OZY Daily Dose

Marcell Dareus' road to NFL stardom is a wicked ride of tragic blows that raises the question of fate's intentions. Still, "Mr. Big Stuff" keeps moving. Change is nothing new for the nimble 330-pound bruiser with an infectious smile and Alabama drawl. The Buffalo Bills nose tackle has seen the peaks, and stumbled through valleys, and coming off the most disappointing year of his professional career, he's determined to climb back on top.

You need to understand something. This Whipping Through the Web, aka WTTW, is less about what I think you’re going to like and much more about a steadfast belief that if you’ve read this far, then you’re keyed up to dig what I dig. That my obsessions have grown to be your obsessions. Or at the very least, you’re attracted out of morbid fascination.

I entered prison in 1976. I was 17 and I saw a lot of bad things, like death. My God, it was awful. It was a time of dictatorship in Brazil. Everyone was subject to repression. I was sent to prison just because I was on the street at night. There was a curfew. Several times I was tortured by soldiers. What could I do? Talk to who? At that time, we had no human rights. The killing of thousands of prisoners was common inside the jails.

This story took place in a time many years ago. There were no such things as travel bans, the NSA, heightened security and HPV. We drank water from the tap and we liked it. It was a simple time. It was a time during which I figured out I could meet women — lots of them — on AOL chat lines. I was in pig heaven in those chat rooms, rolling around in the unbridled access of the new and different.

EUGENE, SIR: Hello. I am a male. I could name myself as a vagina lover and for good reasons (I think). I am back with my first love, and she knows that I always have two women in bed. Well, almost always. But now she wants me to have two women at the same time. Only when she and I make love, I feel so comfortable with just the two of us. I feel a bit scared because I don’t want to lose my first love.

If you’re reading this far, it’s a safe bet you probably need to read further. Because, while navigating the web is typically as easy as being bored and having a phone, knowing where to navigate is a whole other story. How you do it now: hope that the Rube Goldberg-esque connection that has your interest in Precambrian rocks two-stepping you to hard-bodied athletes keeps working well.

Charles O’Bannon and his brother Ed, stars of the University of California, Los Angeles’ last national championship team, in 1995, will be cheering for Charles’ son at his college games next season. But will Charles Sr. wear the cardinal and gold colors of his son’s team? “Doubtful,” he says, laughing. Charles’ sartorial reluctance is because Charles “Chuck” O’Bannon Jr.

Total disclosure: I’ve been playing music for cash since 1980. Total total disclosure: I’ve been writing for cash even longer. So while my bands have been reviewed by everybody, and I’ve written for many who’ve written about my bands, upping one over another is not some creepy quid pro quo. It’s just me giving you the straightest of scoops regarding where I go when I want to know what music I should listen to next.

Remember that whole metrosexuality thing? That thing where they tried to conflate men’s interest in shirts without stains to some sort of homosexual derivative either with or without the extra penis? Then there was the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy franchise that was premised on the same sort of idea: the “average” heterosexual man being too much of a stooge to know when and for how long he can wear white? Well, we’re not so sure about the stooge versus non-stooge quotient in regards to whoever the average man is, but we are quite sure that there’s nothing...

There’s more to life than what you find in your books of science. And on your smartphone. As I raised a glass of sake in a limo with a group of Japanese businessmen whom I met an hour earlier, heading to an undisclosed party that they assured me would be a good time, I thought, “Damn, I love drinking with strangers!” I do. To me, it’s a sport, like hunting, but without the senseless death and ecological destruction.