more reasons to hate commonwealthers

A New York Times piece from yesterday asked the question "Are the Red Sox Ready to Become the Yankees?" The problem is, they already have.

How much did they pay just to see if they could pay DiceK? What about the rest of their glutted payroll? Just between last season and the current one, they went from being $74 million behind the Yankees to $43 million behind. From a $17 million in front of the #3 spender to a whopping $30 million over one offseason. That also adds up to being more than $100 million more than the bottom 5 spenders.

Or what about the treatment of JD Drew, who's taken a massive beating from Boston fans for not living up to his contract that's worth more than the entire Tampa Bay Devil Rays lineup?

What about overcrowding of the Red Sox bandwagon on a level that no one's seen for a baseball team since...wait for it...the Yankees?

Of course, there's also the fact that any goodwill from those who didn't run out to buy a Red Sox cap in their favorite color your underdog status gave the Sox prior to the '04 series has been replaced by a total resentment of the Boston fan's overinflated sense of entitlement previously seen only from the fans in...can you guess?...New York.

So yeah, the Yankees aren't the only evil empire out there, are they?

Go Rockies.

carrot top is a prop comic, too

Chad Johnson, my favorite non-Torry Holt and/or non-Chicago Bear receiver and man who's faster than a horse, has decided that he's done with the end zone celebrations until the Bengals stop sucking. Good for him. As it stands, I hate precalculated end zone celebrations unless they're the currently illegal ones that happen between teammates or entire teams. I concede that I'll never be rid of them(at least props were banned), but I do think that Johnson's on the right track here. There's a time and a place, and I think that some players need to understand that.

So here are some rules that I think should be adopted.

1. The Chad Johnson Rule - If you're team is at less than .500 after the first 4 weeks of play you do not celebrate any scores. There's nothing sadder than seeing a member of a 2-7 football team jubilantly celebrate the touchdown that brings the score to 7-7 in the first quarter knowing that this team will still probably lose the game on their way to a 3-13 record and a number one draft pick. It just looks like he's saying "Yay! I did something right!"

-The Spoiler Exception - If you're playing for a futile team that is by some miracle beating one of a handful of teams in the league that no one shuts up about(this season we're looking at New England, Dallas, and Indianapolis), you may celebrate each and every touchdown in any fashion you see fit until you're losing by two scores or more(see rule #2)

-The Rivalry Exception - Some teams, it feels good to beat no matter how poorly your season is going. If a Redskins team that's 3-9 goes up on a Dallas team that's 10-2, I won't at all begrudge some celebrating from those 'Skins.

2. The We're Beating the Spread Rule - If your team is still down by more than one possession after your score, you do not dance/taunt/celebrate in any fashion. Give the ball to the ref, you've still got plenty of score to make up.

-The Roy Williams Addendum - If celebrating a touchdown when you're still down by more than 8 points afterward is wrong, celebrating a first down when you're down by a million points just proves once again that everyone named Roy Williams is a total d-bag.

3. The Bill Grammatica Rule - Never celebrate a field goal. You had to settle for 3.

The Adam Vinatieri Exception - If it's a game-winner as the clock expires, go nuts.

4. The T.O. Rule - Lots of guys would get called on this. Stop pre-planning the end zone dances. I know that there are guys in the NFL who lie awake at night thinking of what might get them some extra time on a highlight reel. Steve Smith, Chad Johnson, and too many others have laid down some truly asinine dances this way and my fear is still that they'll be hiring choreographers sooner rather than later.

The Ickey Shuffle Exception - If you do a dance that strikes a chord with the fans of the team you play for, you may repeat that dance until the local AM sports radio callers in that town begin to turn on the dance en masse.

The Changing a Football's Diaper is the Dumbest Thing I've Ever Seen Addendum - If you use something from the game as a prop beyond spiking the football(which, by the way, I'm more than okay with), your team is penalized 30 points and the ball. Honestly. Using your towel to pretend to be a waiter? I spent some time in the food service industry, and there's nothing celebratory about standing by a table while someone berates you for bringing them exactly what they ordered.

The Joe Horn Hasn't Been Talked About Again Since That Day Addendum - If you bring an external prop, your team is penalized their next three games. And the ball.

The Teams Win Championships Exception - Remember the Mile High Salute from Denver? Remember the Bob and Weave from St. Louis? Remember the grenade thing the Ravens used to do? Team celebrations. Those are awesome and I think they need to be allowed back into the game. I'd much prefer that to some grand-standing idiot with a prop hidden in his sock.

5. The New York Football Giants are Lame but Not as Much as the New York Basketball Knicks Rule, or the Isaiah Thomas Sucks at Life Rule - Never celebrate a football play by imitating a sport that the team in the city you represent has been horrible at for years.

I should be the NFL's commissioner. You can guarantee I wouldn't be thinking about a Super Bowl in London.

clock's ticking

In the wake of the House's failure to override Bush's stupid, evil veto I'm compelled to reprint some quotes from a previous entry by Rev. Jim Wallis(his book is fascinating) and Rev. William Barber to drive home part of the reason I find the Republicans who voted against this to be entirely reprehensible.

If you want to be protected by the right wing and you're a child, you have to stay unborn as long as possible.

There is no debate that if you read the Bible, you're supposed to care for the poor.

So now that we've established that the political right is full of douchebags who don't understand the faith they exploited to get elected, let me address the Democrats.

You're in trouble. If you'd spent more time trying to make the SCHIP expansion happen and less time pretending to be surprised that Rush Limbaugh said something stupid and offensive without thinking about it, you may have had a chance. I know, you'll say that they started it with the resolution about MoveOn.org's ad. So what? They don't control the House of the Senate. They don't have the votes to do anything but waste your time with nonsense. You're supposed to be better and you're supposed to get things done.

As of right now, your defining moments are wasting time with a pointless discussion about who hates the troops more and and a strongly worded non-binding resolution. This isn't what you were put in office to do. My advice is to stop wasting time and start getting the votes you need to do the things you have to get done.

mostly, we talked about aquaman and condoms...but not how they relate to one another

With Congress looking for the votes to override Bush's insane veto for SCHIP on the 18th, I decided to take further action than just posting Daily Show clips on a blog that no one reads. So I found myself spending my Tuesday evening taking part in a demonstration in front of the NC Republican party headquarters.

I stumbled upon a small pocket of folks holding signs that seemed as uncertain as I was about whether or not we should be seen having a good time while trying to get a rather urgent message out. After we decided that, yes, it was okay, we went about the business of interpreting the reactions from passing cars. There were a few things we noticed.

One was that no one gives a honk of disagreement. If you're honking, you support the cause. This is an interesting deviation from the normal honking of your horn, which announces that the driver in front of you has just performed a vehicular maneuver generally reserved for jackasses that can't drive. It was nice.

Next, was that you could get a pretty good idea of someone's age by the reaction from the car. If you pumped your fist and/or yelled supportive things out the window of your car, you were pretty young. If you gave a thumbs up(the most common reaction), you were young-to-middle-aged. If you flashed a peace sign, you were pretty old. If you flashed a black power sign, you were pretty old and black.

All of those positive reactions, it should be pointed out, were done with one hand on the steering wheel of the cars they were driving. The one overtly negative reaction we got was a double middle finger from one particularly angry driver who obviously hates poor children. We couldn't help but notice that in order to double flip us off, he needed to leave both hands off of the wheel for an extended period of time. This is just more proof that you're either 1) not thinking in the long term or 2) a complete moron if you oppose the SCHIP expansion.

I tell you all of that to tell you this: you can have a great time acting on your conscience. I totally did. Also, conservatives are bad at driving(which is sad because they drive such nice cars).

By the by, Bob Etheridge is being a pretty lousy Democrat/human being and not planning to vote for an override(David Price is, advantage Durham) of Bush's idiot veto. So if he's your Representative(or even if he's not), you can call to tell him to grow a set and do what's right by calling his Washington office(202-225-4531) or his Raleigh office(919-829-9122).

UPDATE: Good news from the organizer:

Page 5B of today's N&O reports that Bob Etheridge will vote for the SCHIP expansion!!! "After careful consideration, I have decided to vote to override the president's veto."

Way to go, Bob.

favre ties record, loses game

Brett Favre tied the record for MOST CAREER INTERCEPTIONS in a failed comeback attempt against my beloved Chicago Bears, who I never said should give up on this season. Never. Said. It.

george, have you even read the Bible?

Once again, I find it easier to let someone else explain why I'm upset with W.



George, I just need to go ahead and point something out to you. You see, George, for all that you believe in private health care, private health care has zero...I repeat ZERO interest in helping anyone. They want to make money. So we can therefore assume that private health care has LESS THAN ZERO interest in helping a child who cannot afford their services.

Of course this isn't your problem, is it George? As far as you're concerned the poor are only poor because they want to be. I might even tune into whack-job right wing talk radio today to see if anyone can explain what "Poor kids first" even means.

In the meantime, there's also this...which is all kinds of entertaining in the face of tragedy.

but marqué en infériorité numérique

Last night, with football currently slowly killing me inside between the performances of the injury-depleted Chicago Bears and the, um, something-depleted NC State Wolfpack, I was very much looking forward to the start of a hockey season with a Carolina Hurricanes team that I think is going to do a lot of scoring and winning.

Of course, being poor means that I'm watching the game from my couch. Also, because someone hates me and has either a tremendous amount of hatred for either the team or its fans, the Hurricanes were the only team whose opening game wasn't televised in its own market. Fortunately, there was a free preview of NHL center ice. Unfortunately, the game was against Montreal so the broadcast was in French.

I was determined to watch me some hockey, though, so I let the game get about 30 minutes ahead so I'd at least be able to fast forward through the French commercials(the DVR is the best invention ever) and plopped myself down on the couch.

Andi gave up on trying to identify what was going on based on her high school French classes about halfway through the first period and instead scoured the interweb for and index of hockey terms in French. The term for short-handed goal is entirely unimaginative. Stupid French.

While the 'Canes did lose in OT, I at least saw a lot of positives in the game that get me excited for the season to come. That's more than I can say for what the Bears and the Wolfpack have shown me in the young football season. Is it basketball time yet?

punt

I may regret this declaration later, but 4 weeks into the NFL season I'm declaring my beloved Chicago Bears finished. Some people will tell me that this is premature. They'll tell me that, in the NFC, no one is really out until they've been mathematically eliminated.

To these folks, I'll say that the Chicago defense was out 6 starters this past weekend, the O-line is having trouble with the basics of blocking, Cedric Benson still has a whole heckuva lot to prove, they gave up 34 points to Detroit in one quarter, and then there's that whole trend with Super Bowl losers not doing so hot in the following season working against them.

This is why I'm doing a complete 180 of my complete 180 on the starting QB status of Rex Grossman. You see, Rex is in a contract year. No one is going to pretend that Brian Griese is a long-term answer to the quarterback question(especially since 2 red zone INT's and one pick-6 aren't any better than Rex's productivity). The Bears clearly don't think of Former Rookie Sensation Kyle Orton as the future.

All of this is to say that the Bears need to give Grossman the next 12 games to either prove he's their man or give them their biggest job for what's already shaping up to be a busy offseason. Go ahead and do it Chicago. At this point, I don't think you actually have that much to lose by doing so.