The Belly Check

We Do Baseball Today

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:00:44 GMT

Check this out... There Is No Joy In Mudville... Mighty Casey Just Got Beaned at 115 MPH

Montezuma's Revenge?

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:47:46 GMT

A friend of this page has some useful information about the Pat's loss in the Super Bowl.

It might seem wild, but it isn't. Duke once lost a title game, partially due to their best player suffering from diarrhea(?). When they played the same team the following season, they beat them.

Did the Patriots literally shit the bed in the Super Bowl?

They were listless, a step behind the play, easily overpowered, and faded as the game progressed. The best offense in NFL history only got 14 points on a team they had surged past 30 points against about a month earlier.

The previous game was a high scoring affair. This one was a sloppy trench war. The Patriots won the shootout...the Giants won the slugout.

My big scoop leads to several uncomfortable questions:

- Was the Super Bowl decided by one team getting sick all at once?

- How much do you really think it would cost to bribe a sickly hotel chef to maybe cough into the Patriot's food?

- Were the Patriots perhaps drugged?

- If we can prove that they were drugged (and that a Giant person was behind it), what should the NFL do? Forfeit the game? Take away the Giant's first round pick?

- Will the Super Bowl ever be played in Arizona again? If so, will players bring their own food and water?

- With bookmakers taking historic beatings after this game, will the Mafia murder someone prominent?

Anyhow... here's the letter I got, shortly after the Super Bowl. Itmay also be the first Mexican hotelier/housewife-driven scoop in sportswriting history.

The "brawl" that Gerri refers to was between NB columnists Stacey and Elle....

I don't know what to make of this brawl, but I rushed over here to tell the sports person or people who write this blog that I have some inside scoop as to why the Patriots lost. You know I live in Arizona, right? My sister's boyfriend who is a Mexican with a green card (very important now days) who just got recertified after months of delay works in a big hotel north of the stadium. The Patriots had been housed over in Scotsdale but moved themselves over to this hotel because it was closer to the stadium, I don't know how many days before. Many of them came down with the runs, even accused the cook of putting something in their food! Meaning they were thinking about something else during the gave and attributed the bad food to losing. This would have could have happened in Mexico had the Superbowl been played there, but it is true, the Patriots might not have been prepared for Arizona germs the natives have become immune, to. Does this mean we will not get another superbowl here any time soon? I don't know. You might investigate this story by interviewing the affected players. I am a fan of Stacey, Elle, and Abdullah, whoever writes this blog as I love a good sense of humor. And I don't want Stacey to be felled so low by the conviction that the Patriots choked. Not even great football players are prepared to ignore everything for the win. Gerry http://journals.aol.com/gehi6/daughters-of-the-shadow-men/

Lucky Win

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:35:53 GMT

Fuck the Giants.

Simple and plain... they got lucky.

How?

-Brady was hurt. I've watched him his entrie career, and I never saw him missing WRs by 20 feet like he did tonight. A healthy Brady is good for 35 points against the Giants, as we saw earlier this season.

- Referee bias. Someone laying on the ground hugging the football is generally considered down, especially when 5 guys from the other team jump him. Somehow, we lost that blown-handoff fumble. Eli's great pass at the end of the game should have ended with an in-the-grasp call...and had he missed that pass, the Pats would have been charged for roughing the passer. I also think that a ball isn't a catch if the WR hits the ground while the ballis rolling up his helmet.

The play where Belichick had to make a penalty call (too many men on the field) was the most obvious instance, an instance where the ref- working his first big game,I might add- simply was going toignore a flagrant penalty. Throw in the Giants jumping offsides all game without punishment, and you get a team playing 2 foes at once.

- The league and the networks needed New York winning.The Jets blow. The Knicks are a joke. Hockey doesn't matter any more. The Yankees are a quarter billion dollar laughingstock. If the Giants are exposed as pretenders, professional sports loses a 20 million person market.

- In order to aid NY, this silly Spygate stuff was brought up again, at the worst possible moment....serving to distract the good guys. Remember... us aiming a camera at the wrong place is worse- in the NFL's view- than stomping on someone's face with cleats.

Here are the legitimate reasons we lost tonight:

- Our offensive line is way, way overrated. Even with the Giants being allowed to leap offsides at will, there's no excuse for letting your QB get beat up like Brady did. Warren Sapp was 100% correct about Hochstein.

- You can get the better of our passing game by triple-teaming Moss and allowing Welker his 7 yard gains. Once Faulk was hurt, we had no one who was a threat to go more than 10 yards.

- As might be expected of old guys... our linebaclkers faded as the season went on. With the exception of Thomas, our LB corps was invisible.

- Our secondary has holes. Harrison isn't able to cover anyone anymore. Gay is a liability. Hobbs is average at best. Meriweather was a blown draft choice. Sanders is no good. When they needed a big stand, they wilted on the final drive.

- We missed Corey Dillon, badly.

Either way, my final impressions....

- The NFL didn't take our better draft pick away. We need to use it on either a linebacker, a cornerback, or an offensive lineman. We need that player to start and star immediately.

- I like to see pretty boys get beaten up...even if the pretty boy is one of us.

- If we played the Giants 50 times, we'd win over 40 of the games.

- The Giants stand a fair chance of not even making the playoffs this year.

- I wonder how much it would cost the Mafia to bribe Tom Brady. It makes as much sense as anything else.

- The decision to ditch the grey hoody for the red one was a huge, huge Karma error for the Belly.

- Reading body language... I can see Belichick retiring tomorrow.

- Even if the Pats came back and won... they aren't the greatest team of all time. One could make a fairly sound argument that NY dominated the game from start to finish, and that the game wasn't as close as the score (or the ending) would seem.

Eli vs Peyton next year? I'd root for both to be injured.

Again... congrats to the G Unit for their lucky win. They pretty much ruined February for me.

Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck FUCK!

Patiently Waiting

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:21:52 GMT

Two weeks (or half of a moon cycle, for all our casino-developing friends) to kill before the big Bowl of Soup!

It's tempting to just start lashing out at that big sewer 270 miles to our southwest. They're loud, ugly, dangerous, and deserve whatever we do to them. My 9/11 sympathy for La Grande Pomme evaporated during the 2003 ALCS.

There's other stuff going on. The Bruins win more than they lose, and have the upper hand in the battle for the final playoff spot. The Celtics have 7 losses this year...at the exact same time last year, they were losing 18 straight. They have not-one-but-TWO legitimate MVP candidates. The BC hoop squad trails only Duke and UNC in the ACC.

But for two weeks, the focus will be football.

I just may ease into it. Hating the Rotten Apple.... hatred in general... is not a sprint, but is rather an endurance event. You don't want to blow yourself out too early, because it weakens your ability to Hate at the time when Hatred is most needed.

Most non-sociopaths sort of cycle between relatively apathetic like and dislike. Sports fans act in more pathological ways. I could probably joke about a Giants-specific Ebola outbreak, maybe 4 seconds after the news came to me. If someone told me that Plaxico Burress just broke his leg rescuing orphans and puppies from a terrorist, I'd be like "Sweet!"... then I'd immediately call the bookie.

Someone as disturbed as myself- and there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of us just in Massachusetts alone- stands a very real chance of exhausting the Hatred too early. You end up cycling out of the Hatred and saying things like "Wow... Manning sure has made great strides this year." You soften.

We won't fall for that kind of stuff here. That's why we're just explaining our modus operandi, so that readers won't think we've lost our edge.

Coming soon....

- The Manning Curse Explained

- NFC= Junior Varsity

- Why New York Deserved The Cloverfield Monster Rampage

- You Don't Put Tomato In Clam Chowder, Morons

- The Wonderful Eccentricities Of Tom Coughlin (you'll think these are all fake, but some of them will be true... I may actually make a game out of the idea)

- Silliest Names Of Giant Players

- Video Coverage

- Point Spread Analysis

... you know... the whole 9.

As for today.... just a few minor matters of interest:

YouTube - Duxbury field hockey fights back, gains tie... your favorite babysitter pops up on this video a few times, although I don't get any goals or injure anybody. Note that one doesn't want video of one's self scoring anywhere on these here Internets.

Random YouTube Magic: P.K. & the Kid - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog... the Boss is also nationally known. Check the shot-calling aimed at Monponsett in this piece from AOL Fanhouse.

Tales of Game's Studios Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden...former NBA star Charles Barkley has a new video game out, dealing with the B-Ballnacht, an oppression of ballers following the Chaos Jam of 2041 AD that killed 15 million New Yorkers. Look closely, and you'll see CB talking some ship to Larry Legend.

YouTube - Falmouth Girls Hockey vs Barnstable.... Getting chilly on ice with two local squads of muckers and grinders.... Barnstable eliminated my field hockey team from the tournament, so go Falmouth! No 5 Hole jokes, please....

Cape Cod Frenzy... our local ABA franchise is sitting out the 2007-2008 season, because they want a permanent venue. They want the Hyannis Recreation Facility currently being built on the old JFK rink, and they deserve it. Also, logging onto that page hooks you up with the only Cape Cod rap song ever made.

Peep the sweet logo!

Next!

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:27:54 GMT

OK.... exhale

The Patriots made it to the Super Bowl, Elle came out ahead for the weekend/season, and we head into the Big Kahuna ready to bathe in the blood of our enemies.

How sweet-sweet-sweet it is that our foes this year are the New York Football Giants! With (c)Indy and Sandy out of the way, it's hard to generate a good deal of hatred for anyone else in the NFL. Only one thing could save that..... Noo Yawk.

First off... Boston and New York both know the deal. If the British come... if Europe is being slaughtered.... if the South rebels.... if the Sioux get uppity.... we'll work together, and do so well. History proves this. The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars are sort of what happens when you steal planes from Boston and crash them into New York. You bring us together, and we kick a lot of ass.

Otherwise, we're the two big dogs that sort of run the Northeast. They're bigger...but we have the better views. We fight all the time. We only stop fighting each other to fight someone crazy enough to interrupt our fight... kind of like two really mean brothers in a small town.

It's not War. Maybe not even pure Hatred, although maybe so in some cases. We do business together. We cut canals through Capes to do business together. We've all been to the Apple... the Carnegie Deli, Rockefeller Square, 42nd St., Times Square, Madison Square Garden, the Museum, etc.... and it seems like every single one of them has rented a house on Cape Cod and cluttered our highways.

The best part? We like it that way. They hate us, we hate them... it all sort of balances out, and the center holds.

Now... New England vs. New York in the Super Bowl. Couldn't'a' worked out betta!

There are plenty of old folks left in Massachusetts who rooted for the Giants back in the day, before we had our own NFL team. Many of us cheered the Namath-era Jets when they repped our upstart AFL.Plenty of our neighbors are New Yorkers who retired here, and still love their old team.

We'll forget about the punk Manning brother for a minute. We'll ignore the fact that the Boston teams are usually the underdog, and the NY team is generally the juggernaut. We won't mention that we already whooped that ass once this year. We'll even resist the urge to brag about that ndefeateduay easonsay. No need to mention or even yet begin to ponder that nice, fat 2 touchdown spread.

No.. today we'll just thank the Sports Gods. They gave us a doozy.

We have two weeks to get into the other stuff. For now... a nice New England/New York throwdown. Get those misleading directions ready, Cape Cod.

Kill Kill Kill

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:30:46 GMT

Pregame Pats Warm Up Stuff

Gotta warm the crowd up first.... why not leave it to the widely-recognized blue-eyed soul of the Russian Special Forces?

YouTube - Spetsnaz Rap

Wait a minute...Ivan doesn't represent the Patriots in MY world, sucka! Here's a patriotic rapper, who left a lucrative tour to enlist after 9-11.

YouTube - canibus army freestyle

You have to get in a few raps before the game, because the other side is doing it as well.

Sporting News - Your expert source for MLB Baseball, NFL Football, NBA Basketball, NHL Hockey, NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball...

Worst rap I ever saw... and that video actually put a "find the worst rap ever" bug in my head, which led to the search that found the Spetsnaz Rap.... which is still better than that kid.

Of course... no one on THEIR side shaved his head and got it tattooed to resemble a Chargers helmet, like our people are doing: Patriots Fan Gets Helmet Tattooed On Head - Sports News Story - WMUR Manchester

I'm still not there, yet. I like to be ready to kill when I watch a game.

MySpaceTV Videos: Sugar Bowl Pregame by TURK

Here's my favorite pre-game speaker.... Derrick Moore, who is the- no joke- official "football chaplain" for the Georgia Tech football team.

His videos are all over the internet, because he's f*cking mad. There's a better video of the chaplain walking around with a sledgehammer, but it took forever to load.

YouTube - Georgia Tech pregame speech before Notre Dame game

If church were more like this... I'd actually go.

The best part about Chaplain Moore is that the comments section on allhis You Tube videos are filled with things like "Goddamn.. give me my helmet!" He's a master motivator.

Here's another man of God... YouTube - Bobby Knight - angry motivation speech -

Of course... if you're gonna go with a psychopath, you may as well get football Scarface: YouTube - Al Pacino's Inspirational Speech

You have to be motivated for the Pats, because it's going tobe about 15 degrees at game time,with a howling wind out of the north.

I had some pretty cold soccer games back in the day,especially when we'd get deepin the tournament and end up playing Longmeadow in Worcester or something. Elle has had some cold field hockey games in her brief time upon the stage of life... and toy play field hockey in a skirt.

Either way...you may enjoy this article:

ABC News: The Cold Hard Facts of Bad-Weather Football

And of course... the piece de resistance:

YouTube - Pats Vs Oakland Snow Bowl game

It doesn't get any better than that, kids... enjoy the game.

Jessica Simpson Jinx

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:08:07 GMT

(pic from NY Daily News)

Much was made last week- some of it in this very column- of the effect dating Jessica Simpson had on Dallas QB Tony Romo.

For those of you not in the know, Romo is the Dallas Cowboys QB. Simpson is a beautiful singer/actress. Texas is football crazy, and something that is applauded up here in Massachusetts (like Tom Brady going through starlet after starlet, like a red carpet) is viewed as detrimental to one's game down in the Lone Star state.

With Dallas in the midst of a hard-fought playoff hunt, Romo began to be seen in public with the pop tart, Simpson. She even watched one game -a loss- from the owner's box, while wearing one of those pink Cowboys replica jerseys with Romo's number (uniform, not phone...see pic above) on it. Dallas lost the game, a scapegoat was needed, and Jessica Simpson took the kick deep in her own end zone.

Dallas fans began calling her "Yoko Romo," in reference to the woman who supposedly "ruined" the Beatles by dating John Lennon. It became a topic of national debate. Terrell Owens wept while discussing it.

Jessica, bowing to public pressure in her home state, stopped attending Cowboys games... but instead took Romo on vacation to Mexico when he should have been concentrating on the New York (football) Giants. Romo promptly gagged on the biggest game of his life, throwing the game-sealing interception in the end zone as time ran out.

But is Jessica really to blame?

In boxing,there is an old adage..."no sex before a fight." I'm told that every Petronelli swears by this theory, as did Mickey in Rocky. There are many reasons for this...some sound, some foolish.

Someone actually studied it, and sex the night before a fight actually holds physical benefits... mostly an increase in testosterone levels (even/especially after ejaculation). It may also help to relax the fighter/QB... although that gets into Psychology, and Psychology favors sending the girl home for a few weeks.

For one, there is a fairly sound logic to the hypothesis that sexual frustration leads to aggression... which comes in handy on the football field. The woman-as-distraction theory holds up, especially if you Google something like "Andre Rison, Left Eye." Trainers and managers rightly view women as being a variable beyond their control, and coaches/managers are control freaks supreme.

Muhammad Ali would abstain for 6 weeks before a fight. Soccer players say it robs one of leg strength. NBA stars claim it takes away explosive leaping power. Horses are kept from breeding until their racing careers are finished.

Check legendary manager Casey Stengel's thoughts on the matter, which seem more reasonable...

"Being with a woman never hurt no professional ball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in."

I'm with Casey on the matter. But this only excuses women as a species. What about Ms. Simpson personally? Can she jinx a football team?

You can only solve that by looking into her dating history. When you do that, you suddenly believe.

The first thing you see is that Jessica kept her virginity until she was married. This, when coupled with an examination of her personal life, brings to mind the fact that- to our knowledge, anyhow- Jessica didn't wreck anyone's career prior to her deflowering. The connection between sex and the curse cannot be ignored.

It also makes her vagina seem like Albion, or even Godzilla.... sleeping, but soon to rise. Once someone tested a nuclear weapon near it, it was only a matter of time before she came out of the harbor and wrecked Tokyo.

Her virginity was taken on her wedding night by former boy-band hearththrob Nick Lachey. At first, he was able to control the power... they had a successful reality show, and even a Sonny+Cher style variety special. They had the world on a string.

The first inkling that a Simpson Curse might be at work was when Jessica sang the National Anthem at the 2004 Indy 500. The race was shortened by rain, and an F-3 tornado hit Indianapolis that day. Of course, no connection was made ....then.

No one noticed the critical panning of her Dukes Of Hazzard film, which, to be honest, probably didn't need a jinx. Roger Ebert claims to have lost 20 pounds simply by hating it so intensely. The sequel went straight-to-video....Franchise Slain.

Then, Nick Lachey began to lose his mojo. At the height of his public exposure, he released "SoulO," which bombed commercially and critically. This was almost too much to believe- he was a TV star in the demographic his CD was aimed at, and his show and songs aired constantly on MTV. Of course, no one at the time attributed this to a vagina-driven jinx, which is probably a good thing.

The marriage fell apart in 2006, and Lachey's next CD went gold. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this loosed young Jessica onto the dating scene. She appeared in a movie with Dane Cook, and the two became linked. He was a comic on the rise, having just hosted the highest-rated Saturday Night Live of the year.

However, he soon began to be haunted by charges of joke-stealing and plagarism. His career suffered, and he was sued. He was being constantly goofed on, with Joe Rogan, Louis C.K., SNL and others taking their turns at the pinata. Extricating himself from the relationship with Simpson, he soon saw a career rebirth which peaked when he became one of the few comics to play Madison Square Garden..

Simpson then turned her attention onto Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine. The band soon lost their drummer to a mysterious neurological disorder, mid-tour. After the relationship was broken off, the band's next release became the most-downloaded ITunes song ever. Not "their most downloaded"... but "the most downloaded." Getting away from Simpson is roughly equivalent to Superman backing sufficiently far enough away from the Kryptonite so as to be able to kick ass again.

With time on her hands, Simpson got into philanthropy... supporting an orphanage in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. During herpatronage, the town went insane... former Mexican Special Forces soldiers employed by the drug cartels began openly murdering police and government officials in the street. A superstitious, heavily-Catholic country, Mexico is now viewed by theorists (well.. me) as the likely birthplace of the Simpson/Romo jinx talk that went down in nearby Texas.

Jessica then began a relationship with singer John Mayer. This is where my theory began to take a jolt, because Mayer enjoyed growing success both during and after his relationship with the pop rock. The Simpson Curse that brought down MTV idols and A-List comics didn't seem to bother John Mayer one bit.

"I wonder why..." I thought... then I got down to researching HIS past.

Jennifer Love Hewitt, who was being compared to Audree Hepburn at the time, has had a string of like 10 bomb movies since dating Mayer. Her post-Mayer artistic peak was "Garfield." She even got really, really fat. Heidi Klum had an out-of-wedlock baby after being linked to Mayer. Minka Kelly suffered the same fate as Hewitt- a stab at Hollywood followed by a humbling return to the small screen.

Christ! He has his own curse. During their relationship, Simpson even released a straight-to-DVD movie that is said to have grossed the producers $4,000. She was soon out of that relationship, freeing Mayer to work his own mojo, free from the vitriol of the Dallas Cowboys fan base.

Then, Simpson began to be seen with Romo. Romo had just come to stardom as the Dallas Cowboys QB. Soon, he was being seen with her in public, often holding her purse. Then, in a nationally televised game against the Eagles which saw Jessica in attendance, he had one of the worst games I've ever seen played.

Romo and Simpson then went on their little Cabo San Lucas getaway, the media seized on it, and Romo sh*t the bed in the NFC semifinals. Simpson was exposed as a jinx now...one powerful enough to alter the fate of 60 behemoths.

As an additional irony, an examination of Simpson's life with that of fellow Simpsons shows a similar pattern. OJ Simpson's career ended the year she was born, almost to the day.He murdered his wife pretty much when Jessica hit puberty. Jessica's rise to stardom even coincided with the creative decline of The Simpsons animated series, which seemed to hit the wall about 1999 and is barely tolerable now.

Finally, I submit the personal experience of the family I work for.

Stacey won an AOL contest that sent her to Houston in 2004. She brought along her sisters and the Colonel. Her assignment was to cover the baseball All Star Game. She planned to bring the Colonel to the game, but he backed out due to fatigue (he had flown in that afternoon). Shea and Stacey went, and they had a great time.

The Colonel stayed back at the hotel, pleased to have Texas to explore without his loud, pregnant wife. His first move upon seeing the girls off was to go back inside the Hotel Derek for a steak and a bottle.

As he was walking in, there was a gang of people behind him. Being a gentleman, he held the door as the whole party entered. Right in the middle of the gang was Jessica Simpson, who had a show in Houston the following night.

Simpson actually took notice of the Colonel, who is quite a large man. "Well, aren't you a big drink of water?" she said, and she even touched his arm playfully. Then, she was off.

The Colonel went into the restaurant, had his steak, went to bed, got up, went to the airport... and then somehow got caught in a 22 hour flight from Houston to Atlanta to Boston. "I was in a 757 in Atlanta, watching a tornado at the other end of the airport," sayeth the Colonel. Stacey, who refuses to fly, almost beat him home by AMTRAK.

Coincidence? Or is there a Simpson Curse? I'll let you decide, but I wouldn't lay with Jessica Simpson for all the tea in China.

I mean, I could lose all this....

Tags: Simpson jinx

Wild Card

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:49:53 GMT

It's Wild Card Weekend in the NFL!

Elle has just 4 more weeks to pay for college via the mob!

Washington at Seattle

We could go into technical matters like Seattle's brutal pass rush, Washington's ability to run the ball with a guy who dreeses as Sheriff Gonna Getcha during the week, the Walpole guy starting at QB for the 'Skins, or the concept of winning one for the Gipper (with the Gipper in this case being a thugged-out Sean Taylor) to choose an outcome for this game.... but that would go against my gambler's instinct, which is telling me that no one who got stomped like the Skins got stomped at the feet of the Patriots is winning snit this season.

Washington knows the hammer waiting for them should they advance to the Super Bowl against the Patriots.... and they already know how it feels when that hammer bashes them around the field for 60 minutes. Seattle is still cherry in that regard...and they have Deion Branch there saying, "Them Pats ain't all that." Seattle still has hope for the future.

As misguided as that hope may be...it will be enough to get them past a Washington team who's best player was murdered a few weeks ago.

I smell me a blowout, folks... it won't be as close as the score I've predicted.

Seattle 26, Washington 17

Jacksonville at Pittsburgh

Another playoff game, another how'd-he-get-there QB. David Garrard, meet The Game Played At That Other Level. Jacksonville has already whipped Pity twice this year, and the odds favor Jackie by 1.5 points. Eff the odds. Pittsburgh has won the whole thing with this squad, while Jacksonville hasn't won Ditka yet/ever.

I see Pittsburgh winning this one comfortably.

Pittsburgh 22, Jacksonville 14

NY Giants at Tampa Bay

Tampa basically crawled out of a division that someone had to win. NY has the worse Manning brother. Talent-wise, this would make a great Arena Bowl...but if this were a college game, it'd be Southwest Schmuck State vs. the University of Clown Fools in the Hoover Straight Up Sucka Bowl.

This game is only interesting if you're a babysitter/sports betting columnist trying to decide how to bet the Dallas game the following week, or if you just watch football with the hope of seeing someone getting their tibia broken.

Or both.

NYG, 20-18

Tennessee at San Diego

Granted... Vince Young has a rep for going out to Cali and winning big games agaiunst powerhouse teams. Sure, Sandy Ego has looked like ass for a lot of this season. Also... betting on a Norv Turner team is a good way to lose money.

What to do? What to do? How to bet?

Why not ask Gabrielle?

Sure, she's still playing with dolls and stuff...and,if you really look at it, I'm sort of involving a 5 year old in a felony racketeering conspiracy...but if she hits the spread, I (actually, the Colonel) will take her to see Hannah Montana.

Gabby likes...San Diego!

Granted... she thinks "San Diego" is a person, but we're going with it.

When pressed for a score, she said "a hundred to ninety-two." We'll read that as an 8 point spread.

San Diego 21, Tennessee 13

***************************************************.

If you, like me, feel that ice hockey should be played outdoors...enjoy...

YouTube - NHL Hockey Winter Classic Highlight video

Granted...my eyes are a little weak to be picking up on a puck from 75 yards back and 75 yards in the air.... but the NHL is dying on the vine, and would probably accept playing games in Mogadishu if they thought it may draw in people.

I'd personally take it to that next level... Toronto/Montreal on the St. Lawerence River, Colorado defending their adopted Great Salt Lake outdoor home, Detroit pwning Lake Michigan. Boston maybe using Walden Pond... although, it would be the purest form to maybe conduct the All Star Game outdoors, on a cranberry bog... with people shooting at a lobster pot or two boots.

All's I know is that, should I ever get into and win a hockey fight- I intend to grab my foe by her ankles, spin a few times, release her, and watch her slide 50-75 yards down the ice. I'm assuming that I win said fight by knockout (a supine foe is needed fort he Big Slide), and that there is no bothersome referee intervention.

*******************************************************

Wanna see a 300 pound armored muscle man, driven crazy by fear, peer pressure and possibly steroids- run 75 straight yards and clobber another big huge guy going the other way?

Sure, ya do!

I swear to God, it looks like one of those cartoons where the anvil drops on Wild E.Coyote, genius.

If it were easier to embed video here, Nate.... I could just put up the media player instead of this bothersome link....

Yikes

Yes, that's not one but TWO bone-jarring football tackles. Enjoy!

Ho Ho Ho

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:30:09 GMT

Hola, Gringoes!

Elle here.. and note that this column is the only column anywhere that has a babysitter.

* Yes, I know where Stacey is.

* No, I'm not telling... I'll leave that to her.

* Yes, it's bad.

It's not something we made up, like when her head exploded. It's not something bad that we can play for laughs once the painkillers kick in, like when she rode her bicycle off the mountain. It's flat-out ugly. She can probably wring laughs from it, but my kung-fu isn't up to that level yet.

In fact, logging on as Monponsett and trying to be funny at the moment just feels wrong- kind of like dressing hot for a wake. I'm doing it for three reasons.

1) Her kids are asleep, and I'm bored. I'd go into the wine cellar, but I have to drive myself home once the Colonel gets back.

2) I know that she hates when her column lies unattended.

3) If I don't do it, Abdullah is doing it. Abdullah can't type.

Enough preamble. Let's strap on some road flares and wander into the campaign office of NFL betting.

.......................................

Dallas 37, Green Bay 27

You can still bet this game if you have a blonde bookie.

Carolina 17, San Francisco 14

If Hillary Clinton had her campaign office in North Carolina, there's a good chance that Andy and Barney would have stormed theplace and took the dude out with like 24 shots to the face from the ol' service revolvers. Andy looks pretty laid back whenever I see him on the reruns, but those Southerners have a temper about them.

Buffalo 24, Washington 21

I was going to pick Washington to win the game in memory of their fallen comrade Sean Taylor, but Buffalo RB Marshawn Lynch has a blog that kicks enough ass to cause me to root against the Gipper boys.... Marshawn Lynch's Blog: Running Back for the Buffalo Bills

Tennessee 14, Houston 13

"Tennessee Houston" sounds like a playwright. "Houston Tennessee" sounds like a stripper. Unfortunately, I wrote Tennessee first, so I'm choosing them.

St. Louis 28, Atlanta 24

I just now thought of describing Stacey's situation as "bad, like turning-up-in-Cape-Wide-News bad," but that paragrapgh is big enough.

Philly 20, Seattle 19

I doubt that Seattle will eschew the running game against Philthydelphia like the Pats did, but Philly deserves a win after that loss of erectile funtion they suffered late in the Pats game that was otherwise a masterpiece for them.

I'm pretty sure that's a run-on sentence, but we're in crisis mode here at the Compound.

Minnesota 17, Detroit 13

The greatest Michigan athlete ever is Tom Brady. The second greatest is Scott Steiner. Check this classic mush-mouthed promo, which features quotes like "I only care about two things- my freaks and my peaks," "when I go behind, and do the bump and grind, it's only amatter of time... before you call me 'the Big Bad Booty Daddy'...." and "I'm gonna get you back for fractioning my face."....... YouTube - Best Poppa Pump Promo EVER! Size does matter, bitch!

Stacey has dozens of these bookmarked in her Favorites section on AOL. If she dies, we can produce various and multiple post-Stacey columns just by sorting through her junk. She's sort of like a much less threatening Tupac. You just need me to do Stacey-like things... like use dots (...) to indicate a pause in her speech, and ending declarative statements with "no?"

Indy 38, Jacksonville 28

I go to Duxbury High School, which is located in a fairly wealthy town. When field hockey games get heated and the trash-talking started, we were quick to use taunts like "I just got accepted into Cornell," or "I live in a $850,000 house"... especially against urban schools. This game is sort of the polar opposite of that... no matter who wins, someone's going to Dairy Queen.

San Diego 38, Kansas City 21

Charger LB Steve Foley got shot like twice as many times as Sean Taylor did- by a presumably well-trained cop, I might add- and while he's not back on the field or anything....

Miami 21, NY Jets 20

This Stupor Bowl is Miami's best chance to dodge that 0-16 staring down their throat.

Denver 21, Oakland 10

Oakland has the son of Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch running the ball, which saves them from the 2 TD spread I was going to Whammy them with.

Arizona 14, Cleveland 13

Kurt Warner fumbling in the end zone last week was the worst choke job since John Bonham drank 40 triple vodkas and then slept on his back.

New Orleans 23. Tampa Bay 18

I'm basically picking Chocolate City because I have their baseball hat.

NY Giants 24, Chicago 19

If a Saudi madman took hostages at an Illinois campaign headquarters, it would be an Obama/Osama Drama.

Pittsburgh 22. Cincy 21

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you watch.

New England 17, Baltimore 15

I'm told that the field will resemble Mud Stew, which tends to keep the scores down.

The Chin Dynasty

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:43:39 GMT

One of my favorite people, Coach Jeff Fisher of the Tennessee Titans...

That's from a few years ago(2004), when Tenny played the Patriots in the playoffs. The game was played in that tundra stuff that you just don't get in Nashville, which is why Elvis didn't build Graceland in Northboro, MA.

Coach Fisher is good. He was in the playoffs then, and he looks good to be in them this year... even with a quarterback who can't pass... a defensive lineman best known for stomping on someone's face with cleats... and with his best cornerback both a) suspended for the year and b) named "Pacman."

That's good coaching, kids.. and Fisher is a good coach, one of the best. Unfortunately for him on that desolate landscape back in the day, the coach on the other side was the best.

Long story short, we won... and towards the end of the game, Coach Fisher began to fascinate me for two reasons. First... as Bad Things kept happening to the Titans, Fisher wore a near constant look of befuddlement. You could tell that the game had moved completely out of what he had a game plan for, and that he was pretty much just surfing the avalanche towards the end.

More importantly to me, his beard began to freeze. I suppose it was from all the shouting... on cold days, the contrasting levels of warmth between the body and the outside air is so vast that breath exits the body as a sort of steam.... which condensates on the beard and refreezes, especially if you're continuously screaming over 60,000 people in a Jack London nightmare of frost and cold.

He also had that steaming head that you usually see only on huge bald brothers, but that was secondary to the frozen chin. Same goes for that Rodham/Clinton headband he's wearing. The picture here doesn't do it justice,,, for parts of the final quarter, this man was essentially the Cold Miser.

The look known as the Ice Grill is funny enough, but when combined with the perplexed look on his face as the game slipped away... pure Jungian archetype. Jung never got to watch much NFL... but if he'd watched the Ice Bowl that year, there would be a Bewildered Guy archetype.

I'm not picking on Coach Fisher, who I've always admired. I'm just noting the Look, for two reasons. One, winter is coming to Cape Cod, and winter will freeze your chin to your neck. Two... we've all worn that look before. At some point in our lives, something went terribly, terribly wromg.... often for no reason other than that's how the Dice of Fate rolled for you that day.

Overall, Coach Fisher has my fourth favorite Chin in sports.

Chin number three belongs to former WWF (now www.wwe.com) champion Sgt. Slaughter. This is the man who personally stopped the Iron Sheik from bringing the Islamic Menace to our shores in the 1980s.

This is the classic jutting chin, displayed by a man who knew where his bread was buttered... even if he couldn't see it because of said jutting chin.

Incidentally... if you ever need to laugh at an aged, drunken Iranian powerhouse ranting to whoever will listen, throwe "Iron Shiek Interview" into a search engine.

Chin number two belongs to Your Favorite Street Fighter, the lovely and talented Kimbo Slice:

Aside from the pleasing aesthetic qualities he enjoys with that chin, it also seems to be smelted from molten steel. Watch him wade right through 3 of this guy's best shots in this video if you want proof... YouTube - KIMBO SLICE. This one is bloody, so be warned.

That's a solid chin, folks... you could pretty much smash him in the face with a brick, and it would only serve to upset the gentleman. I'm pretty sure that there is absolutely nothing I could do to knock this man out, even Tazering him or hitting him with my Cadillac.

Finally...

If I tried to tell you how much time I've wasted image-searching for that one perfect picture of Bill Cowher's near-Neolithic jutting chin, but it seems to have cowered the Internet.

I'll post a good-enough one in a second, but I can actually send you to the live action. If you have a tape of the 2004 AFC title game... watch Bill Cowher as the game slips away. Here's a good quote, from Wikipedia...

"Bill Cowher has been nicknamed 'The Chin'...because of the face that he makes in frustration or anger."

I don't really know how to say this in English or express it properly in a technical sense.... but, at certain points of the game where those Bad Things we were talking about with Coach Fisher were happening to Coach Cowher, his chin would actually protrude forth in what sculptors call extreme bas-relief.

If he had an icy beard that day, it may have been impossible for him to stay standing... and the fall might drive that splendid chin into the ground with such force that it discovers oil. Many speculate that his early retirement was financed by oil speculators, who plan to wet his beard and let him fall forward in various places in Siberia where they think oil deposits may lay.

Anywho.. lemme dig up a good Chin shot....

We try to provide video proof here on Cape Cod.... YouTube - Coach Cowher