205 Drop: Top 10 sports complaints that make you sound old

Today's link helps you be a tiresome crank that's filled with youthful piss and vinegar. Later on, it'll just be vinegar.

Oh, and just because my brain always plays this routine when we're close to the holiday, and I clearly need to double-dip on the sacrilegious when I seem to be one of the 50% of people actually going to work today, albeit on the slowest train of the month... here's the more than occasional word of wisdom from site hero Bill Hicks. Happy holiday!

Epic Drop: Top 10 Additional Signs That You Are Old, Old, Old Sports Blogger

Today's list is here, and I'll throw a fresh one on the fire for the site loyalists... you sit down to fill your bloghole and can't stay awake. That's not good.

And for the record, not that anyone should care, but from the other people I've met in the sports blogosphere, there's basically three groups. The first are ambitious college kids who are trying to rule the world with their blogging. The second are guys in their late 20s trying to make a buck or get a full-paying gig. And the last are people with good jobs who just do this on the side for shits and giggles. All of us, eventually, realize the same thing... that if you want long-term, sustainable traffic, you either need hundreds of commenters who effectively give the site a chance to make its own sauce, or you need a lot of good poon, so that people with site blocking software consider you a go-to site.

Anyway... that's a longer tangent from the point of the post than usual. I must be getting old.

Everyone in for the double jinx

So in my preparation -- yes, I do prepare -- for tonight's Game Six diary, I've been going all over the Interwebs, reading the game previews. And the only thing that everyone is sure of is that neither of these teams are very good, in a good situation, or can win.

Boston? No chance. They've played 107 games this year, traveled to Europe and back, been taken to the edge by Atlanta and Cleveland, and everyone's hurt. Kendrick Perkins is all kinds of messed up with the ankle, but dammit, he'll go. Paul Pierce has Tiger Woods' knees -- which guy has milked his condition more in the last week? -- but dammit, he'll go. Rajon Rondo has an ankle problem that would have euthanized a lesser man, but dammit, he'll go. Ray Allen's kid is being tortured by Eurotrash terrorists that look like members of Vladimir Radmanovic's extended family... but, dammit, he'll try. Try, I tell you. It's a miracle, that so many obscenely wealthy men could have so much to overcome, isn't it? And such a coincidence that all of the Good Character Guys play for a media market that mouth jobs its athletes with both lips and hands while wearing frilly little costumes, isn't it?

Meanwhile, the Lakers? No chance. There's no injury problems to deal with -- being from a warm-weather site, they get *all* the breaks -- but since they are Euros and gutless and have the world's worst MVP ever in Kobe The Unpalatable, no one in their right mind can imagine them coming up with a big win against a hostile crowd. (A crowd that's so hostile, they've got thousands of dollars to spend on basketball tickets. Dammit, why are obscenely rich people so angry?) I picked them to win this series in five, and even I want them to lose at this point, even though it's going to make me do something horrible as a matter of my wager with The Truth.

Of course, this being the NBA, we have the counter to the Lakers Can't Win Argument... mainly that the Vast Right Ratings Conspiracy will use their wiliest, most dastardly, most nefarious referees this side of Dangerous Danny Davis (yes, that geek reference is both check and mate) to make sure that the Lake Show forces a Game Seven on the world.

And well... all I can say is... Jesus Shuttleworth with a Rambis, can you all just please get over yourselves?

As a Sixers fan, I knew that both franchises and media hordes were going to make everything but the ball regrettable in the Finals; that's increasingly true of all championships in every sport, but especially one that rolls out over as long a time period as the NBA's brouhaha. You've got Coke vs. Pepsi here, Yankees vs. Red Sox, Patriots vs. Cowboys -- in other words, the most regrettable fan bases and teams, with the most time and space to blather. (And no, this is not a posthumous fever dream for Spurs-Pistons. Yet.)

But y'all have well and truly outdone yourselves.

Imagine, just for a moment, that we can focus on the game. If you're a Laker fan, you're hoping that Bryant can finally get untracked, as James did before him in the Cavs series; good defense can stop a great offensive player from exploding, but he'll eventually figure out a plan of attack and adapt in a way that the defense can't correct. If Perkins is hobbled, Gasol has a chance to be more effective on both ends. Phil Jackson has won some games and rings in his life; maybe he'll finally try the novel approach of pressuring the Celtics' ballhandlers, the way that the Sixers, of all people, crushed the C's on their home floor in March, back when everyone thought they were invincible.

If you're a Celtics fan, you've got the same thoughts about Kevin Garnett that Laker Fan has about Bryant. You also have two chances at home to get one game, and to date, a far more effective bench. The smart money is with you. You might have been considered the underdog coming into this series, but you've been the better team for most of the 240 minutes played so far. You're up 3-2 for a reason. You're good, especially on defense, and even more so because Paul Pierce has been the best player on the floor in four out of five games.

That, really, is All You Need To Know. The rest of it is just noise, and despite all of the poor mouthing and my most fervent prayer, one of you has to win tonight. It might even happen without a Conspiracy.

So, game on. And from the other NBA fans out there, noting that the series has fair to middling ratings despite being the Biggest Thing In The History Of The Association / Universe? Um, OK. Whatever you little dears need to get you excited...

The Return Of My Cranky Pants

(H/t for Cranky Pants as a concept to the SFGate's Tim Goodman.)

1) Clemens retirement speculation. Did you know that Roger's not sure whether or not he's going to come back next year, and his wife thinks he shouldn't because he's been such a baseball workaholic but he thinks he might and that he thinks that the Yankees should keep Joe Torre and that reading the last sentence just caused your functional IQ to drop by 20 points? (Don't worry, it's temporary. Like pot.)

There is nothing...

> not the tendency of announcers to stop reporting the game they are covering

> not the production of rumors as fact

> not the cheerleading for athletes who are good interviews

> not even the cross-pollination of sports with entertainment or politics (hey, you got your chocolate in my axle grease! you got your rancid cotton candy in my chocolate! wait... they taste like crap together!)

No, not all of these things put together that sticks in the craw like the Retirement Speculation Story. It is the living embodiment of a media-athlete circle jerk, and that it's even the subject of freaking cell phone commercials right now is a sign that Something Is Very Wrong With Our World.

If I were the vengeful all-powerful deity to whom all human events were a puppet show that required simple, swift and wildly escalating justice... any athlete that engaged in such foolishness would have their tendons snap like kindling. Writers, something else.

GO DO YOUR JOB. OR NOT. IF YOU DECIDE NOT TO DO YOUR JOB ANY MORE, I DO NOT CARE. SOMEONE ELSE, HONEST, WILL DO IT.

2) Congressional resolutions about sports. I am not, for the record, anti-political; I do not spend my days fuming about what Those Bastards are doing with My Tax Dollars. I assume that, just like in the private sector with its CEO scandals and Enron-esque shenanigans, there will be some good, some bad, and a cottage industry made from pointing out the latter. (Though it is kind of remarkable how quickly complaints about corporations go away, really. Find me a radio station windbag who goes on about the S&L bailout, or the Iraq contractor thefts, the same way they go on about government waste. Perhaps there is a reason for this that involves six media conglomerates controlling over 95% of everything we read, see, and hear. Anyway, moving on.)

And then there's this:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) commends Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre for establishing a National Football League record for most career touchdown passes;

(2) recognizes Brett Favre for his outstanding community service in Wisconsin and Mississippi and his 16 consecutive years of dedicated service with the Green Bay Packers, a community-owned organization; and

(3) directs the Clerk of the House of Representatives to transmit a copy of this resolution to Brett Favre, to the Green Bay Packers organization, and to the Commissioner of the National Football League.

Is it a small thing, really, in the course of the Republic? Yes. It probably took a junior staffer an hour to write, it got the Rep who read it (D-Steve Kagen, Appleton, WI) a little time on C-Span, and it made the reps from Wisconsin and Mississippi happy. It even made Republicans and Democrats agree on something, and after all Favre's done charitable things and hasn't gotten doped up on pain meds, as far as we know, in months.

But does it continue to cheapen the political discourse to resolve the equivalent of Puppies Are Fuzzy, Puppies Don't Hate, Puppies Are Cute, Puppies Are Great! into the public record?

Believe it or not, we actually pay these people to do things for us. Things that are more important than the all-important Favre Resolution or the all important Puppy Addendum. (For the record, FTT Just Says No To Puppy Burning, but we are soft on Gay Puppy Marriage.)

3) Jerry Buss says that, contrary to popular belief, Kobe Bryant plays for the Lakers and as such, is subject to the same realities (i.e., He Might Be Traded) as lesser mortals.

Really, what is stupider here -- the reporting of a bland pronouncement of How Sports Works as News, or the idea that it might actually *be* news? Trade speculation is a close second to Athlete

Retiring on the Insufferable Meter. Deal the loon or not. Otherwise, these cranky pants are getting matching shoes and jacket.