KSK Gamebook: Super Bowl XLII

-After the clock ran out and the Giants officially pulled the game off, I called a couple friends (none named Hench or JackO) to analyze the game in great detail. Here is the gist of each of those conversations:

Me: HOLY SHIT.

Friend: Unbelievable.

Me: Fucking unbelievable. UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE

Friend: Holy fuck.

Me: Can you fucking believe that shit? I mean, HOLY SHITBALLS

Friend: Unbelievable. WOW. Shit.

It’s always nice to experience a sporting event that leaves you and everyone you know completely retarded in its wake. And you know what the scariest thing about the whole amazing night was? That Reggie Nelson was right!

-This edition of the Gamebook took place in Georgetown, with Ape, Maj, and a host of revelers. The spread consisted of wings, chili, crab dip, spinach dip, and the like. Then, our host pulled something I couldn’t recognize out of the oven. It was a bright orange substance in a Pyrex dish. I asked what it was. She said it was buffalo chicken dip. That’s right. Buffalo chicken DIP. Now, I am an unhealthy person. There’s no debate about that. But even I trembled at the sight of this concoction. I’m shocked a black hole didn’t appear in the room once it appeared. It appeared to be something that, left unattended, might grow multiple times over and take on new forms. I made the executive decision not to risk it. The solid stool in my toilet this morning let me know I made the right choice.

-What was with the fucking clock last night? Sometimes it stopped running after a running play. Sometimes it kept going after an incompletion. Then it ran off at the end of the game after the ball had turned over on downs, only to be reset by Mike Carey. Was there some sort of WWF-style celebrity timekeeper for the event? Was it someone born without thumbs?

-You might know Christmas Ape as one of the more erudite members of the KSK staff. And, with 15 beers in him last night, his mastery of the English language really came to the fore. Any time the Giants made a good play, here are some of the bon mots our normally reserved man came up with:

“FUCK YOU BRADY! I HOPE YOUR FUCKING KID DIES!”
“FUCK YOU, BRADY! TAKE IT IN THE FUCKING ASS!”
“YEAH YEAH! EAT A FUCKING DICK, BELICHICK! I HOPE YOU DIE!”

The man knows how to work a room, I tell you. In fact, I argued with Ape that he was more pleased the Pats lost than when his Steelers won the Super Bowl two years ago. And that’s all right. If you’re a fan of most any team, your chances to experience the thrill of winning a championship are few and far in between. That’s why it’s so gratifying when a team you hate does a total fucking gag job. It gives you something to root for during those years when things don’t quite work out for your boys. Take it in the ass, indeed.

-I don't know if Osi Umeryiora ever found a hooker to poop on. But I'm willing to wager there's a lady or two in Long Island now that would be willing to let him squeeze out a yellow submarine on them for next to nothing.

-There was much debate prior to the game as to whether or not the Giants were a better team without Jeremy Shockey. I think it’s pretty obvious now that the Giants not only need to cut Shockey, they also need to key his car and burn any of his property left in the locker room. SHOCKEY BLOWS. In fact, why not ship him to New England? They love overrated white players there.

-Do you take steroids? Do you beat your girlfriend? Then Under Armour has a sneaker for you!

-I was happy for Eli Manning last night, but it was hard not to want to slap the shit outta him and the rest of the team for wearing those t-shirts OVER their shoulder pads during the postgame celebration. Hey guys, you won. You can take your fucking pads off now. You looked like Fred Gwynne in that shit.

-Here’s your Simmons douchebaggery for the day:

“Our underdog opponent gained confidence, punched us in the mouth a few times, kept punching and punching, caught a few breaks, threw a few more punches, ran out of gas near the end, looked to be done ... and out of nowhere, rallied for a miracle drive to steal the championship.”

Yes, yes. The championship was STOLEN! From a team that for two straight games had played flat, uninspired football. In a game where Tom Brady threw the ball with all the accuracy of Tarvaris Jackson. Yeah, they really deserved that win. Assbag. Commenter King of Pants said it best:

"Dear Bill Simmons:

Did you ever realize, when you spent the entire season comparing the Pats to the Cobra Kai and masturbating to pictures of WIlliam Zabka, that at the end of the movie, they lose to the skinny out-of-nowhere underdog from New York?"

HA!

-I went to godaddy.com to watch that Danica Patrick EXPOSED video. Turns out it was a gonzo movie of her getting an anal cream pie from a 400 lb. Latino man. Now THAT is racy advertising.

-The number of hot women on the field during the Petty set was more than the cumulative number of hot women to see Tom Petty live over the past 15 years.

-I had no particular rooting interest in this game. Yes, we have our fun with Pats fans here, and part of me wanted to see the Giants pull off the upset. But another part of me wanted to see the Patriots pull off what now has to be considered a damn near impossible feat. So I watched the game with a fairly level head. But, when the Giants won, I realized that we are ALL better off for it.

I don’t want to live in an NFL world where I have to wait for Tom Brady and Peyton Manning to retire before my team has a realistic shot of winning the title. If the Giants, who I saw completely destroyed by the Vikings early in the year, can get their act together in the last month of the season and plow through the playoffs like that, and outplay and outcoach a fucking 18-0 team, then that bodes well for all us NFL fans.

It was assumed that the Patriots had found a way to dominate even in the supposed age of parity. But they didn’t. Parity came back and clamped down on their asshole. And that was pretty cool to see. Hooray for clamped assholes.

-Dark M&M’s are good. Very good. It’s like an orgy in my mouth, and everyone’s invited.

-Finally, it’s time to start making fun of Giant fans. Yes you, Giant fans. You bridge-and-tunnel, bad French manicure-having pieces of Jersey trash (Maj’s lady and our friend Becky excepted). Like Patriot fans, you too can also suck our collective balls, because it is company policy here to hate EVERYONE. And, since you guys are the big winners now, I hope you fall out of a hot air balloon. Oh, you like Eli now? TOO LATE! Eli says you can choke on his load. Take your Shockey jerseys, head to Sbarro’s at the mall, and shut the fuck up.

KSK Gamebook: Bears-Vikes on MNF

-You gotta be fucking kidding me with this new Rambo movie. This is the kind of movie that gets 100% of its financing from the Bulgarian mafia. Sylvester Stallone is made primarily of plaster-of-paris at this point. There’s one other problem with this movie. The original “First Blood”, which was about a traumatized Vietnam vet reacting to a bully sheriff like a wounded animal, was a really fucking good movie. Rambo didn't WANT to fuck shit up. He was forced to. Now they’ve got him blowing shit up to Drowning Pool songs. Kinda goes against the spirit of the original.

-Last night’s game featured the Vikings in purple pants. They looked like gay Ravens.

-Nothing says the holidays quite like the word DUH. As in, “It’s obvious… that these Hyundai ads are getting really fucking annoying. Shame on you, Jeff Bridges.”

-They showed Adrian Peterson’s dad in the stands last night. He looked about 2 years older than Purple Jesus. Which reminded me of this:



-I think I’ve had enough of Dewey Cox for right now. “Walk Hard” looks funny and all, but we’re getting into fucking “Bee Movie” terrain with this promotional shit.

-I know we rip on ESPN a lot here, but I thought last night’s telecast was pretty damn good. Yeah, the game was a total fucking abortion. But what was nice was that Tirico & Co. happily acknowledged it. One time after a Bears penalty (their 5,000th of the evening), Tirico blurted out, “This offense is AWFUL.” When the fuck did Mike Tirico become an interesting person? That sounded more like the Mike Tirico that wants to fuck women on top of cars. I want to get to know THAT Mike Tirico better.

-Apropos of nothing, I am far too liberal with wiper fluid. If there's a particle of dust anywhere one the windshield, I fucking crank that shit for all it's worth. I think I just really like watching it squirt out. I must be gay.

-Kyle Orton looked exactly like Martin from “Knocked Up” last night. No, Coach Smith, Kyle didn’t have pink eye. He was just really hiiiiiiiiiigh.

-I have a friend who has another friend who is roommates with Orton. Apparently, Orton was very displeased about the prospect of starting for the Bears, because it meant the end of the gravy train. He knows he isn't good enough to be a pro QB, and that he looks far more appealing on the bench than in a real game. I love Kyle Orton.

-I find it funny that IBM’s new tagline is “Stop Talking. Start Doing,” yet their ads don’t sell any kind of actual product. In other words, they’re just bullshit. I’m not sure any company has spent more on advertising without actually selling something than IBM.

-One of the fun things about being a fan is, when my team plays well, I say to myself, “Holy shit! They’re fucking great! They’re never gonna lose!” Then the next week they play like shit and I say to myself, “God, they fucking SUCK. They’re never gonna get better unless they fire everyone. FUCK THEM.” I have no attention span at all, despite knowing better. But I think that’s what I LIKE about being a fan: The ability to turn on my team at the drop of a fucking hat. It’s really quite fun. My Vikings suck, by the way.

-I saw Krayzee Eyes Killah in a K-Mart ad last night. He did not ask the big blue light if he liked to eat pussy. Though I bet the blue light could do quite well down there, what with the illumination. He knows where he’s lickin’!

-They went through all the Bears QBs since McMahon last night. Each of them makes an excellent “Use an obscure player as a punchline” reference. Steve Stenstrom? Oh, that’s funny.

-There were black Viking fans!

-Brad Childress apparently showed the team a video of a group of water buffaloes scaring off a lion before the game. What better way to motivate the team than to ask them to emulate an animal so weak and pathetic it needs 30 of its kin to fend off ONE other animal.

-Look out! It’s the Fastest 3 minutes in sports! The highlights are shaking! They’re using filters to make the games look grainier! Oh my God, IT’S SO INTENSE!

-And you thought I overpraised Adrian Peterson. Holy shit, did he enter Favre and Vick territory last night. I’m surprised they didn’t have an ice sculpture of him in the booth with them. Jesus.

KSK Gamebook: Broncos/Titans

NOTE: This post was written by Captain Caveman, who is currently stuck at Panera Bread and must abide by their draconian firewalls, which do not allow him to post on Blogger. Nevertheless, our man Ufford is willing to make great sacrifices for a good slice of Asiago ciabatta.

I’m spending the week with my sister and her husband in southern Maryland. It’s nice here: lots of trees, and I get to spend a lot of time with my niece. Other than that, it’s hard to find nice things to say about the area. We’re at least an hour and a half from the nearest train station/airport/urban center, and getting a wireless signal is goddamn next to impossible. And my sister has two cats. I’m allergic to cats. Every time I visit it’s a non-stop search for the right cocktail of antihistamines that allow me to breathe without feeling like someone’s sitting on my chest. Fucking sweet. Anyway, I watched most of the game last night.

- I tune in at 9:00 p.m., just after the Stokley catch-and-run TD. The Broncos’ Glenn Martinez gets sprung by a monster block by the Jamie Winborn that actually takes out two Titans. It’s great to see Hispanics making it in the NFL. All those Spanish telecasts are really paying off.

- An all-new Grey’s Anatomy event! Thursday on ABC! There’s an ambulance crash, or something! Not shown: estrogen-fueled blubbering.

- “Sam Adams the player, not the beer I should point out.” – Tony Kornheiser. Nice one, TK. I made that joke in 1994 when the Seahawks drafted him. I was in high school.

- Bo Scaife: definitely the name of an American Idol contestant.

- I stop by the living room where my sister and brother-in-law are watching television. “Is this Two and a Half Men?” I ask, incredulous. “Dancing with the Stars went to commercial,” they reply. Oh, well now it makes sense.

- End of first half – Shanny attempts the infamous clock block timeout. Bironas misses the first attempt, then makes the second. Fuck you, Shanahan.

- Halftime has the “Fastest 3 Minutes in Football.” What’s the fucking rush? How about a nice, leisurely ten minutes of highlights? This goes for you, too, Sunday Night Football. If I wanted to watch people flap their cockholsters I would have gone to law school. So just shut your fucking mouths and play the highlights.

- A lot of people really don’t like Kornheiser in the MNF booth. I’ll admit he’s not perfect, but Jesus Christ: remember Joe Theismann? Remember Theismann with Mike Patrick? Mike Patrick makes Tony Siragusa look like William Safire. I refuse to file an official complaint about Jaws and Tirico with TK.

- A VY pass deep down the seam goes straight through Bo Scaife’s hands and hits him in the face before falling incomplete, at least the third crucial drop of the night. It’s like Seahawks-era Joey Galloway, Koren Robinson, and Jerramy Stevens have reunited in Titans jerseys tonight.

- Martinez fumbled punt + short field + VY TD after review = 27-17 Broncs. I leave to walk my dog.

- End of the 3rd quarter. Despite an early evening Claritin, I’m still laboring to breathe like Big Daddy Drew on an elliptical machine, so I take a mild “Anna Nicole Kennedy”: NyQuil flu gel-caps chased by whiskey. I don’t have much interest in seeing how the game ends anyway.

- Who is Andre Hall, and why did he just run for a 62-yard touchdown? If there were Wi-Fi in this godforsaken house, I could pick him up for my fantasy team, where he could do nothing at all in the coming weeks. Damn you, Shanahan!

- The Broncos have the ball at midfield with a two-touchdown lead at home with ten minutes remaining. The Titans could come back… but they won’t. I’m going to bed.

KSK Gamebook: Week 8 Games

-Of all the days during the week my kid refuses to take her regularly scheduled 1PM nap, it had to be Sunday. Damn you, child. If you weren’t so cute and helpless, I’d leave you in the recycling bin.

-Okay, Cadillac. I have an answer to your question. If the car in question is a fucking Cadillac, then no.

-Seriously, those ads are starting to get on my fucking nerves. It’s hard to fuck up an ad when you put Kate Walsh (above) in it. But I should never underestimate the gross incompetence of American automakers. And if I don’t get the Kate Walsh ad, then I get the ad with the other, random guy, asking the SAME FUCKING QUESTION. “The question is: when you turn on your car, does it return the favor?” Not that big red fucking boat you’re showing me right now, my man.

-Emily Deschanel plus Wonder Woman costume = boner

-KSK readers have feuded for a while over which Deschanel is superior: Emily or Zooey. I’m firmly ensconced in the Emily camp, but let’s go to the red carpet!


This is an easy call for me, but perhaps not for you. Emily’s got height on her sis. And she has more, uh, you know, ampleness. Whereas Zooey (on the right) has the ankle tattoo, so you know she’s up for giving you a wild ride. Plus, she does a lovely “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”. Still, I remain firmly in Emily’s corner on this one. Perhaps a duel of the boners is called for. My penile epee will outpoint you any day of the week.

-When the Patriots play another team, the other team may as well not fucking exist. I’m not blaming the announcers here. It’s hard to talk about the other team when they aren’t doing anything. I think the Patriots might break a bigger sweat in practice. In fact, I’m convinced of it. And yes, the Brady bounty will be increased later this week. Fucking Brady and his functional body.

-If you saw any of Romeo Crennel’s locker room speech after the Cleveland win, you wouldn’t have been very inspired. I didn’t know you could say “all right” that many times in one minute. Romeo’s clearly a big Johnny Two Times fan. “All right, men. All right. Good win, but we’re not done. All right? We’re not done. We’re at 4-3, 4-3, and our head’s above water now. All right? OUR HEAD IS ABOVE WATER! All right, but we’re not done. Our head is above water, but we’re not done. All right?” All right, coach.

-Also heard Braylon Edwards in the postgame say the Browns needed to “forget about tomorrow” and concentrate on the Steelers. Hard to do the latter when you do the former, Braylon.

-Eek! The FOX football robot has a jack-o-lantern head! And he’s demanding robot candy! (Robot candy, if you were unaware, is made from human plasma.)

-If Budweiser is the Great American Lager, then Newt Gingrich’s “1945” is the Great American Novel. In Gingrich’s book, the Germans win. Terrifying!

-Next week’s Colts-Pats game is a regional game. If you live in Houston or Oakland you don’t have a satellite dish, you’re probably not going to be very happy come Sunday at 4:15PM. Unless you enjoy watching Daunte Culpepper try and grasp a football with his tiny little midget hands.

-I listened to some of yesterday’s Redskins game on the radio. The Redskin radio analysts, in case you did not know, are Sam Huff and Sonny Jurgenson, who between them probably own 15% of a functioning human brain. I have to say, it's almost BETTER when the two analysts are senile old guys. At least they have an excuse. And at least their early onset Alzheimer’s makes for fun exchanges. Like this one, which happened on the Redskins’ opening drive:

Sam: This is good. The defense is getting a rest.

Sonny: The defense hasn't taken the field yet!

Sam: I know! They're getting rest!

I bet that booth has a chamber pot in it.

-I watched the Eagles-Vikings game yesterday, and I really have nothing to say about it. Except that Brad Childress needs to be shot dead and left in a ravine.

KSK Gamebook: Week 1

-This week’s GameBook took place at The Lighthouse Bar in beautiful Dewey Beach on the Delaware coast. The Delaware coast: It’s like the Jersey shore, only 20% fatter! I blame all the Pennsylvanians.

-I have the good fortune of having Sunday Ticket, but since we were out of town for the weekend, I was forced to go to a bar to watch the games. The one great thing about going to a bar to watch the games is that there are enough TV’s to show every game. I only own two TV’s, and my wife did not allow me to put them in the same room. When I grow up, I’m totally buying a large bank of nine TV’s. It’ll be just like the bonus round on MTV’s “Remote Control”. Only, instead of Suzanne Vega videos, they will show football. I also want the option of showing a single game across all nine monitors. I’d totally feel like a Bond villain if I had that. On non-football days, I’d put porn on all the TV’s and turn my living room into my own peep show booth. You know you’ve made it when you’re your own jizzmopper.

-The other bonus of watching the games at a bar is that you can tell when something interesting is happening in some other game simply by the sound cues. If the Eagles fans start going apeshit, you know it’s time to turn your head. If Browns fans start shouting, “Oh, fuck!”, then you know the Steelers have scored again. If Chiefs fans start shouting, then that means… just kidding. Chiefs fans didn’t say a goddamn word all day. And so on and so forth. You can absorb the important stuff from most games without diverting attention to your game.

-Then again, watching from a bar gives you far too many opportunities to cheat on your team’s game. I was watching Falcons-Vikings. Apart from any time Adrian Peterson touched the ball, this was not a terribly exciting game. So my eye drifted from time to time. Then I had to guilt-trip myself into looking back. I feel like such an infidel.

-Dear Bill Simmons: You do not fucking deserve to enjoy Randy Moss being on your team. Seriously, fuck you.

I watched the game at my friend Jimmy's house, where he has a big plasma surrounded by three smaller plasmas in the kitchen (where all the food is)

Gee, I wonder who your friend Jimmy is! And I’m so awed at how great your TV-viewing experience was! Your life is so awesome! Fucking arrogant cocksucker. I hope you get raped by a fucking truck.

-I’ve got you figured out, small beach resort towns. You can’t fool me. You’re all the same and I know it. I even found the template for your design:
-One homemade ice cream shop
-About 75 novelty t-shirt shops (“Freelance Gynocolegist”? That’s fucking GOLD!)
-One surf shop with bathing suits starting at $75 and up
-About 95 candy shops. I’ll take your chocolate-covered gummi bears and raise you a 5” diameter chocolate-covered pretzel rod.
-At least one shop that sells nothing but seashell windchimes
-At least one arcade, exclusively populated by people who are far too old to be hanging out in an arcade
-At least 10 restaurants that only serve food that is “flash fried”. I don’t believe this is any different from normal frying. It just sounds more impressive. Wow, flash fried! They must fry that shit up lickety split!

-I spent the majority of my time in the ocean diving underwater and then pretending I was Adrian Peterson running in a slow-mo NFL films clip. I also wore a pink Vineyard Vines bathing suit that my mom bought for me at Marshall's. Who’s Brady Quinn’s next boyfriend? -->this guy<--

-Speaking of gay, joining me at the bar was none other than Jamie Mottram, complete in a “Frerotte Is Fr’Real” t-shirt. Jamie is a handsome fellow. I’m glad he counterbalances it by wearing shirts that make him look like a complete tool. Watching his face when Jon Jansen went down with a brutal ankle injury? Priceless.

-I have no relevant football insight this week, not that I ever do. The NFC is awful and any team, literally, can win it. The Patriots and Colts are clearly better than everyone else. And if Brady Quinn isn’t on the field by next week, you Cleveland folks have every justifiable excuse to burn your city down. Please do so.

UPDATE: Now THIS is a Mottram t-shirt I can support.

KSK Mini-Gamebook: KSK Keeper League Fantasy Draft

Some highlights from last night’s KSK keeper league draft. You can take a look at the results here if you are so inclined.

-Last night’s draft (pictured above!) was done entirely via conference call, with 6 of us in DC calling in from the lovely Buffalo Billiards in DuPont Circle (where else would you expect a Gay Mafia to congregate?). And if you thought conference calls with your sales team were a complete clusterfuck, try drafting on the phone with 14 other assholes shouting out joke names like “RICK ANKIEL!”. No wait, Leitch actually drafted him.

-UM picked players who had already been drafted on two separate occasions. Each time, I cried out, “Party foul!” and made an L on my forehead, which might make me the biggest douchebag in recorded history. I was also wearing a pink shirt.

-Biggest gaffe of the night: Jamie Mottram taking Carson Palmer in Round 2, then Tom Brady in Round 3. And that’s before he started drinking. I blame the fact that Mottram wore a Smoot jersey to the draft. When you wear a Smoot jersey, you want two of everything.

-UM tried to pull a fast (and some might dare say Jewy?) one by drafting Darren McFadden with his final pick. You’ve never seen someone so thoroughly exalt in their own cleverness. He was shouted down like the retard that he is. He’ll be drafting Cody Paul next year.

-One of my favorite things to do during a draft is to shout out, “That’s a horrible pick” any time someone who is not me selects. I think it really lends an air of professionalism to the whole proceeding.

-Sarah, our contest winner, promised she wouldn’t draft like a girl. And yet, the evidence is clear: she totally drafted like a girl, constantly asking who had been taken, drafting a D too early, doing everyone else a favor by taking Cadillac Williams (the player no one wanted to draft), and drafting Jared fucking Lorenzen (and not even in the last round!). But she did draft Rex Grossman. She’ll be pregnant by October.

-I was gonna have taquitos at the bar last night, but I audibled to wings at the very last second. It seemed almost heretical to NOT order wings during a football draft.

-My favorite pastime during this draft was to get my hopes up for one particular player falling my way, only to have him taken a few picks earlier, then getting on the phone and screaming FUCK YOU to whoever picked him. I didn’t get why these people in front of me kept taking players with good value. Fucking dicks. Sometimes, the shoe was on the other foot and I took someone who was coveted by another. I got two FUCK YOUs myself, and that was really rewarding.

-No one except for Punter realized until the middle of the draft that our league only starts one RB. Rob Iracane, who drafted 3 RB’s in the first four rounds, would probably like a do-over.

-I drafted Bernard Berrian. I wonder if he’s Armenian.

-For half the conference call, some kid screamed bloody murder in the background. Apparently this was emanating from the bodega / refugee shelter / crack-house where Sarah was making her “picks.”

-I reached for Adrian Peterson in Round 2. And you know what? I don’t mind. It’s a keeper league, and I’m about to go All Day on everyone’s asses for the next decade. WOO HOO, bitches!

KSK Gamebook: Chargers-Seahawks/BDD’s Vacation

-This edition of the Gamebook will cover all seven minutes of last night’s game that I took in, along with some notes from my lovely week at the beach. Ah, the beach, where people go to sit in uncomfortable chairs and read. There’s nothing like it.

-Hello, skimboarders of the world. My name is Drew, and I’d like to let you in on a little secret: skimboarding is, bar none, the gayest of all water sports. When I was a child, my parents dropped me off at the ocean, jammed some Bull Frog (SPF 8,000) into my eyes, and threw me into the surf, leaving me to fight the vicious undertow for 8 hours while they enjoyed mixed drinks, shrimp cocktail and sesame sticks on the veranda. And I braved the ocean like a fucking man. That’s not what you’re doing, skimboarders. Put all the skulls and shit on your board that you want. You aren’t surfing. You’re pretend surfing, and you know it. You’re about as in tune with the ocean as Woody Allen. You can get the same sensation putting on brand new Wigwam socks and skidding across your parents’ hardwood floor. And you don’t have to put on suntan lotion to do it. Yeah, I know most of you are seven. But you’re seven going on douchebag. So find a real water sport, or get the fuck outta the ocean.

-Speaking of shrimp cocktail, I would like to demand a shrimp cocktail that is, in fact, a real cocktail. It should have 12 shrimp, three parts Stoli, a jigger of dry vermouth, a splash of tomato juice and Frank’s hot sauce, and a roasted Portobello mushroom dangling out of it. I’m tired of these alcohol-free shrimp cocktails. It’s deliberate false advertising, and, as an alcoholic, I resent it.

-I spent the majority of my vacation trying to mentally understand why I drafted Jeremy Shockey over Alge Crumpler in our Yahoo League draft. There’s no excuse for it. Crumpler is healthier, puts up better numbers, and gets an upgrade at QB this year from the least accurate passer in history to the 2nd least accurate passer in history. Shockey has been overrated for years, yet I drafted him anyway. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about why I did it, and the only reason I can think of is that I am a fucking racist. I’m so racist, I should do a cameo on the Opie & Anthony show. Shame on me. There’s only one thing I can do to make up for it, and that is read a Toni Morrison book. I picked “Sula”. I hear it’s very short, and that you only need to read five critical pieces on it to know what actually happens in it.

-I had one celebrity spotting on my vacation, and it was none other than John Stossel. Yes, the John Stossel, the man who’s made an entire career out of being mistaken for Geraldo Rivera. He was at a gym, arguing with a clerk. I’m assuming he was arguing about whether or not Americans really NEED to work out. He, like “Sula”, is also very short. I can fit him in my shirt pocket.

-Since I am old, I no longer go out to bars while on vacation. Instead, I stayed in and played Cranium with my wife, my sister, and her husband. Cranium: the board game for people who can’t decide which board game they’d like to play. During our game, my sister drew one of the Cameo (nee charades) cards. The word she was asked to act out was “reproduce”. Fuck you, Cranium.

A couple thoughts from last night’s game:

-Matt Hasselbeck should not be wearing see-through baseball hats.

-All QB’s now get a green button on their helmets that they can use to activate their communications systems. Byron Leftwich plans to use the button repeatedly during the course of the season to order his traditional 3rd quarter Triple Monster Thickburger from Hardee’s.

-Ed Hochuli, Mike Carey has seen your luscious bis and tris and has decided he ain’t taking that shit lying down. Last night, Carey showed off two lean, powerful Howitzers encased in sleeves tighter than a weisswurst casing. Carey has fired his shot across the bow, Hochuli. You better step it up if you want to be one of the token “regular” people chosen for People’s 50 Most Beautiful.

-I saw lots of ads for the show “Chuck” last night. Given the hotness of the blond chick in the promos, I really don’t know why they’re spending so much time focused on Chuck. Chuck can go take a walk off a bridge for all I care.

-I went back and forth between the game last night and “Deep Blue” on Discovery Channel, narrated by the silky smooth Pierce Brosnan. I saw a killer whale fuck up a baby gray whale (Bonus points for the infanticide!), and a school of sharks ravage some fish on the ocean floor (double nice!). I don’t know why they covered the emperor penguins, though. That one movie told us everything we need to know about them. I get it. They get really fucking cold and walk a long way for their young. Amazing. But enough already. The tale’s been told. Let’s keep our focus on the killing, shall we?

-I did not see any of the studio show last night. But I’m excited to see Tiki Barber in action. I’ve heard he very telegenic, and by that I mean he says nothing interesting and has meticulously groomed eyebrows that border on being creepy. I also fully expect Brandon Jacobs to steal all his good lines. Fucking Jacobs.

-I did, in fact, catch some football during my vacation, in between washing sand off my child and forgetting to apply sunscreen to my feet. It was three minutes of the third quarter of the Cowboys-Colts preseason “game” on Thursday night. And even though it wasn’t a real game, and even though the players involved were one step below Division VII-AAAAA level, those three minutes were all I needed to realize how much I would like summer to be over. Don’t get me wrong. I love summer. Especially in DC: the smell of hot garbage wafting through the air, homeless people in open-toed shoes, fat women in Tevas… it's magic! But a taste of preseason football is all I need to say goodbye to sunshine and beaches and all that shit I’m supposed to like but don’t really care for all that much.

As I’ve grown older, the NFL offseason feels longer and longer with each successive year. The NFL has, at seven agonizing months, the longest offseason of the three major sports by far. Baseball only goes away for five months. The NBA, a mere four. Neither stays away long enough for me to celebrate its reemergence, and both are horribly overcovered in the blogosphere. Oooh, Gilbert Arenas has a personality! Isn’t that amazing?!

Sorry Gil, but we are but a month away from a new NFL season. So I could give two shits about you, or Kevin Garnett, or Barry Bonds, or remedial skimboarders, or anything else that is distinctly NOT football. Fuck you summer, and fuck you, all you other little placeholder sports. I have a huge footballrection. It lasts five months, and I ain’t consulting a doctor about it.