football thoughts
1) I’m telling you, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to football starting at 10am. After 28 seasons of watching the first game start at 1pm, my internal clock is all of out whack on Sundays; when I’m watching the first game, I crave nachos and Guinness, even though it’s 10am; when the second game rolls around at 1pm, I feel a little drunk and horny, even though I’ve probably had two beers and have not experience erotic penile stimulation in many months; halfway through the “night” game, it’s 7:15pm in LA – and I feel bombed and exhausted and in need of bed. I just don’t think this is going to change.
2) I couldn’t be happier about New England getting blasted by the Dolphins. Last week, Randy Moss said something to the effect of “Y’all better recognize – the Patriots are 2-0.” Well, we all recognize that a) the Jets gave you that game; b) Matt Cassell stinks.
But you know what fans of the Pats should be thinking right now? “Meh.” Between the Red Sox, Celts, and Pats, all I’ll concede to you is “Meh.” A Boston fan dealing with a potential “lost” Patriots season is like the Sultan of Brunei learning that one of his fifteen hot virgin wives went on a retreat to “find herself” and now doesn’t want to fuck his overweight ass anymore. “Meh.”
3) I know I might take a lot of flak for this, but to me, it’s not even close: Burger King’s breakfast options and food far surpasses McDonald’s. I mean, have you had the sausage egg and cheese croissant? And the tater tot-style hashbrowns of BK far surpasses the hash brown brick of McDonald’s. Yes, the Egg McMuffin is wonderful, but pound for pound, I’ll take Burger King for breakfast over McDonald’s any day.
4) This sums up my fantasy football season thus far: I have four leagues. This week, I played against the guy who had Ronnie Brown in three of them. I’ll go 2-2 this week, but I also played against Michael Turner twice in Week One (and I have him in one league). Just a tough opening schedule for Dragulas/What Are You From?/Knorben Knussen/Nass.
5) Three teams I’m not buying into: Washington (can’t get the memory of that first terrible game against the Giants out of my head), Tennessee (media darlings right now with the run offense and good defense, but…meh), San Fran (yeah, just not ready for J. T. O’Sullivan to be a playoff quarterback).
6) Three teams I am buying into: Buffalo (why not?), Atlanta (not saying they’re a playoff team, but they’ve already exceeded expectations and a seven win season isn’t out of the question), Denver (man-crush on Jay Cutler detailed last week; they’ve already beat SD once and have four games total against KC and Oakland, so you’ve already banked five wins right there).
7) MJD: Sorry I doubted you. It will never happen again.
8 ) My roommate Mark got some Omaha Steaks package recently, and included in the package were some hot dogs. My roommate Mark does not like hot dogs. Guess who does? This guy right here. I consumed three of these astoundingly delicious hot dogs whilst watching football on Sunday and boy…if you own stock in Omaha Steaks, it’s going to go up – rapidly.
9) I’m officially excited about the Eagles. Last week, all offense, little defense; this week, all defense, little offense. God help the league if we should figure out how to get both going at the same time. I don’t really know what to say about that game. The defense looked better than it has in ages and maybe the Eagles are catching up with the rest of the league and realizing that long gone and the “stop the run, and you will win days.” In today’s NFL, strike the sheppard and the flock will scatter (or something like that): hit the QB early and often and your chances of victory are greatly improved.
10) Not that this should be taken as Bible, but after last week’s games, Dr. Z’s power rankings went: 1) Dallas; 2) Pittsburgh; 3) Philly. So the Eagles lost a nail-biter at Dallas and absolutely destroyed a good Steelers team. Again, take it for what you will.
11) Oh, and B-Dawk: Sorry I doubted you. It will never happen again.
12) LJ Smith…man, you are bad at the game of football. I think when he got surgery on his knee last year, they also removed his hands and replaced them with breasts.
13) I have an old-school Randall Cunningham Eagles jersey that I’ve been wearing for two or three seasons now while I watch games. I’m not going to stop wearing it, but it’s one thing to rock it in a crowded bar with five or six of your buddies in similar regalia, and quite another to wear it sitting in your living room alone while screaming “C’mon baby!” and “FUCK!” about every twelve minutes. It’s already gotten weird looks from my roommates and their friends – there may be some sort of intervention around Week Nine.
(I even actually did a load of laundry on Sunday morning so that the jersey would be ready for the 1pm (PST) game. Normally, I would have just worn it dirty, but it was at the bottom of my laundry bin and it was a particularly active week in the “masturbating into old boxers” department, so after a week on the bottom of in the laundry bin, in the dark, in my closet, with all the load-cradling boxers, well, let’s just say I could almost see little bearded faces asking for cream chipped beef in the mesh of the jersey. So yeah, I needed to wash it.)
14) A friend of mine, a lady, recently joined an internet dating site. She’s only been emailing with gentlemen so far, but her first “date” was a coffee date scheduled for this Sunday. When I heard about this on Sunday morning, I said, “Let me get this straight: This guy, who you met on eharmony, wants your first date to be coffee on a Sunday afternoon during football season? Like, while actual football games are on? Do you really want to date a guy who’s willing to forsake a Sunday full of football to meet a girl he met on the internet for coffee?” I was joking when I said this – though if I were a chick, a prerequisite for a guy would be that he has to love sports – but then my friend went ahead and canceled her date because of what I’d said.
In the long run, I’m sure I saved her a lot of trouble. Ladies, if a guy wants your first date to be during a football Sunday or a major sporting event, just run away, right away, and save yourself the trouble of learning about his secret relationship with his co-worker Hans eight years from now.
15) Two things from my fantasy football preview that made me look like a genius:
- Cleveland stinks. I told you. To be honest, I can’t even brag about this, since I’m not sure how anybody with a basic knowledge of football could look at that Cleveland team, look at all their overperformers in 2007, look at their schedule, and say, “Oh yeah – playoff team.” I will be surprised if they win more than five games.
(And I love the city of Cleveland and its fans. I’ve even been looking at apartments in Cleveland on craigslist in my spare time, thinking it would be a good fit for me, as I am chubby and like cold weather, beer and cheap real estate.)
- I told you that there was value to be had in the backfields of Seattle, Houston and Cincy. I have Julius Jones (140 yards, 1 TD this week) on two teams, Steve Slaton (116 yards, 1 TD) on all four, and Chris Perry (74 yards, 1 TD) on two. I’m not saying these guys are going to finish among the top ten in RBs, but if you took my advice, you have some pretty good RB3s or RB4s right now.
16) I did so little this weekend that on Sunday, not only did I leave the house only once, only to go to Burger King, but I honestly don’t think I even looked in the mirror one time. I’m totally serious about this. There could have been a finch leaving in my bird and I wouldn’t have seen it. There’s “letting yourself go” and then there’s what I’m doing. I haven’t decided if it’s really impressive or really sad.
17) In addition to leaving the couch on Sunday from 10am until 8pm only to cook a hot dog and poop (twice), for $7 more a month, my roommates and I recently got 50 more DirecTV channels, including Biography and ID (“Investigation Discovery”). I have watched more murdery shows over the weekend – including but not limited to three episodes “Most Evil”, biographies of Andrew Cunanan, John Wayne Gacy and BTK, and several old murder-related “Datelines” – than I have in the past four months. It was probably my best weekend out in LA yet.
(And for the second weekend in a row, I did not shave once, rocking a neck beard from Friday morning until Monday morning. A full neck beard, a dusty 96 Lincoln Town Car, and feet black from not wearing shoes [I would say that I wore shoes for maybe two hours from the time I got home from work on Friday until the time I got ready for work on Monday morning]. Should I just sign up for the Sex Offender Registry now? I mean, I have the time now, and there’s a chance I won’t later.)
18) My old roommate and the only guy friend I have in LA (who I actually see more than once every two months), Brian, works in the entertainment industry for a celebrity news show and has for years. So he’s seen in fair share of celebrities, since that’s part of his job. The most beautiful woman he’s even seen in person? Faith Hill. I could see that, but she’s a little too wholesome for me; I like my women with a bit of desperation in their eyes, you know what I mean?
19) I am really tempted to write something about some other Philadelphia sports teams, but I dare not, lest I jinx them.
20) For a year I lived at 95th and 3rd in this tremendous monolith of post-college milieu called Normandie Court (“When You’re Out of College but Not Ready For the Real World: Normandie Court!”). That year, from the summer of 2004 to the summer of 2005, I worked some long hours and would take the 4-5-6 train from way downtown all the up to 96th Street, and at least twice a week, always about 8:30pm at night, I’d stop in the corner pizza place and get a slice or two to take home for dinner.
The service was terrible and the wait interminable; after working for ten hours and taking the local train for 45 minutes, all I wanted was my two goddamn slices. In theory, the whole thing should have gone down in three to five minutes, but in practice, I’d wait for at least ten, usually longer.
As those hot August nights, when the heat from the open pizza ovens was enough to make me swoon in my Banana Republic khakis and my Brooks Brothers button-down, would bleed into September and its first cool breaths of autumn, I’d stand there in the pizza place, staring at that TV, always tuned in to the Yankees, catching ten or more minutes of the game. They mostly seemed to be at home at these times, so I’d see the black of centerfield as the pitcher took signs from the catcher, the blue padding of the backstop, and the thousands and thousands of New Yorkers clad in their finest Yankee hats and jerseys.
And as someone who grew up with a passion for sports but whose sports teams lacked any pedigree or any great sense of history (think: 10,000 losses, snowballs at Santa), I felt two things. Jealousy: All those fans, rooting for that great team, a threat every year to bring home another championship to their overflowing trophy case, just another accolade to add to their legacy. Something like pride: Four miles north from where I stood in that crappy, slow-poke pizza place, Yankee Stadium, all those fans, all that history, all there and right at that moment as I waited for my regular and pepperoni slices, alive – I’d swear I could feel that stadium shake when Jeter blooped and single into center.
This is how I’ll remember Yankee Stadium: waiting for my pizza, watching that little TV, and realizing how lucky everybody is.
