<em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375414576">My Life</a></em>, Audiobook Edition

Dynasty loose-talk: If it weren't for three field goals and the Tuck Rule, no one would remember the Patriots.

And if I here any more crap about how the Patriots "play as a team" I'm going to wretch. Every team in football plays as a team, even the Atlanta "Michael Vick and ten guys to block for him" Falcons. The Pats have no stars? Didn't Tom Brady make the pro bowl? Didn't Cory Dillon lead the NFL in rushing? Doesn't Troy Brown play on both sides of the ball? What's Ty Law, chopped liver? What abour Rodney Harrison?

I can't tell if this is a general distaste for dynasties or not. I don't think it is. After all, I'm a Braves fan. And I would love it if Mike Martz and the Rams could get back to winning the Super Bowl. And a Ravens dynasty I would have respected, so it's not an offense/defense thing. Maybe it's the sense of entitlement and greatness that seems to surround coverage and fandom of the Patriots, as it does with the Lakers and Yankees, or did with the Jordan Bulls.

In terms of the actual game, I'm surprised McNabb didn't make a single run. I know he cut down on his rushing severly this year, but zero strikes me as an awfully low number. Also the Eagles will spend all of next year on the two minute drill, because the last five minutes of the game simply hurt to watch.

Like many Gen-X and Gen-XY Democrats I am a Clinton-phile (Clintoniphile? Clintonophile? Clintonaphile?) , I own a tattered copy of his book, and recently paid $21 for his audiobook. If you are considering buying the audiobook, I recommend the following instead:

The audio version of My Life commits the ultimate sin: it's abridged. I should have known better and not bought the darn thing once I saw it was abridged. But it was at least read by the Big Dog himself, so I figured that alone would be worth it. The problems is that the drastic cuts in the abridged version of the book reduces the story to a "greatest hits" of the Clinton Presidency: the campaign, gays-in-the-military, Whitewater BS, the Rabin/Arafat peace accord, the loss of Congress, the shutdown of government, more Whitewater BS, conflict in Bosnia, Oklahoma City, the re-election "contest", still more Whitewater BS, beating the "six year curse", Monica Lewinksy, Peace in Northern Ireland, conflict in Kosovo, Al Gore's campaign, Presidential pardoning BS; The end. The one plus to this approach is that it skips a great deal of mundane foreign affairs stuff, which makes up the plurality of day-to-day operations as President and therefore takes up more of the book than almost anyone cares about. "On Tuesday I met with the ambassadors to seven former Soviet Republics to discuss our plan to expand NATO without causing Boris Yeltsin too much grief politically. Planning our trip to Africa was going well," -- one can only take so much of this stuff before the eyes start to glaze over. The minus is that it misses all kinds of interesting color. Every single fun 'aside' in the paper version of the book is eliminated, as is the bulk of the chapter on his first two years as governor -- which may have been worse politically than his first two years as President--along with many entertaining little tales about life as President. The story of Zell Miller's zigging and zagging is gone. The fascinating insider look at the 1993 budget battle is completely eliminated. The NAFTA fight disappears. The list goes on and on. As a result the audiobook reads even more like a diary of events without any flourish, a complaint many had about the full book (though I don't).

One of these days I plan on starting a chapter-by-chapter review of My Life, to examine where Clinton has insights on democratic politics that he's not well known for, where he has learned lessons, and where he hasn't. But for the time being, I have a bad taste in my mouth.

The Charlie Rose interview with Clinton, on the other hand, looks very tempting.

My Life, Audiobook Edition