The Miami Dolphins are in the playoffs for the first time since I was a sophomore in high school. From then until now, that's a driver's test; prom; graduation; buying a car; finding oneself; re-inventing oneself; going to college, switching majors; watching seasons 1-3 of Arrested Development; earning a Bachelor's degree; teaching college. That's not quite a lifetime, but it is a
youth. My adolescence, young adulthood, and then full-blown adulthood have been spent waiting for my hometown team to make the playoffs again. It's astonishing to quantify it that way, really taking inventory of all the lost time. Sixteen to twenty-four -- this is generally considered to be life's best years. And, somehow, the Dolphins were not a part of my best years
at all. This is made even more extraordinary as it seems like even the most hopeless and woebegone teams accidentally make the playoffs from time to time. I grew up, but the Dolphins remained stagnant. And even that's being kind; to be more accurate, they regressed. I improved as a person during this time span -- becoming smarter, more experienced, more worldly -- but the Dolphins became smaller, slower, less talented. I was going one way, they were going the other. They won a single, solitary game last season, and that was only because we managed to be slightly less incompetent than the opposition on that given day. We had become inconceivably bad for an immeasurable amount of time.
And this is why I'm so happy now.
The Miami Dolphins ended the season at 11-5, won the AFC East division, and are hosting a playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens this Sunday. This is our first postseason appearance since 2002.
It's a euphoric happiness, bordering on lightheaded giddiness. I almost want to squeal -- not so much like a pig, maybe more like a girl. There's less reason to brood; things are well. It's not that all of my other worries and concerns are forgotten, they've just been put off for a later time. I feel great and I am thankful.
There are a lot of contributing factors to this season's turnaround:
On the defensive line, Nose Tackle Jason Ferguson has provided everything we needed from him: size, strength, and immobility. Rookies bookends Kendall Langford and Philip Merling look like the future. Randy Starks has been a plesant free agent surprise.
In the middle of the field, Matt Roth has been a pleasant surprise switching from an overmatched Defensive End to a suddenly-solid Outside Linebacker. Joey Porter has been a maniac all season; if DeMarcus Ware and James Harrison didn't exist, he would be the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year. Channing Crowder has been adaquete; he doesn't create any game-changing plays and he often takes the wrong angle on running plays, but I sense that his leadership skills and locker room presence are invalauble to the well being of this team.
In our secondary, Will Allen and Andre Goodman have absolutely blanketed the field, covering and swatting and batting and intercepting anything their general vicinity. Renaldo Hill still has hands of stone and couldn't catch a cold, but he's a very cerebral player, always aware of everything that's going on around him. And I don't even have to look up the stats since I'm sure Yeremiah Bell still leads the team in tackles. Going into the season, most agreed that this was our absolute worst group. They looked clueless. But they managed to get their acts together, transforming not just into a good-enough unit but a formidable group of Defensive Backs.
On the offensive line, 1st overall pick Jake Long hasn't always been dominant, but he has been dependably steady. Justin Smiley was the perfect veteran anchor. Vernon Carey hasn't manhandled the opponent the way he could or should have, but he's proven to be a quality Right Tackle.
In our backfield, Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams are arguably the best Running Back duos in the entire league. They
should have ended the season with more yards and touchdowns, but their combination of size, speed, and strength are nearly unmatched.
Among our Wide Receivers, they haven't been All-World, but they've been boundlessly better than anyone could have imagined. Ted Ginn Jr., with all of that blinding foot speed, is starting to catch on. Before getting hurt, Greg Camarillo had been an inspiration. He has almost no phyiscal talent to speak of, yet gets by on sheer will. Davone Bess has been an absolute revelation -- sure hands, quick feet, expert route-running. We're very lucky to have him. Even Brandon London, he of the long arms and long legs, looks like a future contributor.
Between our Tight Ends, Anthony Fasano and David Martin, we have two big, strong, athletic targets. They can block, run, attributes -- you can often find at least two of these attributes in a tight end, but rarely all three.
And under center, of course, is Chad Pennington. He's been the best quarterback in Miami since Dan Marino...and Marino retired a long decade ago. Getting over his oft-reported lack of arm strength, he's otherwise flawless. Pin-point accuracy, protects the ball, high level of awareness, strong leadership abilities, good teammate -- just about flawless.
And all of this excitement over tomorrow's game is yet another reminder, in a long list of similar reminders, of a particularly interesting facet of my personality: deep down, I'm kind of a Jock-Bro. Now, I don't maintain
all of the typical character traits; I don't wear backwards baseball caps, I don't lift weights and drink protein shakes, I don't pay classmates to do my homework, I don't make a habit of using the synonyms "brew" for beer or "bros" for friends, and I don't date-rape people. But all of that notwithstanding, I love sports. It's one of my favorite things. I enjoy watching them and playing them. All off the top of my head, I know who won the the 1997 NCAA Men's Basketball championship (Arizona), what school Ki-Jana Carter attended (Penn State), the 7th leading scorer in NBA history (Hakeem Olajuwon), and Rick Mirer's Seattle Seahawks jersey number (#3). Organized competition, to me, serves as one of the main objectives of life. Everything always boils down to winning and losing. Beating my peers -- and not just beating, but publically and thouroughly shaming them -- is a prevailing reason I get up in the morning, and for those who don't share that sentiment, I wonder exactly what motivates them to even bother with anything.
So obviously, I have some of that Jock-Bro disposition in me. I have the potential. Maybe in another lifetime, or maybe even in
this lifetime, if a few things had developed differently. If I didn't learn to love reading so much, if I were less analytical and more instinctual, or if I would've grown a little taller, maybe I would be a completely different person today. I don't think I would actually be a professional athlete (as that would be a stretch for even the most active imagination), but who knows, it's within the realm of possibility that I could've turned out to be someone who likes tailgating, pep rallies, and Hollister. One of
those people. Y'know, unlikeable.
Let's go Dolphins.
And as it were, I have an ongoing fascination with extravagantly high-priced "super-foods." I have sampled a few, like saffron, which is the most expensive spice in the world. Relatively speaking, it's worth more than gold. Depending on the market -- and depending on how hungry people are, I suppose -- prices range anywhere from $50 - $80 an ounce. A lot of that cost is a consequence of harvesting, a labor intensive job that takes something incalculable like 80,000 flower stigmas needed to produce one paltry pound. From pictures I have seen, overworked and undereducated workers hand-pluck these flowers in far off, foreign fields that are strikingly verdant; similarly, saffron-infused paella is equally vibrant, a distinctive hue of yellow that almost glows. Overall, the taste is a little subtle (which doesn't necessarily carry a negative connotation), but sometimes borders on the muted (which carries a decidedly more negative connotation). Perhaps my palette isn't as refined as I like to think it is, but I worry that saffron might be little more than fancy food-coloring. I'm sure I would miss it if it were gone, I just don't know if I would miss it dearly. In the case of paella, I think the make-or-break factors are the freshness of the seafood, or adding just enough chicken stock, or not overcooking or undercooking the rice. It seems like saffron might be a very expensive afterthought, but I'm happy to know what it tastes like.
I've also had caviar, most likely the poster child of high-end, "designer" food. It carries an authority, a reputation. Caviar is rich; it lives in a gated community, it pays for tennis lessons, it has an excellent 401k plan, it sends its children to private school, it attends black tie events that raises money for orphans in Africa. Again, harvesting is a process: breed and nurture the sturgeon in specialized farms, closely monitor their pregnancy, gut them when they're ready to burst, then package their babies. Depending on what quality you try -- I'm assuming everything I've eaten ranges from average to slightly below -- there may or may not be an overtly fishy taste. More than anything, it'll taste salty; not unpleasantly so, but salty. The appeal, I think, is not so much the taste but the texture and mouth feel. I've heard some people liken it to little balls of Jell-O, which isn't quite right. Caviar has a little more resiliency than that, it fights back a bit. So tiny beads of tapioca would be a more appropriate comparison. They kind of pop in your mouth, which is a little fun, using your tongue to push them against the roof of your mouth. It's not as life-changing as some food elitists make it out to be, but like the saffron, I feel all the better having eaten it.
While in Japan, I've treated myself to Kobe beef. It's the fabled cut of meat from Waygu cattle. Intricately marbled with fat, its exceptionally juicy and unctuous. Ranchers achieve this higher quality of beef via its unorthodox method of raising the animal: they serve them sake and beer; feed them only top notch grain; brush their fur to a beautiful sheen; and give them daily massages that, presumably, lessen stiffness and muscle tension, resulting in tender steaks. At $300/lb, I'm not necessarily sure it's that much better than our good old fashioned domestic cows here in the States, but it is delicious...almost creamy. I had the tenderloin cut into thick medalions; it was cooked rare, the surface of the meat just barely licked by the flames of the grill. It lay on top of a bed of greens and underneath a sauce that I can't exactly recall. It was a great culinary experience, but I think the geographical experience of actually being in Japan was of more importance to me.
I've never tried Foie gras, but I know all about it. A duck (or goose) is kept in a tiny wire cage as a long metal tube is thrust down its throat, force-feeding it cornmeal several times a day. The bird continues to eat and eat until its liver becomes fatty and diseased, swelling over 10 times its normal size. The duck (or goose) is then put out of its bloated misery, slain for its engorged liver. This reminds me of the 3rd circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. Because of their sins of a lifetime of over-gorging, the gluttons serve their punishment here, forced to eat mud and dirt for the rest of their damned existence. Somehow I think the duck's (or geese's) suffering is less poetic (and more cruel), but that wouldn't necessarily keep me from eating it.
But more than anything -- absolutely more than anything -- I want to try a truffle. They are fungi and they are precious. Pigs are used to hunt them, sniffing along the terrain in the mossy, foggy forests of Italy and France -- I can practically smell the heavy dew in the air. It all sounds so mystical and mythological. They seem so other-worldly, like something not of this time nor this dimension. I can imagine Hobbits feasting on them during their journey to Mount Doom, giving them the required nourishment to destroy Sauron's ring. It's the only food I can think of that is actually scoured for. I know food that is killed, produced, grown, and harvested, but definitely not scoured. They're worth $500 a pound. They often shave it into risotto, or on top of pasta. They look like little black clumps of coal that are the size of a clenched fist, ranging from the size of an infant's to an adult's. I want to know what all the hype is about, but interestingly, all online searches tend to be equally vague and inconclusive. According to Yahoo! Answers, the taste of truffles are "hard to define," "an acquired taste," and "unique," but I think that's kind of a cop out. It's like a non-answer. It's the type of response that leads me to believe these are people who don't know how to fully articulate their thoughts or, more likely, they've never actually tried a truffle and are just full of it. Most things taste like things -- fish tastes light and delicate, onion taste sweet and earthy, honey dew tastes clean and nectarous, Cheetos taste processed and artificial. So what do truffles taste like? I've heard some TV chefs describe it as a flavor similar to mushroom, which makes enough sense considering they're both fungus. And make no mistake, I love mushrooms. Regular white button, portobello, baby portabella, chantrelles, oyster, straw, cremini, morels -- they're delicious. But even if truffles tasted like the most intense, most exquisite mushroom ever, I still have a hard time believing that they're as good as we've been led to believe. Perhaps its legend precedes its flavor. I must eat it, though.
