As part of my journey to try and keep Fort Lauderdale healthy and happy, I have to document to my readers the devastating effects of a horrible, intrusive, and permeating drug: Crystal meth. I have little experience in detox from drugs, but last night seeing one of my closest friends reach bottom at the hospital made me almost pass out. I can only say readers: don’t ever touch it, don’t go near it, and if someone offers it, RUN. I rekindled my friendship with this man after six months of my own psychiatric journey (I am bipolar/schizophrenic) and stabilizing myself, only to think everything was just Disney.

He just does not know how many people really care about him. The drug has turned him into a different human being and has devastated his sister and myself. It killed me to see him almost toothless last night. My initial reaction was “Run, run Marco run,” as I have always relied on him to be MY backup when I needed him. But six months ago when I had a bipolar breakdown, he was not there for me. He was only there for the drug. He thinks hr has everyone fooled, that he is smarter than everyone. But that’s the insidious nature of the drug.

His use of the drug has probably preceded all of our friendships.  He has had money problems for longer than we can imagine. His body is infected with third stage syphilis, possibly fourth, which means it has invaded his brain. The fourth stage is the beginning of dementia. I forgave him after not speaking to him for six months, possibly due to reading Sir John Templeton’s website on forgiveness: The Power of Forgiveness. There is also en entire site devoted to it, http://www.thepowerofforgiveness.com/. It was November 30, 2009, the day after his birthday. I was in my [selfish] retreat: the tanning bed. I realized once again I missed his birthday by one day. I always think of it as November 30. It was time to mend fences, was a message from the goddess.

The goddess compels me. I drove to the Galleria and bought him the finest regular coffeemaker on the market. [We all love coffee.] He didn’t know what to think. I don’t know if he could even conceptualize the emotion of forgiveness. I forgive you. He is still so trapped in the delusion, the anger, the fear, the feeling of superiority–that I am afraid he may never escape.

The Solution for Cleansing Your Body

Burdock root. Burdock root. Burdock root. Say it three times and never forget it. It’s the solution for detox. Daily detox might provide some refuge for my friend, to remove the toxins quickly, if we are not too late.

As far as my wife was concerned I was a cold bastard. Be that as it may, I didn’t have a heart callous enough to visit such bad tidings upon her sister while she was pregnant. Despite the long-standing troubles between Yuko and myself, I had grown deeply fond of her family over the years. I was particularly close to her younger sister Kumiko and her husband, Kenta, who insisted upon calling me “brother”.

There is a saying in Japanese, “Ko-wa kasugai” (lit. a child is an iron clamp), which means that children bind married couples together. Thanks to the unborn child growing in Kumiko’s womb, Yuko and my unhappy marriage was granted a stay of execution.

And while Azami wasn’t happy about my decision to postpone the divorce, at least I was now separated from my wife. I had taken a step, albeit a small one, in the right direction.

-

In the meantime, I was bounding like a man engulfed in flames towards serious methamphetamine addiction. The habit was getting costlier and costlier.

Where I could once expect a gram of shabu to sell for only 7000 yen and keep me soaring above the clouds for weeks, the same amount of crystal meth now set me back 20,000~25,000 yen and had me crashing to earth like an Icarus just off the Cretan coast.

A number of factors contributed to the skyrocketing price of methamphetamines at the time: service of the Mangyonbong-92, a ferry which sailed regularly between Niigata, Japan and Wonsan, North Korea, carrying not only passengers, but drugs and missile components as well, was suspended; patrolling of the seas by the Japanese Coast Guard was intensified after 9/11; and, the police had stepped up their anti-trafficking efforts after record hauls of the drug.

The quality was plummeting, too.

When Jean first introduced me to Shinji in a darkened stairwell two years earlier, the drug made my whole body tingle. In the euphoria of that initial high, I felt as if I had woken to a lovely spring day after years of gloom. Bathed in this new positive light. I felt that I could do anything; that the possibilities were, to steal Fujitsu’s tag line, truly infinite.

Like the Lord, however, Shinji giveth and he taketh away. Despite all the promise early on, two years later my dreams remained frustrated. Worse, the eloquence bequeathed did not last. From effortless fluency I began to stumble, finding myself more and more at a loss for words where they had once flowed from my pen. The well was drying up: it was becoming a struggle to pen a single sentence. To add insult to injury, that dissertation I had labored on for over a year was returned to me with a lousy C. The writing was beautiful, at times poetic, the professor had commented, but not very academic.

Oh, how I used to mock people like the Swiss dancer who didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink, or smoke, or eat meat of any kind! When I wondered aloud if “being healthy” really could feel that good, Jean gave me an avuncular pat on the back, “My friend, you’ve been spending too much time with me.” But, after treating this temple of mine like a bus center toilet for so long, being high wasn’t feeling all that good either. My body started to cry foul, demanding restitution.

My muscles ached, and the sinew of my back was a tangle of knots, my head throbbed as if red hot fire pokers were being pressed against the temples. My lungs, too, ached. They were heavy, and congested. I shuddered to think that they might be coated with the very same white powder that clogged my sinuses and dusted my eyelashes during particularly heavy smoking.

After a nearly two years of essentially uninterrupted abuse, my body was screaming for a rest. The poisons which had been making me high, were now dragging me towards a new low. Shinji, the Liberator became Shinji, the Tyrant.

And one day as I was walking in Daimyo, I came across an old friend I hadn’t seen in ages. When he introduced me to his wife, I took her hand causing the woman to let out a squeal as if she had shaken the hand of the Grim Reaper himself.

“You’re hand is like ice,” she said, recoiling.

I was burning up, on fire, a cold sweat rolling down my back. My old friend gave me a queer look and said, “You might be suffering from hyperthermia, Rémy. You’d better see a doctor.”

“I’m not feeling well,” I replied. “Must be a touch of the flu.”

I was breaking down, my body no longer able to take the abuse. Returning to my apartment, I dumped the crystal meth, about a thousand dollar’s worth of the drug, down the toilet, then collapsed onto the floor and started crying.

It’s never a good time to quit.

-

Amphetamines produce a feeling of euphoria by blocking receptors that tell the body to stop producing dopamine and adrenaline allowing these pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters to remain in the bloodstream.

When you go cold turkey, the level of dopamine in the blood drops, and depression sets in. Even though I knew it wasn’t real, that it was only chemicals, a lack of them in my bloodstream, that were making me feel miserable and with time I’d get over it. I tried to convince myself that I’d be feeling right as rain again, but as I sat in front of the TV watching the news, tears flooded from my eyes.

It devastated me to think of all the things I had wanted to do, but hadn’t done, all the things I hoped to do, but now doubted my ability to carry them through. I was a loser and the possibilities were depressingly finite, growing more and more limited with each passing day.

After several weeks of moping about and brooding over the missteps that were coming to define my life, my mood started to lift, but only slightly. The next several months would be just as difficult, but for another reason: hypersomnia. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. It was as if after two years of speeding, I had amassed such a debt of sleep depravation that I needed to recalibrate my body. The Sandman’s hourglass had to be turned over to return myself to balance. It was a tough six months, made all the more difficult because I couldn’t tell anyone what I was going through–not Azami, not my wife, and not even Jean who was still using the drug to get through each day, and had been pissed off at me for having flushed the meth down the toilet rather than giving it to him.

Eventually, I would come across an article in The Economist about nootropics, or smart drugs, such as Modafinil and Adrafinil, which not only kept you awake, but also brightened your mood. Who needs High Times to keep you informed about drugs when you can always pick up a copy of The Economist? I found an online dealer of smart drugs and placed an order. To my surprise it arrived in the post a week later. Better living through chemistry, indeed!

-

In May of 2003, my sister-in-law Kumiko gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who she named Haruna. Kumiko and her husband never having been around children were afraid of breaking the small thing. I scooped her up into my arms and held her close to my chest. That wonderful smell of a newborn filling my nostrils, I kissed Haruna on the top of her head and made a promise that no matter what happened between Yuko and me, I would try to give the child the love and support she deserved. This baby was, in a sense, my reset button when my life needed resetting.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2009. All rights reserved.

Facebook is quickly becoming popular amongst all age groups. Even the elderly are getting in on the fun. Facebook had previously been utilized by only the most computer literate and internet savvy of people (aka the young). However, today, individuals who only three years prior would have rather thrown their computer out the window than learn how to turn it on,  are blowing up the Book.

A brief history of Facebook:

The  first to settle into the social networking world were young people in their teens and early twenties. Immediately, they made Facebook their virtual drug of choice. They used it as a way to stay constantly connected to friends, enemies and all those in between. No longer did they have to wonder how Morgan, the captain of the high school soccer team was spending her freshman year in college. All a person had to do was search Morgan’s name and WALA, her profile would appear. A friend request could then be sent and if she approved, a person would be privy to Morgan’s new alcoholic life and be witness to the freshman 50 she put on in less than 2 months. Facebook also quickly became the best way to find ex-boyfriends/girlfriends and  see if he/she had a new fatter or crazier significant other. Maybe then you’d find that he or she was still pining after you after all these years via the status update… “(Name) misses his ex. Oh Joleen, you still complete me. Why must I be so inferior to your beauty and brains. Woe is me…”  Overall, Facebook quickily became the ultimate way to reconnect with people you’d rather forget about and cyber-stalk those who you just can’t shake from your head.

So here are only SOME of the reasons why Facebook is the GREATEST invention since Mountain Dew:

•  Facebook  offers its users a chance to create a new or improved identity. If you are a 15-year-old girl who is desperately counting down the years until your 18^th birthday, you can bypass Mother Nature with the click of your mouse. You can be any age you want to be on Facebook. Older men are notorious for lying about their ages. However, they fail to realize that if  they post pics of their 31-year-old daughter, women are usually smart enough to figure out that these men are not 39  years old.
• If you are overweight, you can just post pictures of skinny people and tag them as yourself. Or you can post pics from a thinner time in your life (for example - infancy) and claim that they are current pictures of you. And of course there is always the  magic of Photoshop. This helps to revise pics of yourself for all to see and envy. Whiten those teeth, cut off half those thunder thighs, erase that double chin and add implants to that chest.  Personally, I am a fan of this option, but I try not to use it excessively. I’ve only Photoshopped 997 of my 1,005 pics; however, don’t go searching for those UN-Photoshopped pics of me because they are set to private.
• If you were embarrassed to have dropped out of college or high school, no worries, simply pick a college and a year of graduation and no one is the wiser. However, keep your school of choice within reason. Listing yourself as Summa Cum Laude from Collumbyah may reveal your lie.

•  Facebook allows you to be creative with your job title.

1. Unemployed? I prefer Entrepreneur.
2. Stripper? I prefer Professional Lap Warmer.
3. Trash Collector? I prefer Antique Dealer.
4. Crystal Meth Dealer? I prefer Pharmacology Student.
5. Porn Star? i prefer Sex Therapist.
6. Dishwasher? I prefer make-up artist in Hollywood.
7. Secretary? I prefer Assistant Regional Manager.

• Facebook is also great if you don’t have a lot of friends in real life because you can make up for it with virtual friendships. All you have to do is send out nonstop friend requests to acquaintances and strangers alike to create an allusion of  popularity and love. However, show some discretion – 2,345 friends is creepy and makes you seem like that guy who only goes out on Friday and Saturday nights so that he can tell people, “FACEBOOK ME!”
• Facebook saves lives and offers a reason to live. How many times have we all heard people on the edge who are about to end it all and then realize, “OMG! I forgot to harvest my farm on Farmville! I guess I got to live. LOL!”
• Facebook allows you a forum to brag about yourself via the infamous FaceBRAG. Despite it’s obvious douchiness, it’s far better to brag on Facebook than real life because you can’t see everyone’s eyes rolling. Common things to FaceBRAG about:

1. “Look at my dog. Isn’t he the cutest thing since Siamese babies.”
2. “Look at me, I only eat lettuce and visit the gym 7 times a day. I’m so much better than you.”
3. “Look at me, I only eat organic and volunteer feeding the elderly apple sauce.”
4. “Look at me, I’ve never been to jail.”
5. “Look at me, all my hair is real.”
6. “Look at me, I think I’m funny and write a blog. Watch my videos and pay attention to me.” - ultimate douche!
7. “Look at me, my car costs more than your life.”
8. “Look at me, I have a spouse/significant other who doesn’t cheat on me!”

So thank you Facebook for enriching our lives and giving us a reason to get up each morning.

Facebook reasons for why this picture exists:

1. Cuz she likes to DRANK and wants the world to know it.
2. Cuz it would make a good profile pic. Duh!
3. Cuz her boyfriend FaceCHEATED and she needed to forget it all.
4. Cuz her friends secretly hate her.
5. Cuz she dates a guy who drives a crotch rocket and updates his status 22 times a day.
6. Cuz she wants to scare her Grandma off Facebook.

This conversation happened, more or less just like this.  Some details have been changed… but you get the picture.  What kind of logic is this?

From now on, the site will be updated every Sunday.

Oh yes oh yes oh yes!  Bowl season is upon us.  As of Sunday night, the 2009-2010 bowl schedule is just about wrapped up (one invite will be determined after the Army-Navy game on the 12^th).  The glorious weeks between December 19 and January 7 will undoubtedly be oft-discussed around the water cooler at work or your traditional weekend watering hole.  This year, instead of rolling your eyes and changing the subject (which, let’s just face it, you only do because you’re intimidated by the conversation), you’re going to be equipped to participate.  If I’ve done a decent job, you may even be able to introduce a couple of valid points.

Disclaimer #14: I have yet to experience much backlash but I would like to keep myself covered, just in case: if you don’t care about sports or don’t think it matters for women to know about sports, you don’t need to read (although, I will say that my carefully articulated prose does have the addictive properties of, say, crystal meth).  This is just a fun way to help educate women about the talking points associated with athletics.

Rather than a boring game-by-game analysis (ESPN.com has a great—NOT boring—overview of all 30+ games), I thought it would be fun to review the biggest winners and losers after Sunday’s announcements.

Biggest Winners:

Second Runner-up: Pac-10 Conference. I had initially considered the Pac-10 to be among this year’s losers: for the seventh year running, just one Pac-10 team will be representing the conference in a BCS Bowl.  That stings.  Upon second glance (and insight from a long lost friend), though, I remembered that the conference was considered by several analysts to be the deepest in the nation, could potentially receive seven bowl bids (if Army loses this Saturday, UCLA will be invited to the EagleBank Bowl), and had five teams ranked in the latest BCS Poll.  Let’s not forget the national coverage these guys experienced this year: arguably the best game of the year came out of the Pac-10, was on primtime national television (called by Kirk Herbstreit and Brent Musberger no less!), and didn’t feature USC.  Yes, I am referring to the 44-41 2OT thriller out of Tucson between Oregon and Arizona.  Not too shabby, hmm?  To take things one step further, feel free to review the Second Runner-up in the Biggest Loser category.  Suffice it to say, the Pac-10 has had several teams emerge from beneath a maroon and gold shadow this season.  And that’s some pretty exciting stuff.

Runner-up: Iowa Hawkeyes. When we last discussed the Hawkeyes in October, they had yet to lose a game.  In the interim, Iowa lost quarterback Ricky Stanzi to an ankle injury (and their game) against Northwestern, followed by a second loss to Ohio State.  Stanzi underwent surgery to facilitate his recovery and is planning to return for Iowa’s bowl game.  The fact that Iowa was awarded a berth in this year’s Orange Bowl is what places them in the winner category.  After Big Ten play culminated (before Thanksgiving – so early!), much ado was made about Penn State (another two-loss team) deserving the second BCS bid behind Ohio State’s Rose Bowl invite. It was thought that Penn State could provide a bigger draw in terms of tickets and viewership, as the Nittany Lions have an illustrious history and humongous following.  As I’ve alluded to before (and will continue this rant in my “Losers” section), the BCS is all about money, money, money.  In many instances, the BCS will opt for the team with the most booster support and profit potential.  This year, Iowa’s win over PSU was enough to keep them in the race for the Orange Bowl title.

Overall 1 (and 2): Alabama and Texas. These two teams, who will duke it out for the national championship, are the clear winners in the BCS.  Both teams have had fantastic seasons with convincing wins (Alabama’s most decisive performance coming this past week against the defending champion Florida Gators; Texas’s best win would have to be the thrashing of then-#14 Oklahoma State) and offer top talent (Texas QB Colt McCoy has officially becoming the winningest starter in the history of the game with 45 wins, while Alabama RB Mark Ingram is currently leading the Heisman Trophy race).  That being said, neither team has had an easy path to Pasadena.  Alabama’s season has been peppered with questionable officiating (that frequently benefited the Crimson Tide) and narrow margins of victory.  The Longhorns emerged victorious in a less-than-stellar Big 12 conference on the heels of an incredibly close championship game against Nebraska.  Long story short, an official review gave Texas one additional second to kick a 46-yard game-winning field goal. If you didn’t see the game, it was mayhem.  The margins of victory aren’t important though: the victories themselves are.  And neither of these teams lost a game in their respective major conferences.  Their bowl berths are well-deserved and will certainly result in one heck of a game January 7^th.

Biggest Losers:

Second Runner-up: USC Trojans.  My, how the mighty have fallen.  I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard the phrase “Pete Carroll doesn’t rebuild.  He reloads.”  And, truthfully, Southern Cal has dominated the Pac-10 in such a way that makes such silly generalizations difficult to argue.  With the departure of junior QB Mark Sanchez, four linebackers and six additional Trojans for the NFL, it appears that even Carroll can only work so much magic.  True freshman Matt Barkley shows significant potential with early composure (see USC’s final game-winning drive at Ohio State), but frequently looked like a 19 year-old on the field.  A defense led by senior (and future NFL player) Taylor Mays was inconsistent and, at times, downright porous.  For a program marked by consistency (five Rose Bowl appearances in the past six seasons), the 2009 Trojans were a team marred by inconsistency.  For the first time since 2002, USC will not have even a share of the Pac-10 title and have settled for a place in the Emerald Bowl.  I’ll be curious to see if Carroll will reload for the 2010 season, or if the improved Pac-10 will force his Trojans to continue rebuilding.

Runner-up:  Notre Dame / Charlie Weis. While the disappointing Trojans have graciously accepted their Emerald Bowl bid, the 6-6 Fighting Irish publicly announced a decision to forego any potential bowl invites.  Notre Dame has gone through quite a bit this season: close game after close game (some wins, some losses) and incessant speculation regarding head coach Charlie Weis’ future.  Ultimately, Weis lost his job and the Irish went .500 for the season.  Because Weis also assumed the role of Offensive Coordinator, Jimmy Clausen, Golden Tate (both of whom have since declared for the NFL draft) and crew have been left without so much as a play caller upon Weis’ departure.  This was the reasoning provided by Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick, but one can’t help but wonder if there may have been an additional motive.  After securing the bare minimum number of wins necessary for a bowl berth, Notre Dame was facing possible invites to the GMAC Bowl or Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl.  Could it be that these games might be beneath the mighty Fighting Irish?  Any way you slice it, there’s no denying just how rough of a year it’s been for the boys in South Bend.

**UPDATE: Looks like we’re going to have to add Cincinnati to the Biggest Loser list.  I’ll attach them to Notre Dame, as head coach Brian Kelly will be leaving the Bearcats squad for greener, more Irish pastures.  This ups Notre Dame’s stock a bit but we’ll have to wait until next season to bump them from the loser list.  This is a pet peeve of mine, but why couldn’t Notre Dame wait three weeks to make this announcement?  I understand that the pressure from ND alumni and boosters must be crushing, but with this announcement, Brian Kelly has dealt a major blow to his now-former team.  After their most successful season in school history, Kelly has essentially abandoned the Bearcats mere weeks before their biggest game of the year.  If you’re feeling a sense of déjà vu, it’s because West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez committed this precise indescretion prior to the 2008 Fiesta Bowl, when he publicly agreed to take the University of Michigan head coaching position, left vacant by Lloyd Carr.  The Mountaineers were victorious in their Fiesta Bowl outing and I sincerely hope Cincinnati will experience the same success in this year’s Sugar Bowl.  It’s tough enough to see the price tag placed upon loyalty in professional sports, but there’s an added brutality when this same standard becomes apparent in the college game.  Don’t get me wrong: the Notre Dame football head coaching position is nearly the end-all, be-all in college athletics and I can’t begrudge Kelly for jumping at the opportunity.  I just would like to see these types of decisions put on hold until the bowl season finishes.  Annnnd please hold while I hobble down from my soap box.

And the Biggest Loser is (drum roll please)… TCU. And Boise State. And the BCS.  And the American Public. Throughout the season, we’ve all wondered where TCU and Boise State would fall in the BCS lineup.  Would the Horned Frogs and Broncos have the opportunity to compete for the national title or, at the very least, a victory over a BCS school?  Neither team disappointed, finishing with unblemished records and raring to take on its own giant.  Thanks to the BCS, we will get to see the two teams take on….. each other.  It’s bad enough that we are missing out on two David-Goliath matchups, but to add insult to injury, we have already SEEN this match: last year’s Poinsettia Bowl. To put it plainly, this is a copout.  The legitimacy of the BCS bowl series relies on the dominance of the BCS conferences.  This is a heavy topic to thoroughly delve into, but suffice it to say that the national following / booster support of schools such as Texas Christian and Boise State is not financially beneficial to the BCS.  By having the two teams play one another, the BCS will successfully avoid smaller schools defeating major BCS members.  Such wins would be thrilling and hugely celebrated to be sure (who doesn’t love an underdog?), but would also inevitably expose flaws in the established BCS system, leaving the number of at-large bids up for additional scrutiny and possibly creating an adverse affect on the profit potential of the series as a whole.  Wow.  What a mouthful.
Is it December 19 yet?  I can’t think of a better post-op recovery plan than bowl game after bowl game after bowl game.

Chick On Meth Totally Looks Like Carrot Top

» Think you can do better? Make your own!

Pictures by: dunno source Look-alike by: smellydogfartz via Totally Looks Like Builder

Over at Deadspin, Will Leitch recently made a list of people who had had a particularly bad decade, or as Leitch put it, “reputations that were devastated by the last 10 years.” This list included Ricky Williams.

That list no longer has any credibility.

Sure, when Ricky Williams graduated from Texas in 1998, he was college football’s all-time leading rusher—a mark that would be passed a year later by Ron Dayne, who really deserves to be on this list but isn’t. Williams entered the NFL with high expectations, generally because Mike Ditka moronically traded the entire draft and his professional dignity to land Williams in New Orleans. Although Williams hasn’t quite lived up to those expectations, he’s still been one of the best running backs of the decade; on Thursday night, he surpassed 7,500 rushing yards since 2000, which isn’t half-bad for someone who had an “awful decade.” Ron Dayne would certainly jump at the opportunity to double his career yardage.

But there’s still the idea that Ricky Williams has been a major disappointment. Much of the resentment toward him, of course, stems less from his performance on the field than from his eccentricities off of it—namely, that Ricky Williams decided he’d rather smoke marijuana than play football for a little while. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say it was noble of Williams to retire from the game to sit at home (or in Asia) and blaze; but, is it acceptable for us to excoriate someone for leaving a professional sport that he clearly didn’t enjoy all that much—Williams’ foibles with the press are well-documented—at the same time many of us are praising Andre Agassi’s honesty in Open? What’s the difference between these two, outside of the fact that Williams was honest at the time and Agassi lied to get past the ATP’s ludicrous drug testing? Andre, you tested positive. Oh, you say you didn’t mean to? Our mistake.

They were both precocious athletes who didn’t have the same amount of passion for their sport as we want our athletes to have (within limits, of course; it retrospectively galls us when we find out how uber-competitive Michael Jordan is during his Hall of Fame speech, even though we pretty much knew it all along). Both had excellent starts to their careers; most people forget that Williams ran for a league-leading 1,853 yards in 2002, which is the 12^th-highest total of all-time.* (That same year, Williams’ Dolphins would have won the AFC East if not for what I contend is the dumbest play-calling sequence of the decade: Up three and inside his own 20 late in the fourth-quarter, Dave Wannstedt called THREE consecutive pass plays with Jay Fiedler at quarterback instead of handing off to the best running back in the league. Miami punted, the Patriots drove down and kicked a game-tying field goal and then won in overtime. The Jets ended up winning a three-way tiebreaker at 9-7 to claim the division.)

*One thing striking about that list is Tiki Barber’s late-career success. There are only six times where a running back that is at least 30 years old ran for 1,500 yards or more: Walter Payton did it twice, Corey Dillon and Curtis Martin once, and Tiki Barber did it twice. Barber ran for more yards than anyone 30 or older in history in 2005, and then the second-most yards of anyone 31 or older in history in 2006. I’m not saying Tiki Barber is a Hall of Famer; I am saying it’s a lot closer than anyone suspects.

After a down year in 2003—likely due to overuse and the “Curse of 370”—Williams retired in 2004 and then served suspensions that prevented him from being a full-time player again until 2008, when he teamed up with Ronnie Brown for one of the league’s best rushing duos. This season, the Dolphins are proving once again how an innovative rushing attack can mask weakness at the quarterback and wide receiver positions, even in an era where passing is king. Williams is an integral part of that: His 5.3 yards per carry are sixth-best in the league. It’s been an understated yet impressive comeback for Williams.

Similarly, Agassi appeared in seven Grand Slam Finals between 1990 and 1995, winning four of them. He won the Gold Medal in the 1996 Olympics, and then he kind of took 1997 off. He went 11-10, finished the year ranked 122^nd in the world, and used crystal meth. He lied about it to avoid a suspension, then came back with a vengeance in 1998-00 with the best stretch of his career, reaching the No. 1 overall ranking and winning three Grand Slams in the span of a year. Because of his comeback, we loved Andre Agassi, who was always the more charismatic foil to the bland dominance of Pete Sampras.

What’s different, then, between Williams deciding to take time off to recharge his batteries and Agassi’s essentially doing it without telling anyone (and lying about it)? Even the drug Williams used was far less harmful than Agassi’s. Why can’t we cut Ricky some slack?

• Jets Bash of the Week: The Jets are 1-6 since I instituted the Jets Bash of the Week. I win.

• Chiefs Plug of the Week: After losing 30 of 33, the Chiefs are 2-0! Haley for Coach of the Year?

• The best thing Jim Zorn has done in Washington: Wear the maroon jerseys at home more often. The worst thing* Jim Zorn has done in Washington: Wear the maroon jerseys with the maroon pants on Sunday.

*This is not the worst thing Jim Zorn has done in Washington.

• Years from now, when they’re facing off in the Super Bowl for the sixth consecutive season, we’ll remember how the Matthew Stafford/Brady Quinn rivalry started on Sunday, November 22, 2009.

• I still think Baltimore is the best team in the AFC North; I no longer think the Ravens will make the playoffs.

• So wait, maybe Denver and the Jets aren’t that good after all! And the Chiefs can still run off six more to reach my 9-7 pick!

• At the beginning of the season, I thought the Titans would go 11-5 and the Texans 9-7. One of those nine expected Houston wins came in their home Monday Nighter with Tennessee. Last week, I picked the Titans to beat the Texans, even though Houston’s season had gone more or less as I expected, and Tennessee’s had been awful. That’s how little faith I have in the Houston Texans.

• Isn’t it weird to think that the Texans have one of the longest playoff droughts in the NFL? That pretty much every team has made the playoffs since they came into the league? That most expansion teams—even historically bad ones like the Buccaneers—made the playoffs several years quicker than the Texans? That the Cleveland Browns had a similar eight-year playoff drought in the ‘90s, only Cleveland didn’t have a team for half that time? Isn’t that weird?

• Karma will get Brett Favre, and it will be spectacular when it does.

• When Jamaal Charles (how do we feel about Jamaal with that many a’s?) ran back the opening kickoff against the Steelers, I thought it was pretty amazing Pittsburgh had allowed return TDs in back-to-back weeks. Then I heard they had allowed a return TD in eight straight weeks! How does that happen? How come we didn’t make a big deal about seven in a row? Why wasn’t this a frontpage story in The New York Times? Eight? That’s insane!

• Someone on ESPN said having Thanksgiving Day games in Detroit and Dallas every year gave those teams an unfair advantage. Whoever that was forgot to back up that statement with hard statistical data, like how the two teams combined are 7-11 on Thanksgiving Day this decade, or that they’re the only two NFC teams not to win a playoff game this decade.

• Shakeups in the SBCS! The top three stay the same, but it’s getting real tight among them: New Orleans, Indianapolis, and Minnesota. With #4 Cincinnati and #5 Pittsburgh losing last week, New England and San Diego climb into the top five.

• The real question: Would a Pittsburgh win over Cincinnati in college football—to clinch a Big East title for the aforementioned Wannstedt—make up for the Steelers’ two losses to the Bengals? And would a Cincinnati win give the Queen City its greatest sports year since at least 1990?

Prior to the Week 11 Snap:

Last Week: 7-9

This Season: 61-83

DETROIT (+11) over Green Bay

This Lions team has some spunk. I’m totally on the Jim Schwartz bandwagon.

Oakland (+14) over DALLAS

I’d take Gradkowski over Romo right now.

DENVER (+6.5) over NY Giants

They won last week, but they still don’t look good.

HOUSTON (+3.5) over Indianapolis (outright)

Newfound faith in Houston! Indy can’t keep playing with fire; Andre Johnson burns them.

Cleveland (+14) over CINCINNATI

A bit much for this Bengals’ offense.

MINNESOTA (-10.5) over Chicago

It’s about time AD ran for like 400 yards in a game, right?

PHILADELPHIA (-9) over Washington

Without Portis or Betts, can’t see the Skins scoring much.

Miami (-3) over BUFFALO

AFC Wild Card Miami Dolphins. You heard it here, probably like third.

TENNESSEE (+2) over Arizona

Cards have to lose a road game sometime, don’t they?

Seattle (-3) over ST. LOUIS

The Seahawks are better than what we’ve seen.

Tampa Bay (+12) over ATLANTA

Interesting to see if Freeman can exploit that terrible Falcon secondary.

NY JETS (-3) over Carolina

They won’t make the playoffs, but this is a big game for Mark Sanchez’s confidence long-term. Needs to see a W.

Jacksonville (+3) over SAN FRANCISCO

I see a Nedney FG deciding this one.

SAN DIEGO (-13.5) over Kansas City

The two hottest teams in the AFC West!

BALTIMORE (-2.5) over Pittsburgh

Ravens need it more.

New England (+3) over NEW ORLEANS (outright)

Pats should’ve beaten Indy on the road, and Indy’s better than New Orleans.

It’s worth considering the revelations contained in Agassi’s autobiography titled ‘Open’ published last month.

The five-times Grand Slam champ’s confessed that he:

• used crystal meth,
• took speed before matches
• and lied to tennis authorities about it when caught.

Up to this point, I was down with Agrassi – he sounded like one of the boys from the ‘hood, particularly Ernesto from number 19, apart from the fessing up to tennis authorities bit.

But it was Agassi’s admission that he wore a mullet wig for much of the 1990s that has me upset.

Andre, let’s get this straight, you mean you went into a wig shop, and faced with a 100 different hair styles to choose from – in the 1990’s – you choose a mullet???

You put this dead raccoon on your head and said to yourself  “I like this. It makes me look hot”

This has made me question everything I know about Agassi.

Is your name even Andre Agassi?

You sure it’s not Raccoonhead?

Yours, while being tilted, taunted and shafted by my teenage role models. Damn you Hulk Hogan. Why is it only now obvious that you were filled to the gills with steroids. Is it you who I blame for causing me to doubt the legitimacy of wrestling, and it’s role in society?

Righteous

p.s. an undercover cop’s gotta be Marlon Brando . . . . you gotta be naturalistic as hell — ’cause if you ain’t a good actor — you a bad actor, and bad actors is bullshit in this job. Same for blogging Samuel. Same for blogging.

If things had been going well for me in 2001, why then they couldn’t have been better for my friend Jean. His flagship, The Zoo, was making a killing on magic mushrooms, paraphernalia, and sliver accessories, and the money that poured in from the shops funded further expansions in both his retail and wholesale businesses and gave him the room to embark on new ventures.

In early September just as he was turning forty, he finally found a building that suited his needs in Yakuin and leased the whole damn thing, opening a new boutique for young women called Le Fétiche on the first floor, housing his office on the fourth, and using the two floors in between as a warehouse.

It was a bold move, but then everything Jean was doing at the time was bold, if not audacious. He acted no differently when it came to his relationship with Nori, the lovely Amazonian he had met half a year earlier.

Nori would have had any other man eating out of her hand, but not Jean.

“That friend of yours has some nerve,” Nori said to me one evening in mid September. The two of us were having drinks at stylish bar called Neon, waiting for Jean to arrive.

“What’d he do this time?” I said, taking a nip of my cocktail.

“He had another woman at this flat is what!”

“Am I supposed to be surprised by that?”

“No, but . . . “

Jean had quite a few potted cactuses, giant prickly things, throughout his apartment. It was a message, he had told me with a wink, to the women who came back to his place: “He might look cool, but you don’ wanna get too close.”

“But what?” I asked Nori.

“Listen, listen,” she said animatedly. “When I found out he was with another woman, I went straight over to his flat to give him a piece of my mind and, and, and he chewed me out! He’s with another woman and he bawls me out. Can you believe that?”

Just then Jean arrived, and, giving his Amazonian a big kiss on the cheek, sat down between us.

“What are you two talking about?” Jean asked.

“The other night,” Nori replied, getting up and heading for the restroom.

“She told you?” he asked me once Nori was gone.

“Yeah.”

“Astonishing,” he said shaking his head. “That woman is astonishing.”

I could be wrong, but I think that may have been the moment at which Jean started to fall in love with Nori.

“She didn’t tell you everything, did she?” Jean said, looking back towards the restroom.

“Everything?”

“I was with the Chinese bitch when she came over.”

“I figured as much,” I said. “She said you chewed her out.”

“Of course, I did. She’s lucky I didn’t slap her, too, the way she started to carry on. What are you drinking?”

“Cynar and soda,” I said, letting my friend have a sip.

“Not bad,” he said and ordered the same.

Let me tell you, ask any Japanese woman what kind of man she’d like to marry, and, nine times out of ten, she’ll answer, “someone gentle and kind”. But, mark my words; show a woman kindness, generosity, patience, and she’ll run you into the ground with selfish demands and pettiness only to leave in the end you for a drunken lout who slaps her around when he’s not frittering away his salary at a pachinko parlor.

When Nori returned from the restroom, she was smiling broadly.

“That reminds me,” I said, hopping off the barstool. “My turn to recharge the ol’ batteries.”

As I was taking a couple hits meth in the restroom I could hear that piercing laugh of Nori’s that always sounded like glass shattering. I had to shake my head, too. Jean was right: the woman was astonishing, one of kind.

Not until a year later would I learn that I didn’t know the half of it when it came to what had happened that night at Jean’s apartment. After the two had cooled down, Nori made a demand that intrigued her boyfriend enough to through the door wide open and let her in: Nori wanted to know what it was the Chinese woman did for Jean that she herself couldn’t do better. And so, Nori stepped into his apartment and out of her clothes, and Jean enjoyed the first of many ménage à trois. Three’s company too, indeed.

Later, as I was drinking a Pernod and Pampelmuse on the rocks, a customer sitting a few seats away from me looked up from his cell phone and announced that a small plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.

“Must be an accident,” I said to Jean.

Not fifteen minutes later a news flash appeared on the screens of everyone’s cell phone saying that another plane had crashed into the south tower.

“Accident, my arse! This is a terrorist attack,” I said, dropping a handful of bills on the counter and telling the bartender to keep the change.

I bid Jean and Nori a quick good-bye, and scrambled out the door. Once home, I would spend the next fourteen hours, on the edge of my seat, eyes glued to the television set, watching the Twin Towers burn, people jump to their deaths, and then, at midnight on September twelfth, the first tower came tumbling down.

Needless to say, I did not need drugs to stay awake that night.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2009

Andre Agassi – Admitting he lied to tennis officials after a drug test revealed traces of crystal meth in his system. At the time, he said it was an accident. Tour officials, apparently satisfied with Agassi’s explanation, promptly dropped the matter.

OK…how the fuck do you “accidently” take crystal meth? You accidently trip and fall. You accidently miss the toilet when vomiting after an all-night drinking binge. You don’t accidently take crystal meth.

Official: Yes, Andre…please have a seat.
Agassi: *frantic* A seat? A seat? Oh my God! Where? Where is it? *scratches arms violently* Ah!!!! It’s a seat! It’s a seat! Ahhh, the pressure! (Author’s note: Picture Tweek from South Park.)
Official: You OK, Andre?
Agassi: Just too much coffee this morning…and these bugs keep pecking at my arms.
Official: Sounds like swine flu.
Agassi: …huh?
Official: Well, I called you in here today because there appears to be a problem with your last drug test.
Agassi: Drug test? I took a drug test?
Official: Yeah, last week, remember? You kept yelling at Dr. STFU to hurry and GTFO so you could watch Wopner.
Agassi: Ohhhh…that drug test? *scratches arms* What sort of problem?
Official: Your urine sample tested positive for crystal meth, Andre.
Agassi: Really? *looks around nervously* No shit?
Official: …no shit…crystal meth…
Agassi: That’s odd. I’ve never touched the stuff. *bites nails*
Official: Can you explain how it got in your system?
Agassi: Not at the moment…

*30 minutes later*

Agassi: Oh shit…I got it! I mean…I think I remember now.
Official: …ok
Agassi: Funny story, actually. OK, so I woke up a little late one morning, which was making me late for my daily workout. So there I was rushing to get ready, right?. On my way through the kitchen I noticed this little marshmallow on the table. So on my way out, I grabbed it and ate it for breakfast. I guess it was a rock of crystal meth which must have been accidently left behind by the guy who broke into my house 10 years ago. My bad.
Official: You’re telling me you mistook a rock of crystal meth for a marshmallow?
Agassi: Yeah…you know, one of them mini ones that you put in hot chocolate?
Official: A mini-marshmallow?
Agassi: Yeah, that’s right.
Official: That you put in hot chocolate?
Agassi: Totally.

*long pause*

Official: Whew! Thank God it was an innocent and honest mistake.
Agassi: I know, right.
Official: I was worried there for a bit.
Agassi: Don’t be. It was a total accident, I assure you.

Are you friggin serious, Andre?

STFU & GTFO

Super entrevue de Katie Couric à l’émission 60 Minutes, à CBS dimanche soir passé. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/05/60minutes/main5537569.shtml 

Un Andre Agassi disponible, sensible et honnête, venu présenter son autobiographie intitulée « OPEN », qui a beaucoup fait jaser dans le monde du tennis ces dernières semaines.

Révélation choc : et oui, il a fait usage d’une drogue, la crystal meth! Déceptions, accusations, et jugements de certains ses pairs, notamment Federer, Nadal, Safin, Navratilova et Nastase.

Bon, la poussière retombée, remettons les pendules à l’heure!

D’abord, il faut savoir qu’Agassi a été élevé par un père obsédé par le tennis. Son but : que son fils devienne le # 1 mondial. L’école? Une perte de temps, à son avis. Déjà à 6 ans, il le faisait pratiquer 4 à 5 heures par jour. Un crinqué!

Après un séjour de 2 ans à la célèbre  Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, il fait le saut dans les rangs professionnels à l’âge de 16 ans.

En 1994, il devient # 1 mondial. Puis, un an plus tard, à l’U.S. Open, il frappe un mur et perd devant Pete Sampras. Le début de sa dégringolade. Il a de plus en plus de difficulté à gérer son image, craint de décevoir ses nombreux fans et commanditaires. Résultat des courses : une relation père-fils malsaine, une carrière basée sur une fausse image (eh oui, une fausse crinière, ayant commencé à perdre ses cheveux à 17 ans!), un mariage vacillant avec Brooke Shields et une haine profonde pour le tennis. « I was living a lie », relate-t-il à Regis and Kelly.

 C’est à cette époque qu’il découvre la « crystal meth », ( http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9thamph%C3%A9tamine ) non pas dans le but d’améliorer ses performances sur le court, mais plutôt pour reprendre goût à la vie. Il en fait usage pendant presqu’un an en 1997, à l’insu de ses proches. Alors confronté aux autorités, il ment, affirmant avoir fait usage de la drogue sans le savoir.  

Son coach lui lance alors un ultimatum; recommencer à zéro ou quitter le tennis. Pour la première fois de sa vie, il fait un choix. En 1 an et demi, il passe du 141^ième rang mondial et redevient le # 1. Certainement l’un des retours les plus admirables dans l’histoire du sport. Une deuxième chance selon lui, ayant su transformer une période médiocre de sa vie, en un exploit remarquable.

À 36 ans, marié à Steffi Graf et père de 2 enfants, il met fin à sa carrière après 21 ans sur le circuit ATP.

Depuis, il se dévoue à sa fondation,  Andre Agassi Foundation For Education, à Las Vegas. http://www.agassifoundation.org/   Sa mission : transformer le système d’éducation pour offrir de plus grandes possibilités aux enfants provenant de milieux défavorisés.

Finalement, Agassi semble avoir trouvé un certain équilibre dans sa vie. Avec sa fondation et son programme Agassi Prep, il s’assure que les jeunes puissent faire leur propres choix.

This article represents a very personal viewpoint and is more of a Newsmule editorial than a news article as such.  Please feel free to add your comments below.

The issue of drugs in sport is one which becomes ever more contentious as the methods of evasion become increasingly sophisticated.

The recent case in tennis, where Andre Agassi admitted to lying to drugs officials in 1997 about the circumstances under which Crystal Methamphetamine found its way into his system, has opened up the debate in a sport which was previously considered relatively clean.

Agassi was always one of tennis' most colourful characters

The most sane point amongst the needless hysteria and media clamour was made by Agassi himself, who noted that such a thing could not happen in tennis in 2009 as the regulations have been tightened significantly.

The issue was essentially that Agassi, as he admitted in his autobiography, had taken Crystal Meth for recreational purposes and immediately regretted it – well, one the comedown kicked in anyhow.  Up until that point it appears he had a phenomenal time.  When the presence of the drug was picked up in his sample, he told testing officials that his drink had been spiked by a member of his team and the member in question had since been fired.  This was a lie.

That was 12 years ago and nowadays taking the wrong cure for a common cold can potentially lead to a year long ban from competition, so lying really won’t cut it any more.

What followed this startling revelation by one of tennis’ all-time greats was a raft of media interest and all sorts of questions being raised. Legitimate questions were aired, such as ‘how many other players have escaped a ban by lying to cover their tracks?’ – pun intended.

Predictably though when drugs issues are involved, there were some preposterous questions posed.  Some pondered whether Agassi should be stripped of his honours as he had now exposed himself as a ‘drugs cheat’.

Now, pardon my trademark flippancy, but any competitor who can take Crystal Meth and still compete for Grand Slam prizes should probably be given some sort of extra award for his efforts and should certainly donate his body to science.

Crystal Meth has been known to cause paranoia, anxiety, irritability, heart palpitations, cardiovascular problems and psychosis.  These are hardly the types of symptoms one would wish for at match point down in the French Open final.

So whilst Agassi was hardly a regular user, having tried it and realised he was about to throw his career away, the issue does bring the attention to the difference between drug types and the notion that all those who fail drugs tests are by definition ‘cheats’.

Adrian Mutu has managed to re-launch his career in Italy since serving his lengthy ban

Agassi gained no performance advantage from his brief foray into Crystal Meth, but tried it due to external pressures.  When former Chelsea footballer Adrian Mutu was sacked by the Blues after he tested positive for cocaine, he had gained no performance advantage.  Indeed, living life on London’s cocaine party circuit is highly likely to have a severely detrimental effect on the performance of any top sportsperson.

Mutu was treated as if he was Ben Johnson or Dwain Chambers – men who deliberately used drugs to gain a performance advantage over their rivals.  Some have looked for Agassi to be treated the same way.  But surely there should be different rules for those who have what wider society knows as ‘a drug problem’, rather than pillorying them along in a similar manner to those who have sought to cheat their way to victory?

Prominent sports stars have an exaggerated list of temptations in front of them and have to perform in extremely high pressure environments.  How many of us have their disposable income?  How many of us have been attacked by members of the public because we had a poor day at work, or work for an unpopular company? Most of us don’t get screamed at by 60,000 people when we go to work.  This is a potentially explosive combination.

These sports stars are no different to the rest of us in their methods of dealing with pressure, no matter what we wish to think.  They are, by the virtue of their talent, foisted into the position of role models.  This is not something they choose, but something that comes with their exceptional abilities.

Those who have sought escape from these pressures, rather than an illegal competitive advantage, should be offered help.  Mutu was not only fired, but has to pay his former employer around £15m for his ‘breach of contract’.

If such stars are role models for youngsters, then what does such an inflexible and hard line approach teach those youngsters about compassion in society?  Sport does not exist in a bubble and its attitude towards those with drug problems should reflect the ways in which wider society wishes to address the problem.  If one of your loved ones had a cocaine problem, would you prefer they received punishment or treatment?

To suggest that Mutu should never be allowed to play professional football again is nearly as idiotic as the calls for Agassi to be retrospectively stripped of his titles.

All sports need to separate the two different types of drug taking and consider how cheats can be stopped, but also how young men and women under huge amounts of pressure can best be protected.

By failing in this respect, the governing bodies of various sports are also failing to protect those who make sport the great money making spectacle that allows officialdom to recline in self-satisfactory comfort.

Maybe it’s because of the people I hang out with, but there has been a lot of talk about this Agassi fellow of late.

I remember when he was big in the early nineties, when acid washed jean shorts, florescent colors and frosted tips weren’t a sign to run as quickly as you could in the other direction as they are today, but actually considered cool.  Unfortunately, 60 minutes showed some advertising footage of Agassi from the nineties the other night, and I was disappointed because what I remembered was a hell of a lot cooler than the actuality.  Then came the later years, symbolized by a shaved head and a more serious persona.  By the time he retired, most of the people who had been so adamantly against him when he was a flamboyant and rebellious newcomer embraced him as one of the greatest players the sport had seen and many even went so far as to consider themselves fans.  And no matter how you felt about him, most sports fans remember his stirring speech when he retired from the sport at the 2006 US Open.

For a long time I didn’t hear anything from or about Agassi.

And then I hear that he’s written a book.  And that in that book he discusses his use of crystal meth.

Nadal and Federer were not pleased.  Navratilova was damning.

And after reading many articles, watching both 60 Minutes’ and ESPN’s coverage, I’m torn.  I can’t decide if this is a case of someone used to living years in the spotlight and being controversial having trouble fading into the background?  Or is this a genuine gesture motivated by the need to be honest and forthcoming?

Agassi doesn’t have bad intentions in writing his book and coming clean about what was going on behind the scenes throughout his tennis career.  Had it been me advising him, I would not have told him to refrain from writing or publishing the book, but I would have told him to wait.  Because it is a fascinating story and he is a compelling personality, and his story should be told and there are many waiting to soak it up.  But, I would have told him to wait until his name wasn’t as recognized among kids who now might think of the drug as less dangerous since he is associated with it and was able to play at a high level while using it.  To wait until a few more of his rivals had retired so those that competed against him might feel a little less cheapened by his blatant disrespect not only for the sport but for their contribution to it as well as their time and energy.

But now it’s out there.  And while part of me wants to appreciate the book for what he claims it is, an open and honest look into his life, I can’t help but think that the motivation was more than slightly tainted with that old Agassi urge to rebel.  To be noticed.  To be different.  To fight, even when you’re not quite sure who you’re fighting against.

Ok so in the interest of full disclosure, this opinion is coming from someone who never liked Agassi as a player.  I definitely rocked a pair of jean shorts with spandex underneath in the 10 and unders, but besides that, he annoyed me.  He was a hothead who cared more about flamboyant shots than winning and lacked worth ethic.  Actually, now I realize why I disliked him so much during the first part of his career – he was too similar to myself.  I was a hothead who care more about flamboyant shots than winning and lacked worth ethic.  Then during the second half of his career (post meth), he seemed incredibly fake with his lame kisses to the crowd after every match.  Now, with the stuff that has come out of this book, those lame kisses make sense…seems to me that he was thanking the crowd for putting up with him being an ass for a decade, and for being a methhead.

I guess that isn’t really what you were posting about…you seem to be questioning on whether or not this full blown memoir is a good idea, and why did he bother?  Before I answer fully, I’d really like to read the book first.  People need to take all these excerpts and interviews with a few grains of salt.  As in, he wrote the book for three apparent reasons: 1. A lesson for others so they don’t make the same mistakes 2. to make some dough 3. self-serving divulgence of information to clear his conscience 4. to get back in the spotlight.

Those reasons were not in order.  Anyone want to take a guesstimate as to the order of importance for those reasons? 2, 3, 1.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive, in my humble opinion.As for reason number 4, I really don’t know where that fits, could be in first position, could be in last position.

“But Jeremy, he already has so much money…no way is he writing this to make a buck.”  No, he is not writing this to make some extra cash.  He is writing this to make millions of bucks.  He is writing this because maybe it will be made into a ABC movie of the week HBO miniseries (do they do movie’s of the week anymore?)  That’s why all these excerpts are coming out…notice how they aren’t crazy revelations about his day to day training routine.  No, they divulge such info as the crystal meth use, hairplugs, hatred of his father…Agassi (and his publisher) are trying to sell freaking books.  Oh, and yes, Agassi and his wife have millions and millions of dollars (much of which they have done amazing philanthropic work with)…but he is probably relatively bored, and if telling his story is going to make him millions more, why not?

Wow, I really didn’t expect to come across so angry.  But I guess meth just does that to me.  I mean, talking about meth, not taking it.  Believe me, after seeing this clip, I steered clear.

WATCH AND READ AN INCREDIBLE INTERVIEW WITH ANDRE AGASSI ON 60 MINUTES TALKING ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK: “OPEN.” CLICK: HERE

I always had respect for Andre Agassi.  He only truly landed on my radar in the late nineties. I noticed him because he was suddenly bald and not too tall, which of course gave me hope.  But my awareness of him peaked when I read about him in the Tony Robbins Book, Awaken the Giant Within.  In the book, Robbins writes about how Agassi had fallen from the top and had called upon Robbins, a world class personal transformation coach, to help him regain his edge.  Within a year, he had won another major and began one of the greatest recoveries in sports history.

But I learned so much more about Agassi tonight, watching him on 60 minutes.  And I related – oh did I relate – to so many things in my own personal life.  I related to how his immigrant father drove him with obsessive drive to over-excel at tennis.  I related to his near devastating embarassment because his trademark hair (when he had it — a wild, multi-colored mullet – acceptable, even fashionable in the 90’s) was falling out, and his fake extensions nearly dropped from his head during a finals match early in his career (I relate to being caught living a lie, not to being bald – sorry, folks).  And I related to how he hated tennis – HATED TENNIS (in other words, hated life) and turned to Crystal Meth – because it couldn’t possibly feel any worse. He felt, at the time, that he had no choice.  WE ALL FEEL THAT WAY AT THE TIME WE CHOOSE TO MAKE THAT MOVE THAT WE KNOW IS WRONG.

But what moved me deeply was to see this man pull tears of courage when being torn down publicly by his colleague in athetic greatness, Martina Navratalova, who shunned not only his drug use, but the way he kept it a secret.  Andre did nothing to defend himself or make his behavior acceptable.  But he looked straight in the camera and asked for compassion, to finally admit to the world that he was living a lie, and that all he could do now is come clean and help others (a dropout in 9th grade, he has built a school in a poor section of Las Vegas, his hometown, and raised millions for education). His tears were real.  And I believe, his mind was clear.

I loved watching him play a game of tennis with Steffi while Katie Couric watched (see above for link to 60 minutes interview).  Katie asked him, “Is this fun at all?”  Steffi supportingly repeated the question.  Andre allowed himself to squeeze out a boyish, “Yes, it’s fun.”

I don’t care what anyone thinks about the gifts life has thrown at this man – riches, fame and more… his life was loaded with an abundance of suffering.  Tennis was not an option.  The weight of generations fell upon his shoulders to succeed and save his family.  How is a boy in that situation supposed to know anything else other than to hit that ball as hard as he could, again and again and again and again.

Here is a man coming into accountability with his soul.  Doing his work. This is what we coach people to do.  Look at your role in your relationships.  Look how you may be unaware of how you are hurting others.  Find compassion for yourself, but get inside the truth and swing at it like a tennis serve.  Look at the impact of your choices and make sense of the people who have hurt you.  This opens you to a new life, a new vision of yourself.  Agassi is now “Open” and his work has just begun.  Tennis was a lie that brought him to the truth, brought him Steffi Graf, a wife who understands him, and brought him to the path of becoming a humanitarian.

Did I mention he was undersized and bald?

I love this guy.

LEARN HOW YOUR RELATIONSHIPS ARE GIVING YOU THE CLUES TO BE TRULY OPEN WITH YOURSELF AND TURN YOUR LIFE AROUND.  JOIN OUR LIST AND RECEIVE OUR FREE 12 PAGE  REPORT TO BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY.  CLICK: HERE.

Andre Agassi, tennis playboy superstar of the 90’s, has recently written a tell all autobiography in which he admits to crystal meth use throughout the ‘97 season. As if this wasn’t shocking enough, Agassi also states that the substance was found in his system during a routine drug test conducted by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).

What I don’t understand is how the ATP could justify throwing this case out and not looking into it further? Agassi went from being ranked number one in the world at the end of the ‘95 season to number 141 by the end of ‘97. Am I the only one that thinks this isn’t a red flag?

To digress a little, let me inform you of my tennis background. I started playing tennis at the ripe age of five, thanks to some gentle encouragement from my father, although I think it may have been in blood from the start considering my first word was “ball.” My dad acquired his teaching skills from the Jimmy Evert, tennis legend Chris Evert’s father, during his time in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and bestowed the love of the game onto me.

Long story short, my family has a great passion for the sport of tennis and one of the most epic matches I’ve ever watched was the 2001 U.S. Open quarterfinal between Agassi (he eventually lost the five-set match) and Pete Sampras.

I’m telling you this so that you understand not just how upset I am that the ATP didn’t see fit to investigate the reason for this positive drug test, but how saddened it makes me to hear that one of greatest male players to ever pick up a racquet and one of my personal childhood idols was in fact a bald face liar.

I use the term bald face liar because it is not only the truth as it pertains to the drug usage, but to another shocker for Agassi lovers around the world. According to his autobiography, his iconic long hair was actually just a wig to cover up the fact that he was prematurely balding at the age of 20! What are you going to admit to next Andre? Were you in cohorts with the Russian mafia to throw matches and make money on the side to support your drug habit (since you obviously couldn’t pay for it with your winnings at that time)? At this point, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised.

However, even I must give him credit for being so “Open” to the world and sharing these details about his dark past. He could have just taken this secrets with him to the grave and nobody would have been the wiser. The fact that he chose to share his story with everyone in the hopes that it would help someone who is venturing down a similar path is commendable.

Although the ATP makes the claim that regular player testing for substance abuse has been rigid since the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) took control in 1999; I am inclined to disagree.

This past July, ATP player and Frenchman Richard Gasquet came under fire for testing positive for cocaine. By WADA rules, this should have meant that Gasquet was suspended from the tour for two years. However, he was only banned for two and a half months after persuading a panel that he only tested positive for the substance because he “kissed a girl in a nightclub.”

This leads me to pose the following questions: do you think we go to easy on athletes when they are caught abusing banned substances? What should be done to improve the system?

So here I am. Finally getting down to writing my first blog after eons of procrastinating. But now I have made a promise to myself that I will be blogging once a week on different and varied topics in which I would like to chime my two cents in. And it is but obvious that my very first blog should be about my first love in life: the game of tennis.

I was shocked, to say the least, when I read excerpts from Andre Agassi’s forthcoming biography called “Open”. Right off the bat, I must admit that I have been a huge Andre Agassi fan all my life and for me he was, after Boris Becker, the most charimastic player of his era. So its a given that I followed his professional and personal life as he grew from being a rebel teenager to being the grand old champion and the great ambassador of tennis.

For the uninformed, Andre admits in this memoirs that he took crystal meth for a year or so starting in 1997 while his career was crashing and his marriage to Brooke Shields was falling apart. Morevoer, he lied to the ATP when asked to justify his positive drug test.

Firstly, I simply can’t understand why Andre would want to open a can of worms after 12 long years and especially since he isn’t even in the limelight anymore. Maybe it was the need to be in the limelight again that made him do that. Only Andre and his cronies know that.

Andre has made more money than anyother tennis player of his era in endorsements and hence he is rich beyond his wildest dreams. And he could have had more money, if he wished, if he was involved in numerous charitable organizations  So its hard for me to believe that he did it to increase the sales of his book. Books needs stories and the more controversial the story, the more the book will sell. But having heard Andre in interviews, I can say for sure that Andre comes across as a fairly intelligent and reasonable bloke. So I refuse to buy the fact that he wouldn’t have thought long and hard about this controversial revelations just to pocket some more money and not think about its effects on his reputation and legacy.

The judgement on Andre’s revelations in the tennis community seems divided. While players like Navratilova and Nadal have castigated him for cheating, others like Roddick and Murray seem to have been more cautious in their reactions. I,for one, know that crystal meth is not a performance enhancer and it could only have hurt his chances on the tennis court. So he obviously didn’t gain anything from taking that drug. Maybe he was depressed about breaking up with Brooke that he slipped into a negative phase where all he was looking for was a ‘high’. Or maybe, after holding a secret for so many years, he just wanted to unburden himself and get it off his chest.

Either way, my opinion on Andre Agassi doesn’t change. I don’t believe that his revelations will change how fans perceive the current crop of players and the game of tennis as a whole. I still believe that he was the foremost ambassador of tennis in the last 20 years and he has done more for humanity that any other athlete I have known. He will  always be an idol for me but in light of what he has revealed, I must admit that now I will have major doubts about his ability to think rationally and pragmatically.

Rafael Nadal is niet blij met de onthullingen van Agassi

Het is inmiddels zo goed als een week geleden dat de eerste berichten naar buiten kwamen uit de biografie van Andre Agassi, over diens drugsgebruik in 1997. Gedurende ‘ongeveer een jaar’, gebruikte de destijds op de wereldranglijst ver afgezakte Amerikaan crystal meth, een zware vorm van speed. Enfin, het is ondertussen oud nieuws. Vanuit de tenniswereld is er logischerwijs volop gereageerd op de onthulling van de tegenwoordig alom geliefde oud-prof. Op de Baseline maakte een overzicht van de reacties.

“Het was een shock toen ik het nieuws hoorde”, zegt Roger Federer. “Ik ben teleurgesteld en hoop dat zulke gevallen zich in de toekomst niet meer voor zullen doen. Het is absoluut een zwarte bladzijde voor de ATP, maar we overleven het wel.”

Federer’s rivaal Rafael Nadal was een stuk uitgesprokener in zijn commentaar. “Als het waar is dat de ATP inderdaad Agassi beschermde, dan is dat een verschrikkelijke zaak. Als ze hem in bescherming namen, maar andere spelers wel straften voor een vergelijkbaar vergrijp, dan toont dat vanuit mijn oogpunt een gebrek aan respect naar alle sporters. Dat hij, nu hij gestopt is, met deze onthulling komt, is een ondoordachte manier waarmee hij de sport beschadigt.”

“Zijn boek zal wel verkopen,” reageerde Venus Williams. “Maar wat kan ik zeggen over Andre’s leven? Niks”. Ook zus Serena hield zich op de vlakte: “Ik weet niet eens wat crystal meth is, dus… dat is mijn reactie.”

“Ik speelde in die tijd niet op de tour, dus ik weet niet hoe het er aan toe ging”, zegt Andy Murray. “Maar er zijn tegenwoordig nog steeds gevallen waarbij spelers straffen ontsnappen na positieve tests. Kijk naar Richard Gasquet (die dit jaar een lange straf ontliep voor cocaïnegebruik, na verklaard te hebben met een meisje gezoend te hebben dat had gebruikt). Soms komen mensen er mee weg, maar ik denk sowieso dat drugs geen groot probleem is in tennis, waar dat in andere sporten wel het geval is.”

Roddick laat zijn idool niet vallen

Landgenoot Andy Roddick nam het op voor zijn illustere voorganger. “Andre is mijn idool en dat zal hij altijd blijven”, schreef de Wimbledon-finalist op zijn Twitter-pagina. “Ik beoordeel hem op de wijze waarop hij me altijd heeft behandeld, en hoe hij de wereld heeft verbeterd. En om eerlijk te zijn: toen Andre zijn brief aan de ATP schreef (waarmee hij loog over de aanleiding van zijn drugsgebruik en uiteindelijk een schorsing ontliep) stond hij buiten de top-100 en werd hij algemeen beschouwd als zijnde op zijn retour.”

Interessant was ook de reactie van Boris Becker. “Ik ben de laatste persoon om iemand te bekritiseren, aangezien ik zelf ook de nodige problemen heb gehad in mijn leven, maar het feit dat Andre crystal meth heeft gebruikt plaatst hem wel in een heel ander daglicht. En het is geen mooi licht. Ik kan maar niet begrijpen waarom Andre zoiets beschadigends wil toegeven als het gebruiken van drugs, en het wegkomen ermee. Waarom wil hij zo goudeerlijk zijn? Ik ben echt verbaasd dat hij zo’n slechte periode uit zijn leven heeft willen beschrijven.”

Misschien wel het meest kritisch van allemaal was Martina Navratilova. “Het is echt een shock. Niet eens zozeer het feit dat hij drugs heeft gebruikt, maar wel dat hij er over heeft gelogen en de consequenties niet wilde dragen.”

Daartegenover staat de reactie van ’s-werelds beroemdste tenniscoach Nick Bollettieri, die Agassi groot maakte. “Ik praat niet goed wat hij heeft gedaan, maar kijk nou naar wat Andre heeft bereikt. Hij is een school begonnen voor kansarme kinderen. Ik weet dat hij van binnen een geweldige kerel is.”

De laatste woorden zijn voor Agassi’s laatste coach als tennisprof, Darren Cahill. “Andre is ontzettend trots op zijn boek en ik ben trots op hem, vanwege het feit dat hij een dergelijke oprechte en onthullende inkijk heeft geboden in zijn leven.”

Foto’s © Niels de Water.