The A's are way too depressing to even think about, let alone write about. Let's just forget them for awhile.

Instead, I want to share my favorite OMG! moment on today's Internets, this blog entry from David Byrne:

Here is a photo from a NY Times article on a Northern California company that specializes in games and content for mobile phones. The CEO and founder of the company, Trip Hawkins (is that a movie name or what?), stands center. Looks like he spends time at the gym — and at personal grooming.

The guys slouched around him — overweight, balding slobs — are the guys who, I presume, do the grunt work in the company. If ever there was an image of animal social hierarchy this is it.

That, my friends, is Silicon Valley in a perfect nutshell. There's a set of Alpha Males, driving around in shiny new BMWs, wearing expensive designer "casual" clothes, discussing all their latest and greatest deals, bragging about their latest round of golf, perfecting their preening to impress anyone who will listen. Then you have a set of out-of-shape dudes in t-shirts and flip-flops who don't have time to play golf, and wouldn't care to if they did, because they're too busy, you know, makin' stuff. The Venn diagrams of these two sets barely touch.

I shoulda learned to play the guitar. I shoulda learned to play them drums. Money for nothing and the chicks for free.

I remember one time I was wearing a 49ers t-shirt with a picture of Ronnie Lott on it. I walked into the CEO's office (in one of those rare moments of Venn diagram intersections), and I think the words that came out of his mouth were, "Oh, Ronnie Lott! I played 18 holes with him yesterday," but the words I heard him say in my brain were, "I am an alpha male. I hang out with alpha males. You, however, can only manage to wear the image of an alpha male. Therefore, you are not an alpha male."

When I get frustrated about the A's, and I don't feel like blogging about them, I think about that moment. Athletes are the alpha males of our popular culture; their status-to-actual-societal-value ratio is way out of proportion. So why the hell do I keep feeding their egos by doing exactly what they want me to do, and obsess about their success?

I really ought to have more dignity than this. I should be an alpha male! I should be the obsessee, not the obsesser! But it'll probably never happen. I'm such a beta male, it's pathetic. And probably, if you're reading this, so are you.