when you are trying to make a name for yourself at your job, you want everything you print to be a clean, crisp copy.

This doesn't really apply to writers at a daily paper, who have no choice but to work up to the deadline every night. But instead it's for people who work at a paper or magazine like I do, that prints only once or twice a month. At these types of periodicals, the worst mistake you can make is putting something off. Because as I have learned, you don't get to work around your schedule.

For an average sized story, I will interview around four people. That means playing phone tag four separate times, sending emails back and forth, and finally waiting for them to call you back. A five minute phone interview has taken me two weeks to set up in the past. But if you put this off, there is a pretty good chance that you won't have time to do the interview. You're story will suffer, and so will your job.

So my advice is to make the first step in your process to make some phone calls and set up the interviews. And when in doubt, just make up some quotes. OK, not really, that was just a joke. But if you get bored, here is a great website with some of the best quotes around.

http://www.sportspickle.com/

A Follow Up to Not Wearing High Heels

I make a lot of false promises in this blog. I usually say I am going to show you something I've done at school or talk about some sport issue later on in the blog and 99% of the time it doesn't happen.

Well ladies and gentleman, mark this date on your calendar because Mummy is coming through with her promises.

One of them at least.

If you remember the blog I wrote about covering the post game "celebrations" better known as riots, better known as hell on Earth, I said that I would eventually post the final product of my news package (and if you didn't read the blog then I am going to let you do the work and find it amongst the archives with other literary achievements of mine such as "Jane Austen Would Have Hated the WNBA" or "Getting Down on the Farm."

So in my attempt to be tech savvy, here is the final copy. I can't actually figure out how to show it on this exact blog, I'm no Perez Hilton, but if you simply click on the link below (or copy and paste into your browser, it isn't that hard) you can see the package I did and the entire show EIV did dedicated to the World Series. Keep in mind it is a rough copy of the show so don't be too hard on it.

Note: To see the package I did, you have to go about 5 minutes into the show. Fast forward through the clip montage. Keep going through the beautiful people at the desks. Go through Adam Harding's package from Denver (well watch it if you want but I know what you really want to see.) Stop and play when you see the female anchor talking and the graphic of "Red Sox Celebrations" in the background.

The Link: http://www.eivtv.com/champions_v1.mov

Enjoy.

Matt Ryan is Too Damn Sexy

I need to rant before I start this post. Ok, you may say that all I do is rant through the whole blog so what's the difference?
Oh contrare, if you had seen Matt Ryan, you would know why.

I go to Emerson College which means a. I will get amazing hands on experience in journalism and b. I will never date.
Now, letter b hasn't really bothered me over my year and a half at Emerson. (Ok that's a lie but I just try to ignore the fact that most of the men at Emerson have unnatural hair color's and waer the same kinds of jeans as me.) But today, it bothered me.

Today I went to Boston College to shoot a package about Eagles football. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I didn't know that I was going to a meat-market. I could barely concentrate on hooking up the mic for my reporter because SO MANY REAL LOOKING MEN were walking onto the field. I wanted to pack one up in my bag and take it home. Sigh.

And then it somehow got better. I hear the media relations girl, Meredith, (wonderful name may I add), call to us reporters, "Matt Ryan, the quaterback, is here to talk." And then I turn around and see my future husband. All 6'5 of him.

And the best part is, besides being gorgeous and articulate, he'll someday play in the NFL which means he'll make loads of mone!. On the downside, he'll probably just leave me for Carrie Underwood but until then, he's totally mine! Unfortunately during all my ogling of Matt Ryan, I completely forgot to slip him my number. You know, just incase we need a follow up interview. Oh well, I can always just facebook stalk him.

But back to the point of this post. One of the things I realized while going to BC was that, I live near one of the best college football teams in the nation who are having such a amazing season, and I don't feel the buzz. With the Pats and the Red Sox around, this town isn't big enough for college teams like B.C. You couldn't turn a corner in Boston over the past two weeks without hearing every nauseating fact about the Sox post-season chances and now it's all about the Pats big win over the Colts, but what do you hear about B.C? Nothing.

Which is why I feel like B.C. deserves more coverage. They are a college team from a college town. So although this blog may not start a media frenzy, I think B.C. needs to get more recognition for the kind of season they've had. They've only lost one game this season and with a brand new head coach, that is an impressive feat. From watching them during practice and interviewing some players, you can tell how much they care about each other and how high their team morale is. There are so many stories that a reporter could find in that team but everyone is blinded by the major franchises in Boston and the New England area. One day, Matt Ryan, Mark Herzlich, and other B.C. players could be, and most likely will be in the NFL and reporters will be scrambling to find stories about them from their college years.

Luckily for me, I am one of those college kids that can only get access to local football team's practices when I lie and say that my little art school is full of football loving jocks, and I will have those stories in the next few years. So, CBS, NBC, or Fox sports, when you are scrambling for those Matt Ryan interviews when he was a mere college boy, give me a call. Oh, and ask for Mrs. Ryan.

It's not just a game

I heard four words this weekend that every sports fan hates to hear. The four words that when they are uttered, your spine tingles and your butt hole tightens.

"It's just a game."

Errrr, no it's not. Try again.

If it's just a game then why did I cry when the Steelers lost the AFC Championship game to New England in 2001? (I'm man enough to admit that.) Why did I put a hole in my dorm room door when the Patriots beat the Steelers again in the 2004 AFC Championship? And why do I go through a different remote for my TV every year?

I don't recall ever getting so upset from losing a game of Scrabble that I threw the remote against the wall. But something about seeing a 7-footer for Pitt miss dunk after dunk makes me want to break things.

To some people, it's more than just a game. I know that's a terrible cliche, but it's true. In fact, for a select few, it's a career. I mean seriously, what would Shawn Bradley have done with his life if he couldn't have played in the NBA? I'm not so sure he is coordinated enough to brush his own teeth without accidentally scrubbing his chin a few times.

And since we are on the subject, here is something else that I absolutely can't stand to hear.

"Just tape it and watch it later."

Why in the world would I do that? The only difference between the athletes and myself is that they have an effect on the outcome of the game and I don't. OK, maybe that's a huge difference. But if I watch a taped version it loses it's appeal, because I know whatever I'm hoping will happen already is over and done with. I can pray to God that Tony Romo throws an interception on the next play causing Carrie Underwood to break up with him and subsequently give me a call. But if it's on tape then it's already happened, and there is no chance for Carrie and me. That's upsetting.

It's ironic that as I type this I'm actually watching a tape of the Steelers' 38-7 Monday Night Football victory over the Ravens. Yes, it just ended a few hours ago, and yes, I did watch it already. But no, I don't have anything better to do, and no, I'm not sure where this fits into my little rant.

So in conclusion, lets just recap for those who weren't paying attention...

• Sports aren't just a game.
• The Patriots make me emotionally violent.
• Carrie Underwood and I are through.
• And a taped game is no where near as good as a live game.