Well, blog me down!

I yam what I yam!

TIME TO EXHALE…
Man, I am so glad the holiday season is over!  Like I wrote in my last post, I’m growing to dread the end of the year more and more, even though it’s supposed to be a real happy time.  To me, it’s nothing but stress and hustle and hassle.  The first week of January always re-charges my batteries, thankfully.  And I’ve officially decided to forego my annual “Asshole Of The Year” chronology—I’ve already sufficiently ripped on these people anyway, and I’m just about sick of re-hashing 2009—time to move on, already.

One last thought, tho:  In all the year-end reviews of famous people who passed away in ‘09, I saw a listing entitled "Untimely Hollywood Deaths".  Other than Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Disco and a few others, is there really such a thing as a timely death?

AN OXY-MORON OR JUST A PLAIN MORON?
Rush Limbaugh was said to be in “good spirits” after his little hospital scare in Hawaii last week.  The Big Fat Idiot and “good spirits” are definitely a contradiction in terms…

NO TIME FOR LOSERS…
…because I AM THE CHAMPIONS!  Congratulations to me and my Sweet Bippies fantasy football team for winning the whole she-bang last weekend.  I was the #2 playoff seed, and I trailed my worthy opponent, the #1 seed, by 20 points heading into the Minnesota/Chicago Monday Night game, but thankfully he had no one in that game and my man Adrian Peterson of the Vikings came through for me, big-time.  What’s ironic is that I pulled a Brett Favre and came out of “retirement” to play again this season.  This would be my third fantasy football champeenship, the first coming in 2002 with my “Holland’s Comet” franchise at the K.C. Star (for which I actually won money!), followed the next year with another title in Yahoo’s free leagues with a team I dubbed the “Matriculators” in honor of the late Hank Stram.  I know fantasy sports are for geeks, but it’s good clean (and free) American fun, and I enjoy competing with other guys who know what they’re doing.

GET WELL, WES
One of my most productive Bippies, Wes Welker of the Patriots, suffered a nasty knee injury yesterday in Houston on the third play of the game which most likely will end his season.  They’re saying he has a torn ACL and MCL, and what’s weird is he wasn’t even touched on the play—his knee just gave out on him.  I strained ligaments in my right knee back in ’85 and that hurt like hell—I can only imagine what tearing ligaments feels like.  Damn shame—Welker is one of good guys in the NFL, even though he plays for those evil Patriots.

WHERE THE HELL WAS THIS ALL SEASON, GUYS?
The Kansas City Chefs suddenly looked like a Super Bowl-caliber team yesterday, after four months of general ineptitude, whooping the Denver Broncos 44-24 in their first win ever at Mile High Stadium II.  Running back Jamaal Charles set a new team record for rushing yards in a game (259), blowing Larry Johnson’s previous mark of 211 clean out of the water.  Equally-impressive was linebacker Derrick Johnson picking off two passes and returning them for TDs in the second half, a feat only done 24 other times in NFL history.  Even sweeter, the win knocked Denver out of the playoffs, which is always fun to do.  While the Chefs did double their win total from last season, I still think this was a totally-wasted year—we can only hope this off-season’s personnel moves (both players and coaches) will produce better on-field results next season.  The 4-12 record nets K.C. the fourth pick in April’s draft, so there’s a ray of hope right there…

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST
Last night’s NFL season finale between the Jets and Bengals was also most likely the finale for Jimmy Hoffa’s alleged final resting place, Giants Stadium in the Joysey Meadowlands.  The Jets and Giants will move nextdoor next season into their as-yet-to-be-named multi-gazillion-dollar stadium, which is near completion.  The new joint dwarfs the current one and looked quite impressive in the aerial shots NBC provided last night, and unlike Giants Stadium, the Jets are equal partners instead of mere tenants.  Personally, I think the Jets should have their own home stadium, but their attempts to snag one in Manhattan earlier in the decade proved futile.

Giants Stadium was the first place the G-Men could truly call home after many years of living a nomadic existence of sorts, playing home games at the venerable Polo Grounds and old Yankee Stadium, only to be kicked out of the latter for its major renovation after the 1972 season.  They spent the next three seasons in the twilight zone, playing two years at New Haven’s Yale Bowl in ’73-’74 and sharing Shea Stadium with the Jets in ’75 (shades of irony there) before the home where L.T., Phil Simms, Eli and Big Tuna would soon roam opened in ’76.  The stadium was also home to the short-lived New Jersey Generals of the ill-fated USFL in the mid-‘80s, as well as the mighty Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League (Pele and the boys would pack the place quite often during their ’70 heyday) and Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls (nee Metrostars), not to mention more than a few Bruce Springsteen concerts.  The J-E-T-S—Jets-Jets-Jets joined the fun in ’84 when they deemed Shea to be substandard, and what was initially intended to just be a temporary stint in the Meadowlands wound up being permanent.

Even though its seating bowl and layout were clearly modeled after our own Arrowhead Stadium here in K.C., Giants Stadium isn’t nearly as distinctive or striking as the ‘Head, and I always found it a rather boring stadium to watch games on TV from.  Giants Stadium might as well have had a dome, because it seems all closed-in, while Arrowhead is more open and airy.  GS also seems very poorly-lit, and the glare from the lights off the old AstroTurf and even the current FieldTurf surface rendered some night games almost unwatchable, especially when it rained.  Even when they replaced the AstroTurf with the temporary real grass that was trucked-in on palettes in the late ‘90s, it didn’t really make the place any more tele-genic.  The stadium’s exterior is very utilitarian and Spartan too—i.e., hardly a sexy stadium at all—so I can’t say as I’m all that sorry to see it go.

UNCLEAR OF THE CONCEPT?
Was channel-surfing Saturday afternoon around 3:30 and landed on UHF Channel 50, our local Ion-TV affiliate.  The network formerly known as PAX was founded by one Lowell Paxson, who was appalled by all the sex and violence on network TV and decided to create his own network devoid of such vices, and fill his programming schedule instead with Christian programming and wholesome family shows (think “Growing Pains”, “Little House On The Prairie”, etc.).  All well and good, I suppose, but guess what was airing when I dropped in the other day—none other than Death Wish V!  Ah, yes, a gory Charles Bronson shoot-em’-up—now that’s fine family fare, ain’t it?  And surely on a Saturday afternoon, there couldn’t possibly be any young and impressionable kids tuned in, right?  Let me guess, next Saturday’s matinee feature on Ion will be Showgirls…or maybe the Porky’s trilogy…

Even though I liked Bronson, I gave up on the Death Wish film franchise after the third one—you can only do so many variations on a theme, and the flicks got progressively stupid-er with plots that were thinner than Ron Howard’s hair.

I DON'T MEAN TO NIT-PICK...
...but is it really necessary to post church closings on TV during inclement weather?  Unlike school, attending church is a fully-optional activity, and it seems to me that all one needs is a little common sense to determine whether to go or not.  And after all, the Lord is well aware that it snowed—He's the one who made it happen, right?  Or does He only cause hurricanes and tornadoes?

And in another example of our ever-diminishing society, even the school closings now have on-screen corporate sponsorships on some TV stations here.  Oy!

LATHER, RINSE, RE-PETE
Some South Florida children’s advocacy group has its collective panties in a wad over The Who’s upcoming halftime performance at the Super Bowl, because of Pete Townshend’s brush with the law over kiddie porn charges in 2003.  They want the band punted (sorry!) from the game, claiming Pete shouldn’t be allowed in the country because he had to register as a sex offender in England, even though he was cleared of all wrongdoing in the case, and his name came off that list after five years.  Uhhh, folks, The Who has toured the U.S. at least twice since 2003, and were honored at Kennedy Center as well—where was all the protesting and bitching then?  The NFL, to its credit, is not changing the halftime show, and the band will play as scheduled.

It chafes my hiney no end when these grandstanding do-gooder groups come out of the woodwork and use the Super Bowl (or the Oscars or Olympics or any other high-profile event) to further their cause, like when the native Americans pitch a fit about Indian team nicknames every time the Redskins make the Super Bowl.  If they’re so dedicated to their heritage, then how come they aren’t out protesting at some routine weeknight Chicago Blackhawks game in November or Cleveland Indians game in June?  Because they don’t get no attention that way.  Meantime, it seems to me if these child advocators spent more time going after those who produce and supply the kiddie porn in the first place instead of worrying so much about those who view it, maybe they’d make a little progress toward eliminating the problem, but they don‘t have a fucking clue about how to stop it, do they?

Btw, by “do-gooder” I’m not referring to people who do good things—certainly nothing wrong with that—but rather these phonies who act important and want to appear to be doing good (“save the children”, “save the this” and “save the that”) when in fact, it’s just another dog-and-pony show.

POTTY MOUTHS!
I never noticed until this week that the Jefferson Airplane song "We Can Be Together" (from 1969's Volunteers album) contains the line "Up against the wall, motherfuckers."  Shows you how much I've been paying attention all these years—I always thought it was a love song rather than a war protest tune!  That album must have had great difficulty getting airplay back in the day, because another song contains the Grace Slick line “doesn’t mean shit to a tree.”  More to come soon about the Airplane/Starship franchise—I'm all but finished reading the book about them.

LADY LOOKS LIKE A DUDE?Tell the truth, now—does Susan Boyle not look like Matthew Perry in drag in this photo?  If they do a biopic film about Boyle, he’d be my first choice to portray her!