First, an apology to you all: I’m sorry the site was down for much of yesterday (and has been spotty today). There is very little we can do, as the host company is having massive outages or downages or whatever.

Second, a big “FUCK YOU” to our host company, iPowerWeb. There have been two days in the past 15 months when I really, truly needed the site to be up. The first was July 17 of this year, my 30th birthday, when maybe some of you might be compelled to buy me a beer via the donation link to ease the pain of turning 30. But of course, the site crashed for the whole day, and I had to pay for an uncomfortably large percentage of my drinks myself (though those who did buy me a drink were sent a thank you card, since my mother raised me right).

The second was yesterday, a day after sending an email to a few thousand of my closest friends, and email that ideally would have been forwarded and brought new people to this site that a) would enjoy what we do here; b) potentially sign up to get the next edition of the email; and c) ultimately fall in love with/viciously fellate me (we’re talking spitting, snorting – the whole nine yards). And of course, the site was down yesterday, too.

Over the next few months, Site Guy Brendan and I will be making some enhancements to the site. And you can bet that moving away from iPowerWeb has now been moved to the top of the list. Fucking assholes.

(And I know that some of you, in response to my Facebook status update about this, made suggestions or pitches for new site hosting companies. If you work for these companies or whatever, please contact SGB directly at brendan_at_jasonmulgrew_dot_com to make your pitch, since he truly is the brains behind this operation – I just bring the pizzazz.)

(Which is not to say that Brendan especially lacks pizzazz, but you know what I mean.)

************

Speaking of the monthly email, thank you for all the positive responses to it. I know that you have no reason to believe me when I say this, but the plan is to send them, you know, monthly from here on out.

But note that these emails will not be subsequently posted on the site, so if you want to read their content, you have to sign up. The point, after all, is to offer exclusive content for those on the mailing list.

I have gotten a several emails over the past day or two from people who have signed up for the email but did not receive it. This may be because it was caught in your spam filter, but more likely it’s because the email address you may have signed up with in 2006 or 2007 or 2008 is no longer active (i.e. maybe you signed up with hotmail but have since switched to gmail, perhaps you are no longer at your former job, etc).

So here’s what we’ll do…

I’m not going to post the content of the email (about my time in Denver at the Great American Beer Festival) on here, but if you didn’t get it and want to read about it, please 1) sign up for the monthly email with your current, preferably non-work email (due to swear words) on the right; 2) email me at jason_at_jasonmulgrew_dot_com with the subject line “Send me the monthly email” and I’ll personally forward it to you. Because I’m just that nice of a guy.

Got it? Whew. Enough admin – let’s move on.

************

Two sites I’d like to recommend if you’re looking for an additional football fix:

- BumpandRun.com. Funny, informative and covers a range of football topics (i.e. real football, fantasy football, survivor picks, etc). Guaranteed to kill at least ten minutes of your work day and put a smile on your face. What more can you ask for?

- TheFantasyFootballGirl.com. I like this one, because Liz and I are in a fantasy football league together, and Liz prides herself on knowing a lot about fantasy football. And all I can say is that she does, indeed, know a lot about fantasy football – FOR A GIRL (zing!). Her most recent post is a letter to our mutual friend Brad, who I trashed last week in our league (sorry, Brad). Check back often, as I’m sure Liz will provide updates about our league and follow my march to a championship.

[Full disclosure: Liz won the league last year. However, I finished third in this is QB-heavy league (QB TDs worth six points, 20 yards per passing point) despite the fact that I took Tom Brady in the first round and lost him in Week One. I'm currently in third place at 2-1 this season and Vegas has my odds on a championship at 6:1.]

************

Speaking of Vegas, let’s get some picks in. I’ve only picked for Week One, as I was in Vegas and half-dead over Week Two and in Denver and half-dead for Week Three, so in parens is Week One results.

MORTGAGE (2-0)
NE -2 bal
SF -9.5 stl

PAYCHECK* (1-2)
KC +9 nyg
CLE +6 cin
JAX +3 ten

STEAK DINNER (2-1)
DEN +3 dal
NO -7 nyj
HOU -8.5 oak

CASE O’BEER (2-2)
gb +3.5 MIN
buf -1 MIA
IND -10.5 sea

BEER (1-2)
tb +7.5 WAS
det +10 CHI
PIT -6.5 sd

SEASON TOTAL: 8-7

* Remember, the “Paycheck” section is when I take the three teams getting the heaviest action and bet against them. I went 1-2 last time, because it was a tie: 70% of people were taking NO -13 det and sd -9 OAK, but I picked det +13 in the Paycheck section and lost, and put OAK +9 in the Steak Dinner section and won. This week, the teams getting the heaviest action are the Giants, Bengals and Titans, so I’ll take the Chiefs (very, very begrudgingly), Browns and Jags, just to prove my theory that the majority is usually wrong. I contemplated moving HOU -8.5 in my Mortgage section over SF -9.5, but remembered that Houston’s run defense is terrible, and also they’re the most frustratingly inconsistent team in football. Also, if SF doesn’t dominate this game against a brutal Rams team, Mike Singletary is going to fist-fight each player on his team.

[And remember (part two), the titles represent what I would bet on these games and thus how confident I am, i.e. I'm more secure in taking NE-2, which I'd bet my mortgage on, than tb +7.5, which I'd only be willing to bet a beer on.]

************

Six Songs

“La Dolce Vita” Sebastien Tellier
No idea what this song is about, because I only have a limited knowledge of French. I can tell you that the title means, “The Dolce Life,” so that’s a start. Lovely little piano tune that makes me want to get drunk and feel pained (or at least, make pained expressions).

“Because It’s Not Love” The Pipettes
How can I put this…if there ever was a song that you do NOT want to randomly come on your stereo or your iPod speakers when you and your buddies are doing a bunch of drugs and getting pumped for a night out, or if you’re arguing with your girlfriend, trying to convince her that you’re not a homosexual and just have been really tired and stressed lately, well, this is the song. Doesn’t make me love it any less.

“Wasp Nest” The National
I have absolutely no idea how I haven’t recommend this song before. I searched the archives and couldn’t find it, but I almost think that’s wrong. This is one of my favorite songs ever, and usually the song in the “Let’s Make Out or Something” playlist during which I undertake the most daring/stressful part of my seduction: removing my own shirt. Thanks to the power of the song (and some really, really cheap tequila), the girl usually just rolls with it. And by “rolls with it” I mean “makes the sign of the cross and closes her eyes.” And by “girl” I mean “human being of indeterminate gender that I picked up at White Castle.”

“Snails” The Format
How I do Six Songs is that I have a playlist on my iTunes/iPod called “Six Songs Candidates.” Any time I hear a song I think is worth recommending, I put it in the playlist, and once a song has been pimped, I remove it. The playlist usually has 40 or so songs in it at any given time (I try to be somewhat discriminating with what I recommend). This particular song is probably the longest-tenured on the “Six Songs Candidates” playlist. This is not a reflection of the song itself, but rather just that it has yet to strike or move me when I’m writing the Six Songs part of the blog. See? Even now, I have so little to say about it, aside from that it’s a lovely little song and you should definitely listen to it, that I have to explain the “behind the scenes” of the Six Songs process. I’ll stop now.

(Lovely song. Check it out.)

“You Make a Fool Out of Me” Brendan Benson
I could have picked just about any song off Brendan Benson’s poptastic, somewhat new album, “My Old, Familiar Friend.” Love this guy, and this particular song (sadness! strings!).

“The Girl I Love” Led Zeppelin
A balls-out rock song that makes me smile for two reasons: 1) my college band used to play this in practice, though never live, since it’s so hard to sing (still fun, with a straight-up bonerizing bass part to play); 2) are there many better opening lines than, “The girl I love, she got long black wavy hair/I do declare”? Fucking A.

But after thinking about it, I then got sad, because I realized that not only have I never done a girl with long, black way hair, but I don’t even think I’ve made out with a girl with long, black wavy hair – ever. Provided, my memory’s getting worse with age, but I can only remember making out with just one girl with black hair, and it was short.

(Wait – I just remembered another girl that I made out with short black hair. So that’s two. But again, short, not long and wavy.)

And it’s not like I have a type that excludes raven-haired beauties, though my friend Nicole once described my type as “boobied” and “generally not that interested in [me],” which sounds about right to me (actually, I think she said “with big boobies,” but I preferred “boobied”). But as I think back about the rogues’ gallery of girls that I’ve made out with, there’s a noticeable lack of long, black wavy hair. Such is life, I suppose.

Anyway, these are the types of things that you think about when you’re getting drunk alone in your apartment on a Friday night and the large majority of your friends are 3000 miles away. Welcome to my life. But hey, only two months to go.

[Have a good weekend.]