Blogrolling: Paying the rent with skunky beer

The Hater Nation roasts Tony Dungy. It's crude, rude, and necessary on many levels.

The Moondog weighs in on how Congress shouldn't get involved in a college football playoff in a reasonable, though chalk, assessment of the situation is this... this is the *perfect* situation for Congressional intervention.

It's something with bipartisan support, since no one in their right mind wants to defend this abominable system. Even the statheads hate the BCS, because it promotes bad sportsmanship and takes so much control of the situation away from the individual teams. (Honestly, when you schedule a well-regarded opponent and beat them so badly that they mail in the rest of the year and wind up being seen as much worse than they were supposed to be... how is that your fault?) Colleges, of course, receive some aid, in the form of students getting Pell grants and local institutions getting help and/or clearance for construction and expansion efforts. So there's influence there, too. And since the athletics department is such a cesspool of corruption as it works as a de facto minor league / expansion system for all of the parts of the country that don't get enough major-league action to satisfy the market, it's rife with vulnerability for oversight.

Frankly, I'm a little amazed that the system hasn't been taken down before.

So go, Congress Critters, and afflict these comfortable parasites. Because government oversight is, really, akin to having a labor union show up in your industry. Independent of the merits or vices of the individual union or action... if you have one, you probably did something to deserve it.

So, Cub Fan, the most powerful man in the Free World prefers your rival, to the point where he's grilling the troops. Can you use this to crank up more self-pity?

Pay that rent, John "Joey Knish" Turturro. You're doing the Lord's work.

Cardinal Fan goes down for the McNabb lawn burning. Gents were 28 and 37, and might not have even been drunk. This will do wonders for Arizona Person's PR, especially seeing how the state still doesn't recognize the Martin Luther King holiday. Oh, and the fact that burning a guy's lawn with gas is a *misdemeanor* will, I'm sure, make sure that no one ever does this again.



And finally, one of my favorite songs ever. First time I've seen it as a solo acoustic piece, rather than with the full Golden Palominos production. And here's a fun fact... the French word for orgasm loosely translates to "the little death", or, perhaps, suicide. (Yes, I am goading certain members of the audience. Listen to the song anyway; Carson's fantastic.)

Harry Caray with the anti-ad

One suspects that Harry's real problem with the product is that he only had room for one Jack (i.e., Daniels) in his life...

The Natural Follow Up To The Cubs Urn

And good advice for all of us, really.

Never Escape

Proving that MLB will suck you dry in this world and the next, and continuing FTT's theme of finding the perfect holiday gift, consider the recent rise of MLB themed coffins and urns.

Sure, you're paying 20% more than the non-logo model to intern your loved one in the last and most symbolic act of never growing up. But can you really put a price on making sure that their remains spend the rest of non-biodegradable eternity in the loving embrace of Cub Fandom? If I were you, I'd go the extra mile and put a Fathead on the inside of the box or urn. That's the tasteful thing to do.

(And if you must know, yes, I'm going down in a Garment of Greatness. Why risk going nooky-less in the next world?)

Oh Cubs Fans...

The Daily Show buries the knife in deep, deep, deep. The whole thing is good, but the 1:30 mark opens it up.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Things Cubs Fan Doesn't Want To Hear Right Now

Your daily list is here, and at least I can count on the Cubs to make me feel better about, say, my Eagles fandom...

Other People's Shame

You know what's the best/worst thing about watching playoff baseball? The yummy, yummy tears of the losing team's fans when it's a home game. With the Bad News Cubs falling into another big early hole en route to a big late loss last night, TBS had plenty of time to find distressed looking Cub diehards to show as they stared the long, frozen stare of disappointment out at their suddenly stricken club. Carlos Zambrano turned in his best start since throwing the no-hitter; it didn't matter. The Dodgers just kept making the plays, taking advantage of myriad Cub defensive mistakes, and all in all, looking like a remarkably bloodless killing machine. You know, one that wasn't playing with One Hundred Years Of Woe Is Us in their laundry.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt at all that they've got Manny Ramirez on what will likely be the last and best defining hot streak of his life, before he signs some ginormous contract for the Yankees and becomes Sheffield II, Electric Boogaloo. His bomb to center field last night was like watching a golfer who is five strokes up on the 18th take out the driver anyway and crush it; completely unnecessary and yet pretty danged great, because, hey, wow, I didn't know humans could do that. At this point when ManRam goes deep, it's almost expected, and that sound you heard when he did it was his agent, Scott Boras, cackling as he orders another ivory backscratcher, this one made entirely out of late-trimester aborted elephant fetuses, for that extra ounce of E-Vile.

If your taste for abject self-pity wasn't sated by last night's telecast from Woefully Field (soon to be have its naming rights sold to some bank, then bought out at taxpayer expense to become the US Tresury Rescue Program's Woe Is All Of We Field), then you should just click over to the 9,531 word embarrassment that our old friend The Bad Tooth put up at the World Wide Lemur. (For people who are new to the site or Blogfrica, you may also know these things as Simmy Boy, The Four Letter, or just Boston Douchebag at Network Douchebag. And so we move on.)

Wait, I'm afraid you missed something in the middle of that last paragraph. Let me put it out in bold relief, so we're all aware of it.

Nine thousand, five hundred and thirty one words.

No, seriously.

In it, you will learn:

> How very, very awful it is to have the temptation to go out drinking with your favorite athletes on someone else's check

> That when an athlete quits on his team and the team ships him out, an E-Vile Sports Agent (Boras, naturally) has to be The Culprit... rather than, say, the freaking maroon who HIRED HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE, because the E-VILE AGENT HAS MYSTICAL MIND CONTROL POWERS

> How the 3-4 hitters of a team that has won two championships is just the same as Ruth-Gehrig (my, how the modern standards have fallen)

> That a guy that leaves million dollar paychecks lying around uncashed is somehow lovable or wacky, rather than the jaw-dropping and embarrasing embodiment of a system that causes simmering resentment, distance and distaste between athletes and fans

> That the Red Sox do not, it would seem, offer direct deposit

> The degree to which the author is a spoiled child, in that it wasn't enough that his team has won twice in four years by buying players like, well, Manny Ramirez... they also have to, it seems, win more championships with them, despite age and declining skills, because, dammit, There's Love Involved Here

> That life Just Isn't Fair (waaah!), because he has to live with the possibility that Coke might swoop in and buy ManRam after his many years of working for Pepsi... and that there is no chance that hated rival will, of course, sign said player to a ruinous contract where they pay for a declining circus

Finally, this. I get the appeal of Woe Is Me. I am, after all, an Eagles, Sixers and A's Fan who plays in five fantasy sports leagues (1 baseball, 3 football, 1 basketball) while commishing three of 'em, and I play poker every month or so. Bitching about the hand you've been dealt and your awful, awful luck is a universal thing.

But at what point did we decide this was, well, entertainment?

When I'm bent about my fortunes, I generally try to Shut The Hell Up (yes, I know, not always)... because it's Boring To Listen To. It's shameful to engage in. It's a cry for attention and sympathy for a game -- not your career, your relationship, your family, or anything else of real and lasting value -- not going your way.

I'm also going to let all of you Public Woers -- and most specifically, Bad Tooth, in on a little secret. This life thing? It's not going to end well. Those aches and pains aren't temporary. The increasing creepiness that you generate from watching teenage girl entertainment, the sense that your music is no longer with it... that's all here to stay. Along with the improperly located hair, the sense that all of these athletes aren't as good or as lovable as When You Were Young, and the urge to declare everything as going to Hell In A Handbasket -- well, welcome to Flavor Country. Adapt.

So, to Cub Fan and The Bad Tooth and all of the rest of you that will be on my screen and Oh So Sad soon... I'm very, very sorry for your loss. You're very, very brave for telling me how you feel. You'll feel better soon, maybe after a nice long cry, a warm bath, maybe some milk and cookies and cuddling with your favorite stuffed bear.

Now, um, can we all move on, and maybe talk about say, sports?

C is for Cubs... and Class

This summer, I've been taking the Shooter Eldest to a handful of different stadiums. First it was Yankee, then Shea, and then Camden Yards, just to give her a sense of how things were in other places, and to give the wife a break. (Like all 8-year-olds, she is a great and tireless being.) Because I try to keep her from any potentially ugly crowd scene, this involves a lot of planning, buying tickets in alcohol-free sections when possible, avoiding strong rivalry games, and the like.

Sometimes, I think I overdo the protectiveness, but I'm not a big guy, and they are only small once, you know? It's not as if we need to go to games so badly as to risk something stupid, on top of the expense.

And then something like this comes over the wires, and you wonder if, perhaps, exposing your kids to sports isn't just out and out child abuse.

McHenry County authorities say three Chicago Cubs fans face felony battery charges after allegedly beating a Chicago White Sox fan so badly he lost his right eye. The men are accused of beating 32-year-old Robert Steele of Gurnee during a 2-year-old girl's Sesame Street-themed birthday party. Police said Monday the men were drinking alcohol at the July 19th party and taunting Steele.

(H/t, Chicago Tribune, via Deadspin.)

Normally, I'd react with the usual snarkiness to such things, and the Deadspin commenters did their usual fine work, with profane Sesame Street songs, William Ligue references and the like. But I'm more interested, for the moment, with wondering what this all means, when three men in their '30s feel that sudden and horrific violence is what's called for in the case of finding an Enemy Fan.

Does the quick dissemination of news, especially novel and stupid and bad news like this story, just mean that we hear about all of the dumb as dirt violent morons that we might not have heard about before? Or is it that stories like this help to encourage the sub-humans out there towards greater creativity in their violence... or that the Web helps these geniuses to be exposed to each other, and therefore, to hate each other more?

I'm not sure on any of it. What I am sure of is that grown men decided to throw down at a 2-year-old's birthday party, and used sports as their pathetic excuse for it.

There's a phenomenon where, when idiots enjoy something, it ruins it for you. I play Grand Theft Auto and like it a lot; I'd rather watch Fox News then play it online with a nation of fast-twitchers. It's just not something that I'm thinking I need company for, and I'm sure that if I got into a lot of conversations with other players about it, I'd like it less.

The same goes, one suspects, for sports with people who identify with it so much as to be moved towards violence... and not even violence against a referee or player, which while totally unjustifiable, at least has a glimmer of reason in the madness. No, they are ready to maim someone who, at most, irritated them with his allegiance and/or trash talk. In front of kids. Little kids.

And some part of me would be OK with their team ceasing to exist now, just because it seems like it would be the only thing that would get through their little reptilian brains, that maybe committing unjustifiable acts of violence (and no, I'm not much caring if there was liquor involved; the liquor got in the mouth without coercion, one suspects) isn't just something that gets you arrested and sued, but with any kind of civic responsibility, shunned from all human contact for, oh, most of the rest of your life.

Now, back to the puppets.

Epic Drop: Top 15 Reasons The Cubs Won't Win This Year

Here's today's link, and the bonus coverage... the thing that Cub Fan really has to be scared of is that their time as an MLB+ team may be on loan. Sam Zell, their repugnant owner, picked a curious at best time to get involved in a dying medium when he bought the Tribune, and while this mostly just means that he's a very good candidate to turn the franchise over to some other billionaire for a marked-up profit sooner rather than later, there's no guarantee that the next ownership group is going to have incredible pockets, either -- and right now, the Cubs spend like the Yankees, only without the same media empire to help pay for it.

There is no really good reason to spend a lot on the Cubs payroll. They've got a decent enough farm system to be a .500 team, and you're not selling any more seats or having a huge jump in advertising revenue from a winner. The team isn't trying to get a new stadium from the locals by going into a Win Or We Move run. And the more they spend, the more they pay into revenue sharing. Unless you're really just committed to a championship, it's not defensible... and the people who own them next might not have that commitment. (Which is why Cub Fan is really, really hoping for Mark Cuban, and will hold his nose for all that entails to get him. Boy, if you think they're unlikable now...)

So what you have, right here and right now, is a good old-fashioned sprint from the general manager, not that I can blame him for such things. Ted Lilly's contract is actually a bargain under those conditions, but that doesn't mean he's really going to be very good, and Jason Marquis is a poor man's Ted Lilly. What they really needed was for Carlos Zambrano to be a Cy Young candidate and Rich Hill to be a dominant #2 starter. Z hasn't been that and now he's hurt, and Hill's utterly lost in the minors. The offense and bullpen have better than imagined, but the offense is doing it on Geovany Soto and Ryan Theriot -- in other words, a catcher who probably will wear down with workload, and a second basemen playing shortstop who is very likely hitting over his head. (Also, if Edmonds continues to give them a stick, he'll be overcoming years of decay and injury build-up. Let's just say that if you have him in a fantasy league, you're including him in every possible trade package right now.)

They aren't going to turn into a bad team. Lee, Soriano, Ramirez and Fukudome ensure that they'll continue to hit above the average. But right now, they're playing +.600 baseball with a rotation that just doesn't seem to be more than .500, and a defense that is (significantly) less than that. They may be able to win the division by just playing .500 ball the rest of the way (especially if Poo Holes is out for a long time for the Cards), but if this is a top 5 MLB team... well, I'm just not seeing it.

And the fun thing about Cub Fan is that he's not seeing it, either.

Epic Drop: Top 11 Reasons Why Wrigley Field Can't Change It's Name

Your list is here, and yes, it is a little gift to longtime FTT contributor The Truth. Though I'm not sure that I'd call viewing this video a gift...

Epic Drop: Top 10 False Signs of Spring

Your link is here, and the astute reader will notice that I'm treading on Truth's turf in smacking around Mark Prior, but let's face it... the man will spend the rest of his time in MLB answering questions about his physical condition, no matter what else went on that day. He could strike out 20 guys in a Series win, and the question will be how the elbow feels...

"Hey, Cubs Fans. Read between the lines."

Actual unretouched photo from Mark Prior's press conference announcing his signing a minor league deal with the San Diego Padres.

Merry Christmas, Truth....

Cubs Fans

Come on, don't act surprised. You knew this was coming, you just didn't know when or how. And even for the Cubs, that was just pathetic. But the biggest surprise to me was found on chicagotribune.com. Who is the brain surgeon who wrote this title: Fans stunned over loss. Really? Stunned? After 99 straight years of not winning, you are stunned by not winning? I could write for days on this topic. Instead, I'll let these photos from the Chicago Tribune tell the story of what it's like to be a Cubs fan.

What Does a $91 Million Baby Look Like?

Like this. No, I didn't mean to say bonus baby. I meant baby. As in Carlos Zambrano. Apparently Carlos got his feelings hurt yesterday by the fans at Wrigley. According to Carlos, even if you go 0-5 over the past few weeks and get shelled in your latest outing while contending for the division, fans should not show their displeasure in your lack of success.

Little Z (yes you're nickname has even been demoted. "Big" implies that you are a man, which after all the crying yesterday, that is being questioned.) was yanked in the 5th inning and met with a chorus of boos from the crowd. Z pointed to his head as if to say "I won't forget this." Now I know they do things a little different in Venezuela and Ozzie Guillen's threats against other players/reporters have shown me that crazy is a commodity in Venezuela. But Z, come on, do you really want to agitate your fans even more? That usually works out well. And what line of work do you think you're in? You are a professional athlete who just signed a contract that will pay you close to $100 million. When you stink (over a five week period to boot) you will get booed.

Here is what he had to say after the game:

"I don't accept that the fans were booing at me," a seething Zambrano said afterward. "I can't understand that. You know, I thought these were the greatest fans in baseball. But they showed me today that they just care about them, and that's not fair, because when you're struggling, you want to feel the support of the fans."

I am not a fan of the Cubs. Never have been, never will be. They have brought me a lot of joy over the years watching them lose over and over. But I will say this about their fans - they are some of the most loyal, if not the most loyal fans in baseball. They haven't won squat in almost 100 years yet their fans have stuck with them. For Little Z to say that these fans don't care about anybody other than themselves shows that either he isn't very bright or just wanted to find a way to invalidate the fans. Either way it shows what a classless, me first, whiner Little Z is. Guess what Z - you signed the contract, now earn it.