A vent, by Rick Lavoie

I listen to a few podcasts now; Skeptics Guide to the Universe, Hub History, Small Town Murder, and the MIPPAcast. It is probably obvious that I didn’t immediately press play for the most recent MIPPAcast as I was on the marathon two hour long show. With that said, I began listening to it this week. A small snippet caught my attention.

Seth was ranting about almost calling a Philadelphia radio station to protest the old trope that the Patriots are cheaters. It resonated even more when I heard a clip from Glen Ordway interviewing some other jamoke from Philadelphia radio.

During the interview, the Philly-fraud joined in the chorus of morons whose only rebuke to Patriot glory is by declaring that the Patriots are cheaters. At DeMolay LTC, there is an advisor from Connecticut that happens to be a Jets fan. On Facebook, or face to face, this guys believes in a massive league-wide conspiracy to help the Patriots win. Every September, at the beginning of the NFL season, this guy has some post about how the Jets might have a chance…and then, when it is finally apparent to him, he starts again on the Cheatriots.

Call me a homer, but don’t call my team cheaters without first doing a deep dive on your own team.

In November of 2007, I went to Indy to watch the Patriots play the Colts. It was a great game and trip. I met a ton of nice people, but I met plenty of Colts fans who accused my beloved team of cheating. This, for those who don’t remember, is the game where Indy was accused of artificially pumping crowd noise into the dome. The accusations never went anywhere, but the Patriots are the cheaters?

After the Patriots came back in the 4th and beat Manning’s Colts, we went to the Slippery Noodle. It’s a cool bar, but I was verbally accosted by many blue jersey boys. In this instance, I think I physically threatened a small man. Needless to say, they all maintained that we broke the rules.

It’s here, where this post is taking a drastic turn.

The Patriots are cheaters. There is no doubt about it. Cheating is defined as “a person who acts dishonestly in order to gain an advantage.” The team, its coaches, its players, and even its owners (on occasion) have absolutely acted dishonestly to gain a competitive advantage. The NFL has rules. They broke the rules. They were caught. They were punished. Nothing here is a lie or falsehood. The problem is that the Patriots are not the only team that acts dishonestly to gain an advantage. They are all guilty.

The NFL has a ton of rules. If you break any of them, for a competitive advantage, you are literally a cheater. Normally, during the game, if you “cheat” the officials throw a flag (Sorry Saints fans). The penalty is assessed. If you commit an egregious violation of the rules, you might be fined or suspended. There is no legal difference in McVeigh’s bum-chum than there is with Belichik’s favorite home videos or Tom’s balls. The scale of the cheating might matter to some, but they are never heard saying, “your team cheats more than my team.” Of course, the Patriots are among the least penalized (On-field) cheaters in the league over the past 20 years, so…perhaps not.

The truth is everyone is cheating. Some do it better than others, some suck at it.

• 

My favorite artist, Aesop Rock just put out a new album, albeit a side project with producer Tobacco, known as Malibu Ken. As a self proclaimed Stan of Aes, I’ll try to remain fair on this review.

Going into this, I didn’t know too much about Tobacco. My taste mostly lie in the boom bap-Brooklyn-bass in your face beats. This album is more of a lo-fi/electronicly/high pitch at times alternative to that which was actually pleasantly surprising. It paired well with Aesop’s flow and rhyme schemes. Coming off what I believe is Aesop Rock’s best album to date, The Impossible Kid (maybe my favorite album in the last ten years,) I was a little nervous about him being able to live up to it. Looks like I had nothing to be nervous about. Although it may not touch the previously mentioned TIK or some of his other earlier work, it doesn’t have to. It is very entertaining in itself!

I think very highly of the first track Corn Maze. In fact the second verse might be the best I’ve heard penned in the last (place arbitrary number here) year or 2. It rolls into track 2, Tuesday. Although I don’t have anything professionally to say about it because I’m not a professional, it’s a very fun track and easy to listen to. With someone with severe ADHD, the next song or 2 turned into background music over my thoughts but I got sucked back in with the end of Sword Box (track 4) and keeps me entertained through Dog Years (track 5.) Track 6, Acid King, proves why Aes is the greatest story teller disguised as a rapper since maybe Slick Rick. A true story about Ricky Kasso, self proclaimed acid king, who kills a friend who stole a couple bags of drugs from him, is a masterpiece in my dumb humble opinion. The album finishes up with four more enjoyable songs, 1+1=13 probably being my favorite out of said 4.

If you’ve never heard of Aesop before this write up (wtf man!!!) then I would suggest some of his other work such as The Impossible Kid, Skelethon, Float or Beastiary (with Rob Sonic as Hail Mary Mallon) but Malibu Ken will still be enjoyable and will definitely not turn you off from becoming almost as big a fan of Aesop Rock as me. Almost

7.9/10 for Aesop Rock and TOBACCO are Malibu Ken

By Rick Lavoie

I am sitting in the family waiting room at Lahey Hospital. My Dad is getting another new knee and at the same time driving up healthcare costs for all of us. I was reflecting a little bit on this week’s MIPPAcast and I realized how right I was.

This iteration of the Patriots is the most dominant version of the Patriots ever. Don’t get me wrong, the 2007 Patriots team is probably the best Pats team ever (we discussed this on air) and the teams from 2001-2004 would definitely wreck this year’s squad. All of that, however, is irrelevant to my bold statement on the headline. In 1994, the NFL’s salary cap went into effect. That collective bargaining agreement lasted until 2009. A labor crisis ensued when that cap expired, but by 2011, a new cap was in place.

The first two phases of Patriot dominance came in the first era of cap’d football. The league, at the time of Brady’s signing, was still adjusting to this deal. Scoring Brady late in the draft happens to be the real magic of the Patriot legacy (Thanks, Bill!). Bill, not only hit big with Brady, but he was able to exploit NFL rules by focusing more on his aggressive, hard hitting, defensive squads for those early years. By diverting a higher percentage of cap money to defensive players, he was able to shut down high powered offensives throughout the early years.

Seeing what was happening, in an age where parity was supposed to ever-present, the NFL rules committee took action. They made the type of defense utilized in New England obsolete. Bill, however, saw this coming, and shifted gears to a better offensive line, a stud wide-out, and bunch of guys who were mediocre in other places. The genius, at this time, was less about balancing cap space and more about balancing egos. Welker, Moss, and Brady (among others) bought into the system. Bill’s willingness to take risks on non-clubhouse guys saved money and non-cap binding incentives helped curb some of the pride high paying players demanded. The best offense ever assembled (debatable, yes, but still true) was backed up the remains of those old defensive corps.

Then, the CBA expired.

The lockout of 2011 was a major turning point in the NFL. Players stupidly gave away arbitration rights (Brady and deflategate), but the two sides ultimately agreed. The architect that ended the lock-out was Bob Kraft….off of the heels of Myra’s death. The new cap, aimed at revitalizing “parity” also allowed for a new wave of Patriot dominance. Things are more equal now, than they had been. There are more teams showcasing a competitive edge than ever before. Even the Brown’s are looking to the future. With all of that said, the Patriots have been to three straight SuperBowls (4 out of the last 5). In this new age of the NFL, Bill has worked his magic on and off the field while Tom has done his on gameday. Bob Kraft must have seen it all coming when he gave the keys to the franchise to Bill.

In ancient Rome, you may recall, there were several great triumvirates. A trio of enigmatic Romans who shaped the empire’s future. Tom Brady, Bill Belichik, and Robert Kraft are light-years ahead of their competitors. I loved hearing the audio of Bill telling Tom that he loved him and Tom replying in kind. It is the type of emotion rarely shown in New England, but it was real. I harken back to the stories of those guys hating each other just a few seasons a go. In any family relationship, there may be arguments, but something must be said about all of that being a smokescreen. So many pundits claimed it was over. That Brady was gassed, that he was jealous of a young gun taking the mantle, that Bill wanted to move on, but Robert wouldn’t let him.

This allowed other NFL execs to take a breather. They didn’t have to outsmart the Pats anymore. True parity was coming. What they didn’t realize is that the Patriots of today don’t have to be as good as those other Championship teams, they just have to be better than their current competition…teams struggling with a parity that our triumvirate probably drew up one night in 2010. Kraft ends the lock-out…shapes new policy. Brady gets accused of cheating; sanctions come, but he, Bill, and Robert get to fight against the NFL to make other GM’s relax a bit. Patriots keep quietly winning games.

Dominance isn’t only shown on the pitch…Prove me wrong.

A vent, by Rick Lavoie

I spent a good part of this week watching competing documentaries on the same topic. No, I am not talking about watching episodes of Cops and LivePD. I am talking about two films that discussed the failed music festival of the century, Fyre Festival. For you noobs, here is their promo video:

This music festival was pitched as a luxury music festival for only those who could afford it. The douche who advertised it committed real fraud to bilk hundreds of rich millennial kids out of their mommy and daddy’s expense account. The dude worked with Ja Rule, but the whole thing turned belly up and a bunch of MAGA Douches’ were stranded at an airport in the Bahamas after eating cheese sandwiches.

Now, honestly, I laughed at these two documentaries more than I would at your typical Will Ferrill joint. The images of these pretty people struggling really excited my mirth. But after careful thought, I think it is crazy that two competing documentaries about something so insignificant were made. I am tired of this trend.

It is hard to remember the first time this phenomena hit me square in the face, but it might have been Armageddon and Deep Impact (1998). The next worst example that I can think of, at the moment, is Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down (2013). In each of these examples, one more had more popular success. Armageddon is actually fairly re-watchable, while Deep Impact left no lasting impression in my mind. Olympus Has Fallen was so successful, it spawned a shitty sequel set in England (think Hellboy).

I don’t necessarily care that there is more than one documentary about this festival that flopped. I am fairly confident that I watched more than one Woodstock ’99 video, but they didn’t come out days apart from each other. Hulu produced “Fyre Fraud” and released it on January 14th. The Netflix version came on January 18th. They both had different access points and both were interesting, but seriously four days??? WTF.

https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-or-hulu-which-fyre-festival-documentary-you-should-watch/

Feel free to read the above link for more info, but in the meantime, I am going to continue to vent.

Why can’t we forbid filmmakers from doing this type of thing. It happens a lot, but shouldn’t. I look at the whole thing as a form of copyright infringement. If I opened a chicken wing place called, “Peckers” and forced my male waiters to wear bright shorts with a woodpecker’s face painted on the crotch, I am pretty sure Buffalo Wild Wings would still fucking suck. Hooters, however, would probably sue me. If I invented a pair of sneakers that let me inflate little airsacks in my shoes, I’d probably get a lawsuit filed against me by Dee Brown. If I emulated my entire Presidency after that of Richard Milhouse Nixon, I would probably get sued by some Federal Prosecutor, right?

What if I did any of those things in the same year as the first example? I think I would lose more than those wealthy snobs who flew to the Bahama’s even though the experience was already falling apart in front of them. I don’t know how to become an Instagram Influencer, but I do know how to write a blog that Hollywood producers might pick-up.

What is the worst example of content double-dipping you can think of? I am interested to learn more.

A subject that is never brought up successfully without controversy amongst friends and family is that of sound investment principles.

Enter John C. Bogle, the founder of The Vanguard Group. He died yesterday at 89.

As I sat down this morning to read e-mails and get started with my work day, this news derailed me a little bit. I’m not going to spend much time going over my personal strategies a.) because you likely don’t care and b.) it’s not really the point of my writing this.

I just wanted to throw something together simply because if you’ve never heard of John, his story, and what he accomplished in the financial industry, he’s worth a few minutes of your time.

As I started thinking about this, I turned to Reddit, where I knew I would find others similarly seeking to eulogize Bogle and his impact on society. One Reddit user captured Bogle’s essence in a simple way I really liked:

“…he could have been a billionaire. Instead, he was able to make so many millionaires.

Bogle graduated from Princeton in 1951 with a degree in economics. His senior thesis, titled “The Economic Role of the Investment Company”, laid the foundation for what became a massive potential power shift toward the consumer in the financial industry.

I want to get my hands on the full thesis and read it again – I went through it in graduate school and it had a huge influence on me. I found a location with some excerpts from it online to start.

The TL;DR of Bogle’s philosophy (admittedly through only the lens of my personal understanding, so your mileage may vary) is that individual investors (i.e., you and I) should not be paying exorbitant management fees to simply earn average investment returns.

Put another way, every individual should be given the opportunity to invest in the market at a reasonable cost.

There’s a belief in society that if you can afford to pay “more”, you’re guaranteed “better” quality. Bogle challenged this idea from the very start of his career.

He found that the average manager of a mutual fund simply did no better or worse over the long term than the actual market performed. (He’s not the only one who’s challenged the industry on this – famous investor Warren Buffett also won a bet under this pretense over the last decade)

The Vanguard Group, founded in 1974, is lauded for basically being unwaveringly committed to this principle of giving affordable market access to the public.

Those of you who have/have had the experience of setting up deferred contribution retirement accounts through your employers have probably seen the name Vanguard before – you may have even picked one of their funds.

If you have, Mr. Bogle is the reason that fund exists. I’d go on and on about this for paragraphs, but I need to get back to work. Have a day, folks.

https://giphy.com/embed/x70p0tqMsvqMM

via GIPHY

By Rick Lavoie

While catching up on the MIPPACast, I heard someone mention that the blog had been silent. As MIPPA’s most prolific blogger, I took the time to compose another retrospective. I thought that 109 Tweets received such positive feedback, so the column must be popular.

The most significant portion of the 3rd podcast was obviously the talk about draft location. As last year’s reigning champ, I made a solid argument that the draft location should be chosen by the winner of the league. With history on my side, we held at least one more draft at Hooters Saugus. I am not really sure when we moved the draft to Hooters, but I know it didn’t start there. As I pointed out in the chat, the original draft was held in MetroBoston. More specifically, it was at Shawn’s old employer (I believe it was a text messaging app company) located in Watertown at the old Arsenal location.

The complex, for those who weren’t around, was as high tech as you’d find in those days. You needed to be buzzed in…the draft table had plug-in ports…and we projected the MIPPADraft Spreadsheet for all to see. The night always started with rules discussion, 7 layer dip, and BizzBot cookies (She may not be real, but the cookies were). Trades were conducted like middle school kids passing paper notes under the guise of secrecy. We were pioneers. The earliest email I can find regarding those drafts was dated August 24, 2007.

I responded in due time with keepers of Joseph Addai and Laurence Maroney. All of this reminiscing, led me down a rabbit hole filled with memories of poker, myspace, and days of yore.

Most of you newbies have been taught that our humble fantasy league started as a bunch of guys playing poker. The MIPPA wasn’t just a couple of guys with a weekly hold ’em game. It honestly was much, much more. As we embark on new media (podcasts, blogs, etc) we must look to our beginning as to not make the mistakes of the past. That brought me to my old friend Tom.

Long before messenger, long before Twitter, and long before Seth or Rooney, the MIPPA was on the world’s largest social media site – MySpace.

MIPPA’s MySpace was an amazing resource for our little poker league. We posted statistics for wins and losses, we organized Memorial Day events, and we shared photos, favorite songs, and everything in between. The MIPPA MySpace was groundbreaking.

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg stole the idea from a few twins, and Tom started selling out. MySpace began to liquidate (kind of). But the Retrospective team was able to access the archives and pull out some doozies.

The Top 8. The was one thing that caused much consternation with an emerging society based on ratings. Who were the MySpace Top 8 for the MIPPA?

1. The Praying StormTrooper: Mister Tewstep hailing from Quincy, Massachusetts. Otherwise known as Mike Long. Mike boasts 164 followers.
2. The Young Abercrombie Model: Matthew Gerrish from Lowell, Massachusetts. This PSMC0304 can brag about his 169 followers.
3. Incognito #1: The Franchise. His 994 followers know that he was from North Weymouth, Massachusetts
4. The Cup of Noodles Fan: Also from Lowell, Massachusetts William Northrup is proud to have 84 friends and he self identifies as a writer and a teacher.
5. The Out of Place Red Sox Fan: Me. With 124 followers and still living in Saugus, lol.
6. Incognito #2: Justin Adams. Living in Wollaston, Massachusetts, (Is that even a real city?) Justin had 108 followers.
7. A Family of Three: 204076485 is also known as Chris Sylvia. Chris has 150 followers, but never saw the need to update his profile picture after the birth of his daughter.
8. No One. Even though someone created this page, and it is followed by a Theresa, a Liz Caliri, and a Jamian Whiting, we don’t have any idea who might be the genius behind this page.

The one thing that is certain is that the folks in this group are more than just some friends. We are a collection of memories and laughter. The Rabbit Hole tonight took me down made me pause and reflect a few times. I smiled and chuckled at old pictures and profiles. I accessed the MIPPA Poker Rules:

The hope that one day we will play poker again still resides deep within my soul. Perhaps it will be a 14 player game after Conclave with Tom Shnorrenburger or maybe a few cocksuckers will get together when Deadwood’s movie shows up On Demand. Regardless, the memories were good. The times were some of the best times I’ve had. The trip down memory lane brought forward one other image, emblazoned in my mind.

The Rabbit Hole of memories is supposed to be pleasant. The image above shows a shirtless carpenter aboard an Alaska Air flight out of St. Louis. He was angry. He stormed the cockpit (pre-9/11) and attacked the pilots with his shoes. Ultimately subdued by a passenger with an axe, this man will never know how much pleasure he brought a few MIPPA members and their friends. No one knows why he was so angry, but his anger should make us pause anew.

The whole scope of MIPPA Retrospectives is to bring the history of this league alive. I hope this second installment has accomplished that feat. I will entertain suggestions about future topics of this column, of my Prove Me Wrong column, or of course more of “A Rant by Rick Lavoie”

In today’s morning e-mail, Seth asked me to post his favorite, totally not aggravating, completely normal fantasy point accruing play of the season for y’all.

Here it is: