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DEFEND YOUR MOVES OFF-SEASON 2022 #7!!!!!!!

WHAT IS UP, SPECIAL ED?!?!?!?


It's SPRING BREAK over here at the DYM Home Office. We took the whole week off of work to spend time with the family. We figured with a solid month to go before the draft there wasn't gonna be too much major NFL news here in late March.

See, we always used to say that NBA off-season is easily the most entertaining off-season while NFL teams have traditionally pussy-footed around trades except for on draft day. But, surprisingly, this first week of 2022 NFL free agency turned out to be super hectic for most of us so-called football bloggers.

Since we were already committed to a full slate of family day trips, gambling, heavy drug use, and near-death experiences (typical spring break shit), this little "week off" turned out to be exceedingly taxing.


In the last ten days or so, twenty-three potentially fantasy relevant players changed teams:

QBs:

Brady - (not retired)

Russ* - Broncos

Deshaun* - Browns

Wentz* - WTF

Matty Ice* - Colts

Marcus Mariota - Falcons

Trubisky - Steelers


WRs:

Juju - Chiefs

Davante* - Raiders

ESB - Bears

MVS - Chiefs

Allen Robinson* - Rams

Tyreek* - Dolphins

Amari* - Browns Christian Kirk* - Jaguars Jamison Crowder - Bills


RBs:

Chase Edmonds - Dolphins

Raheem Mostert - Dolphins

Duke Johnson - Bills


TEs:

CJ Uzomah - Jets

OJ Howard - Bills


Ds:

Von Miller* - Bills

Chandler Jones* - Raiders


That's a shit load of moves!!! Great job, everybody!!!!!

But what's even more shocking is that 11(*) of those 23 players got new contracts that get them paid actual NBA-level money this year. They finally did it, you guys!!!


Davante Adams signed the biggest WR contract of all time, clocking in at $28.2M per year. Then a few days later Tyreek Hill broke that record with his new $30M per year deal. In an era where every team needs 2-3 good WRs and rookie WRs are popping off every year, it seems odd that NFL teams would have this sudden change of heart.


Folks, lately it seems that whenever something really weird and dumb happens in the NFL, it's most likely the Jaguars fault.

Last Wednesday, in one of the very first moves of the year, the Jaguars signed Christian Kirk to a legit NBA-Money deal of $72M over four years ($18M per). Now, this is Christian Kirk we're talkin about here, not Christian McCaffrey. This dude has never been better than a WR3, he's never had a 1,000 yd season, and never even came close to 100 catches or 10 TDs, but the Jags decided to offer him about $3.5M more than Davante Adams made last year. After that, there was just NO WAY that any legit WR1 was gonna agree to a franchise tag this year - Davante, Tyreek, Al Rob, Amari, Juju - even Jamison Crowder (once, technically, a WR1) - all got the fuck outta dodge right after Kirk signed.


Another under-reported element of this story is just how thoroughly fucked A-Rodg and the Packers are. Everybody realizes how important Davante was to that offense, but after losing him they also let Marquez Valdez-Scantling and Equanimeous St. Brown walk too (and Jake Kumerow is still on the Bills). So old-ass Randall Cobb is gonna be the only WR returning to the Packers next year. WR/QB chemistry is absolutely essential in today's NFL. Most of the league's top passing game duos spend a lotta time together honing that timing in the off-season.

At this point Aaron Rodgers has no clue who his receivers are gonna be and a couple of em are probly gonna be rookies - if he's lucky. It's hard to imagine A-Rodg canceling his vacation(s) to throw a few hundred passes to some fuckin 20-year-olds. Packers are BIG fucked, you guys.



WHAT ELSE HAPPENED THIS WEEK?!?!

We saw The Batman of course, it was good. We still have a few questions, but we haven't had a chance to go see it again, and we don't know when we ever will cause is so fucking long. At the time the idea of sitting down for 3 hours of brand new Batman content was very appealing, but it's just not logistically feasible to schedule multiple re-watches. And we gotta say, there was really no reason for it to be three hours. We left the theater feeling like we enjoyed it all, but it didn't seem like all that much actually happened.

So we were absolutely SHOCKED when the "deleted scenes" started leaking on the internet this week.

Somehow there were whole entire Batman scenes that they cut out instead of the like 40 minutes of Pattinson's stupid emo hair. This scene here with the Joker is dope, and we kinda wish it had made the final cut.

Despite the (intentionally?) unlikeable Bruce Wayne, Pattinson's Batman was excellent. He was scary, the action scenes were tight, and his chin looks great in the mask. So if nothing else, this will be a great movie to watch 20 minutes of at a time when it comes on TNT in a few years.

 

We saw this other movie on Amazon recently that's probably a lot better than The Batman and we're definitely gonna rewatch. It's called The Sorcerer and The White Snake - the Sorcerer is Jet Li and the White Snake is this fine chick that's literally a snake, and she's got a sister that's a green snake. Needless to say this is by far the most in-our-wheelhouse movie we've seen in the last several years.

We're still brainstorming the next chapter of The CJ Story. The next part is gonna be after he wakes up from the weird dreams and then he has to like walk around and do shit with his life in the 4th century. We got some really cool ideas for shit that's gonna happen, but it's a weird story cause everybody loves CJ, and he's the King of Peace, and he has no problems. Which means the story of his life can't really be mapped to that old Hero's Journey template (besides, we told you guys last year, all that Disney bullshit is deader than Norm Macdonald). So we had to do a bunch of research about how to write stories without any conflict. That led us to a lotta Japanese poetry and old Taoist myths (like The White Snake). There is a basic story structure format in Asia that's actually as ubiquitous over there as the Hero's Journey is in the west. "Kishōtenketsu (起承転結)", is a four-part story structure that was employed in ancient east-Asian mythology and is still used in most popular Japanese literature and cinema today. The four parts are:

  • Ki 起: - Introduction.

  • Sho 承: - Development.

  • Ten 轉: - Plot Twist.

  • Ketsu 合: Conclusion.

So basically, the first half of the story is all set-up. Then something bonkers happens that changes the course of the plot. Then there's a conclusion that ties the two disparate parts together. This is why so many anime movies seem like they take forever to go anywhere then they stop making sense about 3/4 of the way through.

It's all very intentional, and apparently Japanese audiences prefer it this way. The cool thing about this structure is it's not actually a story at all, it's just a bunch of stuff that happens. Plus, the characters don't necessarily have to face any real challenges or obstacles, the 'conflict' in the story is just that the audience gets confused when some weird shit happens in the middle.


And life is just like that sometimes. Our OG treatise on mythopoeia was about how people understand their own lives through the practice of storytelling. Then we posited that the Hero's Journey story was a useful template for people in pursuit of concrete goals (like fantasy football championships). We still think this is mostly true, but in the off-season life tends to be a bit more meandering and, especially when we're on vacation, a lot less goal-oriented.

Like, just his past Tuesday, we planned a little day-trip for the fam that took on a quintessential kishotenketsu story arc:

"Ki" 起: We made up a scavenger hunt for the kid that had ten items for him to find at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since he's 6, so he obviously doesn't like museums, we made the things pretty easy to find and they were all on the first floor. If he found them all, then the prize would be a trip to Nintendo World in Times Square. (We didn't have the heart to tell him Nintendo World is actually a museum too.) Then we ate a couple mushrooms (just enough to make the colors pop, ya know?), then hit the road.

"Sho" 承: We drove to The Met with the fam.

First, we let the kid scooter around central park for a while so he wouldn't get all wacky around the ancient priceless artifacts.

We had a great time overall - Got a couple selfies with our favorite statue of the big homie Hercules, and found a sculpture of the wife's namesake that we never seen before! And the boy found all ten scavenger hunt items!!!

But the last item ("a pyramid") surprisingly took a while to find and forced the boy to venture deep into the Egyptian exhibit. All the mummies and sarcophagi seriously creeped the kid out, so we had to bounce outta there pretty quick once we were done. Fortunately that little scare wasn't anything a Spongebob ice cream bar couldn't fix.

"Ten" 轉: Next we drove downtown, parked on W48th St., and walked toward Times Square.

We were walking along, about two blocks away from Nintendo World, and outta nowhere this guy walking toward us just collapsed right there on the sidewalk. No clue if it was a stroke or a heart attack or what but dude was completely unresponsive.

So the wife calls 911 and we started poking the guy with our foot, tryina tell if he was still alive or not. A crowd started to gather around and we could all see that he was breathing at first, but then he definitely stopped. At this point 911 was on speaker phone telling us to do CPR and it became clear that none of the like hundred people gathered around knew what the fuck to do. So we roll the guy over on his side and gave him another kick in the ribs (just to make sure), then put him on his back, took his pulse (none), and started pumping his fat chest. We'd never done CPR on a live person before and we were shocked how similar it felt to those practice dummies. Dude's sternum cracked and a bunch of nasty spit flew out his mouth, then it seemed like at least there was air going in and out.

After about another minute the boy was SERIOUSLY CREEPED OUT and he started pulling on our sleeve tryina get outta there. Just then a cop showed up so we asked him to take over the compressions and we tried to take his pulse again on the way out (didn't find it, but dude had a really fat neck).

Then we took the boy to the Pig n' Whistle across the street, cause we figured he could use a drink after that.


"Ketsu" 合: The wife met us at the bar after the ambulance showed up. She said dude definitely had a pulse and was breathing when the EMTs scooped him. That was somewhat of a relief, but we still had a sick feeling in our tummy from having thought we just watched a guy die. So, although we actually "saved a guy's life" that day, to be honest, we felt way more traumatized than heroic.

Eventually, we made it to Nintendo World but we're not sure it really helped. That feeling was tough to shake for us and for the boy. Nobody was hungry for dinner so we went back home, and tried to not talk about it (we call the guy "Bruno" now). Then when we got home we just sat in the dark, ate the rest of our mushrooms, and watched Dune.


BUT HEY, SHIT HAPPENS!!! THAT'S LIFE, FOLKS!!! See, this kinda shit is EXACTLY what the CJ Story is all about. There are no "heroes" - it's just the story of a guy who lives forever, and helps people, and everybody worships him and does what he says, and he makes the world perfect. Which is just like our life!!!

Thing is tho, if we're gonna do this kishotenketsu style, then we already wrote the intro (起), and that makes the "dream journal" the development (承), which means whatever comes next has to be even fuckin weirder than that. Hooo, it's gonna be a doozy!!!!!



HAVE A GREAT SPRING EVERYBODY!!!!!!!



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