Redskins
 

And black.

Mild rant
 

Wow, who knew that Labor Law had its own dictionary?

We don't hoagies out west. We have subs. I don't think I've ever had a grinder. Sandwich.

Real close to walking out...
 

Exactly. People love espresso in Boulder.

Guaranteed Contracts
 

Best part of the football season? More TMQ.

• By Gregg Easterbrook
  Special to Page 2
  
  
  Man, let's hope you enjoyed that first-of-a-kind Monday Night Football doubleheader on ESPN. Airing those games cost ESPN only $129 million. And that's just for the rights fees. Cameras, techies and announcers are extra: ESPN had about 150 production personnel at each game. Typically, prime-time network programming costs a couple million dollars an hour. This year, ESPN is paying $1.1 billion for the Monday Night Football package, which works out to $65 million per contest and about $20 million per hour. Ten times the normal cost of prime-time programming. Sure hope you liked those games!
  
  
  All rights fees shot up in the new round of NFL network contracts in effect this season, reflecting the incredible popularity of professional football. For television broadcast rights, the NFL now gets about $3.7 billion annually from ESPN, CBS, Fox, NBC and DirecTV (which holds the odious monopoly on the wonderful NFL Sunday Ticket), plus advertising income from the league's upcoming self-published games on NFL Network, plus additional millions for radio and cell phone broadcast rights from Sirius and Sprint. Forty years ago, commentators were shocked when NBC and CBS agreed to pay about $340 million (in today's dollars) per year to broadcast NFL games. Now the same rights are selling for considerably north of $4 billion, a dozen times as much as a generation ago. This fall, just two weekends of games will bring the league the present-dollar value of all pro football broadcasting in 1966.
  
  The way the latest NFL-NFLPA agreement works, for all intents and purposes, broadcast fees go directly to players. Ticket sales cover the clubs' expenses (coaching, facilities, overhead), and owners make their profit on everything left over (local radio rights, tie-in marketing, parking and food sales). Let's stop to consider what this means to the average NFL athlete. This season, average NFL pay -- monies actually received, not contract paper value -- will be somewhat more than $1.7 million per gentleman. That's almost exactly the $3.7 billion in broadcast rights fees, divided by roughly 2,000 NFL players on rosters or on injured reserve.
  
  
  
  This represents 17 seconds of Monday Night Football. We hope you enjoyed it!
  Now think about the amount the typical NFL player will earn this year just from ESPN. Ready? An average of $550,000 per player. That's the amount ESPN is putting in the average NFL player's purse for the 2006 season, and for seasons to come. From ESPN directly to you, dear NFL player: $550,000. The sum works out to $32,000 per Monday Night Football game. If you are an NFL player, every time you tune in Monday Night Football this season, bear in mind ESPN is sending you $32,000 worth of thanks. The next-highest rights fee on the landscape works out to about $12,000 from CBS to each NFL player for each game the Columbia Broadcasting System airs. So guys, ESPN is being almost three times as nice to you and your families as CBS! Remember this when interview requests come in.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...erbrook/060912

Mild rant
 

Who knew you'd have to search all the way to labor lawyer dictionaries to find hoagie spelled with a "y"?

Real close to walking out...
 

You get out. But you have to wait a few years.

Redskins
 

Nicely done.

Mild rant
 

Maybe the other spellings at issue are the British variants?

I think I owe a lot of people a lot of drinks
 

oh, sorry. One or two or more EACH!! I am nice like that.

Guaranteed Contracts
 

Can we rename the thread?

Mild rant
 

Yeah. I had to scroll past a bunch of crap about Hoagy Carmichael first.
Is it his sandwich?

Cool.
 

In other words, it's not a problem if its a small problem?

Real close to walking out...
 

Quite contrarily, my friend, you will find yourself looking at that cute little kid and thinking two things:

1. Do I want this kid to know a father who's been a goddamned shoe-shiner for a pack of shysters?

2. Do I want to be around for the child?

3. Do I want my kid to think of me as another shakedown artist?

I want the kid to know a father with some balls, and one who took some risks.

You're going to die someday, Coltrane. And Penske's right. Every minute that goes by is a lost one...

You're only prolonging the inevitable. You know you'll quit. I can sense it in the way you write. You're not wired for the Office. You'd better go, before you get bitter.

Real close to walking out...
 

Now. I can't wait.

ETA: and I had corn last night, which means I could leave a glorious pile of steaming corn shit on a partner's desk.

Cool.
 

Not necessarily, Hank's wife still had him castrated.

Real close to walking out...
 

New thread title?

Real close to walking out...
 

It's like fate or something!

Real close to walking out...
 

On this topic, if the MP calls you with new projects even though you are flailing on others, it means they don't want to fire you, but rather that they only want to kill you, correct?

Real close to walking out...
 

Exactly!

Real close to walking out...
 

Brother, it most assuredly never goes away. The nagging voice telling you "I can't waste my life like this" will never leave your head.

All debts can be worked out over time.

BUT, you have to make the decision outside the context of talking to most lawyers (read, not most people here... but a few) or conservative people. They're wise counsel for some things, but not generally good for bounicng around issues regarding your life, and what you want to with it as a person. Too many of them have been trained to be risk hedgers, myself included. I'm still trying desperately to unhinge my mind from seeing the pitfalls of everything, and seeing the huge upsides instead.

It's hard as hell to walk away from something you're so tied to, but if you believe its the only way you can regain the person you were, well, shit, brother... how much more of a cost/benefit analysis do you need?

You can do it. The tyranny of the rat race is not terminal...

Real close to walking out...
 

One of the following will happen first: (1) I will walk out; (2) my smart-ass mouth will get me in trouble...it's like I'm in the first stage of tourettes - I literally cannot control some of the shit that comes out of my mouth (to anyone). I was supposed to grow out of this. In 10th grade it was, "Mr. Coltrane, Sr., your son has a big problem with authority." Nothing has changed. Whatever I think comes out of my mouth. Immediately. I can't stop it.

I think I owe a lot of people a lot of drinks
 

[deleted -- T.S.]

Real close to walking out...
 

Example in the work context?

Real close to walking out...
 

This sounds suspiciously like the speech given to me by my father when I told him I was thinking of leaving my marriage.

Real close to walking out...
 

Can I have your dad's number? Please call him in advance and let him know that I am thinking of leaving my job, so he should change some of the details in the speech.

Real close to walking out...
 

not necessarially. once someone like me knows we're going to fire another, I'll get them involved in all of the files I fucked up. that way, once they're gone, I'll be able to dodge responsibility for my malpractice by pointing to their involvement.

Real close to walking out...
 

No, no, no. This means they love you and want you to have many chances for success.

Real close to walking out...
 

"When I snap, and come back to kill you all, I'm coming to your office first. And then work my way down the hall."

I actually haven't had those thoughts for a couple of months, but last night, at about 11:30, it all came back to me.

Real close to walking out...
 

Does it also mean that I'm pretty?

Real close to walking out...
 

MP wants one last good look?

Did he keep assigning things to you until you finally picked up that pencil in front of his desk?

Real close to walking out...
 

Think of it this way, also, Coltrane. The system exists in its present incarnation only because people like you and I buy into it. If you stand up and say "Nope, I don't buy it," and move into something else, you're helping to destroy the myth that has created Service Partners since law firms began - the fallacy that You can't Do Something Else.

Most of us here play the system like a fiddle - half assing our way around our jobs based on some natural talent and an occasional flash of interest in the rare truly interesting project that comes our way. We get used to the money and figure "all jobs suck, this one pays well, and I have loans..." We ratchet our spending to meet our income in the flawed belief things will substitute for the time lost to our tedious toil. Bang - suddenly you have golden handcuffs. You're trapped, right?

No, you're not. You can restructure your life the same way a business does in an industry downturn. You do what you love, and you realize suddenyl, the days aren't work anymore, and you're not working just to buy things to forget the toil of your work week. You're out. Maybe you missed a few payments here or there, but you're out.

This sounds elementary, I know. But sometimes, you get so caught up in the Fear law firm life lays on us that you forget that escape isn't impossible, but just following a painful, but doable formula... With a payoff multiples of what those who stay and stifle their desires to do something different never enjoy.

I'll get beaten by a few people for this comment because a lot of people don't like to hear this sort of thing. That's understandable.

But you're not one of them. And you know it.

HP and done
 

There's something odd about this woman's face, but I can't put my finger on it. It's not the wig (that has to be a wig, right?) or the fake pearls, just...something.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Co...730a.widec.jpg

her skin?

HP and done
 

She sort of looks like a lhasa apso? (lahsa?)

Real close to walking out...
 

This was all very well said. It was like your prior rants, but this time it seemed more user-friendly.

HP and done
 

She was one of what, 7? female Fortune 500 CEOs, and she has stepped down, and all you can do is make a comment about her looks?

Not to get on a soapbox or anything, but break me off a piece of that KitKat Bar.

HP and done
 

Tsk tsk, fringey, tsk tsk tsk!

Real close to walking out...
 

So quit preaching and join us.

HP and done
 

I have no clue who that is, but based on your prior comment, and having briefly looked a the front page of nytimes.com, I think it might be that HP chick.

I was just looking at the face.

gwink, is the user-friendliness from having paragraph breaks? Or is that not one of sebby's issue?

Real close to walking out...
 

Modest proposal? Earlier today this board showed what we can do if we all work together- particularly if we can determine the rules and walk close to them, and while one of us won, surely in some way did we not all win? did we not all prove what we can achieve when united by a common goal?

Instead of all this pain of weaning off the big $$$ maybe we can come up with a few insider trading schemes?

But HP goes to 11
 

She looks a bit like Nigel Tufnel.

http://musicmoz.org/img/editors/magne/s_t_nigel.jpg