With the surprising and senseless death of Kenny McKinley in Denver this week, a simmering debate has taken one more step toward raging out of control. Lately sports writers and retired athletes wearing bad suits on ESPN have been spending a lot of time talking about concussions, especially amongst football player. Athletes have gotten so big and fast and strong that violence on the field has far outpaced the evolution of football safety equipment along with the evolution of knee ligaments.
Already Sports Illustrated and all manner of bloggers have posed the question of McKinley’s concussion history. Odds are every football player has suffered through a few concussions, even if a few mild ones may have gone undiagnosed along the way. Odds are just about everyone has suffered through a concussion or two at some point. At least I hope I’m not the only one haphazardly banging my head off every available hard surface.
The new theory on concussions says a history of concussions possibly leads to an increased risk of suicide and general insane behavior. There’s a long list of cases to support this theory, which is gaining steam by the day.
Former Philadelphia Eagle Andre Waters committed suicide in 2006. A study on his brain revealed the tissue had degenerated to the point it became similar to that of a man in his 80s rather than a 43-year-old professional athlete.
It’s called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Owen Daniels, a University of Pennsylvania football player, committed suicide in April. He too showed signs of CTE due to a history of concussions.
The man who first asked the concussion question is a former Harvard football player named Chris Nowinski. He went on to be a WWE wrestler for a few years before ultimately retiring because of concussions. His history of concussions left him battling migraines and depression. He spearheaded the efforts to research this. He acquired Andre Waters’ brain for research by doctors at the University of Pittsburgh.
The Pitt doctors also did research on two former Steelers players. Mike Webster died homeless and crazy of heart failure. His brain also showed the effects of numerous concussions. Terry Long’s brain showed the signs, too. He committed suicide in 2005.
Sadly, there are several other confirmed cases and several dozen cases of suicide and bizarre behavior where the brains of those involved were unable to be examined.
The theory hit the mainstream hard with the death of Andre Waters and the Chris Benoit murder-suicide. Benoit’s brain was examined at the University of West Virginia and their report said it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.
This all seems like a lot of hard evidence that a history of concussions leads to an increased suicide risk, among many other possible complications.

Seeing as how I like to go against the grain, I’d like to raise another point. I’d like to point out a bunch of people who didn’t have the same concussion history as these various athletes, but people who did have one thing in common with the football players and rasslers.
Ray Combs was the host of Family Feud when I was a kid. After his time on the Feud was over, Ray Combs injured his spine rather than his head in a car crash and was left in constant pain for the rest of his life. From there proceeded to lose some businesses and most of his money along with his mind. In the end, he used his bedsheets to hang himself while being held in a hospital on a 72-hour suicide watch.
Dana Plato is another example. She was on Diff’rent Strokes and she was huge as a teenager. She had a long history of drug and alcohol problems and it finally caught up to her when she overdosed on Soma and Lortab at 34.
Hugh O’Connor was a stud on In The Heat of the Night. He was like a mini-Bubba. He survived Hodgkins Lymphoma as a teenager, but had long-lasting addiction problems after taking prescription pain pills and marijuana during his illness. He shot himself in 1995. He had cocaine in his blood at the time, but no history of concussions.
Those are three examples of people who didn’t have a concussion history, but did have some manner of notoriety and problems related to their own fame along with the same life struggles faced by millions of people everywhere.
Like the athletes, they were at least somewhat notable figures dealing with the pressure of that. Dana Plato took sleeping pills and pain pills and she died from it. Hugh O’Connor became addicted to prescription pain pills. Ray Combs suffered a severe spinal injury and relied on pain pills to make it through his daily life.
It stands to reason that maybe we should look into the fact that notable people kill themselves more often than us more anonymous masses.
On the other hand, it stands to reason that maybe pharmaceuticals have as much to do with it as concussions or fame. Think about your favorite musicians who killed themselves and all the actors I didn’t get to. Think about all the non-notable people who kill themselves. Think about people paying 10 dollars per pill to get their hands on Oxycontin. Think about all the football injuries and the surgeries…and the pain pills.
I’ll bring up Charles Rogers. The Lions drafted him #2 overall in the 2003 NFL draft. He got hurt, and he never made a successful comeback because he became addicted to the painkillers he took while recovering from his injuries.
Christopher Nowinski, the Harvard man who came up with this concussion theory, works in Boston…in pharmaceuticals.

In reality, I’m more likely to be lost in the Bermuda Triangle like so many people used to be but don’t seem to be anymore.
I’m not afraid of boats or the water. Maybe I should be, but I have a reputation for being bull-headed and stubborn because I am…bull-headed and stubborn. I have reason to be afraid. Dating back as far as I can remember, I’ve had terrible luck with boats and lakes and oceans and water in general.
When I was around five years old, I had a run-in with paddle boats at Santa’s Land in Cherokee, NC. Paddle boats are great fun if you’re just hanging out in a pond. You drive the boat like riding a bike and it’s a good time and in boner pill commercials you see old people paddling around in ponds holding hands before they go have disgusting sex.
Rather than a lemon party breaking out, my paddle boat ride ended when I fell in the lake while trying to feed a monkey. That’s the great part of their paddle boat lake. They have animals, like monkeys, living on islands. So you paddle around and feed the animals. Or, if you’re me, you fall in the water and proceed to flip out when some stupid lady goes, “OH MY GOD THERE’S A SNAKE IN THE WATER!”
To summarize to this point, I’ve fallen into a nasty pond and I am freaking out because I’ve been told there is a snake in the water with me. I can’t climb back on to my own paddle boat, and there is a curious and potentially deadly monkey staring me down from his island home in the North Carolina mountains.
Thankfully, a nice man took a chance and hefted my husky behind from the brown water. I almost pulled him in the way the Royal Rumble went down with Sid Vicious and Hulk Hogan in 1992, but he kept himself on the boat and rescued me from having to wade 100 yards in chest-deep water.

Example #2, the pirate ship ride at Ghost Down. You know, the one that swings to and fro and looks like a pirate ship. You’ve definitely seen one here or there in your life. It’s a fun time. And it barely counts as a boat, but for the sake of my theme it definitely does.
At this point, I was probably 4-6. It seems like it was before my Santa’s Land trip, but it very well could have been the same one. We were at Ghost Town. I was in redneck heaven watching dudes dressed like cowboys shoot each other and pretend to be shot. I saw some proud Cherokee people sacrifice their dignity and do rain dances with fat pale face tourists. Like me! To top it all off, we rode the pirate ship! And my mother freaked out in a way that scarred me for a good portion of my childhood. Her blood-curdling screams of terror scared the hell out of me like few things ever scared a small child. It was like hearing someone get stabbed, but watching them have a good time on an amusement park ride. I wasn’t the same again till I went to Disney World with my grandma’s church group and rode the roller coasters with my cousin. My cousin turned out to be far more manly than my mother, who it turns out had no place on the pirate ship since she was terrified on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Example #3, Disney World! The trip with my grandma’s church group started out well. I was on a bus with a bunch of old people and a few other kids. Mainly old people. I have no idea why the old people wanted to go to Disney World but more importantly I did not care. This was my chance to visit the Magic Kingdom and I could never miss such a thing. Unfortunately, this was the continuation of my nautical numbskullery. I don’t know if they still have those cool little sprite boats, but they did when I was there as a kid! Mine broke down.
The ferry…it broke down, too.
The submarine ride where it seems like you really go under water but I’m not sure if you actually do…it broke down, too.

This all takes us up to more recent stories. This summer, I’ve been stranded on Lake Hartwell on a broken down boat, then caught in a monsoon later on the same day. I’ve fallen down the stairs on a house boat and compressed my spine like someone stepping on a Coke can. I lost my hat, sat on my glasses, cut my legs, stubbed my toes, and bruised myself in mysterious ways. It’s all part of a day on the lake if you’re me. It’s like the water unleashes my inner Jerry Lewis.

Other maritime mishaps also highlight my youth. Don’t worry. I can’t fit them all in fewer than 1000 words. There are simply too many, and I am simply too wordy.

When I was 2 or 3, I was going to some daycare here in Greenville. I have no idea which one, but I remember it was around the time I was wearing cowboy boots and fire suits as part of my daily attire. It wasn’t GrrAnimals. It was GrrAnderson. Bordering on GrrAntreville. Osh Kosh B’Homeland Park.
Anyway, one day we went to the YMCA to learn how to swim! I was 2 or 3. It’s one of my earliest memories. I don’t remember this part, but apparently my parents forgot we were going to take swimming lessons that day. Fast forward through breakfast and some play time and some dude I’ve never met before is throwing me into a YMCA pool in my tighty whities. Eventually I did learn to swim, but not that day. That day I didn’t learn much of anything, but remember you pay people to do this stuff to your kids.

Another time, I was probably 7 or 8 and our summer vacation found us in Myrtle Beach! I was there with my mom. My dad never went on our beach trips. He only went on our Pigeon Forge trips. We never went anywhere else. Myrtle Beach, Pigeon Forge, and that’s it.
So we were in Myrtle Beach! Exciting. Beachfront hotel! More exciting! One evening, I remember playing in the pool while my mom sat in a chair reading some stupid book probably written by John Grisham or Robin Cook. There was a couple in the hot tub and they were doing something I decided was sexual in nature. I had no idea what was going on, but I was taking mental notes all the same. I kept up the splashing and the playing so Moose never got suspicious. My attention, though, was on the drunk chick and why she was pretending her boyfriend was one of those Fry-Guy spring horses at a McDonalds playground. A few minutes later, two old women are on a second story balcony and they’re yelling at the people in the hot tub and pulling a good old-fashioned “WILL YOU THINK OF THE CHILDREN?” routine. The drunk people in the hot tub are angry because their fornication has been interrupted by old women. They were yelling, too. They said I didn’t know what was going on. The old women asked me if I knew what was going on so I answered and I told the truth. A few minutes later, hotel security showed up and the Myrtle Beach PD showed up and nobody went to jail but nobody really went home happy, either. Except me. I was glad I got to be in an untelevised episode of Cops.
Also, that Robin Cook must be one hell of a writer because I’m pretty sure Moose never put the book down during any of it.

With a history like that in the water, there’s a good chance no one will see me alive again on the mainland after Friday when I board the ship. The Poseidon Adventure could become The…uh, Posninedon Adventure. We could all be aboard the Carnival Nine-tanic. I don’t think even Mandarax can help me now!

There are few things as much fun as summertime in the south. Ask any southerner or any reasonably non-biased yankee, and you will get the same response. Summertime in the south is pure magic. Every moment of every southern summer day – magical. Enchanted, even. That’s all there is to say about it.

Monday morning’s show included a bunch of people calling me gay because I don’t like one night stands. Not that I don’t like women, just that I don’t like one night stands. Or “hooking up,” as the kids say.
A lot of dudes just can’t comprehend that and I have a tough time explaining it. Let’s say some dude asks, “Why don’t you want to have sex with some random attractive girl?” All I can say is, “I dunno. I just don’t. Makes me feel bad about myself afterwards, like I just did something I personally disapprove of.” After that, he says, “But you’re not religious!” and I can never explain all that to anybody. I do wish I could. I guess no one really gets my weird moral code, but I enjoy it. I’m not religious, I do drink, there are rumors I may have smoked pot at some point, and I’m not interested in hooking up with anybody – even the hottest of hot chicks you think about when you’re touching yourself.
The problem with my way of thinking is twofold – Men don’t understand it and start calling me gay until they lose their voice. Women, on the other hand, think I am simply lying to find an alternate route to getting in their pants. But I’m not! That’s why I laid out the challenge on Monday for women to hang out with me and go out with me and watch as I do not try and have sex with them! That challenge still stands, by the way. Until I find out I’m terminally ill. If I come down with terminal cancer, I’ll probably be way more open to things like randomly hooking up with strangers but I’m sure it’s a weird feeling to be lying in bed with a dying person. Can’t say I’ve ever done it – at least not intimately like that. Man, I bet that’s a weird thing.
So even as I try to offer a bit more insight into something that’s raised a bunch of questions for me this week, I still can’t do it. Not in a way that satisfies very many people. But you can never satisfy them all! I’ll keep trying. Just like the mouse taking a bite of the electrically charged cheese. That’s me, right now and always.

Sadly, my close personal friend and hero is done for the remainder of the baseball season! Chipper Jones has a torn ACL and he won’t be ready to play for a while. Probably not even by the time next season starts in April! Thankfully, the heir to the throne is already upon us in the form of Brooks Conrad! Another switch-hitting 3B in Atlanta is a welcome thing. Chipper or no Chipper, this team is destined for greatness. And by that I mean they’re going to win the World Series!

Not really, but I did think long and hard about the Griswold family on Sunday evening.
You remember Christmas Vacation, right? Clark W. Griswold is wholly determined to make his display of Christmas lights the biggest, brightest, gawdiest, most awe-inspiring display of Christmas cheer anybody has ever seen! Everybody else in the neighborhood wanted to outdo each other as well. It turns into a huuuuuge competition, unspoken at first, but often with rewards and prizes later on for the most nicely decorated house in the neighborhood. It’s grown to that over time because we (as Americans) love to compete. Be it on the field of play or with our Christmas lights, we want to compete and do it better than the guy beside us. That’s our capitalist spirit and it’s awesome as long as it isn’t ridiculous.
Sometimes, though, that spirit makes us attempt to kill ourselves! That’s when it gets most entertaining.
This all leads me to my Independence Day spent at the lake. My roommate and I have a friend who inherited a pretty sweet house down on Lake Hartwell in what I like to think of as suburban Townville.
From his back yard, we watched fireworks go off for literally 2 hours in every possible direction. We watched some people in the next cove blow stuff up for well over an hour. It was like a big-time professional-type display of fireworks. And those people weren’t the only ones. No matter where you looked, huge professional-grade fireworks were lighting up the sky. They were close, they were far away, they were in front of us, behind us, beside us, and damn near on top of us.
Once the ash was done raining down all over Anderson county like a volcano just erupted, I’m not sure what was decided amongst all these pyrotechnicians hanging out on the lake, but I hope somebody got a trophy. I hope someone got to declare himself the winner of the non-contest. Otherwise, it’s all for my entertainment and I know these intense fireworks nuts are looking for at least a little bit of personal satisfaction to come from this nonsense.

Hey, do you know what the most popular concert in town is? Posibly the most popular concert to come through the upstate in all the years I’ve been working for the Planet! Of course it’s the Carnival of Madness. Of course it’s Shinedown, Sevendust, Puddle of Mudd, 10 Years, and Chevelle. People are begging and pleading for tickets to that show. Begging and pleading for tickets to see Shinedown and passes to the backstage BBQ and chances to be the Bootleg Photographer! Women are willing to degrade themselves, men are willing to humiliate themselves. The things people offer to do…unspeakable things! And none of it matters. We have a few pair left for the rest of this week, and we’re giving them all away on the air. So listen up and you could get into the Carnival of Madness for freeee! But your attempts to blackmail, extort, and seduce your way through the gates…those aren’t gonna work. We have a whole big P1 family to think about!

Finally, the Braves are definitely winning the World Series this year, a mere 15 years after they made me the happiest 10 year old on the planet. Good for them. God bless them. I salute them. I love you, Troy Glaus.

Saturday was a huuuuuuuuge day for 2/5 of TRG! Maffew and I got to go up to Asheville for a little lunch date with the legendary Dale Murphy. And it was good. So very, very good.
Dale was a complete gentleman and a gracious and patient man even though he was sweating in the sun and facing a good many rabid fans who seemed to struggle to treat him like a real person.
I do hope that makes sense. When I say they struggled to treat Murph like a real person, I mean they treat him as such a legend that they basically act like they’ve just met Batman or Donald Duck. At an event like that, Dale Murphy may as well be a robot. Makes me feel bad for him, and makes me want to avoid being a 2-time NL MVP and a 7-time All-Star. Somehow I don’t think I have too much to worry about with either of those.

Maffew and I got to go to Anderson on Friday night! Our first trip to the Electric City in a few months, and our first trip to an Anderson-area bar in a couple of years. Of course the P1’s came out in huuuuuge numbers and showed us a real good time. Hopefully we showed them a real good time, too. And we’ll be mack at TJ Whispers thsi Friday night from 10-midnight once again! Please do join us.

Tomorrow, we’re going out to Willow Creek for the 7th Annual Rise Guys Big Ass Golf Outing! This time, we expanded the field and got a bunch more players in for the tournament and I have to say it’s gonna be an awesomely fun time. It always is. And while I’m concerned about what people may be doing to the golf carts while we’re there, ultimately those stories are the ones we remember years later when we’re trying to figure out why the people at certain golf courses won’t return our calls anymore. Oh well. That’s life, sometimes. Especially if you live it the way we tend to, right?

It’s been a big couple of months for the entire show. We were NASCAR’d properly a couple weeks back when we got to do the show from Charlotte Motor Speedway. That place is like a shrine to all things NASCAR. A beautifully massive complex meant to burn rubber and thrill people like myself. Also yourself.
I didn’t even get to stay for the All-Star Race and the Creed concert on Saturday, but I had a great time on Friday just being surrounded by the spectacle. Those NASCAR people know how to throw a spectacle. Not an event, or a party, or anything else. Purely a spectacle. It may be the new Greatest Show on Earth since we’ve all seen elephants do tricks enough times that it isn’t impressive anymore.

So we all know about Jeff Lewis Neal’s Maine Coon Cat and Matt’s cat, and Paige’s various dogs, and Fatboy’s dead fish and those cats he does NOT have in his apartment. I tended to feel a little bit left out. For years and years and years, I’ve been the only one on the show who is always (ALWAYS) showing up by himself to everything, and the only one who doesn’t get to tell stories about my stupid pets. But not anymore! Moike and I have found a pet in the form of a tiny kitten that was terrified and hiding under my car last night. Unless it has leukemia. Barring a case of feline leukemia, I now have a pet and can join in on telling those stories about pets that no one really wants to hear. This is what goes on in my life. Then again, saving kittens from certain death seems like a good way to earn brownie points from women who won’t talk to me. I’m gonna milk it for all I can. And if I can’t milk it for enough, I guess I’ll have to go back to killing kittens* like I’ve been doing for the last 12-13 years. Someone’s gonna get that. Most people won’t.

*I’ve never actually killed a cat, for the record. Nor a kitten. Nor a dog. Once a possum, with my car. Also two deer. No cats, though. Don’t call PETA. They won’t care.

That is a word we’re gonna throw around a lot in the month of May. It’s a good word. It’s what fuels manhood, after all. So we do TEST FEST every year to celebrate manliness. It’s one of my favorite times of the whole year. We get to hang out with the P1’s every weekend in the month of May and that is simply fantastic. This year, we’ll be introducing dodgeball and having Jackyl take part. We’ll also be bringing back paintball and The Rise Guys Big Ass Golf Outing. Aaand bowling! Bowling is just a few days away! Friday night at Wade Hampton lanes is the Test Fest Rock N Bowl, and this year it is Big Ass Draft bowling! As noted above, it is a great month and an interesting month, and an affordable month. Registering a bowling team gets you a lane for 6 people at 10 bucks per person. So we do that from 7-10, then we go start a party somewhere else. Deal? See you at Wade Hampton Lanes? Beautiful.

I hope to bowl well. I feel I should impress Fatboy since he owns bowling shoes. No ball, but shoes. As a bowler, which is more important? I hope he doesn’t show up with any form of strap-on wrist support. That’s intimidation. He may as well be Ernie McCracken at that point. And I may as well be a one-handed con man trying to take advantage of Amish Randy Quaid.

You ever hear the one about the fat kid playing dodgeball? You can see it in person later this month. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.

We made fun of Jeff Lewis Neal pretty hard this morning. He has this little pet thing he does with his girlfriend where they say, “Wus you, babes!” Naturally, we went after that like a pack of dogs. Well, Matt and I. We realized people seemed to really think it’s funny. So yesterday we sat around singing karaoke for a little while after the show. We came up with such classics as Wus of a Wifetime by Firehouse and Wus Game by Lady GaGa. Also Power of Wus by Huey Lewis and What’s Wus Got to do With it by Tina Turner! I really do hope this is a never-ending joke as long as there are love songs to make fun of. Here are some of my thoughts for future renditions:
Feel Like Makin’ Wus
Wus me Tender
I’ll Make Wus to You
Teenager in Wus
Baby Wus
Can’t Buy me Wus
All You Need is Wus
Game of Wus
Wus in an Elevator
Stop! In the Name of Wus
All You Need is Wus
Hello, I Wus You
Tainted Wus
Let You Wus Flow

Do feel free to make suggestions. We like singing karaoke at the expense of Jeff Lewis Neal, or anyone else for that matter.

It took me 25 years, but I finally made it to an opening day in Atlanta! Not only that, it was a 16-5 sort of stomping the Braves put on the Cubs with over 53,000 people there to see it.
This past Thursday night was the opener for the Greenville Drive after a day of thunderstorms and rain. The rain cleared up less than an hour before the game and the weather was perfect for baseball by the time the game started. I like to think of it as baseball weather. In the fall, we have football weather. It’s those subtle seasonal changes in the air that everyone notices. If you watch sports more than you probably should, you notice those changes in the context of football and baseball.
Basically, there aren’t many things in life better than those April and May evenings at the ballpark. Any ballpark, anywhere you happen to be. Opening day is one of the 3-5 best days of the whole year, up there with Christmas and Thanksgiving and Halloween and Matt’s birthday. I wish every day was opening day.

I still like watching baseball more than I like playing softball. The Rise Guys Shockers exist this year. We finally started the softball team we’ve been thinking of starting for around three years! We accomplish things slowly. Hopefully we can get better sort of quickly. Games start in a month and we aren’t very good at things like…uh, fielding grounders. Or catching batted balls. Not very good at running. Or throwing. We have some athletic talent but I think it’s all in sports other than softball.
We also need a few good women to play on our team. Not good at softball, necessarily. Just warm bodies with a desire to play who happen to be female!

This week coming up is the Entercom Sales Executive Talent Show! We’ve invited the entire sales team from Entercom Greenville to come in and compete against each other in a Talent Show. Hence the name. What’s going to happen is going to be…good. It could be great. I don’t know what these people are planning, but I know these people and they won’t let us down. And if they do let us down, it’ll be such incredible and epic failure that we all remember it for the rest of our lives. I hope they aren’t feeling pressured. I want them to do well! Most of them!

It all went down on the show very recently and it was quite exciting. I haven’t gotten so many questions about a single thing on the show in a long long long long time so I think people liked it! It was awesomely entertaining now that I look back at it.
Everyone else on the show found a contestant to come in and compete for a date with myself! We started, of course, with four girls. And even Fatboy found one. Chloe came in on Monday as Paige’s contestant. Mandy came in on Tuesday as Fatboy’s contestant. Erin had to call in after some trouble on her way to the station on Wednesday as Jeff’s contestant, and Andrea was in on Thursday as Maffew’s contestant. I was blindfolded on all of those initial meetings so it was a bit awkward. Still, I am an excellent judge of character and I took away that one of the ladies seemed kind of crazy, one of them definitely is crazy, and one of them reminds me of my dear mother, Moose.

On Friday morning, they all came in. Well, three of them showed up. Paige’s contestant did not. And Jeff’s contestant brought a friend with her. In the end, Matt’s contestant was the big winner. Andrea was victorious and all was good, except that Jeff’s contestant got really mad about losing and spent the rest of the time in studio giving everyone the dreaded EVIL EYE. It happens.
Paige’s contestant apologized for not showing up and said she simply slept five hours too long. I guess that happens? No one is really buying it, not even myself. I personally think she just chickened out on the finals, but in any case I am not in a position to be worrying about things like that.

In the end, Andrea won and we went on the date to Chophouse ‘47. It was good. It was fun. She’s cool and fun and also incredibly hot. Maybe I’ll see her again! Maybe we’ll do For the Love of Jimmy 4! Either way.

Finally, a lot of people were asking me this weekend about my so-called epiphany from our recent vacation. I’ll share more about that soon right here on this blog. As soon as I figure out how to put it into words. Whatever happened, it left me a smilingly happy person for six straight days and counting so it’s definitely worth sharing. Soon.