Not exactly words to live by, but they probably won't kill you either

I’ve lost my muse, have you seen it?

Feeling lethargic, listless, even a bit languid these days, as I try to spark some kind of interest in the local sports scene.

Kevin Love has a broken hand, the NHL lockout is making a cancelled hockey season more likely by the day, and the chances of a 1,000-day postseason drought are getting more real by the day.  It’s in front of this backdrop that I’m struggling to find something to write that doesn’t resemble a 3-year old child’s tantrum.  Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh, everything sucks, it’s not fair!!!

Because this is Loserville, and that concept has been done to death.  Sure you could go the other way by singing the praises of a 5-2 Vikings team, but that’s not going to last either.  The Vikings will not save you, they will only find a more sinister way to bring about your ultimate demise.  And yes, I know, every time I insult them, they turn around and prove me wrong, but that’s just part of the spectacle.  Nothing has changed but the schedule being even softer than it first appeared.

So, where does a chap go for a shot of positivity between football weekends when everything seems bleak?  How about some good old fashioned nonsensical rambling?  Digging into the Loserville Rules of Life sounds like a solid idea.  There’s not much I know for certain in this life, but there are a few things, and here they are:

Never make a joke about a bomb at an airport – This one would seem to be obvious, yet none other than a college hockey referee made themistake a few weeks ago.  I’m sure every person sitting through a shutdown of that airport took solace when thinking about whatever uncomfortable body-cavity searches he was subject to.

Never go into the back room at a strip club – Chris Rock said it in a more catchy fashion, but it remains true, nobody’s interested in you and the meter spins like the national debt clock.  You’re basically paying for a more comfortable seat by spending roughly the equivalent of a new couch.  Of course if it wasn’t for alcohol, would never be an issue, stupid alcohol.

Never (ever!) go into the back room adjacent to the bathroom in a gay nightclub – Most men are ingrained with the instinct to avoid this situation like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter, no pun intended.  But occasionally, one is pressed into service to locate his girlfriend’s pal, who’s disappeared into the backroom with some random dude.  If he’s an idiot, he listens, instead of countering that it actually makes more logical sense for her to be the one to attempt a rescue from Manlove Island.  Sure, I’ve only heard about this happening once, but that doesn’t change the fact that once I did, it immediately became one of my tenets for life.  I also wanted to bring it up again in case the guy who told me is reading this, because it will make him cringe, what has been seen cannot be unseen.

Never patronize businesses close to holidays unless absolutely necessary – Other than maybe the kids in those African famine commercials, I never see a sadder group of people than those forced to work on days that 90% of the public has off.  On one hand, I suppose you could spin it as a good thing, since it motivates people to higher achievement and jobs you only have to worry about hating on a predictable 9-5 / Monday-Friday schedule, rather than the scattershot “Sunday on, Monday off” world of retail or convenience store work.  But what needs to be remembered here is that it sucks to be surrounded by people who are doing fun stuff while you’re stuck going to work.  It’s something I like to call the Vacation Comportment Corollary.  You want to send emails to the folks at work about how much the security lines suck?  Fine, that might make their Monday sound better by comparison.  But if you’re starting off Tuesday with a picture of a white sand beach and the caption “How’s work suckers?”, then you’re a dick.  So while I get that you may need to run to 7/11 if you need more butter for a Thanksgiving recipe, or you need a trip to the mall to say your procrastinating ass at 4 PM on Christmas Eve, try to avoid these behaviors under less critical conditions.  People in those type of positions get paid the same amount regardless of the actual amount of work they have to do.  Heading to Target on Easter and putting some poor kid through the ringer with 57 questions about a digital camera is not okay.  He’s just trying to coast and make his $8 an hour in peace, let him be.  Of course this doesn’t apply to tipped employees, since their pay is commensurate with the service they provide.  This exempts bars from the discussion and leaves me free to patronize them on Thanksgiving and Christmas with impugnity. 

Never forget to keep a book of matches by your toilet – I know it may seem a bit crass to have a book of matches just sitting there on the lid of your toilet, but you can easily get around that problem by classing it up with a little pottery-type dish, or something of that nature.  Besides, do the aesthetic concerns surrounding your bathroom really trump the social embarrassment of the defecator and olfactory discomfort of those who follow?  It’s true that bathroom etiquette is a two way street, people should do their utmost to attend to their business before placing themselves in a crowded, single-bathroom situation, but sometimes things get away from you.  I’m as regular as the postal service, but give me some extremely spicy or exotic food and results may vary.  Just sayin, it hurts no one to leave the matches in there, your benefitting all parties involved here.  The exit accompanied by the smell of a flaming match is about 1/10^th as sheepish as the one accompanied by the stench of a flaming o-ring.  Not to mention how much the on-deck batter appreciates the effort.

Never wait for a closer parking spot at the gym – Is it possible to miss the point any more than this?  If it’s pouring rain, freezing cold, or there are no more spots available, then sure.  But if it’s a mild day with none of the above?  Park the damn car and cut short your treadmill time by 15 seconds.  Everytime I pull into the lot, there seems to be some clod holding up the show, because they’re angling for a parking spot 20 yards closer.  I know that they probably can’t help themselves, that they’re conditioned by years of trips to the mall and supermarket to always try for the nearest possible spot, it’s a reflex action.  But along those lines, let me just say that I’m conditioned to strike people in the face when I see them doing something stupid, so be prepared.  Here’s a radical notion, if you parked 50 yards further away everywhere you went, maybe you could skip a gym trip every couple of weeks?  It’s worth considering.

That’s all I have for life wisdom at the moment, tune in next week when I segue back to sports with important topics like “See?  I told you Ponder sucks” and “The Timberwolves Curse: Is it possible Target Center is on an Indian burial ground?”

Presidential power

I caught a few minutes of the Presidential Debate last night, and the two sides are way further apart than I’d previously thought.  At this point, it’s seems very unlikely that Republicans and Democrats are going to reach a consensus by Election Day.  I’m sorry to say it folks, but it seems as if we’re on a collision course for yet another lockout.

Now I know what you’re thinking, it’s going to be disappointing to show up to your favorite school or church on November 3^rd and find the doors padlocked.  You’ve likely been anticipating the thrill of filling in that little bubble card as you hearkened back to the halcyon days of 5^th grade math tests, but that might have to wait.  At this point, all we can hope for is progress at the negotiating table and an agreement to be hammered out as soon as possible.  As we all know, if the stalemate drags into January, we run the risk of losing an entire election, a sobering thought for any hardcore politics fan out there.

As is usually the case when one of these situations arises, I have no interest in blaming one side over the other, just a wish to see things resolved.  Like the NHL and NFL before them, if they can’t come to a workable agreement on dividing the massive sums of money at their disposal, the only people who lose out are the fans.  The camaraderie of following election returns, celebrating victory or consoling defeat will likely be lost to us in the coming weeks, we can only hope that’s not the case forever.

In the meantime, we’re one-quarter through the NFL season, so why not do a power poll?  In my customary fashion, it's time to link each team to something it reminds me of in a particular category.  This week seemed like the perfect time to decide the historical US Presidential doppelgangers of NFL teams.  With the lockout looming, at least we can hearken back to happier (or unhappier, depending on your bent) times in electoral history.

 32. Cleveland Browns (Ralph Nader) – Although technically in the running every time out, there’s never a chance in hell they’ll actually win the thing!  Best they can hope to do is play spoiler to a Wild Card team (or Al Gore) before fading back into obscurity.

31. Indianapolis Colts (Grover Cleveland) – Both won it all once, and by all indications both will win it all a second time after a brief hiatus.  Grover took care of business, now it’s up to Andrew Luck to complete the analogy, he retires without a ring and the Colts are Jimmy Carter.

30. Jacksonville Jaguars (Pat Buchanan) – Came sorta close that one time, since then totally irrelevant and likely to remain so.

29. Oakland Raiders (Richard Nixon) – Dominant in the 70s, before going downhill in the legacy department and ending up widely disliked.

28. Kansas City Chiefs (Harry Truman) – Pulled off a huge upset, but unable to replicate the feat in later years.

27. Tennessee Titans (Ron Paul) – Gamely making attempts each year, but haven’t won anything and no one can ever remember where either is from.

26. New Orleans Saints (Barack Obama) – Incredible run of recent success now looking a tad rocky, remains to be seen if a rally can be made to overcome current struggles.

25. Miami Dolphins (Woodrow Wilson) – Went back-to-back, but that was a long, long time ago.

24. New York Jets (John  F. Kennedy) – Another big upset over long odds that's been raised to mythic status as the years have passed. 

23. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (William Henry Harrison) – Whether we’re talking about length of term, or time spent as a competent football team, blink and you missed it.

22. Carolina Panthers (John Kerry) – Looked overmatched on paper, but made a tighter contest of things than was expected.

21. Detroit Lions (Newt Gingrich) – So there was this blip, for a minute there, when it looked like maybe…oh never mind. 

20. Buffalo Bills (Adlai Stevenson) – Peaked in the wrong era.

19. Washington Redskins (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) – A lot of time may have passed, but man were they good.

18. St. Louis Rams (Lyndon Johnson) – Won in a landslide, but despite being favored, ultimately didn’t repeat.

17. Dallas Cowboys (Georges W. Bush) – You either love em, or you hate em.

16. Seattle Seahawks (Al Gore) – Stop whining about the refs already.

15. Minnesota Vikings (Hubert Humphrey) – So close, yet so far...

14. Pittsburgh Steelers (Abraham Lincoln) – Top of the heap, king of the castle, best there ever was.

13. Denver Broncos (John Adams) – Overcame bitter defeats against the greats of the game before finally breaking through.

12. Cincinnati Bengals (Samuel Tilden) – Not-so-great moments in last second comeback history.

11. San Diego Chargers (Walter Mondale) – Ran up against a juggernaut in the big game.

10. Chicago Bears (George H.W. Bush) – One great year in the 80s and been milking it ever since.

9. New York Giants (Bill Clinton) – Just when everyone was 100% convinced that something got blown, they managed to come out unscathed.

8. Philadelphia Eagles (Michelle Bachman) – Zealous (borderline psychotic) support of fans makes no sense when compared to actual track record of results.

7. Arizona Cardinals (Barry Goldwater) – Came from the desert, lost, went home.

6. Green Bay Packers (George Washington) – Won the first two, and we’ve all been hearing about it constantly ever since.

 5. New England Patriots (Thomas Jefferson) – Deserving of consideration among the all-time elite.

4. San Francisco 49ers (Ronald Reagan) – Dominated the 80s, fans think they re-invented the game, enjoying a recent resurgence.

3. Baltimore Ravens (Teddy Roosevelt) – Only one win, but extraordinarily strong on defense. 

2. Atlanta Falcons (Rick Perry) – Often discussed as possible threat, but needs to show an ability to close before taken seriously.

1. Houston Texans (Mitt Romney) – Remains to be seen if either can capitalize on recent strong performances.

More humpday ramblings

After last week's novel, I swear I'm going to keep things short.

The first week of the NFL season is always a learning experience.  You spend a lot of time forming opinions, 3 hours getting them blown out of the water, then the next few days trying not to overreact.  The world can be a frightening place in those moments spent realizing just how much you don't know, and judging by my 0-4 fantasy football and 7-9 picks performance, there's a whole lot I don't know.

So, I will attempt to comfort myself be reviewing what I do know.  Some of it I've known for some time, and some of it I'm just finding out now, but it all seems pretty solid.

Away we go:

It would've been hard to do, but I can't tell you how happy I am to not be invested in either the Browns or Dolphins from a fantasy perspective this season.  When Brandon Weeden got drafted, we made jokes about him having to use Super Polygrip to avoid getting his dentures rattled loose by James Harrison.  As the summer progressed, some dumbass thoughts in the vein of "well, you know, maybe that maturity will help him hit the ground running" started to creep in.  This is what heat and boredom can do to the unoccupied mind, the only thing hitting the ground is every pass he will throw on 3rd-and-8 all season.

Commercials for things like Clamato, SPAM and amaretto are utterly pointless.  Nobody has ever been sold on trying any of these things by a commercial.  The words "well, I'm not the biggest fan of tomato juice, but maybe adding in a splash of clam brine is just what it needs."  I will remained convinced until the day I die that Clamato is a way for women to avoid the taste of beer and nothing more.  And don't we only have SPAM because of World Wars?  In dire times of need, they swept up the trimmings from the slughterhouse floored, ran them through a grinder and canned it, that about right?  Pitching someone on trying this stuff would probably go about as well as my dad trying to convince me to sample a pickled turkey gizzard as a kid.  That's right, they actually sell those.  But I see commercials for both these things, as well as amaretto, which is only useful to 14-year-olds with no tolerance who steal it out of their parents liquor cabinet.  Of course the good news is, they won't miss the bottle because no one drinks that crap.

On a related note, I know that you should never consume more than two dairy-based cocktails in an evening.  Those white russians may be going down smooth, but your concocting a witches brew in your stomach my friend.  It also should go without saying that even one should not be paired with any amount of wine.  Cabernet smoothie, blech.

Sunday night football bypassing Monday night football as the premiere game of the week is the worst thing that's happened to the NFL since the Bucs changed uniforms.  I like football more than 90% of the population, but after following 10 or 12 games over 6 hours, I'm a tad footballed out.  Not to say that there shouldn't be a game on Sunday, just liked the lower-key nature of the ESPN production.  They had good games, but not necessarily the marquee.  A fantastic matchup on a Monday night was far more valuable as you slogged your way through the first day of the workweek.  The Monday games still look good this season, but lack the Sunday pizzazz.  Detroit at San Francisco and New England at Baltimore the next two Sundays versus Denver at Atlanta and Green Bay at Seattle in the Monday tilts.  It's like eating a delicious sandwich two hours after you finished a steak dinner, still good, but would've been better if you hadn't eaten since lunch.  It's football gluttony. 

(Of course they did display great brilliance in adding a full season of Thursday night games, which is liked free chips and salsa in this analogy, so I can't be too mad at them)

I helped a friend move last Saturday, which I never mind doing.  Lifting heavy objects is a talent of mine, so I'm happy to help, particularly when beer and pizza are offered as payment.  The move itself was fine, and didn't give rise to the following, rather it was a conversation about the nature of favors that got me thinking.  Shouldn't we have some system outlining the values of different acts in relation to one another?  Like 4 hours of moving is enough points to get you one weekend of dogsitting and a ride from the airport?  Or helping to dispose of a dead body is worth a lifetime of designated driving and first refusals on tickets?  Sure, you can say that friends do friends favors without the expectation of anything in return, and I'd generally agree.  But some people are just so nice about things, you don't realize that you may be taking advantage of your friendship with your repeated requests.  For the consciencious person, this could be a good barometer of that.  "Say, I was going to ask Joe to help me out rebuilding the deck this weekend, but I'd be perilous close to owning him a kidney.  Better just tackle that myself."  This idea needs more thought, perhaps we'll revisit it down the road.

A friend of mine lives in Vegas, and has been back here during the summer for work.  On Monday night, we met to watch some football.  He's headed back today, so I gave him $100 to bet on games for me, starting this weekend.  The theory is that I'll put $20 a week on a 2 or 3-team parlay, standing to profit $30-50 in each week I win.  Given my recent record in picking games against the spread, this was likely a dumb idea, but should at least provide some entertainment...for a month or so.

Free-floating hostility

You know what irritates me?  On certain days, a whole lot of things. 

This has been one of those weeks, a cross-section of my most recent irritations:

Leftside walkers

Can we all just get in agreement right now that in confined or crowded spaces, we’ll walk how we drive?

If you find yourself on a sidewalk or in a hallway, keep to the righthand side.  We call all get where we’re going reasonably quickly, and with minimal confusion about which party is going to zig while the other one zags. If you’re a small child, elderly, or from a foreign country, fine, we’ll let that slide.  But if you are a fully formed, adult American who’s been driving an automobile for more than a year, please just apply the rules of the road to your pedestrian meanderings and this will go much more smoothly.

I will never understand why this elementary concept never seems to occur to a lot of people, there may be no lanes on the ground, but you're still dealing with many spaces which only allow two lanes of traffic.  If you've got a better system, I'm all ears, but until you figure that out, let's just go with what's kept us moving along on the roadways this far in life.

Yet it never fails, walk around some a public space for awhile, and you'll encounter someone wandering absentmindedly toward a head-on collision like they’re channeling their inner-Brit. Happens everywhere you go; supermarkets, malls, work, the gym, there might only be two people in the entire hallway, yet some have the innate skill of angling themselves into your path from 50 feet away like you’re a goddamn human tractor beam.  I know I'm cuddly, but contain yourself, I have places to be

Soon, I may just snap, and start approaching this situation like a drunk or a fool has wandered into the passing lane. Right-of-way my friend, and you’re in the wrong, be prepared to get run down like a deer stepping in front of a semi. No warning, just chunks of bloody carnage littering the salad dressing aisle. All because you were too busy pondering whether to go with the light balsamic vinaigrette or spoil yourself with avocado ranch.

Cleanup in aisle 7 boys, cleanup in aisle 7.

Bitchy restaurant reviewers

Online reviews of restaurants can be quite useful at times, particularly in identifying an exceptional dish to try, good time of day to visit, or other trick of the trade. But for every blurb of value, there’s 2 or 3 angry screeds decrying lousy food, terrible atmosphere and waitstaff with attitudes. Also featured prominently are snobby comparisons made by too-cool-for-school hipsters on how a place “used to be cool, but ever since the new ownership took over” and blah, blah, blah.

It’s not unreasonable for the customer to make their voice heard. But once you pass paragraph #3 in your scathing critique of a local pub’s take on a Rueben sandwich, you’re no longer trying to convey info, and certainly not trying to help, you’re just being a self-important f*ckwit. A good rule of thumb is that if a place has 50something reviews that average a 3.75 rating, you may want to throttle back the anger on the zero you just gave them. I don’t need to be Guy Fieri to recognize that this is most likely a “You” problem.

Take the following first line of a review I read while checking out an Irish bar I was heading to for the first time. Let me repeat, this was an Irish bar, a drinking establishment first and foremost, keep that in mind.

We tried this place one evening for dinner. Our waitress was less than stellar. I had to ask for cream after she brought my coffee. Most disappointing was the food. I got the irish beef stew which tasted like something out of a can and loaded with salt.

This was just the opening, it goes on for awhile afterward, but this was really all the info required.

Let me translate for you:

Our waitress was less than stellar.– I did not feel that I got the requisite attention befitting my stature, don’t these people understand who I am?

I had to ask for cream after she brought my coffee –First off, I’m drinking coffee, so I either walked in here pissed off because I’m the designated driver, pissed off because I hate beer and would rather be at a wine bar, or pissed off in general because I’m the type of person who’s too uptight to have a drink during an evening out. Not to mention that I had to ask for something. From a waitress! The nerve of some people! Again, DON’T THEY KNOW WHO THE F*CK I AM!!!!!!!

Most disappointing was the food – I have never heard the joke: What are the three shortest books in the world? French War Heroes, Irish Cuisine and the Amish phonebook.

I got the irish beef stew which tasted like something out of a can and loaded with salt – Not only do I over-punctuate to a staggering degree, including periods where none are called for, I can’t even find the time to capitalize the ‘I’ in Irish. This must mean that while I demand the requisite attention be paid to anything prepared for my consumption, I won’t even do any potential readers the courtesy of reaching over for half a moment to hold down the ‘Shift’ key. In other words, this is like the crappy beef stew of reviews.

As always, we here at Loserville advocate voting with your dollars, or at least having the stones to tell whoever runs the joint your complaints in person. The problem is never with the sentiment, it’s how the strength of that sentiment and vitriol in it’s worded seem to grow twentyfold from behind the security of a keyboard. What we really need to do is come up with some that makes these people put their money where their mouth is. Hammer away online all you want, but once you do, you’re 86ed from the place, permanently.

Would it stop some people? Probably not, but you know there’d be more than a handful…

The Vikings stadium debate

In the words of the immortal Marlo Stanfield: "Either do it or don't do it, but I got someplace to be."

Gym lingerers

A distant cousin of the walking dolts these people show the same capacity for obstruction, only without that pesky mobility part.

Like most men, I tend to look at certain establishments as necessary evils.  Supermarkets, malls, gyms, all come with the idea that speed is of the essence.  You do what needs to get done, and you get out as fast as possible.  Now that we're finally getting into the warm weather and people can go outdoors for their exercise, workout conditions have finally relaxed a bit.  Far fewer people cluttering up the place, staring agape at a piece of equipment like it just spoke Farsi to them, it's been grand.

But one species of annoyance is year-round, in the form of those guys who just can't seem to figure out that someone else might be interested in using the piece of community equipment they're currently monopolizing.  Nobody is ever going to mistake me for a fitness model (or for that matter, a guy who goes to the gym with any regularlity) but at least I have the common courtesy to move things the hell along at a reasonable rate.

Yet these jerkoffs exist as if they're in their own little world, hauling equipment to the other side of the place and leaving it there, pausing to have a 15-minute conversation with a passing acquaintance while sitting on a bench press.  Hey chief, sorry for stumbling into your rec room, mind if we get a bit of work in while you're catching up?!?!?!  Honestly, it's enough to make you want to coldcock him with a 25-pound dumbell.

But then you start thinking about how much fun it would be to navigate the weight room in prison, and that reels you back in pretty quick.

Insurance commercials

I'm at a loss on something here.

Insurance companies claim to be all about saving me money.

Each insurance company runs approximately six million commercials a day (give or take) across every conceivable form of media.

Commercials cost money.

Doesn't it stand to reason that they could probably save me a lot more money if they didn't run commercials constantly?  I know you need to attract customers, but this is ridiculous.  Ever since bin Laden got taken out, that Flo from Progressive has been solidly in the Top 5 on my "People Who Need To Be Taken Out" list, and might crack the top spot before the year is out.  The guy who does the Gecko voiceovers is on the radar as well.  Dennis Haysbert, we're cool, you were Pedro Cerrano and President Palmer, much respect.

Commercials for three products dominate American mass media: Cars, insurance, and alcohol. 

A conspiracy theorist might look at this situation and say first they sell you the car, then the insurance to drive the car, then the alcohol to make you crash the car, leaving you in need of a new car and new (undoubtedly more expensive) insurance.  It's a clever game.

Everyone's going out of their way to convince you that they want to give you the cheapest possible insurance, but if insurance wasn't a highly lucrative business, why chase market share so hard with all these damn commercials?  Seems to me that despite the sweetheart deals being handed out, the margins of these companies must be holding up nicely, certainly don't seem to have any trouble maintaining healthy marketing budgets.

And just because it came up obliquely in the alcohol conversation: Clamato, give it up!

Nobody's ever taken a sip of a glass of tomato juice and said "Hey, you know what this could use, some clam juice!"  Just like nobody over the age of 16 has ever said "Man, I really feel like a glass of amaretto tonight!"  Now you and those ridiculous DiSaranno commercials, go back to whoever thought you were the centerpiece of an ad campaign and tell them they do not have the pulse on the American drinker. 

The only good thing to ever come from Clamato's was a joke I made up years ago: What do you get when you mix half a Bloody Mary with half a Bloody Ceasar? 

A Bloody Jesus.

Thanks, I'll be here all week.  Don't forget to tip your waiter, or at least don't bitch about him online.

2012 State of the Ville: The Minnesota Twins

A lot of how we view things in life hinges on what our expectations were going in.  For instance, I might be the only person on Earth who thought The Hangover was lame. It generally seemed to meander from one stupid joke to the next, with no real plot, consistency or cleverness. A random slew of occurrences tacked on one after another, each dumber than the last. This isn’t pulling the highbrow routine either, you’re talking to a guy who’d rank Spaceballs among the more humorous films of all time. If you happen to disagree with that opinion, all I can say is “What’s a matter Colonel Sanders, chicken?”  Sometimes a bit of cleverness can go a long way.

On the other side of the coin in this discussion is Zombieland, a movie I’ve watched at least a few minutes of somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 times over the past couple years. I knew nothing about this film going in, believe it started as 15 minutes of throwaway TV late one Friday night. Instead, it only took 15 minutes to decide it was going to the DVR (right about this scene), and it’s been safely there ever since.

But does either movie truly deserve those extremes? Is one truly a waste of 90 minutes, while the other is worth pausing on each and every time it’s scrolled past? Probably not, but that’s the roles they occupy for me. Taste accounts for some of that, things will always strike people differently, but the bigger issue has always seemed to be expectations going in. If ten people even insinuate that something should be in the “best of all time” conversation in a given category, it had better be amazing as a prerequisite, or it’ll be torn apart.

If, on the other hand, you expect nothing, simply feeling like your time hasn’t been wasted is all you need.  Not to mention, if you’re like me and have a neurotic streak, the effect here can be powerful enough to make you avoid certain popular things entirely, if too much has already been said. (Yes, I’m talking to you Moneyball, got all I needed from the book and the movie screwing up the ending to the Twins-As ALDS game would be too much to take, already know that going in.)

So be careful with your hype, judicious in doling out praise and damn near unwilling to utter the phrase “best ever” in regard to what you see and do in life. I’d rather hear a spoiler, than be lured into a subpar dining/watching/reading experience under false pretense. At least the spoiler hasn’t robbed me of my time. Personally, the only thing I feel comfortable in tagging with the “best” label these days is the Best Sports Weekend Of the Year, but we’ll be discussing that in greater depth shortly. If you doubt me, come to St. Paul next weekend and I’ll prove it.

All this expectations talk is currently front of mind because I watched a ballgame a couple nights. Not just any ballgame, but my first Minnesota Twins game of the spring. It was poorly played, some players looked out of sorts, there was just a general “WTF?” air to the whole thing. But it did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm about the impending start of baseball season, for three reasons:

Going to ballgames is fun.

Things have gotta be better than last year.

I’m just not expecting very much.

There’s no accompanying detailed breakdown to back up the feeling that we’re dealing with a fair-to-middling ballclub this year, just the recent body of work of the guys on the roster. Some statgeek could probably craft a plausible argument for the potential of a Twins playoff berth, but take it from me, it’s just not going to happen. By the way, I do not use the term “geek” in a derogatory fashion, as I’m no stranger to getting my geek on when the opportunity arises. For years I thought I was a nerd, but as this handy Venn diagram points out only falling into geek territory, as the requisite social awkwardness isn’t present. Well, at least not unless there are girls around. Good news finding that out, the family might finally invite me back to Thanksgiving dinner now that I've shed that stigma.

So I'm good with the geek community, and love a lot of the work they've done with the numbers.  Some of it is a little out there, but in a year featuring Tim Tebow, Jeremy Lin and a Super Bowl champion who lost two games to the Redskins, should we really be counting anything out?  The answer, in the case of the Twins, is yes, and there's only one number you need to know: Three.

As in the Theory Of the Three "Ifs", something I just made up, but seems perfectly plausible after 10 minutes of noodling it over.  It's a simple premise, when you find yourself trying to convince your own brain that something is going to work out, make sure you don't have more than three contingencies that need to be met in order for that to happen.  I don't care if we're talking about being on time for a flight ("If I can get out of the office 30 minutes early"/"If traffic isn't too bad"/"If the security line is moving") or getting away with killing a drifter ("If I wasn't caught on the security cameras at that gas station"/"If there are no traces of DNA in the car"/"If I can burn these bloody clothes without the neighbors noticing") the Three "If" tipping point is not something you want to mess with.  We're not talking in absolutes here, any theory that doesn't have to do with physics has exceptions, just general trends of probability to serve as signposts on our way.

Take the question of, "Can the Wild make the playoffs?" we asked a few months ago.  While trying to delude ourselves into thinking it was possible, we went down a path that sounded something like:

"If we can get lights out goaltending"
"If Heatley can get back to being an elite scorer"
"If Koivu can make the leap to a 30-goal guy"
"If Bouchard and Latandresse can stay healthy"
"If the young defenseman can develop"

That's five already and we're barely past the first line.  All those "Ifs" are what had most of the world thinking a 10-12th place finish was in store.  Sure they shined us on for a few months, looking like they'd pull it off, but that's the thing about the "Ifs" over the course of a long season.  They're hard to sustain, and the chances of failure increase exponential with each one you add.

Where the wiggle room comes in on Three "If" Theory is the statments you're making.  Crazy and unexpected things happen in life, but at some point the question becomes how crazy is too crazy?  Say my statment about Heatley's season had been "If Dany Heatley scores 100 goals this season"?  Well then you're probably good with that "If" alone, maybe one more, and it's time to start printing postseason tickets...but you're also delusional.  "If I lost 20 pounds" and "If I won the Powerball" could be the criteria for my getting a date with Kate Upton, but that's a requirement that's nigh impossible (by that I mean the 20 pounds, it is March after all).

Point being, unreasonable "Ifs" are like cheating at golf, you can do it, but you're only fooling yourself.  You'll look ridiculous telling people you're a scratch golfer, then duffing one off the first tee, but no more that you would by uttering the phrase "If Ponder can just throw 40 TDs, the Vikes will be in the playoffs".  No sh*t Sherlock.

There are however, many borderline situations that deserves scrutiny in this regard.  Consider this season's Timberwolves team, and these Three "Ifs" about contending for the playoffs:

"If Ricky Rubio lives up to the hype."
"If Kevin Love takes the next step from All-Star to superstar."
"If Rick Adelman does an amazing coaching job."

Borderline plausible, but kind of getting out there on the edge, right?  I admit to being more negative than most, but assuming Love would be the best power forward in the game, Rubio would turn in a season of Top 10 PG play and Adelman would be in the coach of the year conversation?  That's not quite delusional homerism, but it is homerism writ large.  Change the question to making the playoffs and all of the sudden you're tossing "If Nikola Pekovic is a good NBA center" into the mix, and you've found a big time exception to the theory.  But as I said, these are just tea leaves, not absolutes.

In roundabout fashion, we return to where this whole post was supposed to be going, the Twins, and their laundry list of "Ifs".  By my count, the tally so far:

"If Mauer and Morneau can stay healthy and productive" (Being charitable by lumping those into one)
"If Pavano and Liriano can regain their 2010 form" (Ditto)
"If Scott Baker can put together a full season of what we've only seen from him a few months at a time"
"If Nick Blackburn can resemble a capable major league pitcher on a regular basis"
"If Denard Span's concussions and Ben Revere's arm don't derail our hopes for capable outfield play"
"If the 38-year old/Japanese free agent bust/perennially-hyped underachiever can offer something at short"
"If whoever these guys in the bullpen are can find a way to get the job done"
"If Matt Capps doesn't make me feel homocidal 2-3 times a week"
"If the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers and Angels all don't win 95-100 games"

Now that, my friends, is far too many "Ifs" to offer much in the way of hope.

But you know what?  It doesn't really matter.  Sure we'd all like to see a winner, and the Twins have pulled rabbits out of the hat before (albeit against weaker division opponents), but even if they don't make the playoffs, are we really that bad off?

I know that I'm not supposed to admit this, and perhaps it makes me a poor fan, but I'd rather watch a bad Twins team play at Target Field than a good one at the Metrodome.  Having a winning team to boot would be the best of both worlds, but at least if they're lousy, it won't be too tough to deal.

A day at the ballpark is once again fun around these parts and, at the risk of sounding like a Cubs fan, I'm going to enjoy mine win or lose.  But if it's not too much to ask, staying about .500 through the end of July would be appreciated.  Like I said, expectations.

The 2012 Minnesota Twins: Expect Mediocrity, Deal With Success!

If they want to use that slogan, I won't even charge them.

Happy New Year!

Fellow Midwesterners, our long regional nightmare is over, praise the Lord and pass the Pabst, because March is finally here.

It was a rough start to the week for me.  Following a riotously good time at my sister's wedding in Arizona, I was forced to depart 75 degrees and sun for 25 degrees and an impending snowstorm.  Woke up on Tuesday to deal with a 90-minute commute, courtesy of the inclement weather, which was immediately followed by my favorite high school hockey team having it's state tourney hopes extinguished on Wednesday evening.  This was February's final 'Eff you', and it was a good one.  But none of that matters now, because the new year is upon us, and the past was only prelude.
I know, you probably think January 1st the start of a new year, and most calendars would agree.  But once upon a time, when the world was centered around agrarian thinking, the 1st of March marked the beginning of a new cycle.  As discussed a few weeks ago, our current first two months were pretty much just filler, a few cycles of the moon spent waiting around, drinking and trying to keep warm, before the interesting activities started up again.  In other words, exactly the same as it is today.

Because we're all farmers in our own way, only instead of corn or soybeans, I'm harvesting fun, and every year is a bumper crop.  Forget about spring, summer, fall, etc. as well, (all arbitrary designations that convey little reliable meaning) and let's re-tool the seasons into something that actually makes sense:

Bracket Season: March 1st - April 30th 
In my estimaton, the currency of life is events, and the secret to it is trying to maximize the number of fun ones you're involved in.  This is why we all try to surround ourselves with interesting people who have stuff going on and (if you're any kind of decent human being) bring interesting things to the table ourself.  As the saying goes, "Shoot me, stab me, kill me, just don't bore me".  That's why this time of year rules, it brings events in spades.

Consulting the Offical Loserville List Of Reasons It's Acceptable To Drink Before Noon shows what I'm talking about:

1) Haven’t gone to sleep yet
2) On vacation*
3) Killing time in an airport**
4) Tailgating
5) Sunday brunch
6) Attending a sports championship game or tournament***
7) Viewing any sporting event that starts at or before 1 PM EST
8) Hunting/Fishing
9) Holidays (Thanksgiving, St Paddy’s, etc.)
10) Personal events/Celebrations (Weddings, funerals, birthdays)
11) More than 100 miles from home
12) Within the city limits of Las Vegas or any college town^
13) Participating in a leisure sports tourney (Golf, bowling, billiards, darts, etc.)
14) Killing a mean hangover^^
15) Divorce #
16) Job loss ##
17) Being diagnosed with a terminal illness
18) Armageddon (Over 6" of snow in less than 24 hours counts)
19) The Minnesota Vikings

*Must be actual traveling vacation, standard days off do not qualify.
**Void if traveling for business, drinking after noon still permissible.
***Full day qualifies, even if event starts after noon
^Applies to non-residents only, likely redundant to #11, but sometimes only one applies and you need to be covered
^^Void if required to work in fewer than 8 hours; 24 hours for airline pilots
#Valid for the longer of one week or two days for every 10% of wealth lost
##Valid for one week, then get your lazy butt up and find something new

Not only does this period feature two of the greatest sports tournaments known to man, it's also got Spring Break, St. Patrick's Day, Opening Day and myriad other events that could fall in somewhere on the list.  That's why it should be the lidlifter on any decently run calendar.

Patio Season: May 1st - June 30th
This one should be fairly self-explanatory, given that there are only 3 exceptional months (May, June, September) in this part of the country for outdoor dining and drinks.  Sure, you can do it at other times, but you run the risk of rain (April), suffocating humidity (July, August), unanticipated cold (October) and just general unpleasantness (other).  Not to mention that September is football season, and who has time for things like dining in areas without televisions during football season?  Best to maximize your patio time during this stretch.

Baseball/Cabin/Golf Season: July 1st - August 31st
It's hot, there's not much happening in sports, even the crappy network TV is on re-runs.  There are only three acceptable ways to spend a Saturday during these two months: On the course, at the ballpark or on a boat.  Frankly, given the fact that the option to travel and play golf in warmer climes exists much of the year, a trip to the lake should be everyone's first priority.  Minnesota and Wisconsin may get (deservedly) maligned for their terrible winters, but there is a little secret called lake living that, to my knowledge, can't quite be duplicated elsewhere.  As a matter of fact, I might have to amend the list to include "Trips to the lake", because it's sort of a vacation, but it's more a way of life.

Football Season: September 1st - October 31st
Nuff said.

Holiday Season: November 1st - December 31st
More football, gatherings with family and friends, eggnog, Patmas, the pre-homocidal urge part of winter, bulky clothing leaving one free to engage in gluttonous behavior, baskets of snacks showing up via UPS, neighbors dropping off trays of cookies, a bunch of days off from work, chesnuts, open fires, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, all capped off with gifts.  People who hate the holidays, just add puppies, hamburgers and breathing to your list, because it's over.  You may hate the mall, you may hate the crowds, but you may not hate the holidays.

The Rest: Do The Math
Skiing?  Snowmobiling?  Ice sculpting?  There are some ways to enjoy it, but every time it leaves, I'm glad it won't be back for another 10 months.

Now, let's get to the good stuff.

What's in a name?

Driving around the other day, I saw a restaurant named “Frankie’s”. This got me thinking about the names of things, and what they imply, because certain names only work for certain things. I mean, “Frankie’s” may be a fine name for a restaurant, but wouldn’t work nearly as well for a florist. This was further confirmed later in the evening when I mentioned the restaurant to a friend in passing, and he replied “that place had to be in a strip mall”. Indeed it was. Sometimes, you just know.

There have got to be thousands of businesses in the world that start with people’s names. Bars and restaurants are definitely the most common, seeming to be followed closely by auto mechanics and hair salons. But in truth, you can probably think of an example for just about anything. Last names are easy, if told you need to blindly choose between a meal at Pineida’s or Romano’s, you can probably figure out the type of fare served at each with no further information. First names are trickier, some fit and some don’t, depending on what type of commerce we’re talking about. Unless you live in South Boston or the Bronx, it’s doubtful you’ll be encountering Frankie’s Hair Salon anytime soon, and if you do, Frankie will likely be a large woman with garish fingernails and way too much makeup. At least that’s how I’m picturing her.

A lot of subtlety exists here, take one of America’s best known crafts stores, Michael’s. Would anyone stop in to buy glitter and other assorted cutesy items if the place was named Mike’s? Of course not, that would be ridiculous, Mike’s is the name of a hardware store, or if you want to irritate people, a bike shop. Michael’s Crafts? Well obviously. Mike’s Crafts? We’d better be talking about boats. Incidentally, this theory was almost blown up by the existence of Frank’s Nursery & Crafts, but the placement of the word ‘nursery’ there is key. This conjures an image of Frank, the old retiree who lives nextdoor and likes to work in his garden, seems to fit. I have a tougher time picturing Frank scrapbooking. Without the nursery, they would’ve had to name the place Frances’ Crafts, and a guy named Frances is a scrapbooker if ever there was one.

This phenomenon is perhaps best illustrated by the Joe/Joseph duality. Joe’s Crab Shack has paper placemats and goes for a beach-type feel. Joseph’s House of Crabs would have white tablecloths and a bathroom attendant. Would anyone ever consider buying a Joe Abboud suit at Joe A. Banks? Highly doubtful. But change them both to Joseph and you’re in business. Perhaps this resonates more with me because of my androgynous name, Pat. In fact the reason I know the meaning of the word ‘androgynous’ in the first place is because of that damned “It’s Pat” Saturday Night Live skit, which incidentally caused me to add a second ‘T’ to the end of my first name during the 3rd grade, in an attempt to masculinize it. That’s right, my first name was Patt for a few years there, even had it stitched on a jacket or two. To this day, I still have one friend who will greet me as “Paddie Two T’s”. In retrospect, I should’ve just gone with Patrick, but guys named Pat only get called that by family members and significant others. Seems cumbersome, and why should I have to give up my monosyllabic status because of a stupid, un-funny SNL skit that decided to bastardize my name at the worst possible time? I can still hear them at recess, “What’s that? It’s Pat.” Let’s move on before I start getting angry.

Admittedly, much of this post is a bit of a ripoff from this great George Carlin bit (apologies for the language, or if you happen to have one of the names mentioned), but thinking about businesses also makes it a bit different. Trying to recall odd combinations and perfect fits over the last day or so, the first that sprung to mind was my favorite breakfast restaurant, Fat Nat’s. I have never met Nat, so I cannot attest to him being fat, but I do know that if you ate there every day, you would be. The other side of the coin is Vincent A Restaurant, which by some accounts has Minneapolis’ best hamburger. Now it’s a great burger, that’s not the debate, and Vincent A is a fine name for a restaurant. It’s just that if you were playing word association, burger isn’t what would pop up when you see the name “Vincent A Restaurant”. Matt’s Bar on the other hand? Well there you go.

Two more quick name-related thoughts, as I’m not quite sure where this ramble is leading:

After attending the Minnesota Wild game last night, their name should be changed to the Minnesota Mild, not just for the alliteration, but because that’s what they truly are. Lately they lose a lot of shootouts, the ultimate “well, we lost, but I guess it’s not that bad” sorta moment. In other words, meh.

I was shocked to learn that Newt Gingrich was born in Pennsylvania, as Newt just seems like a quintessential Southern name. Then again, Mitt Romney sounds like a 19th-century baseball player, so maybe it’s best not to read too much into it.

As you can probably tell, the lack of entertainment from the sports teams in this town are causing my mind to wander further afield these days.

Happy Friday.

Shut up and play ball

So today is Valentine's Day, or as I like to refer to it, The Day Single People Sit Around Bars Staring At Each Other And Wondering What The Fatal Flaw Is.  It's almost like walking around a prison yard.

"What are you in for?"
"I get blackout drunk and start throwing things. You?"
"Insecure narcissist, rare combination, fatal to personal lives."

Make no mistake, if you're sitting someplace alone tonight, then you're doing life wrong.

The problem is, there are a whole host of other things that also indicate you're doing it wrong, but ironically these are the very things you need to do to ensure you're not alone on V-Day.  Going to a church instead of watching football, sitting through any show featuring singing, dancing or the word "housewives" and being spoken to as if you were a small, slow child are a few that can make solitude the preferable choice.  Matter of fact, depending on who you're dealing with, a swift kick in the nuts might be the preferable choice.

Not that any of these things are a constant part of a relationship, but odds are you will have to them, or things like them, on a regular basis should you hope to maintain one.  The great myth of the world is that men are somehow running things; spend a day with any couple and that notion becomes laughable.  Not that this is a bad thing, often times unsupervised men are a fairly self-destructive bunch.  Sure we've got some nice things on our resume, killing mammoths, building stuff, curing disease (not to mention all the mice and spider issues solved over the years), but generally seem to need that female GPS to keep things pointed in the right direction.

Take the Panama Canal, for example.  If left to their own devices, all the guys contracted to build it would've got down to Panama, started effing off, enjoying the warm weather, drinking, and nothing would've been accomplished.  Only the thought of their wife's reaction to them returning home after 6 months with no paycheck kept them on task, if not for that, no Canal.  You can see it on a small scale every day, I'd wager that 90% of the intelligent decisions men make are centered around making or keeping a woman happy.  The other 10% are based on the desire to afford a faster car or larger television.

Laugh if you want, but I'd bet anything the guy who ends up curing cancer is finally kicking it in the ass to finish medical school this semester because he needs to buy a wedding ring, or risk the woman he lives with walking.  That Evolution of Man painting should have a woman standing on the right side with her arms crossed, tapping her foot.  Again, I don't bring up this point to cause offense, paint women as shrewish, any of that.  Only to highlight an evolution is my own way of thinking, which is to say, the stuff I used to mock guys for doing doesn't sound so intolerable any more.  At least not when you consider the alternative.

Valentine's Day is a perfect example of the type of thing I used to rail against.  While you have to tip your cap to the savvy businesspeople who've marketed the concept, it is, by and large, a scam.  Prescribing a certain date on which tokens of affection are required to be exchanged is the perfect way to ensure you could jack the price up at exactly the right moment.  If Hallmark and Russel Stover throwing huge marketing budgets behind a hyped up "holiday" make it required, then Guiness and Jameson should do the same for St. Paddy's.  Unfortunately I don't think Car Bombs are ever going to be afforded the same mandatory status as roses (but I can dream!).

Sure, you can argue that it's a nice show of appreciation for your significant other, but isn't that what an anniversary is supposed to be for?  If you're an inconsiderate f*ck the majority of the year, do flowers and a nice dinner on a Tuesday in February tilt the scales?

In truth, this day means little in the big picture, but the options have been laid out quite clearly: Shut up and play ball, or protest and perish.  In the past, I've taken a stand on principle and gone the second route; I probably don't have to explain just how poorly this has served me.

Now it's time for fresh tactics.  All that I ask is when you see me at a Farmer's Market some fall Sunday, holding a purse, with that glazed/stifled irritation expression that most men perfected much earlier in life, take it easy.  Just smirk and nod, we'll both know I'm a fraud, be content in that knowledge.

But not the Housewive show, some things are too far beyond the pale, if forced to watch that, it's the black pill and don't look back.

A scattershot Friday

Some days, my brain is more of a shotgun than a rifle. This is one of those days…

• Watching football last weekend, they kept playing this McDonald’s commercial talking about how great the Egg McMuffin is. If you haven’t seen it, the gist was people saying “it’s the Egg McMuffin of cars” or “the Egg McMuffin of beach days”, the same way you’d say “it’s the Cadillac of hemorrhoid creams” or “the Rolls-Royce of body hair trimmers”. But here’s what I don’t get, if the Egg McMuffin is so great, why is my favorite breakfast item called a Sausage McMuffin with Egg? Shouldn’t it be an Egg McMuffin with Sausage? If not, then why is a regular Egg McMuffin not an Egg McMuffin with Canadian Bacon? Are we supposed to assume Canadian Bacon is implied in our breakfast foods? Seems a bit odd, given that this is America, if anything, regular Bacon should be implied. On a semi-related note, if you really want to piss off a Canadian, offer them some Canadian Bacon. 9 times out of 10, they will respond by angrily yelling “We just call it ham!”. High comedy.

• Do you ever get cut off in rush hour traffic by some idiot who thinks he’s going to weave his way out of ever having to stop? When that happens, do you ever root for the traffic in front of you to grind to a halt, adding to your own commute, but screwing over the self-important a-hole in front of you in the process? I do, in fact I also hope the lane next to us that he just merged out of starts flying along at the same time. Sure, I’m not getting where I’m going, but at least I get the enjoyment of thinking “well what do you know jackass, you’re no more important than the rest of us, now stop treating this freeway like an Olympic slalom course and eventually we’ll all get where we’re going”. You might think that’s dumb, but remember, a Pyrrhic victory is still a victory.

• A couple weeks ago, I was in the passenger seat of a car, driving back from an out-of-town hockey game, when the window next to me spontaneously shattered. There was no warning or explanation for this, it just shattered and fell into my lap as we were driving along the interstate. Sounded like a gunshot and scared the heck out of me, but beyond that there was no harm done. We jury rigged a solution, drove the last couple hours home, and now it’s just an amusing anecdote. It did however bring to mind a previous traumatic experience in an automobile, when I was driving and got stung just below the eye by a bee who flew through the window. That hurt like hell, had to pull over for a few minutes and collect my wits. Obviously that bee had some sort of personal vendetta, or was an insect assassin. I bring this up because I can’t decide which is the better pun, should it be referred to a Kamikaz-bee or a Bee-had?

• Who came up with the octagon for MMA fights? Was the thought process as simple as “we’ll market it as twice as good as boxing” or was it more nuanced? I like to picture it as being a sort of roundtable discussion:

“Johnson, the ring is played out, we need to differentiate our thing from boxing and wrestling”
“Gotcha boss, how about a circle? Like that classic Roman fighting pit sort of look?”
“Circles have been done to death Johnson, and how is an announcer going to sound saying it? This is their first time meeting in the circle? Sounds like the neighborhood kids getting together for a game of hide-n-seek”
“Good point as always sir. Pentagon is already taken, what about a hexagon?”
“Hexagon? Are you ----ing nuts? Who the hell is going to take us seriously with a hexagon???”
“Sorry, don’t know what I was thinking there.”
“You could be onto something though with the extra sides, how about an octagon? Step inside the octagon, I like that, take it to the focus groups and see how it tests”
“Excellent call sir, should we throw decagon in there to get a comparison as well”
“Don’t ever try to one-up me again Johnson”

• Cheez-Its are my favorite snack food, and my favorite Cheez-It is the slightly burnt one. They have roughly 73 different varieties of Cheez-Its available now, which begs the question: Why can’t I get a whole box of slighty burnt Cheez-Its?

• Last week, the punt returner for the San Francisco Forty-Niners dropped a couple of punts and began receiving death threats on Twitter. Later on, a guy who had posted one of these classy remarks claimed his account had been hacked. This got me thinking, how far away are we from someone threatening the life of the President on Twitter, then claiming they were hacked once the Secret Service shows up at their door? Has this already happened? I want details if it does, if only to hold the moron responsible up to scorn and ridicule. The lesson, as always, the internet is the death knell of civility.

• I like to imagine really good quarterbacks as being total jerks, even if they aren’t. It just makes watching football more fun for me to think that after some rookie drops a pass and jogs back to the huddle, Tom Brady turns to Wes Welker and says “Wes, please inform wide receiver #5 that one more play like that is going to land him back in the paint department at Home Depot. Also let him know that I will be addressing him as wide receiver #5 until he gives me a compelling reason to learn his actual name.” I dunno why, thinking about it just makes me chuckle.

• The other day at the grocery store, I witnessed someone returning produce. This seemed like the height of stupid customer behavior to me, taking the time to return a 79 cent cucumber that did not meet your rigorous quality standards. Sure we’ve all been burned by the avocado with the “Ready to Eat” sticker that was about a week away from actual ripeness, but it’s hard to fathom being compelled enough to return to the store for reparations. In addition, the situation I saw appeared to be an actual refund, not a simple exchange for a new cucumber. It was enough to make me consider walking over and clarifying the situation. Did the offended party stop liking cucumbers since the purchase was made? Did they simply change dinner plans? Or was it that they no longer trusted the stock in the produce department or that particular store? A tougher issue, what if you’d never had some type of fruit, say a pomegranate, purchased one to try it and discovered it wasn’t to your taste? Is the store obligated to accept an perfectly sound item that you rolled the dice on liking, just because it doesn’t agree with your palate? Caveat emptor, I say, but then I’ve never been a very discerning consumer.

Happy Friday

A sad tale that will make you want to shake your head in disgust

Watching two conference championship games wrap up yesterday in stunningly disappointing fashion, I was overcome by one thought: Thank goodness the Vikings weren’t playing today.

If they had been, is there any possible way they don’t come out on the short end? The simple fact that Billy Cundiff was wearing purple when he shanked a 32-yard tying field goal was enough to send a shudder down my spine. Had the Vikings been there, they would’ve played that role, or the one of San Francisco, inexplicably losing on two muffed punt returns. However the particulars work out, some teams win, and some teams break your heart, the way it actually unfolds is just details.  But as both games unraveled, you couldn't help but think, that is EXACTLY how we would've lost those games.

In a twisted way, that can make you sort of happy.  Rather than spending today dejectedly staring into space, we can simply offer condolences to the shattered Ravens and Niners fans out there who deserved better, but ended up with what they got. Of course not all of them deserved better, in fact I know of one Niner “fan” who deserves only ridicule and scorn. To protect his anonymity, we’ll just call him Fraudboy, as it’s an appropriate moniker, given how things went down.

Fraudboy is a friend of mine who I’ve been watching football with for many years. He’s a dedicated antagonist of Minnesota sports teams, even going so far as cheering lustily following some of the more crushing losses in state sporting history. Obviously this has put us at odds on several occasions, even resulting in some isolated incidents of physical violence. Nothing too serious, no bloodshed, just the general sort fisticuffs that are the natural consequence of acting like a d-bag. Sometimes you gotta tell somebody what time it is.

At any rate, Fraudboy enjoys sports as much as I do, even if his loyalties are confounding. Despite living his whole life in Minnesota, he hates hockey, loves basketball and counts the Niners and Lakers as his favorite teams. Despite living his whole life in America, he also despises baseball. So while the rest of us sit and root on the Twins on a May Sunday, he will carp and whine about the fact that playoff basketball is being missed.

Now I’m not saying that everyone needs to fall in lock-step with the local teams of the town they grew up in.  But if you don’t, then you’d better have a damn good reason, and above all, you’d better be consistent. I’ve never gotten much in the way of good reasons from this fellow, and I seem to recall periods during which other teams topped his list. But since the past decade has been one of solid affiliations, I was willing to mlet it go. Then yesterday happened.

As is our custom, we headed out to a bar for the early game, looking to grab a bite to eat and a couple beers before retiring to the couch. Fraudboy spent the majority of the time haranguing the rest of us for incorrectly predicting that New Orleans would end the 49ers season the previous weekend. Fine. He also loudly proclaimed that his squad would win the late game and advance to the Super Bowl, because, to quote “this isn’t the Vikings we’re talking about here”. Fine again. He was throwing back beers, having a grand old time, king of the world, holding court from his barstool. And it was fine.

What wasn’t fine was that, after all the talk, all the bravado, harassments and insults, Fraudboy took a seat on the couch…AND FELL THE F*CK ASLEEP!!! (Some may say passed out, but I’m being charitable here) Now I’ll grant you he made it through the first half just fine, and many of us have dozed off during a football game before, but to fall asleep when your favorite team is playing in a conference championship game? Floored would not be a strong enough word. Aghast comes to mind, as does disgusted. I know of no other fan who would ever let something like this happen. I even tried to wake him up by trying to land Cheez-Its in his mouth from across the room, scored a couple direct hits to the nose, but nothing.

Just know that I could fly overseas, eat a Thanksgiving dinner, down a bottle of NyQuil and listen to one of those white noise machines on the ‘Babbling Brook’ setting. If the Vikings were playing a playoff game, I can guarantee you, wide awake. I don’t bring this up because it makes me special, it’s a trait that every other fan in America shares, how does something like this happen?!?!?!?

This moment will never be lived down, and I do mean never. I managed to text just about everyone that Fraudboy has ever watched football with, complete with photos to prove my point. Next season, and for every season the rest of his life, any time Fraudboy utters a “we need to get the Niners game on”, it will be met with a stinging “Why? You feeling like a nap?”

The only question is, how to hammer the point home more completely?

A pillow, or better yet, one of those sleep masks, embroidered with the 49er logo?

Setting a bottle of No-Doz on the table at the bar every Sunday next football season?

Text messages at 7 PM every Saturday night reminding him to go home and get rested up so he can make it through the afternoon?

All I know is, when you open your mouth, you also open yourself up to all sorts of people just looking to throw those boasts back in your face. With eight months to plan, you can bet I’ll have something nefarious cooked up for all 17 weeks of next season.

Fraudboy, you’ve made a critical error my friend.

Flub-u-ary

We laughed, we cried, in some cases we hurled things (remote controls, expletives) at the television. But now, as we enter the last true football weekend of the season, it’s time to come to grips with the fact that next Sunday, there will not be a single NFL game.

Sure, if you’re a special kind of degenerate, you can place a bet on the Pro Bowl in order to give it some kind of meaning, but we all know a glorified exhibition when we see it. Even the Super Bowl, with all its build-up and pageantry, has a starkly different feel than a true NFL Sunday. Frankly the conference championship games moving back a few hours has made this week start to feel oddly bastardized, but there’s football on when it’s light outside, so I’m rolling with it.

The problem here isn’t really one of sports, but more so the dawning of the worst month of the year. Read up on the history of February some time, and you’ll see that it’s the black sheep of the months, oddly shoe-horned into whatever space in the calendar needed to be filled. In fact, I’m making the decision right now to officially revoke month status, as well as its name, terming it only “the period of time that must be endured between January and March”, shortened to “the period of time” or T-POT if you’re a real brevity fan.

There might be a lot of Roman historical mumbo jumbo out there explaining why T-POT is shorter than all of the real months, but it’s obvious to anyone who’s paying attention why that’s the case. Whoever was in charge of the calendar decision making in ancient times, we’ll call him Bill the Calendar Guy for our purposes here, was just looking for an excuse to whittle down the length of this impostor. Bill knew that he’d be stuck inside his mud hut for days on end, nothing but the same roasted mutton day after day, without a tomato or apple in sight, freezing his toga-wearing ass off every time he had to venture outside an empty the chamber pots. In other words, it’s just like today, the dead of winter has sucked for time immemorial.

So being the sharp guy that he was (because after all, they don’t put you in charge of calendar decisions if you’re not sharp, you might turn swap Tuesday with Saturday and all hell breaks loose), Bill made a call, and slapped a couple of those days onto other months at T-POT’s expense. Even if nothing had changed on March 1st, you could still flip that calendar and feel like there was hope. Like many a great man in history, Bill understood the power of marketing in human psychology; if he were alive today, there’s no doubt he’d be making a fortune selling Ed Hardy t-shirts and Lucky Brand jeans.

Subsequent decision makers followed the lead of this visionary, and refused to put anything worthwhile within the bounds of T-POT. Groundhog Day? Valentine’s Day? President’s Day? Are you kidding me?  Much like the definition of a sport, there is the definition of a holiday, and it's quite simple: Do people get work off?  Not just government employees and bankers either, I’m talking about the vast majority of the working population. With all due respect to America’s presidents, what you have here is not a holiday. I wish it were a holiday, put it to a vote and I’d give it a yea in a minute, but as it sits right now, it’s just another Monday. Granted a Monday with less traffic. Sorry.

(In my wonderings about this topic, I also stumbled across the interesting fact the T-POT is National Bird Feeding Month. Are you f*cking with me here? We’re going to have a celebration of feeding and watching birds during a month when they flee the northern half of the country? What a swell idea! Tell you what, it’s Hockey Day in Minnesota tomorrow, but what do you say we move it the second Saturday in July? Sure none of the teams will be playing, so there won’t be any games to watch, but we could all go sit in arenas wearing sandals, how’s that for novelty. I guess the upshot is, because the birds are having a tough time, you’re supposed to offer them extra food and shelter. Thing is, I don’t see a whole lot of birds whipping around my neighborhood in the dead of winter, they leave town for more hospitable climes. In that sense, we probably could all learn a thing or two from the birds, I mean beyond the hilarity of taking a sh*t on someone’s freshly washed car.)

Some people will try to point out that the Super Bowl occurs during T-POT, but that’s a new development, and one coldly calculated by the NFL to build additional hype. They want to throw the first week of this time frame a bone, so be it, but it’s definitely not natural.

Anyway, the month formally known as February sucks, and it will be here before you know it, good luck.


NFL Picks

2-2 last week on winner, but 0-4 against the spread, this will not stand. 

Karma finally paid back the Saints for the NFC Championship game from two seasons ago, only problem was, the Vikings were the beneficiaries.  I don't blame myself for that one.

The Patriots scored twice before the Broncos got off the bus, and destroyed my thoughts of a cover; I do blame myself for that one.  Let the Tebow mysticism of the past few weeks get inside my head, forgetting about the Brady mysticism of the last decade.  Dumb.

This week, I'm more confused than ever, but the good news is, only two opportunities to be wrong.

Baltimore @ New Englad (-7)
I'm trying to think of someone on the Ravens who can cover Rob Gronkowski, and failing.  I'm also trying to reconcile how all those "New England can't win a championship with this defense" stories from a month ago have somehow been rendered moot.

The pick: New England 33, Baltimore 24


New York Giants @ San Francisco (-2.5)
Feels like the Giants, but isn't Eli Manning due for a couple bad interceptions?  And isn't the likely place for that to happen on a damp and windy day in San Francisco?  The other side of the coin is, if Alex Smith plays successfully against a defense that stymied Aaron Rodgers, is it time to sell your possessions and live out the final months of human existence on a beach somewhere?

The pick: San Francisco 23, New York Giants 20

So hey, that means Ravens vs. Giants in the Super Bowl.  Enjoy the games and drink deep the cup of football on this final weekend.