Waiting for Speedway Fowler

The new season of "Deadliest Catch" has started, and Phil is still, surprisingly, among the living.

For longtime fans of the show, the saga of the skipper of the Cornelia Marie has been one of a decrepit, beaten-up man constantly circling the drain, but never quite slipping down into the darkness.

Phil is a guy who has been down miles of bad road and every mile of it shows on him, along with every cigarette in his years of incessant chain-smoking. The man is a physical train wreck.

Last season ended with Harris developing a blood clot in his lung hundreds of miles out to sea and the race to get back to land and get him to a hospital. Once he arrived there, the first thing he did was go outside to have a cigarette.

Phil Harris can't be stopped.