I found myself watching Madden Nation yesterday. Not familiar with it?
It's an ESPN reality show with several guys traveling to various
cities to compete in head to head Madden Football games on the XBox
360.

 If you're thinking, 'That sounds like absolutely riveting television,'
you would be exactly not-even-close-to-correct.

 But occasionally, I'm in the mood to watch a train wreck, so watch I
did. Annnd I jotted down a few notes. Here are the high points:

 1. Two guys getting ready to play each other Took. Time. To. Stretch.
before the game. Yes, they did.

 2. Quote from one of the stretchers when he went up by 2 touchdowns:
'I'm feeling good. My stick work is phenomenal.' Of course it is.

 3. Each week, someone gets voted off or kicked off or leaves. Not sure
how that works. Didn't watch long enough.

 But it saddens me greatly that most of these guys gave up promising
careers with Best Buy and Radio Shack to participate in this, only to
have their dreams of a championship dashed by another player's
phenomenal stick work.

 4. Jeff Garcia made a cameo. Played a pick up game with one of the
players. Garcia described him as having a 'calm before the storm
personality.' I'm pretty sure Garcia meant either the guy seemed
incredibly stoned or had the personality of a dead chicken. Maybe
both. But I could be wrong.

 5. Calm-Before-the-Storm Guy had a ballcap on backwards. The back
(facing front) said 'The Truth.' The front (facing back) said 'The
Corporation.'

 I wondered for several minutes about what this statement could mean . . .

 The Truth . . . But it's facing the wrong way . . . Is he making a
statement about his rejection of epistimological foundationalism?
Maybe his support of Robert Nozick's 'View from Nowhere'? Maybe even a
rejection of the Law of Noncontradiction?

 And The Corporation . . . On the front of the cap but facing backwards
. . . Is this a commentary on the lack of awareness of Corporate
America vis a vis the working class? Perhaps a prediction about the
future efficacy of Corporate America in the face of Thomas Friedman's
Flat World?

 And what about The Truth and The Corporation set on opposing ends of
the cap? Are the two antithetical in Calm-Before-The-Storm Guy's mind?
Is he is possibly pointing out that the truth hides from the view of
the corporation or that the corporation by its very nature attempts to
hide from the truth?

 Or perhaps . . . just maybe . . . he's a video game junkie who just
kinda liked the hat precisely because he had no idea what the hell it
meant, but it seemed kinda cool. I won't be tuning in next week to
find out.