Ryan Gowland

What a big, glorious weekend of football! A lot of folks think watching football is a waste of time, but they would be wrong! As is often the case with sports, this weekend of sport was filled with meaningful lessons! Join me, won’t you?

1. You can’t catch a football without your anus.

Just in case you’re curious what a catch looks like, it doesn’t look like this: 

It does, however, look like this:

Who knew? Football is a complex game!

2. The NFL is Finding New Ways to Recycle

Fans at the Bengals-Steelers game found a new way to recycle their empty cans: tossing them onto the injury cart! The recycling center must be right by the locker rooms!

However, be careful! Some people might get the wrong idea if you throw your cans at a humanitarian like Ben Roethlisberger and think you're acting like a dirtbag instead of someone who has Mother Nature's best interests at heart.

3. Professional Sports People Get Angry, Too

We all get frustrated sometimes and feel like the whole world is against us. So do sports participants! Take Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce, who was so upset over what was happening during his match that he punched a football!

Now I don't feel so bad about slamming my keyboard when my computer crashed!

4. No One Will Make Fun of You For Crying

Losing is tough in any aspect of life. But what's great about sport is that even if you're caught emoting on camera, no one will take that image and duplicate it all over the Internet trying to make you pay for it! What a gret reminder of humanity's kindness!

5. Not Everyone is Athletic

So, that short I'm in ("Personal Day") was great and won an award and reminded me of some of the shorts I made with writer/director Michael S. Duffey while I lived in Chicago. My friend Tony introduced us and I made around 5 or so with Duffey, mostly shot in and around his house. I loved working on them, loved Duffey's writing and sensibility and was always so happy when he asked me to be in one. I keep waiting to see if Duffey's making a feature. I know it'll happen eventually.

Anyway, here's a short called "Manners" that was made possibly 10 years ago, back when IO was doing a show caled Vidiocy where folks could pay $20, grab a suggestion and make a short movie based on that in 30 days. The suggestion was "Manners" and the short stars my old pals Lauren and Tony, who are both terrific actors and improvisors and if you see them, tell them I said hello and that I miss them.

When I was in college, I acted in a student film. To set the scene, I was 19, had long, stringy hair down to my shoulders (that I thought looked like Wiley Wiggins in Dazed & Confused but in reality just looked greasy and gross) and thought student films were where I could cut my teeth before breaking it in huge for all those roles that Wiley Wiggins might turn down.

The film was supposed to be about a man who finds his wife cheating on him with another woman and was based on some Irish parable of some kind. I met with the director, talked about the role and got it. Once I was on set, the story had changed and day one I was hopping into bed with some dude because now the story was about a guy who looked like a gross Wiley Wiggins and was real bummed out about his dead boyfriend.

The film eventually screened at a Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and was shown in San Francisco's Castro Theater, a gorgeous single-run movie house that I frequented as often as I could. However, to my great and selfish regret for seeing myself on the Castro screen, I was out of town for the screening.