While reading an article on ESPN.com about the “10 players who excel at scare tactics“, I noticed the ad to the right on the page.
I see these IQ related ads all the time on the web, but I’ve never known until now how important they are. Tony Romo’s IQ dropped 10 points in the time it took for ESPN to put up 2 ads! Imagine what state he’ll be in by the time his finger is healed!!
Except for a rebellious period in my youth when I was a Habs fan, I've been a Leafs fan the whole time, and it's been hard.
But I'm going on record here, in the face of all my Ottawa Senator loving "friends" out there (who only get the quotes when it comes to hockey) that I'm not giving up. I love the Leafs … and I'm not giving up.
This is the year. The year they go all the way. Even though they suck.
Problem was, I couldn't remember exactly how it went. I knew it was something along the lines of "You have to ride the horse that got you there." That didn't sound right. Mike suggested, "You have to dance with the horse you rode in on" which sounded better though vaguely disturbing at the same time.
In desperation I turned to Google, where I did a search on "you have to * with the * you " and I got some pretty varied results, including:
- you have to deal with the cortex you have to work on
- you have to deal with the public, you’re bound to have a hassle or two
- you have to stick with the lifestyle you have chosen for your character
- you need to replace with the cracked exe
- you have to replace with the folder, where you hold your inf driver files
- you need to comply with the law when you ship sensitive or strategically controlled goods to destinations outside Canada
- you have to downgrade ur psp with the homebrew downgrade
- you have to fight with the police, you have to fight with the prosecutors
- you need to deal with the dragon you need to slay
- you have to deal with the avatar you were given
- you have to race with the Chocobo Trainer in Calm Lands.
- you have to answer with the Peekamo id you get on the message
- you have to piss with the dick you have
- you have to fight with the woman you love it might as well feature a bitchen guitar solo
All so very true. I didn’t find the one I was looking for though — anyone have any suggestions?
Last night while we were out with Marisa, I saw that the women's curling championship was on TV, and amidst the riveting action (seriously) I noticed that there was something unusual about curling that I hadn't noticed before.
Everyone on either team was wearing their jackets. When they showed highlights from other matches, everyone was wearing what basically amounted to casual winter wear.
It got me thinking — is there any other sport where competitors dress like curlers?
There are a lot of winter sports, but usually, at least these days, competitors wear thermal singlets or skin tight suits. Or padding. Or costumes. When you think about it, winter sports are pretty unusual in their outfits.
And then there's curling, where people are wearing winter coats.
First, it means unconditionally hating everyone that your team has any sort of rivalry with. Specifically, that means anyone who your team plays regularly, or any team that breaks any record of your team, or any team that has beaten your team in the playoffs. More generally, it means any other team that your team has ever played and not crushed.
New England meets every specific criteria for my fan-based hatred. They are in the same division as my Dolphins, Tom Brady broke a bunch of Dan Marino's records this year, they beat the Dolphins handily this season and worse — they were on the verge of matching the one record I thought no one would ever break, the '72 Dolphins' perfect season. In fact, if they had won the Super Bowl, they would have surpassed the 72 Dolphins, because they had to play more games.
It could not happen. Not on my watch. Not as long as sitting on a couch in Canada screaming at a TV had any impact on the outcome of a football game!
I'm sure you all know the outcome by now, it was a heck of a game, and the Giants outplayed the Patriots to take home the trophy that I will admit the Patriots deserved. I can say that because the world is right and good today.
In other news… be sure to click here to order 19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots from Amazon. It's not yet available for release, but get your order in the queue now!
P.S. Matej, this one’s for you — no more looking at that bajingo couch.
The results were humourous. Turns out my 20 years of non-golfing did not improve what was already a horrible golf game.
Fast forward to last Monday night, when I went to my first golf lesson, received as a gift from my wonderful wife. It was a beginner class, with only five people. I was quite worried that the other people would be too good and intimidate me, but fortunately, they weren't holding back on the definition of beginner in this class. I think a couple of them were unsure which end of the club to hold.
The first lesson was actually very helpful. We spent the lesson chipping, which was pretty much the only part of my game that wasn't a comical disaster, yet I learned enough that I would bet my chipping is at least five times better.
My instructor looks like he's about 16, so in some ways, it was a little intimidating to get lessons from him. He also had some wonderful comments that made me feel so much better, like:
Whippersnappers these days.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I love modern art, but sometimes I have difficulty as it gets more, I won’t say obscure, but … modern. Unlike my lovely ladywife, I don’t have any issues with very abstract art like Mondrian or Pollock — in fact, I love it. Once the art starts becoming more installation-y and very abstract and starts feeling pretentious that’s when it becomes harder to relate to.
During our second floor of modern painting and sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art, things were starting to get rough. We had left the Van Gogh and Matisse and Klimt and moved into and then past Mondrian and Pollock and Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. It was getting harder to keep Timmi’s eyes from rolling, but I was doing my best.
I was telling her about Bluebeard, by Kurt Vonnegut, and the lengths it goes to to describe what is art and what is not in the abstract expressionist movement, and just when I felt like I was making a little headway, we came around the corner and saw the piece to the right, called “Eurasia Siberian Symphony 1963 by Beuys”. Maybe the picture isn’t clear, so I’ll describe it…. it’s a goat/donkey on stilts with a balance beam attached to its fur and a triangle dangling from it in front of a blackboard with a polygon and some words written on it.
Obviously, it’s considered a master work of art, or it wouldn’t be in MoMa, but from a timing perspective, it couldn’t have been worse for me. It’s pretty hard to argue the deeper meaning of art, turn the corner, see this puppy, and still be able to continue your conversation with a straight face.
We decided to go to the photography floor after that.
We had a great day overall, which I suppose is getting repetitive and boring to read about so I’ll tell you a story from dinner that is at least a little weird.
We were in a pizza place in Little Italy enjoying a simple pizza and trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation going on behind us, but it was impossible.
The guy behind us had a lot of theories about a lot of things and he loved to talk. The one that I remember though was his rant about the way the NFL has been treating Michael Vick. It was way too harsh. After all, he figured, all Vick had done was kill some dogs … and pit bulls at that! Have you seen pit bulls, he asked, they’re the meanest ugliest dogs there are, and they’re just dogs!
After all, in this country, and I will go into quotes here, “You can kill a man. You can string him up and hang him. You can drag him in chains from the back of a car. OJ Simpson, he killed those people. But you can’t kill some dogs?”
I wanted to turn around and say that I was pretty sure that you couldn’t kill a man and drag him behind a car and NOT get suspended by the NFL, but I really didn’t think the point would hit home.
Today was an exhausting day and to be honest, I think it was probably one of the easier ones we’re likely to have here. I’m a little scared.
We took a cruise around Manhattan, walked around Central Park and the Upper West Side, then went to a Yankees / Red Sox game.
I actually hate both the Red Sox and the Yankees, so I was thinking I could boo them both. Then I saw the section we were sitting in. It was about half Boston and half New York fans and it felt like we were sitting in a war zone. Not some clean and nice warzone either, like something from Red Dawn. No no no. This was scary, real, ugly war. Booing was not an option for the polite Jays fans lost in a sea of Boston and New York holy warriors.
We saw someone puke on a family in front of them, then ejected after the entire section stood up and pointed at him chanting “A–hole!” at him –vigilante justice at the baseball stadium!
We saw about 10 other people ejected for various crimes. We also saw two women from a couple of rows ahead of us ejected for flashing the crowd. Sadly, we did not see the flash, but we heard the reaction from the men around us, which was best described as a collective, “OH!” blurted in that distinctly New York way.
These were ejections by cops by the way, not ushers, like at Skydome.
Yankees Stadium for a baseball fan is a history laden, special place. The hot dogs are better (way better) the grass is greener (and real) and there is a sense of awe that comes over you when you look around at the monuments and think of the greats who played here. I’m really glad we went.
That being said (and given that they’re tearing the place down next year) I am not going to go again. I’ll be honest, it was a pain to get tickets to, they weren’t well-organized, the fans were … well… barbarians, and even though there are 3 subway lines serving it, getting there and back was a huge pain.
They sure were good hot dogs though.
I have more stories about the game and whatnot, but I’ll save them.
Still laid out on the couch, and Arrested Development made a reference to "diving into second base", and although I was familiar with what it meant, I wondered, "Does Wikipedia have an entry for it?" and they do!
In other news, I can't believe Fox canceled this show. It was the smartest, funniest show ever.
Whales at Risk, WWF Warns, was the headline.
It's not a funny topic. It's saying that whales in the arctic are at risk due to global warming and their native waters getting too warm.
Of course, what my BRAIN read was something else entirely.
See, to me, even though the World Wrestling Federation lost their lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund over the use of the acronym WWF, I still read World Wrestling Federation whenever I see WWF.
I have a confession to make to people. I used to be a wrestling fan. I knew it was fake, I knew it was stupid, yet I still looked forward to it every week. It didn't matter that the acting was horrible, the moves were ridiculous and the muscles were steroid enhanced, there was something about the primitive drama of it all that was appealing to me. When I read the article in the Globe, the entire thing was being read by Randy "Macho Man" Savage's voice. If you know the voice, try it out, it makes the article much more amusing.
Did you know that Randy Savage was a minor league ballplayer? He was a catcher who blew out his shoulder and learned to throw with his other arm in an attempt to salvage his career. Imagine that for a moment. I feel like a spaz if I try to use a mouse with my left hand, I can't imagine throwing a ball in a professional league with my left hand.
Did you know that Randy Savage and Leapin' Lanny Poffo (the Poet Laureate of the WWF) were brothers?
Just a couple samples of the many useless wrestling related facts sitting useless in my brain. Let me know if you want any more!