PITTSBURGH – This is the Coach here. As I have nothing but the greatest contempt for the media, I find it no big problem to simply skip the weekly podcast. However, managment told me I have to talk to you assholes on occasion. So, here are the past 2 links to the weekly podcast. You can also find them archived up there on the title menu bar. Okay? Great.

[ Click here to listen to the Week 3 Press Conference ]

I worshiped the porcelain gods later in the week but I’ll take the win.

[ Click here to listen to the Week 2 Press Conference ]

Perhaps the best week ever on the FFD. I won every day. This week could serve as a model for future drubbings of my Inner Fat Slob.

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – It is very early Saturday morning right now and I stepped on the scale and achieved a low mark for the year. So in that sense, I am the lightest I have been all year and for the past several years for that matter.

Now, I want to level up and am determined to do so. If I score today, then I should be congratulated because today is a night out on the town. It is starting with dinner and will surely include a beer or two. Towards those ends, I plan on hitting the gym for a good awful amount of torture later today. Moreover, I learned in the past, sometimes it is not so much the days you plan for but the days you don’t, like the day after hitting your goal, which really prove troublesome.

I recall earlier in the year (and thus is the benefit of keeping this journal) that I was so ecstatic I was able to achieve my DGO (daily game day objective) on a night out for Mexican food, that I missed the mark the next day and so on and so on. So, tonight, I want to hit the mark and then score tomorrow too.

Still, it irks me to no end that all this week I have been clawing my way back to post a net loss weight wise. The last three days last week and the first three this week are making that very difficult to achieve. However, if it is a negative, it will be marginal at best. I guess it is a pride thing.

By Matt De Reno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – We are nearly to the weekend and I am relatively back on track. I feel as if I have stabilized my weight loss efforts from last week, though it looks as if I may run a slight weight gain this week. Part of that could be due to the steep drop I have showed the previous weeks. The important thing this week is to get back on track and hold that weight steady. Because if I do that then I am NOT on the Yo-Yo thing right?

I mean I don’t know what your experience is with Yo-Yo dieting but I have always appeared to show the classic traits: extreme health followed by extreme unhealthy ways. There was never that sensible middle. It was literally feast or famine.

Yesterday I walked a good deal all the way around West View with my faithful dog Coco. I had did a decent job watching the calories but towards the end of the day, since I had a few hundred to spare – I used them up by enjoying a couple Sierra Nevada’s Early Spring Beers. Today, I still showed a loss.

In some sense I think days where I show a balance are more healthy than the days I show the extreme healthy lifestyle. The difference being sensibility and sustainability. Now, I have sustained for the last 2 days. What I need now is method to continue this for at least the next 14, so I can continue the progress made last week.

We are heading into March and it should be a little warmer today, which is always a nice reminder that the summer will get here sooner or later. If I keep doing what I am doing, my efforts just may pay off.

By Matt De Reno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – Perhaps the FFD is nothing more than a grandiose exercise in capacious puerility, an effluvium of pent up frustration of a stunted teenager who is careening toward his 40s with both surprise and a spare tire around his waist. Perhaps it ain’t. Perhaps it is the next best thing since sliced 35-calorie bread? Maybe, just maybe, there is something here, when there shouldn’t be anything at all? Perhaps I will define what “it” is, but I won’t, because I am not even sure what “it” proclaims to be. Got it?

Why I am being so philosophical—if not downright freaking existential—when I am merely sitting in my cement concrete bunker office at Carnegie Mellon University, having just enjoyed a Quizno’s roast beef and cheddar sub? I am not sure. I do know that having willingly ended my record streak last Thursday, I have struggled to regain control of the wheel since? I having Mexican food am like an alcoholic having one night of free drink. It is not the night per se that does you in, it is the next one. This is all too a lesson I have learned time and again, that the healthy streaks are bound to end and the real measure of progress is my ability to snap back into healthy action. That is far easier typed here in pixels than put into real results when it counts. Maybe that is why it is easier for an alcoholic, or any kind of addict for that matter, to simply quit cold turkey than to have “just a few.”

Okay, I am done bull shitting for today. I walked the dog yesterday and did some good work at the gym. Today, I am aim to do the same. So for me, it is back to the bricks.

Beers

A poem by The Town Drunk
Exclusive to the FFD

I THINK that I shall never hear, 
of a drink more lovely than a beer.
 
A beer whose frothy foam is best
Savored while gawking at passing breasts;
 
A beer that helps me worship the porcelain god’s all day,
And lifts her foamy hops to spray;
 
A beer that may when teams do score
Knock rooting drunkards to the floor;
 
Upon whose empties many get lain;
By beer-goggling John to get intimate with Jane.

Poems are made by drunks and larks,
But only a beer can make me snarf.

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – Thursday, Friday and Saturday were surely a taste of the old way and a descent into hell. I no longer enjoy being unhealthy like that and it sort of pisses me off I had to spend several days in that mind set. Sunday I had a great comeback day. I hit the gym and put in some stepper in a very workmanlike fashion. Later, I hit the pavement with my faithful dog. It was how I want it to be. As it is Monday and the snow is still hanging around, I want to begin the “next record.”

But we are nearly out of February and the cold winter in Pittsburgh can’t last forever – or maybe it can? Maybe I will be fretting about the snow in August. Isn’t that what global warming has come down to? It is cold as hell more than ever.

The Oscars were on last night. Hugh Jackman was pretty entertaining as the host. I watched for maybe a half hour before I turned it off and hit the sack. I sort of wanted to see Mickey Rourke win an award, but, alas, he is still somewhat persona non grata in Hollywood. The problem with Rourke is he is still not the consummate comeback story. I mean he really is an A-hole, though that doesn’t bother me in the list. I like the comeback story because in a way the comeback story is what the FFD is all about.

Here we take myself, some guy who played football in high school, that suddenly woke up and was like “where did this big gut come from.” Now, we must reclaim that former glory. I am not saying I went to the extent that Mickey Rourke did to trash his career, but a good parallel can be made to what I did to my health and what I am trying to do now. Maybe I will get an Oscar at the end of next year. Nah, when it is all said it done, it is just like Mickey Rourke said yesterday in his interview with Barbara Walters: “In the end a trophy would be nice but you can’t eat it and you can’t f*** it.” Now that’s the Mickey we love.

Charge of the Lite Beer Brigade!

A poem by The Town Drunk
Exclusive to the Football Fan’s Diet!

Half a keg, half a keg,
Half a keg onward,
All in the party of Death
hiccupped the six hundred.
“Forward, the Lite keg!
“Charge for the cups!” he said:
Into the party of Death
wigged the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Keg!”
Was there a frosh dismay’d?
Not tho’ the frat boys knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to drink beast and die:
Into the party of Death
drank the six hundred.

Jokers to right of them,
Clowns to left of them,
Townies in front of them
chugged and wondered;
Storm’d at with jello shot and dorito shell,
Boldly they drank and pounded,
Into the breasts of Death,
Into the mouth of Horny co-eds.
reeled the six hundred.

Flash’d all their johnsons’ bare,
Flash’d as they party’d in air,
Sabring their Johnsons’ there,
Charging each other, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the frat house-smoke
Right thro’ the coke lines broke;
Freshman and Senior
Reel’d from the keg stand stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they walked back to class on Monday, but not
Not the six hundred.

Classes to right of them,
deans to left of them,
parents behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with “what the hells?”,

While stipends and grant money fell,
They that had partied so well
Came thro’ the party of Death
Back from the frat house of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild party they made!
All the misfits wondered.
Honor the keg stand they made,
Honor this beer Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Editor’s Note: Forgive us Lord Tennyson.

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – If yesterday was a victory, I don’t know what a loss is. I stayed within my DGO (Daily Game Day Objective) but I was worshiping the porcelain gods last night and it hit me all at once, like a ton of bricks.

One minute I was home and ready to kick back and watch TV and then my stomach buckled!

Suddenly I was like “Lard Ass” Hogan in Stand By Me spewing gastric streams at random. The only thing missing from my bedside was Farther Damian Karras. Yes, it was very gross.

Now the funny thing is I don’t think I really had too, too many if you know what I mean. I had a couple beers and then a couple rum and diet cokes. Did I get a dirty beer glass? Did I catch some bad rum? Was it the mixture of the two? Was it because I have for the last month, dramatically cut back the spirits and my system was no longer accustomed to mass quantities of bottom shelf liquor and cheap light beer? All of the above? None of the above? Hard to say.

Nonetheless, I painfully stayed within the parameters of my goals. Today, though, did not feel like I had been healthy at all last night. So, I am not sure what to call Friday. I did keep it within reason but then again, when you go out for a few beers, come home and start making Picasso paintings on the walls with nothing more than your mouth, well, like I said before, if yesterday was a victory, I don’t know what a loss is.

So, I will call it a win. Why? Because I am not a dumb ass. If you win you win. To do so otherwise would be like beating the Bengals by a field goal and then forfeiting the game because you have no business beating the Bengals by merely a field goal. Anyways, yesterday was surely the ugliest win imaginable. I mean it was like doing everything wrong and coming away with a victory. I’ll take it. But, I dodged a bullet on that one. Big time. Now, where are those rubber gloves. I have some art work to clean up.  

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – I knew sooner or later my record setting streak was going to end and perhaps it is good that it has so I can get on with setting the next record. But, for the record, I rattled off 16 straight victorious days on The FFD and the scale still shows it. But, it ended last night.

Yesterday we had dinner a Mexican restaurant in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh. Just by showing up at this place, I knew the day was lost. I didn’t eat like I had been starving for the past couple weeks, which I don’t believe I have, but I did enjoy what I wanted and what I had come to get: burritos. Later that night, I enjoyed several Sierra Nevada Ales, which I had forgot about in my basement fridge – some two weeks ago. So I lost Thursday and the streak is over; went over my limit and even enjoyed some beer-glorious-beer. Now, comes the real challenge.

You see when I look back earlier in the season to my 8 day winning streak, what killed me when it ended was that for the next 11 days, I only posted two winning days. In fact, I went on to only finish the Preseason by winning merely 8 of the next 24 days for a pitiful winning percentage of .333. Ouch!

So this is where the champions make their mark. It is not so much in the occasional loss it is how one responds. I put in 16 winning days. If I restart that streak today, then yesterday’s loss will be but a blip on the map – a fumble if you will. Every great team fumbles or turns the ball over every now and then. It is just the great teams then get the ball back and ram it down their oppositions throat. That is what I have to do now, beginning today – Beginning with Today’s sit (why am I channeling Glengarry Glen Ross) I have to get the ball back and ram it down the throat of my fat slob.

I suppose it didn’t help yesterday writing poems about beer. I mean for crying out loud, if that doesn’t portend bad things, what does? Wouldn’t that be like being stuck in a boat for days on end and the only person with you, your so-called buddy, starts writing poems about cannibalism! Well, I don’t think writing poems about beer would that different.

Well, it looks like my Inner Fat Slob just kicked off. Let’s see what I do with the ball now.

O Budweiser, My Budweiser

A poem by The Town Drunk
Exclusive to the Football Fan’s Diet!

O Budweiser, My Budweiser! Our fearful trip is done,
The mug has weathered every crack, the broads we sought are won,
The porter is near, the froth I hear, the football fan’s exulting, While follow my bloodshot eyes the steady gal, the empty beer mug grim and daring;

But O Budweiser! Budweiser! Budweiser!
O the frothy drops of gold,
Where on the bar my empty bottle lies,
and all my bullshit told.

O Budweiser! My Bud! Rise up and hear the sound;
Rise up–for you the dick-dos hang, for you the swampy buttocks trill,
For you frothy heads and ribbed sheaths, for you the tramps a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying big ones, their eager lips turning;

Here Bud! Dear Sud!
This mug beneath your head!
It is some dream that at the bar,
Two broads request my bed.

My Budweiser does not answer, it’s an empty mug pale and still;
My tap does not feel my arm, it pours only “Lite” swill;

My derriere extraordinaire is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful taxi the victor blimp comes in with fantasy objects won;
Exult O Budweiser, and ring O hell!

But I, with mournful tread,
stumble my sidewalk to my house as I think of lies to tell my better half,
That Buds were far fewer as were the broads who sought my bed.

(Editor’s Note: With All apologies to Walt Whitman. In fact, perhaps this humor will prompt you to really read Walt Whitman)