Another Missed Wonderlic Question

Because making fun of borderline retard millionaires cracks me up, that’s why.

Terrorist Fist Jab: KSK.

Golping With Dad

He: They got a woman up there driving that cart!

Me: Next thing you know they’ll let ’em vote!

He: They shouldn’t be allowed on the course!

Me: Oh, really?

He: Hell, yes! That’s what Golf means.

Me: Here we go…

He: Gentlemen Only Ladies Prohibited.

Me: Golp?

He: I meant…

Me: Forbidden?

He: Yeah! Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.

Me: I’m taking another mulligan.

He: You can’t do that!

Me: Clearly you aren’t familiar with the Rules of Golp.

Children Are The Future

Over at Making It Rain, our new favorite sports blog, there is a fine post about the asinine comments made by Whoopi Goldberg concerning the self-destruction of Michael Vick.

I don’t have a lot to add. That’s the thing about this blog deal. If you let an idea or opinion percolate too long, someone else beats you to the marketplace of ideas with their take.

Last night, I started foaming at the mouth after reading about Goldberg’s statement and started the usual ranting and raving.

Like a crazy street person, I started yelling to no one in particular.

“There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of the country.”

Are you fucking kidding me? So are lynchings. We pretty much have all agreed that regardless of your “cultural upbringing” that it is socially and morally unacceptable. You talentless hack. The funniest thing to come out of Whoopi’s mouth is Ted Danson’s dick. And he isn’t that funny.  

I yelled downstairs to the kids, “Kids, if the house was on fire, who would you make sure got out–the dog or Whoopi Goldberg?”

The Zen-like wisdom of the boys brought the whole uproar into perspective.

“Who’s Whoopi Goldberg?”

Field of Screams

WordPress has thwarted my attempt to get a poll loaded up here.  Better to blame the “nameless, faceless corporation” than to admit to my own shortcomings.  Here it is:

Which Would You Rather See? 

Barry Bonds break Hank Aaron’s home run record.

or

Barry Bonds drop dead at the plate of a massive, steroid-induced coronary. 

Pretend to vote now!

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

With no way to defend the indefensible, the Vick Fan is chumming the waters of the internet and sports talk radio with charges of racism and allegations that The Man is out to get another Black Hero.

Really?  As The Man’s local representative, frankly, we’re shocked.  How did you figure out our secret plan to offer to pay this guy $130 million dollars, only to go after him for some harmless fun?

Is it racist to expect better from this man?  C’mon, we’re not talking about Marcus Vick. Have we infantilized the Negro Male to the point where animal cruelty is something to be tolerated, and more often than not, expected?  If it is racism to expect better does that mean that dog fighting is a part of black culture and we are not being sensitive to the traditions of others.  Golly, I hope the diversity broad at work doesn’t find out.

The aptly named (for Boondocks fans) Mike Freeman of CBS Sportsline gives his take.  He damns Vick with faint damning before equating those who don’t see a racial element with Klan members.

As a brief aside, the drooling idiot Senator from West Virginny tossed in his two cents the other day.   What courage Senator Byrd must possess to stand on the Senate floor and condemn the scourge of animal cruelty.  Let me see if I have something straight.  This worthless old windbag was a Grand Wizard Great Poo-Bah Eminent Dodecahedron Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan.  The Klan is a domestic terrorism organization according to law enforcement.   This asshole was a segregationist and filibustered against civil rights whenever possible.  Unbelievably, he is celebrated by the Democrats for his long and distinguished record, despite clearly loving dogs more than the Blackamoor.  When Byrd dies, his seat will go to a former member of either Al-Qaeda or the Baader-Meinhof Gang.  They can’t be much worse than the feeble and pointless Byrd or the nitwittery of Jay Rockefeller.

But I digress.

Getting back to the Freeman piece, he rambles on to a point where he coughs up his true life encounter with honest to gosh racism.  This one time, he recounted, a middle age white woman admitted that she didn’t know black folks owned dogs.

Wow.

I bet that room got so quiet you could hear a church explode.

Spare us all the talk about race as a driving force in this unfortunate tale.  Spare us the conspiracy theories.  Spare us the comparisons to high profile white quarterbacks.

If you want someone to measure Vick’s transgressions against, how about Pete Rose?  All Pete did was bet on a few baseball games.  Pete went to prison.  Pete isn’t allowed near professional baseball.  Pete is living out his sad life as a disgrace and a joke.  Pete has to sit outside a Vegas memorabilia store for the rest of his days signing baseballs and photos for anyone dumb enough to want one.

By the way, I have two Michael Vick jerseys (youth small and youth medium) I need to sell.  Any takers?

I didn’t think so.

Curses

Things overheard while watching the Super Bowl:

Before kick-off: 

"Look at Marino.  You know he is hoping for Manning to lose." 

"Goddammit, I hate Peyton Manning." 

First Quarter:

"Hey, that Doritos ad looks like it was filmed over at Fountain Square!"

"It was.  They had a budget of about seven dollars."

"Looks like they used every bit of it." 

"Good job on this ad.  I’ll never eat Snickers again."  

Second Quarter:

"Letterman has the best ad, so far." 

"Was that Tom Arnold?"

"They used most of the budget to find black guys who can swim." 

"Figured they would have just used digital effects." 

"For what they had to spend in CGI, they couldn’t afford Tom Hanks." 

Halftime:

"A five foot two guy with six inch platform heels and an electric guitar dancing around on a slick stage in the middle of a monsoon.  What could go wrong?" 

"They just mentioned that two of the refs are brothers."

"Funny, they’ve been saying that about the head coaches all week."

Third Quarter:

"I heard Tony Dungy might retire after this." 

"Why?  To spend more time with his kids?" 

"Look at Peyton pout.  What a whiny titty-baby.  His team is winning and he still acts like a little girl." 

"You have to wonder if they had a meeting about whether or not to use a white girl."

"That’s why Kobe isn’t in the ad.  For all we know, that’s how it happened." 

"For all we know, it’s the same girl." 

Fourth Quarter:
"Rex Grossman looks kinda like that kidnapped boy in Missouri.  He’s got that same 1000 yard stare now."

"What an idiot.  Why isn’t he throwing towards the sidelines? Stop the clock!"

"The spread was six."

"There hasn’t been a Jew who could throw since Sandy Koufax."

"Goddammit,  I hate Peyton Manning." 

 

“O” is for Overrated

It may be time to rename the Big Ten. How about the Big Two and a Half?

Prepare now for the onslaught of sniveling, excuse making and backpedaling concerning last night’s BCS blow out. My hand to Jeebus, I swear FOX put the camera on a grown man, decked out in Buckeye gear, sobbing his eyes out like his children’s school bus went off a cliff. Or more probable, he placed a bet with his children’s college money. As well as their food, shelter and clothing money. Expect the State of Ohio to repeal their child labor laws shortly.

Almost all of the so-called experts, sportstalk hosts, prognosticators and oddsmakers put Florida as the underdog. Except for Lee Corso. Give the man credit where it is due. In the kingdom of the blind, he was the one-eyed man.

Down here on street level, most college football fans I spoke with felt that Ohio State’s number-one ranking had always been unearned. A quick check of Ohio State’s schedule of tune-up games against teams like Great Lakes Community College and a handful of other Big Ten Daisies showed a lack of strength in their schedule.

Like Vanderbilt, for instance. As Florida defensive end Jarvis Moss stated after the game, “We played a lot better teams than Ohio State this year. I can name four or five teams in the SEC that would compete real well against them.”

Vandy gave Florida a good game earlier in the season, losing 25-19. The Commodores had 391 yards of total offense against the Florida defense. That’s 310 more yards than the Buckeyes were able to eke out. Do I think that Vandy could beat Ohio St.? Hell, no.

What I would like to see is them swap schedules. Let Ohio St. run the table against Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and South Carolina during the season. Give Vandy a shot at a bowl game by letting them play a schedule loaded with the talents of N. Illinois, Cincinnati, Bowling Green, Minnesota, Northwestern and Michigan State.

That will never happen. The status quo will remain unchanged. The meaningless preseason poll rankings will continue to unduly influence the rest of the season. The BCS bowl system will retain its title as the biggest cock-up in sports.

Ohio State slipped to number 2 in the final rankings. They shouldn’t be any higher than number 5.

BWAHaHaHaHaHa!

Every once in a while the planets align favorably. What that has to do with football, I have no idea.

The facts speak for themselves:

**Vince Young showed the nation why he was a first round draft pick, despite his Gump-level score on the Wonderlic test.

**The Colts can’t stop the run. They will not make it to the Super Bowl until they can figure out that little trick.

**Peyton Manning, in the inestimable words of Mrs. Sarcastro, is a whiny titty-baby. He looks like he is going to cry whenever he is prevented from scoring. I wonder whose shoulder he will dry his tears on?

**Bironas will wind up taking the blame sometime in the near future for not nailing another 60-yard field goal. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s goat.

**Keeping Manning off the field is a good way to keep him from throwing touchdowns. Here’s another good way: Send more than three guys to rush him. I guarantee if you knock that whiny titty-baby’s dick in the dirt three good times, he will get so rattled he’d start throwing like Archie Manning. Other than the lack of quarterback sacks and the ability of Lamont Thompson to cover maybe my grandmother, the defense did a superb job. Fisher should get to yank out a dreadlock or cornrow or whatever the fuck that is for every time Lamont let Marvin Harrison or some other random Colt beat him down the field.

**Last night’s Ravenwood-Smyrna High School game was good. This one was better.

Speaking of the High School championship, here’s a few thoughts:

**George Plaster is a jock sniffing moron. His grasp of the obvious is only surpassed by his failure to understand what was going on right in front of him.

**I didn’t know that Larry The Cable Guy’s dad was a high school ref.

**Keep an eye on the Smyrna QB. He’s just a junior. That kid has a future.

**The whole “Let’s have girls as sideline reporters” fad is officially over. I’m with Andy Rooney on this one. Having the dingbat chick from the D.T. McCall ads try to interview the Smyrna coach as he was running off the field was the funniest thing ever.

The Trailer Park Sure Is Quiet Tonight

If you were watching the Sci-Fi channel Tuesday night, you may have seen me.  I was the guy in an arena full of America’s Saddest Losers.  Look for me behind the pathetic sign-holding tool whose only hope for moving out of mom’s basement is somehow getting on television with his Sharpie and poster board masterpiece.

We went to the WWE Smackdown/ECW Crap-fest at the Gaylord Hockeytarium.  Against my will and better judgement, I might add.   

Having wrestling on Sci-Fi is not as dissonant as one might imagine.  Going to see professional wrestling must be similar to going to a Star Trek convention.  The people watching is amazing, for one thing.   The well-dressed Green Hills moms tend not to blend in to the crowd like, say,  the three pounds away from needing a scooter from Medical Mobility Greenbrier moms.  Let me tell you, there were plenty of folks from Greenbrier.  Morbidly obese folks who won’t live to see their next birthday.  And that’s just the kids.

Another similarity between the Sci-Fi types and the wrestling fans is a tenous grip on reality.  Or what constitutes everyday reality.  

Both groups spend crazy cash on trinkets and totems of their favorite characters, and can obsessively recite the backstories and character profiles of their respective heroes.  Combine those with an unbelievable story arc and acting styles that remind me of a Sci-Fi original production filmed in Bulgaria, and the two genres  suddenly become very compatible.

In an unexpected development, it struck me how polite and relatively well-mannered people were.  Even the drunk 45-year old man running around wearing an ECW belt.  When he wasn’t hurling profanities at the ring, he was making sure the losers in front of us were keeping their signs down so people could see.

In addition to the usual batch of carnies, shut-ins and ex-cons, there were a lot of families with young children.  Nothing warms the heart like watching an eight year old scream, "Chavo sucks!" at the top of his lungs.

Speaking of carnies, the wrestler’s lingo shares a lot in common with  carnival argot.  As pro-wrestling has roots in the traveling carnival, this isn’t much of a shock.  Words like:

Kayfabe
Smarks
Tweener
Shoots and Worked Shoots

The disturbing thing is when you put all of these elements together, whaddya got?  Science fiction/wrestling fans, carnival workers and children collide for the perfect storm that is Jeremy Duffer.  Only a wrestling story line could come up with Comic Book Guy molesting children at The Android’s Dungeon and skipping bail to run off to the carnival.  Luckily, the cops caught him and he is back in the crowbar motel.  But I digress.

Tune in Friday night to watch Smackdown on the UPN channel.  Whichever one that is.  You might see me.  I’ll be the one with the two children next to me screaming, "Chavo sucks!", all the while keeping a sharp eye on the losers holding up signs in front of us.

Bring Me The Head Of Pete Rose

The trip to Cincy for the baseball game left me with one indelible thought.  Kentucky still serves as a buffer state between North and South.  Once you cross the Ohio River, all bets are off.  People drink Pepsi instead of Coke.  Bob Evans has interstate hegemony over Cracker Barrel.  Strange foods are celebrated in festivals.  Foods that normal people have never heard of.  You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a chain-operated chili restaurant.  It’s a madhouse!  A MADHOUSE!  What sort of culture could condone this behavior as evidenced by this chili parlor’s signage?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last Major League game I attended was in the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.   I was pleasantly surprised by the architectural improvements in baseball venues over the last forty years compared to the cookie-cutter multipurpose sporting facilities of the Sixties and Seventies.

Here’s the view of Cincinnati’s Great American Park from my $12.00 seat

Not bad, for the price.  You get a beautiful view of the Ohio River that the poorly designed Riverfront Stadium denied the paying public. 

The game itself was outstanding, except for Atlanta’s starting pitcher, who after the first three innings, found himself with a one-way ticket to Richmond and the minors.

A controversial decision to leave the game in the crucial 8th inning with the score tied 6-6 was not supported by life-long Reds fan, Sugar Momma.  So we missed Phillips’ dramatic home-run and Griffey’s run scoring double which sealed the Braves’ fate.  She was not pleased by our desire to get on the road at the cost of missing the decisive inning.

It wasn’t that we weren’t having fun, we were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a beautiful day for baseball.  Not a cloud in the sky to threaten the goings-on. 

The humidity was down and a fourteen mile-an-hour wind provided a swell breeze.

 

 

 

The boys were getting their fill of worthless souvenirs and over-priced concession stand food.   I couldn’t bring myself to eat a ballpark bratwurst or a bowl of the dubious local chili.  As Ron White says regarding Cincinnati’s overblown self-applied Chili Greatness,  "I don’t even think y’all told the Mexican boys you were having a contest."

We had the pizza instead, and it was damn good.  

No, the main reason we had to leave was my affinity for the Braves combined with my Caledonian heritage.  We had to leave that ball game  thanks to the sun.  For the sun is like poison to my people. What made it worse is, I was turning into a Red.