And to know anything about Hawthorne is to know his undying love for all things Detroit, evident in the Michigan plates on his car and his unwillingness to don a pair of purple and yellow sneakers at our photo shoot (“I’m a Piston’s fan,” he insists).

But, like most transplants, he can’t knock the good Cali weather.

“In Detroit you get up and there’s a foot of snow outside or there’s freezing rain and you just want to go back to sleep. I get up here and I’m ready to take on the world.”

Are the Olympics changing the way you view humanity? I was walking on the sidewalk to my office today and an old man was not budging from his path on the sidewalk. In my head I thought, “That’s an aggressive line he’s taking,” and I realized I was thinking about snowboard cross rather than walking.

I had a slight headache. I thought it might be a result of the shot of Patron I had in a particularly loud cantina in West Hollywood the night before. I was watching some basketball game on their high definition screen when suddenly the face of Juwan Howard appeared. Juwan was my favorite player on the legendary U of M Fab Five team. I watched for a few minutes, just long enough to catch a glimpse of him executing a fabulous dunk. Intense, idealistic Juwan Howard, great as ever. My tequila arrived in a small plastic shot glass. I downed it and left. I reasoned that the culprit probably was not one shy Patron, just the heavy morning rain.

I’ll say something after I read his ten point plan.

Today’s football players have an edge that no athletes before them have possessed: They’ve played more football than any cohort in history. Even with the rise of year-round training, full-contact practice time on the field hasn’t increased — in fact, it has actually gone down, as coaches have tried to limit the physical punishment that the game exacts. But videogames, especially the ubiquitous Madden NFL, now allow athletes of all ages to extend their training beyond their bodies.