"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

Over the weekend, someone who shall remain nameless informed me that he has a hard time getting through my posts. Grrrrr.

But, ok, fine that's fair. He cited the completely ridiculous volume of analogies and references. Again, I suppose I can see some validity of this. THEN, he trots out this:

"Just try writing a column without a single pop culture reference. Just straight analysis."

My head almost exploded. Seriously.

Is this even possible? I don't know if it is. I feel like the guy in "The Twilight Zone" episode, where someone dares him $500,000 to stay quiet for a year.



On the last day of the year, after successfully staying mute, it's discovered the challenger can't even pay off his bet. And the challengee goes crazy and scribbles out a note: "I knew I would not be able to keep my part of the bargain, so one year ago I had the nerves to my vocal cords severed."

While my competitive stubborness rivals Marty McFly, it's safe to say I won't hack off any important vestiges. (Mostly because that wouldn't really help my cause.)

But can it be done? Do I dare? To pull a few lines from Eliot, "Do I dare disturb the universe?...Would it have been worth it after all, would it have been worth while, if one settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, and turning toward the window, should say, "That is not it. That is not what I meant. At all."

Before I embark on this perhaps pointless endeavor, I can only hope that my brief foray into stark analysis and unadorned reporting doesn't permanently exorcise all my pop culture muses. I don't know if baseball would even make sense to me if I couldn't find appropriate Family Guy clips to support it.

WAIT, actually, I know what this is like. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Willow gets addicted to using magic, so she has to go to witch rehab. And when she comes back, she goes all cold turkey on the magic-using, and can't focus on anything, thereby rendering even the simplest of tasks impossible.

(Ugh, I just counted, and in this intro alone, I used 4 irrelevant comparisons. &^%$@&)

Ok, I can do this.... I will write a Spring Training Preview when I get home and not use any weird references. And maybe unnamed person will have an easier time getting through my posts. (At least one of us will.)

AHHH, wait, one more for the road... To quote Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers:

Let me break it down for you so you understand. I'll hold your hand and walk you through it like a small child.

Yeah, that's what I gotta go do. Interesting. This reminds me of when I had to apply the Flesch-Kinkaid Readability Formula to everything I wrote, and it almost drove me certifiably insane.

I remember once I had to get this piece on asthma treatment down to a 3rd grade level, and unless I took out every word more than 1 syllable, it was literally impossible.

And strangely enough, there weren't any 1-syllable synonyms for "corticosteroid." So, no dice.

I guess, actually, this is the opposite of that. I have to take my crazy-person reading level and bring it up to that of a mentally sane person's.