NFL Conference Finals '10

The big day is here, the day where we find out which two teams will advance to play for the title. (Can I say play for the Super Bowl? There's so many lawsuits if you use that term without the NFL's permission, I'm not sure if I can even utter it out of my mouth without paying royalties.) On to my bad predictions!

New York Jets @ Indianapolis (-7.5)

Now where the heck have I seen this matchup before? It seems so familiar to me...oh yeah, now I remember! Week 16. Colts are 14-0, on the verge of a perfect regular season. Jets are fighting for their playoff lives. But the Colts have everything clinched. 1st round bye, home field throughout the playoffs--Indy has everything wrapped up already. Rumor is, they're going to yank their starters out of the game about halfway through so as to protect them from a freak injury, because we all know that starters can't get hurt during the 1st half of games. Middle of the 3rd quarter, Colts have just rallied to take a 15-10 lead on the Jets...and here comes something named Curtis Painter to play QB for the Colts as Peyton Manning looks on helplessly. Final score: Jets 29, Colts 15. Goodbye perfect season. Big middle finger to the fans who not only root for the Colts, but specifically the ones who paid good money to see this farce. Ironically, the Colts threw a game to the Jets in order to theoretically give themselves a better chance to get to the Super Bowl and win. And today, who stands between the Colts and the Super Bowl? It's the Jets. The same team the Colts could have killed if they played to win the game (hello?) in Week 16, because a loss would have knocked the Jets out of playoff contention. All karma points toward picking the underdog Jets to stick it to the Colts and beat their starters today instead of their junior varsity. I can't pick that. My thoughts on the Colts last week applies tenfold today--Manning and everyone else on that team have to feel like the Super Bowl is the only acceptable outcome to this season after pissing away a chance at perfection, and even more so today because to lose to the team that wouldn't have been in the playoffs at all had they beaten them would be a monumental boner. I'll call the game like this: The Colts had to rally to take a lead in a defensive struggle in Week 16. But to put the Jets behind means to make them rely more on QB Mark Sanchez through the air than RBs Thomas Jones and Shonn Greene on the ground. Therefore, if the Colts would have kept playing in Week 16, and not let Curtis Painter and the other scrubs in the game to turn the ball over and give up great field position, then the Jets would have had to come back using their passing game. Yes, the 31st-ranked passing game in the league. Don't know in what quarter, but I say Colts get a lead today and never give it up.

My Pick: Indianapolis 24-10

Minnesota @ New Orleans (-3.5)

In the main event of the evening, two heavyweight offenses slug it out in the Bayou for the NFC title. In one corner, an offense in the Saints that seems capable of looking as good as any offense in the league when it's clicking. I talked last week about how awesome the Saints looked against New England earlier this season, but I couldn't pick them over Arizona because they hadn't looked that good since then. Well, last week they looked that good and then some. The bye week clearly did them good. In the other corner, an offense that seems to constantly be at odds with itself, but it didn't matter last week because the Vikings defense terrorized the Dallas Cowboys and didn't allow QB Tony Romo any time to operate. I was afraid of that happening when I picked Dallas, and sure enough, the front four of Minnesota dominated the Cowboys offensive line all day long. They're certainly capable of doing that today to New Orleans, too. But I think about the perfect storm of happenings that have to occur in order for the Vikings to get the job done today: Brett Favre's wild passes have to find Sidney Rice or any of his other WRs in perfect stride while the defensive backs aren't even looking for the ball (honestly, the Cowboys secondary looked like they had no interest in picking up the football in the air, and once it was caught, they had no interest in stopping the receiver from running away), Favre and coach Brad Childress have to co-exist knowing that they have widely differing viewpoints on how the offense should be run, the playmakers on the Vikings secondary that were playing at a high level at the beginning of the season have to get it going against one of the top offenses in the league, AND they have to do it in the Superdome, one of the toughest places for a visitor to play, even though the Vikes sported only a 4-4 road record this season. That's too many obstacles for me. Saints QB Drew Brees wasn't even called on last week to have a great game because the defense and RB Reggie Bush were so effective. So I can see Brees having a tremendous evening in the town that has adopted him in the last few years as maybe the best player in franchise history. And don't forget Favre's tendency to gag in big moments and start heaving up multiple interceptions in desperation. Ask the Jets how that felt towards the end of last year. I'm picking Saints vs. Colts in a very entertaining Super Bowl matchup.

My Pick: New Orleans 38-34

NFL Conference Semis '10

A perfect 0-4 last weekend. Nice. Hey, I warned you to print my picks and bet against them if you want to make some money. You degenerate gamblers out there missed a beautiful four-team parlay betting against my dumb ass. So here's your opportunity to make some cash this weekend. On to my horrible picks!

Arizona @ New Orleans (-7)

It was Week 12 this season on a Monday night when the New Orleans Saints dismantled the New England Pats 38-17 in one of the most complete football games I've ever seen by one team. The Saints looked like the greatest team of all time in that game. They threw, they ran, they defended, they could seemingly do no wrong. Here's what they've done since then: Week 13, went to overtime with the putrid Redskins, winning 33-30; Week 14, could only beat the Falcons by 3 in a game where the Falcons were missing their starting QB and RB; Week 15, fell to Dallas at home on a Saturday night; Week 16, fell at home in OT to the Buccaneers, one of the worst teams in the league; Week 17, resting star QB Drew Brees, got blown out by the Panthers. This is called whatever the opposite of momentum is. I'm afraid to pick the Cardinals, however, because the Saints are still the biggest socioeconomic happening in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. Big games at the Superdome since then have taken on this feeling of something much more than just a football game. They've seemed like celebrations of the spirit of New Orleans, what with the U2 pre-game concerts and the announcers hyping it up and the fans taking their fandom to another level. But I'm going to have to go with my instinct and say that the Saints haven't played good football in so long that I'm not confident at all in their ability to flip the switch and get it done this afternoon. The Saints defense has to hold Arizona somewhat in check in order to have a chance, and I don't see it happening because they don't have a great pass rush to disrupt the phenomenal Kurt Warner from throwing wherever he wants, and the secondary may be talented, but it's also old. A hidden x-factor may be Cards RB Beanie Wells, who is getting better and better in his rookie campaign. Give me the Cards in a wild aerial battle.

My Pick: Arizona 40-30

Baltimore @ Indianapolis (-6.5)

Indy is a big blind spot for me because of my admiration for the QB, Peyton Manning. I've had a chance to pick two Colts playoff games on my blog since I started posting my predictions, and both times I took the Colts, and both times they shit the bed. (This isn't counting my correct prediction of the Colts to beat Da Bears in the Super Bowl, because Stevie Wonder could have seen that one coming.) But I will take the Colts once again, because it's just too hard for me to overlook the most poised quarterback I've ever watched play the game. I started talking about Manning for MVP halfway through the season, and I didn't think it was close. What other QB would have led that group of wide receivers to 14-0? I know Reggie Wayne is as good as it gets, but who the bloody hell is Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon? I love Jay Cutler, the Bears QB, but he had better receivers than that on his team and couldn't do anything with them. And if you took Greg Olsen off the Bears and put him at tight end with Peyton Manning throwing to him, he'd be All-Pro. Instead, it's Dallas Clark making every catch thrown his way, because it's put in a perfect spot for him to catch it. The fact is, no one, and I mean no one, commands his offense the way Manning commands his. He's been in the system so long that he is the system, and anyone that comes on his team had better configure their skill sets to work in his system, or else they will not see the football come their way. Judging by last week's slaughtering of the Patriots, the Ravens still have what it takes to bust a QB in the mouf and screw up his game plan and make a mess out of the situation. But Peyton and the Colts have a unique motivational factor--throwing away those last two games of the regular season after finding a way to win every game prior to that. You could tell that Peyton and the rest of his teammates were very unhappy when they were yanked in the 3rd quarter of the Jets game in Week 16 so that Curtis Painter could come in and show the most ineffective leadership this side of the Republican Party. But this playoff run, starting tonight, was why the move was made--so Peyton and the rest of the team could be fresh and ready to make their big run towards the Super Bowl, the only thing that matters according to the Colts upper management. They can't come out and throw up in the very first playoff game after all that, can they? Well, they can, but I'll pick them not to.

My Pick: Indianapolis 24-16

Dallas @ Minnesota (-2.5)

The smallest spread this weekend, this is the gamblers' favorite for an upset of the better team, and I will reluctantly go along with the wiseguys on this one. I just hate the feel of the momentum going into the playoffs for the Vikings, even more than what I feel about the Saints. Bickering between the coach and QB, throwing a game away in Chicago on purpose to prove a point about whose style worked better (and the game mattered, too, because if the Vikings win that game, they would have finished the season with the same record as the Saints, and through tie-breaking measures would have gained home-field advantage throughout the playoffs)...and the coup-de-grace is that same coach, Brad Childress, thought to be on the hot seat before Brett Favre descended from on high and gave the Vikings the great season they had, deciding that the team was sick of him and he was sick of the team, so they had the entire bye week off so that they could spend time away from each other. Ladies and gentlemen, that don't sound like a team ready to unite and make a long playoff run. Not even a little bit. Now, to pick the Vikings to lose means that I now have to jump on the Cowboys bandwagon. Someone pass me the Alka-Seltzer. But hey, I can't deny that the Cowboys at the moment look like the picture of a unified team performing at its peak. Ironically, it started with the aforementioned upset win at New Orleans a month ago, and the 'Boys haven't stopped since, shutting out the Redskins and Eagles back-to-back to end the regular season, then repeating the domination of Philly last weekend. The pass rush is storming the gates, led by all-world LB DeMarcus Ware, and that allows the linebackers and secondary behind them to play great football because the opposing offense doesn't have time to execute the game plan. Meanwhile, QB Tony Romo may not look like a Hall-of-Famer, but he's not making mistakes, and he's got a devastating running game to rely on when the Cowboys take a lead, with Marion Barber's heavy, punishing style softening the defense up for Felix Jones to come in and sprint away from the pack. The Dallas Cowboys are ignoring the fact that the hapless Wade Phillips is their coach and Romo is their QB, and they are playing to their considerable abilities. The Vikings are arguing whether it's better for the 40-year-old QB to throw it up every play or for the young, talented RB Adrian Peterson to get more touches. And the Vikings' best CB, Antoine Winfield, was banged up and beaten badly on many plays the last few games of the season? Looks like the Cowboys are definitely the play here.

My Pick: Dallas 36-24

New York Jets @ San Diego (-7)

I must have yelled four or five times at my TV during the Bengals-Jets game last Saturday, "God, neither of these teams deserve to be in the playoffs!" Then Jim Mora called and said that if I excitedly yelled "Playoffs!?!" one more time, I would have to pay him royalties. But I digress. For those of you that watched that abomination of a game without digging your eyeballs out, congrats, and you can testify to the homeliness of Jets football: Run on 1st and 2nd down regardless of field position, keep your overrated rookie QB from having to throw as much as you can, and rely on your Pro Bowl cornerback to keep the other team's star receiver on Revis Island away from the footballs flying five yards over his head. And even with all that, the Jets should have lost because their TE Dustin Keller shouldn't ever be that wide open, and the "star" WR Braylon Edwards should be able to catch wide-open passes in the end zone, and against a real playoff team, dropping TDs loses games. Well, San Diego is a real playoff team, having won their last eleven games in a row, and Philip Rivers shouldn't miss his receivers by five yards, not only because he's better than Bengals QB Carson Palmer, but because his receivers are all about nine feet tall. Vincent Jackson, Malcolm Floyd, Legedu Naanee, and the great TE Antonio Gates--seriously, Rivers is flinging it to a bunch of Jolly Green Giants. That said, I can't go with the Chargers to cover a touchdown. For some reason, I see the Jets hanging in there. I think they're playing with that attitude you see some teams adopt, that "no one believes in us, so screw everyone" attitude, and that's always dangerous. Even with that, I see the Chargers and that big-time passing game putting the Chargers in the 20s or 30s, and the Jets having to play catch-up, which means more throwing for rookie QB Mark Sanchez and less running for the #1 rush offense in the league. Should mean disaster, yes? Maybe not. Sanchez did hit his receivers when asked to throw last week (as I mentioned, Edwards dropped a sure TD). The Chargers can allow some passing yards if they get in a shootout. And in the most random factor I've ever pulled out, Sanchez is playing on the West Coast, where he enjoyed great success in college at USC, so perhaps he will relive some of his glory days. I'm pretty much taking the Jets to cover because they look like the least likely playoff team playing this weekend, which means no one thinks they have a shot, which sometimes emboldens that team to play at a level they wouldn't think possible, just to prove loudmouths who know nothing (like me) wrong.

My Pick: San Diego 26-20

Wild Card Weekend '10

Happy happy joy joy! Playoff football is here, and I am no longer working weekends so I get to watch the games live in their entirety instead of at 2A on tape after praying that I could get home from work without accidentally hearing guys talk about the games and spoil the results for me. (This happened. One Sunday a year or so ago I was walking down the street after work hoping to get home to see a Bears game that I taped, and some drunk strangers walked past me yelling about that awesome Bears win. I silently weeped.) And now, without further ado, here are my picks for the weekend. Print and bet against me if you want to make some cash:

New York Jets @ Cincinnati (-2.5)

I have to refer to ESPN writer Bill Simmons, who summed up the Jets brilliantly in his most recent column: "...everyone likes the 'red-hot' Jets to upset the Bengals this weekend, conveniently forgetting that they dropped six of seven games midseason before beating the Panthers to end the Delhomme era (Jake went out in style with four picks), winning consecutive road games over the 6-10 Bills and 2-14 Bucs, then mustering seven points at home against the Falcons in Week 15. From there, they whupped the Colts' second string and the Bengals' second string to sneak into the playoffs. Suddenly they're an enticing underdog pick. Huh???? They can win a road playoff game with a rookie QB who finished with 12 touchdown passes and 23 turnovers?" My thoughts exactly. Look, the Bengals don't exactly inspire confidence either--would it surprise anyone if Chad Johnson Ochocinco killed himself falling out of a pickup truck while filming a Chris Henry biopic?--but the Jets were one of four or five teams trying to make the AFC playoffs in the last week of the season, and none of them are any good. It's been said that the Bengals lost to the Jets last week knowing that the Jets would have to come play them in Cincy, and they would rather see Mark Sanchez and his 23 turnovers than the Houston Texans with the best wide receiver in the game, Andre Johnson. Perhaps. I saw a lot of dropped balls by the Bengals, so I don't think they were trying to lose necessarily, but they had a really bad game on the road in a hostile environment with their 1,000-yard RB, the great Cedric Benson, inactive. There are a lot of factors swung in the Bengals' favor today, so I'll take them to barely cover in the ugliest game of the weekend.

My Pick: Cincinnati 16-12

Philadelphia @ Dallas (-4)

Ah, the Eagles, the team that I absolutely cannot predict to save my fucking life. Since I'll get it wrong anyway, let's make this quick: I had Philly going into Dallas and whipping them last week to win the NFC East and get a 1st-round bye. They completely gagged it up, meaning the Cowboys won the division, and the Eagles happened to draw the Cowboys in Big D again as a playoff opponent, the second of three rematches this weekend from Week 17 regular season games last Sunday. The same theories apply this week as to why I liked the Eagles last week: Cowboys coach Wade Phillips and QB Tony Romo have atrocious track records in big games, especially late in the season and the playoffs, the Cowboys passing game would appear to be relatively easy to handle once you realize that there's one NFL wide receiver on the whole damn team (Miles Austin), the Eagles defense is underrated and capable of dialing up big blitzes and creating turnovers, and it would seem that this is the best core of receivers that QB Donovan McNabb's ever had, and they should never be out of any game with Jeremy Maclin, DeSean Jackson, Jason Avant, and TE Brent Celek running around. Give me the Birds in a Lone Star shootout.

My Pick: Philadelphia 41-37

Baltimore @ New England (-3.5)

Now I'm really going to get special on you: I'm going to use statistics to completely contradict myself. Pay attention. I like New England because Baltimore isn't young and talented enough on defense to overcome their rough, heavily-penalized style of football. The Ravens were tied for second this season in most penalties per game with 7.2. 7.2! I cannot take the Ravens to come into New England with their pop-gun passing offense and a highly motivated Patriots team playing their first playoff game since the David Tyree Bowl waiting for them, knowing that the Ravens are good for three or four silly penalties minimum in each half. The Ravens are so predictable on offense that even the Pats' subpar defense should be able to recognize: Run with Ray Rice, throw it up for 94-year-old WR Derrick Mason, occasionally try to hit 95-year-old TE Todd Heap on a seam route, lather, rinse, repeat. And Rice can be a weapon out of the backfield in the passing game as well. But the Patriots have the real weapons on offense in this game, with a (somewhat) healthy QB Tom Brady throwing to fellow Hall-Of-Famer Randy Moss. Moss seemed to be miffed earlier this season at the amount of balls being thrown to WR Wes Welker, who is much more willing to catch short passes over the middle for first downs than Moss. Mr. Moss no longer has to worry about Mr. Welker; he tore his knee up last week and won't be playing football anytime soon. This should result in a huge game for Moss against an exploitable Ravens secondary that at times this year looked old and decrepit. And don't be surprised if something named Julian Edelman makes a lot of those over-the-middle first down catches in place of Welker. He seemed to thrive in that role when replacing Welker earlier this season.

My Pick: New England 27-21

Green Bay @ Arizona (-1)

And now for the contradiction: Who led the league in penalties per game? That would be the Green Bay Packers at 7.4 (but hey, only 5.3 in their last three games!). And yet I will gladly take the Pack and all those penalties on the road. The matchup seemed like a slam dunk to me last week when I picked the Pack, and even though the Cardinals had nothing to play for and rolled over for Green Bay, I think Arizona is too old and beat up to turn on the juice and beat the Packers this week when it counts. This ain't quite the same Cards team from last year, when they shocked the world and got all the way to the Super Bowl. The parts are the same, but they're a year older, and some of them won't be playing anywhere near 100% this Sunday. Stud WR Anquan Boldin didn't practice all week and is a game-time decision. Top cover corner Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie is banged up, and that's the wrong passing offense to be facing when your best cornerback is banged up. This seems too delicious. It's the 7th-ranked pass offense of the Pack against the 23rd-ranked pass defense of the Cardinals. And whatever comeback ability may remain in aging Cards QB Kurt Warner's arm should be curtailed by the much improved Green Bay defense, led by defensive MVP candidate Charles Woodson creating all sorts of chaos in the secondary. To top it off, Green Bay should be able to hold on to a lead late because RB Ryan Grant has lost his fucking mind lately. Yards per rush for Grant his last four games: 6.9, 4.6, 6.1, 4.6. That's Adrian Peterson at Oklahoma numbers, and he won't get much resistance from the Cardinals to keep that up.

My Pick: Green Bay 38-27

34 Years Of Thankfulness

I recently posted my status on Facebook as "(Me), despite all his bitching and moaning, is pretty darn lucky." This was sparked by my fiancee calling before she went to bed just to tell me she loved me. That's not the first time she's done that, but it just struck me as special because of how miserable I've been the last several months, living on a shoestring budget now that my credit cards are in a debt consolidation program and can't be used by me until they're paid off, wondering when my fiancee and I will be stable enough to decide on a wedding date, living alone in my house despite having a fiancee...the madness never seems to stop. The reason I'm home typing today is because I had to use a sick day because my ankle is swollen, but a day off from work is something I'm always glad to take. So for once, I want to acknowledge the fact that I have many things to be thankful for, like said fiancee, and my family, and my job, low paying as it may be, and the roof over my head, and the food in my fridge. You know, things that 98% of us take for granted every day, including me. And since I haven't posted in a while, I'll touch on a couple of popular subjects that make me even more thankful.

I'm thankful that I'm not Tiger Woods. But I have to be clear about this. Under no circumstances will I say that Eldrick--I feel nasty calling him Tiger, considering that probably every single slut he had called him that as he came--had a bad life screwing a Swedish underwear model, slipping out of the house to bang every white girl he came in contact with, sometimes slipping them into the house (which is either the ultimate pimp move or a sign of a serious sexual addiction problem, or both). No, that lifestyle, amoral as it was, would seem to be the dream of every heterosexual male, except for one small part--the "wife" part. In today's modern sports world, Derek Jeter is the example held up as the guy who can fuck anything he wants and get no public persona hits because of the simple fact that he ain't married. But there are thousands of guys out there like him. They're what I like to call "adults." Nobody, and I repeat, NOBODY, should ever get married living the lifestyle that Eldrick did. There is absolutely no reason to vow that you will be faithful to one woman under God and the world knowing damn well that you won't be. I'll allow the possibility that he didn't realize how much he needed to get his freak on until he said "I do," and maybe he was intending to be faithful to Elin Nordegren, but that still makes him a child because you have to understand yourself enough to know that you're not ready to be in a committed marriage. I would allow that Elin agreed to an open marriage that would let him screw everything that moves, except I'm not sure why she then would be so upset with him that she'd bash his mouth in with a 5-iron Thanksgiving night. And all reports now say that she's divorcing him, so she's clearly not happy with his actions. The part that makes me glad I'm not Tiger is his reaction to all of this. For two solid weeks, whore after whore after whore came out of the woodwork and made some huge claims about Tiger--oops, Eldrick--that shocked and titillated certain people, and he hasn't confirmed or denied one of them. Not one! What kind of man either does all the bold things he's accused of doing and hides behind his website when he's exposed, or doesn't do those things and hides behind his website while skanks make cash off false stories about him? Oh, and cost him cash, too, because sponsors are dropping Mr. Woods left and right while he cowers under his silk covers. I don't care if he came out and cried in front of everyone, or if he came out in sunglasses and told everyone to kiss his Cablanasian ass, but to say absolutely nothing in hopes that this would blow over is wrong on every level. Thank goodness that I'm not as afraid of the world knowing the real me as Eldrick Woods is.

And also, I'm thankful that I wasn't Chris Henry. Henry was an NFL wide receiver who was such a malcontent that the Cincinnati Bengals cut him a few years ago, not because of his production on the field, but because he was dealing with various arrests and legal issues and was driving his coaches and bosses crazy. The Bengals brought him back this season, however. Character doesn't matter in sports so long as you can make the play. What, you don't think O.J. wouldn't still be getting tryouts if he could prove that he can still run the ball? Anyway, Henry was not with the team because he was injured, and he decided last week that a good use of his free time would be to chase his fiancee out of the house during an argument over wedding expenses, watch her climb into a pickup truck and drive off, and pursue the argument by jumping into the pickup truck and banging on the window yelling at her. He didn't stay in the truck very long. He fell off in the street, split his head wide open, and died the next day. What an incredibly stupid way to go. The sports media coverage was predictably slanted toward portraying Henry as misunderstood and a guy who was turning his life around and behaving well, blindly ignoring the fact that he was chasing his fiancee and may have had a violent message or two for her once he caught up to her. So if he didn't fall out of the truck and crack his skull open, he was on his way to not turning his life around and getting arrested again for assault and battery, at the least. I shouldn't have been surprised at the cameras capturing members of the Bengals wailing like some tragic thing had happened, especially when one of those men crying was Chad Johnson, a man so caught up in fame and the media spotlight that he legally changed his last name to Ochocinco in some bizarre tribute to his number, 85. Chad's tears probably didn't start until he felt the heat of a camera light on his skin. But I was a little surprised that of the many various media that I listen to--four sports podcasts daily, as well as a lot of ESPN television in the evening when I come home--only one expressed the opinion that this was a bad guy who died a bad, violent death, and the world's better for it: The Boers and Bernstein show in Chicago on 670-AM. Everyone else either ignored it or said that it was a horrible thing to happen. No it wasn't! It was a funny and really ignorant thing to happen, and it couldn't have happened to a more ignorant guy.

So on this, my 34th birthday, I recognize my need to be more aware of the good things in my life instead of always whining about the bad things. I may not have fame or riches like Eldrick and Chris Henry did, but at the moment, I wouldn't want to be either of them. Well, maybe Eldrick, not because of the pussy, which is nice but ultimately unimportant, but because of the moolah.

Stuck

I'm stuck. I want to pursue a broadcasting career, which means higher education, but that takes time and money, neither of which I have. What little money I bring home from my crappy job is being sucked away by rent and credit card payments. Earlier this year, I had to enter a debt consolidation program because the monthly minimum payments had become too much for me to pay in cash, and I ran all my other cards up to their limits so I couldn't use them to pay off each other. So in exchange for having my payments lumped into one monthly debt and having that lump be considerably less than what I would owe if those debts were kept separate, I don't have access to those credit cards anymore. For the first time in more than ten years, I have to live on the wages I make and nothing else. The lifestyle adjustment has been at times overwhelming. No longer can I decide that I feel like going to Quizno's and getting a $7 sub because that's what I'm in the mood for. No longer can I notice that I'm short on cash and drop by an ATM to get more green. It's a very humbling experience to continually ask my aunt to let me pay $50 less than what I owe for rent because I simply don't have the money. It's very humbling to have my fiancee notice that I'm desperately short on food money and send me a big box of food, like I'm deployed in Afghanistan or something. She also recently sent me a $50 gift card to Jewel Food Store. I appreciate her efforts immensely, but she can't continue to support two people on one salary. I have been looking for a second job, but no luck thus far. And even when I find one, it's just a temporary Band-Aid, a way for me to pay my bills, not to save money and pursue an education. My fiancee and I can't really discuss wedding plans because nothing's stable in our lives. I can't afford a wedding right now, and if I could, she wants to wait at least a year because she may want to stay in Memphis and have me move down there instead of her coming up here. She found a job that she's happy with, and she sees potential career growth, so she's no longer a slam dunk to move to Chicago upon our nuptials. It's frustrating because we're both anxious to start our life together, not to mention the financial help I would have paying bills the moment I gain her as a roommate. I was determined not to be one of those couples who were engaged for seemingly years on end, but due to circumstances beyond our control, that's exactly where we're headed. And I'm not getting younger, on the marriage front or on the education front. I didn't want to be earning my bachelor's at 40 and trying to break into broadcasting then, but I may have no choice. And I don't want to wait any longer to get married now that I've found the one woman worthy of it, but unless we put together the world's cheapest ghetto wedding, it's not happening soon. I just feel like I'm in a hole that I can't get out of, and it's very, very frustrating.

Prediction Sure To Go Wrong

I hate using a line from ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning Show, which is as cliched and hackneyed a sports talk show as you will ever hear, but it's true: My predictions always go wrong. I picked the Patriots to win the Super Bowl before last season started, and Tom Brady goes out and breaks his leg first game. So it's time to ask the question, Whose Season Do I Ruin This Time?

Well, I'm going to go with the upset special of picking an NFC team to win the Super Bowl despite being the inferior conference. Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb's window is slamming shut. He was able to close out a run of four straight NFC title games with a victory and a Super Bowl appearance, only to barf all over the field figuratively and literally in their loss to the Patriots. That was several years ago, and the Eagles managed to find their way to the NFC title game again last year only to bow down to Kurt Warner and the miracle Cardinals. I believe that the Eagles picking up Michael Vick despite having one of the best quarterbacks in football was a bit of a desperation move. But the fact is, the Eagles have one of the best pure athletes ever on their roster. Vick was the greatest running QB by the numbers that the game has ever seen. I'm convinced that the Eagles will figure out a way to put him to great use by the end of the season, even if it means taking plays away from McNabb at QB. Hell, McNabb is a pretty good bet to hurt himself at some point this season, and now instead of some unproven mark as a replacement, they have a QB with plenty of NFL experience. I just think there's a hint of desperation in Philadelphia. The veterans aren't getting any younger (and one, safety Brian Dawkins, left town this past offseason), and the defense has some extra motivation after their guru, defensive coordinator Jim Johnson, died two months ago. The running game got some help with rookie RB LeSean McCoy to spell oft-injured Brian Westbrook. The passing game may not have the high-quality weapon that Terrell Owens was, but the receiving corps has much depth. And I'm always a fan of motivation from a tough end to the previous season, and the Eagles led the Cardinals late in the NFC title game before choking down the stretch. I will take the Philadelphia Eagles to go to the Super Bowl and get that one elusive ring, outlasting the Baltimore Ravens in an ugly, hard-fought game. Let the season begin!

Catching Up

I'm chilling at home watching some Law & Order: CI, and I finally did the dishes last night, so I have an opportunity to write a blog post and catch up on some events in my life and outside of it that I haven't commented on. Not a whole hell of a lot is happening in my life. There's a shift of lifestyle that I've had to adjust to, now that my credit card balances spiraled so far out of control that I had to enter a debt consolidation program and cut out my credit cards entirely. My lunches are consisting of homemade sandwiches almost every day, and if I don't find a part-time job soon I'll be forced to really start cutting some luxuries out of my life. But I strangely don't see the whole situation as that big of a deal. Lots of people are trying to get by daily on a lot less money than me, due to car payments and trying to raise children and other expenses that I don't have to worry about. So I'll be fine. I've survived much worse shit than this.

Here are some current event topics that I wanted to make blog posts about but never got around to it:

The Psycho-Pussy Phenomenon. Within a couple of weeks of each other, former NFL QB Steve McNair and boxer Arturo Gatti were murdered by their respective lovers. (McNair's wasn't his wife, and Gatti's death by purse strap strangulation was ruled a suicide by the cops in Brazil where he was murdered, just for the record.) But I pause one second to gather my thoughts on why men who can get any piece of ass they want instead go for young and mentally instable ass, and next thing I know Jason Whitlock has a column out saying the exact same thing (via Deadspin, although I'm not writing an article here, so I don't know why the fuck I'm bothering giving credit for where I saw the column). Whitlock says basically what I was thinking when I first heard about both cases, which is, why in hell would an athlete with money and some fame choose to shack up with young women who don't know what they want in life because they haven't lived long enough, not to mention might be psycho? Having sex with hot, young chicks, that's understandable (although it would have been nice for McNair to decide he wanted a divorce before having sex with hot, young chicks, but in a way that's none of our business). But McNair had an entirely separate life away from his home living with the nut that shot him, going on vacations with her and everything, as if she's mature enough to make your second wife at the age of 20, and Gatti made some 23-year-old stripper his wife. Both men were in their late 30s, and mark my words, both were going to throw the girls aside in ten or fifteen years once they got too old for their tastes. I don't have a problem with that. But you never make one of those young girls your life partner. You're asking for nothing for trouble when you take a hot flame and try to mold her into a housewife. And I can't even get into the press coverage of the McNair story because it was so ridiculous. He was painted as this warrior and great family man who had this tragic thing happen to him. You know who doesn't have tragic things happen to them? Guys who don't fuck little girls and then cheat on them while sleeping in the same house with them and guns are lying around. Try to avoid those loosely connected situations, and still be alive today. See how easy that works?

RIP, Freak. Speaking of sexually confused people, the world's most famous pedophile, Michael Jackson, passed on, and honestly, my second reaction (the first, like everyone else, was "OMFG!1!! MICHAEL JACKSON DIED!!!1!!") was, "I hope he's happy wherever he is." Talk about a guy who didn't like the skin he was in from a very early age. It's hard for me to imagine what being Michael Jackson must have felt like. I like to think I'm the foremost authority on not liking yourself very much, but I've never tried to go from a black man to a white woman, I've never tried to get my nose surgically reduced so much that it looks like a cheese wedge, and I've never desired to fuck little white boys as a way to reclaim my lost childhood. This guy was in so much pain, I can't even fathom it. Only those closest to him could possibly know what went through that guy's skull on a daily basis, and we'll have to wait a year or two for the tell-all books to start coming out. And for what it's worth, I don't think there's a valid reason for fucking little white boys, and it's despicable any way you slice it, but I'm just guessing he did it because it was a way for him to live out his lost childhood; perhaps little white boys were the purest, most innocent form of humanity to him, moreso than little girls or grown humans. But I really hope more than anything that his spirit finds a way to be happy now that it's freed from his body. Someone making as much money as he did, showing his talent as effortlessly as he did should have had so much more fun during his time on Earth, yet no one seemed more tortured in his own skin than Michael Jackson. It was time for him to get off this planet, when you think about it. He didn't die too soon. If anything he died too late, before his desires and psychological issues led him to suck off little boys and ruin their lives forever. Oh, and I've been told that Michael's daddy is a damn fool, but since I've never once paid attention to anything he's said, I can't confirm that.

Support Your Local Indy Fed. About six weeks ago, while walking home from the Metra train on the last Saturday night that I had to work before I started my new shift of M-F, I noticed a small white cardboard sign shoved into the ground that said "Pro Wrestling Tonight," with an arrow pointing across the street at a lonely-looking truck company office. I was thrilled and confused at the same time, thrilled because who knew there was a venue in my neighborhood large enough to hold wrestling matches, and confused because, well, where could this venue possibly be?? I'm telling you, that truck company office is a one-flat storefront, so I knew it couldn't be in there...could it? I went home and decided to search around the internet for any wrestling events on the West Side of Chicago, and thanks to the upcoming events tab at this website, I was able to locate the address and next event of an indy league called the UWC. The address was exactly where that truck company office is. The next show was the very next Saturday after I saw that sign. The cost was $5. I decided to attend. It wasn't worth the $5. First, finding the venue was a trip because as I said, that innocent little office didn't appear to be where the event could be taking place. Well, if you walk along the side wall of that little office, you have to go back about two city blocks to where most of the trucks are parked, but eventually you come upon a building with a row of offices lined up in a way so that it resembles a row of trailers in a trailer park. I frightened the shit out of this 40-year-old white woman who clutched her purse as I approached her and asked was there a wrestling match taking place around here somewhere. "OH, yes," she cheerfully answered, relieved that I wasn't there to rape her, "right through that door." This trailer-park looking place was also a one-flat, so I was still wondering how there was a wrestling match happening here. "Is this the way to the wrestling?" I asked a fat white girl in black jeans. "Yeah," she answered sarcastically, "did my t-shirt give it away?" She turned to show me the UWC t-shirt she was wearing, which was impossible for me to see since I was walking behind her, so yes, cumbucket, the t-shirt that I couldn't see gave it away. Through a corridor, I came upon a small room that had a front wall with framed wrestling magazine covers and pictures of guys that you've heard of and therefore wouldn't be in attendance this evening. Then, around the wall, the rest of the room was empty except for a concession area to the left with food that I wouldn't be ordering and t-shirts and lucha masks that I wouldn't be purchasing. A middle-aged Latina woman took my money at the door at the front of the room, and I stepped through into a larger room resembling a section of a warehouse with about 50 or 60 flimsy folding chairs set up in rows and a rickety ring against the far wall that looked like it would fall apart if someone breathed on it. One wall had a small opening at the bottom resembling a mouse hole. The smell was strong, like people had been sweating and grunting in there for many days before I ever showed up. Less than half the chairs were occupied. I was the only brotha in attendance, although there was a black guy doing very annoying play-by-play over the house mike, and there were a couple of black guys wrestling during the show, and the one and only referee they had was black. I had to sit on two of the chairs at once because I didn't trust just one of them to support my weight. One single small camera on a tripod stood to the right of the ring filming the night's activities. Of the first three matches, one of them featured a wrestler in wrestler's gear--you know, trunks and pads and wrestling boots. Everyone else seemed to be in their street clothes or workout pants with no shirt on. The 350-lb. brotha who came out in a camouflage hoodie almost lost his gym shorts during his match, but thankfully for all of us he had shiny red trunks underneath covering everything up. All five matches were as painfully amateurish as you'd expect, with lots of blown spots and moments that left you wondering why some of these guys were even being allowed in the ring. During intermission, I asked the referee, who was outside on his smoke break, how often they have shows. "Every three weeks," he replied, then looked me up and down like a piece of meat and added, "But we do have training every Saturday!" Hell to the naw, I replied, or something resembling that. For the main event, the champ, a large white dude in a mask, stood in the middle of the ring while his manager and white-trash skank valet issued an open challenge, meaning they charged $5 for a show in which the title match had no advertised challenger. Five minutes before this, two heavy Latina women showed up and sat right behind me, and when the champ came out for the open challenge, they both immediately started booing him and shouting him down, so based on nothing more than this, I assumed that the man answering the challenge would be Hispanic, and he probably just showed up to the "arena" and dropped those two women off in his 1984 Chevy Caprice. I was right. Some fat dude named Will E. Bling ran out and fought with the champ for about five minutes before the champ's manager and entourage jumped into the ring and attacked Will, laying him and some other Latino who charged into the ring out with chairshots. The women howled in anger and shouted words too salty even for this blog, as if this were an actual mugging in the street. They were as entertaining as any wrestlers on the show. The next show after that, according to that Chicago wrestling website, was going to have nine matches but was going to cost $7 for admission. I almost swallowed my tongue when I read that. I didn't go back. That's not to say that I wouldn't someday check it out again just for the cheesy atmosphere, and also because I feel good supporting an indy fed that clearly needs the support, and also because if I ever got the guts to ask if they need an extra announcer or something, I may wind up breaking into the wrestling business after spending my entire life fantasizing about it. But I can't ever see myself in the ring despite my size. Too many bad things can happen trusting an amateur to protect you while you try moves that you're just not coordinated enough to do.

Chicago Sports In The Spotlight. It's fun to see our major league pro sports teams step up and go for the jugular instead of always waiting back and hoping things turn around on their own. The Bulls, despite their horrible draft picks a couple of months ago (Taj Gibson? What, we don't have enough mentally challenged spazzes loitering underneath the basket?), still have a chance to clear salary off their books and jump into the free agent pool after next season. That's the only way they're ever going to get Derrick Rose a supporting cast that can contend for a title, and they know it. Drafting turds every year isn't going to cut it. It may not look like it, but they are putting themselves in the best position to succeed. The Bears are about to fire up their first season with Jay Cutler as their quarterback, and I still can't believe they had the balls to pull off that trade. Cutler is without question one of the seven best QBs in the damn game, and we went out and got him. I'm not perfect with predictions, but I'm not always wrong, either. Prediction: Cutler will throw for 3,500 yards and 25 TDs. Prediction: WR Earl Bennett, who couldn't do much of anything last year for the Bears with Kyle Orton at QB but set records playing with Cutler in college at Vanderbilt, will go for 1,000 yards receiving. Prediction: The Bears will win the NFC Central and will have a really good run through the playoffs, falling just short of the Super Bowl. Prediction: The Denver Broncos, who traded Cutler here for Orton and some draft picks, will suck. Hard. And how about the White Sox going after former Cy Young Award winning pitcher Jake Peavy? I never would have thought the Sox would move that far forward to get an ace for their rotation, but giving up four pitching prospects was not too stiff for GM Ken Williams. Good for him. They don't trade aces every day in baseball, so huzzah for going after one and getting him. It's a strange deal considering Peavy is on the disabled list, and I didn't know you could trade guys on the DL, but I guess when you want someone that bad, you don't care if he's temporarily sidelined. Around the same time the Bears will be gearing up to start the season a month from now, Peavy should be getting set to lead the Sox into the last month and go after a pennant. I'm really, really looking forward to September. Makes me wish I was a sports columnist, because there would be no shortage of topics right now.

And Speaking Of Writing...While looking for part-time jobs, I came across a website called Examiner.com that was looking for columnists, but they wouldn't say how much they would pay. I applied anyway because I hoped that I could write for them and make some extra money, but I never expected that it would pay a lot because if it did, they would say upfront what kind of money they were offering. Well, I got the gig, and I am now the Chicago Long Distance Relationships Examiner. Sure enough, the pay is virtually nothing. They appear to give me a whole penny every time my page is viewed. There's no actual salary for my labor, so page views is the only way I will make any cash. Plus, they won't send me any money until my account grows past $25. At this rate, that will happen around 2013. Oh well. At least I will have a catalogue of writing that I can send a future employer if I want to get into freelance writing, and that catalogue won't have profanity or diatribes about wanting to murder ex-lovers.

Finally, How's The Missus? My fiancee is still searching for work, although she's having success doing volunteer work for nonprofit organizations, which could easily lead into paid labor if she impresses the right people. She visited here twice this summer, and the second time she was able to attend my dinner at ESPNZone that I won at the Sports Spelling Bee. We did it on Saturday, July 4, because I wanted my whole family there with me, and they agreed to be there with me on that day. I was very proud to have everyone there, including my fiancee. I looked over the scene a couple times--all nine of us, including my aunt's family and my uncle's family, except for my uncle's oldest son--and I imagined that this is what it will look like if all of them come down to Memphis for the wedding. It was a little emotional. It sounds strange, but I miss being the center of my family's attention. This happened all the time when I was a child. I'd have a play at school, or a part in some sort of assembly, or they would take me to dinner for some sort of academic achievement. And it was an occasion for my folks to tell me how proud they were of me and how much joy they took in my accomplishments. And the fact is, I ain't accomplished much since I grew up. I still don't want a celebratory dinner for getting my Associates degree because that's something that I shouldn't have done when I was fucking 33 years old. That should have been taken care of twelve years ago, but I was so immature that I avoided college at all costs. I don't think I should be celebrated for something that I put off so damn long. Anyway, my fiancee also went with me to the Sox game that I won tickets for, and that was really fun. They weren't just regular old tickets, they were tickets to something called the Jim Beam Club, and that got us free food, free drinks, free dessert, and a seat one level up from the ground right behind home plate. At one point I got up from all the food and headed out the door to go down to field level because I assumed that I had to go into the actual stands to buy a scorecard. (I like to keep score of the game.) The lady at the door informed me that no, I don't have to leave the Jim Beam Club to get a scorecard, they have them right there at the door. I gladly whipped out a dollar to pay for the scorecard, delighted that I didn't have to go searching for one. She told me the scorecards were complimentary. I then started wondering how I could break the news to my fiancee that I wasn't EVER LEAVING THIS PLACE. To top it off, it was Fireworks Night, and the Sox won, so you couldn't have made it a better night. The only down part about my fiancee's second visit was that I used most of my vacation time on her first visit, so I was going to work, coming home, eating the supper she prepared, and promptly falling asleep. So yeah, we didn't mess around a whole lot. We're both still getting used to each other on some levels. We're shy people by nature, so it's a battle to make that first move. I believe she thinks it's incumbent on me to be more forward since I have more experience, but I'm just not that guy. And she's definitely not that gal. I have a feeling we'll get more comfortable once she moves up here permanently. But after three and a half years of long-distance dating, we still are getting to know each other.

But hey, no excuses. I'll just have to get it together and do better next time. After all, I am the Chicago Long Distance Relationships Examiner. I'm a fucking expert! Right?

Hello? Anybody home??

Say Anything, No Matter How Moronic

Just a couple of tidbits I heard while listening to sports talking heads the past couple of days, which just reinforce how much I want to become a sports broadcaster if only to raise the intellect of the everyday banter:

First, during the NBA Draft coverage on ESPN Thursday evening, main booyah Stu Scott and the Seven Dwarfs doing running commentary next to him were yapping about the #3 pick about to be made by the Seattle, er, uh, Oklahoma City Thunder. Since the Clippers took Blake Griffin #1, and the Grizzlies took Hasheem Thabeet #2, Stu and the boyz assumed that Spanish PG flash-in-the-pan Ricky Rubio would certainly be the next pick due to all the hype around him. For a solid minute, which is a long time with gasbags like these, they did not mention the possibility of anything happening other than the Thunder drafting Rubio any second now. So NBA Commissioner David Stern sidles up to the mic and announces, "With the 3rd pick in the 2009 NBA Draft, the Oklahoma City Thunder select...James Harden from Arizona State." To which Stu immediately responds: "The Thunder liked James Harden all along." WHAT?!? You imbeciles just spent the last minute or two telling everyone how good Ricky Rubio will fit with the young talent of Oklahoma City, and three seconds later, they liked Harden all along? Stu, STFU, you retarded Cyclops. You know NOTHING. None of you know ANYTHING.

Then, just this morning, I woke up to some golf show on WSCR-AM, which I guess is what I fell asleep listening to last night, and I had the pleasure of hearing this exchange between two twits talking about great sports owners, specifically Bill Veeck:

Twit 1: "Is Veeck in the Hall of Fame or no? He should be."

Twit 2: "Charlie Finley is not in the Hall of Fame. Veeck died in '86 but was inducted in '91. That's a shame. I'd have loved to hear that induction speech."

Twit 1: "You can YouTube it, right? Everything's posted on the internet nowadays."

Once Again It's Time...

...for the annual Sick-A-Cell Walk-A-Thon. It's (hopefully) a perfect day for it today, starting around 9A, along the lake starting at 31st St., up to about 67th. Come out for a good cause, and the good weather!

Local Boy Does Good

I have a strange combination of tunnel-vision desire to win anything I compete in and crippling fear of failure. So when I first heard about a sports spelling bee at ESPNZone this past Tuesday, I only had a couple of days to chicken out and decide not to go even though I officially registered for it by e-mail. The event was Thursday (last night), and I had to call my job several times to find someone with authority to give me the day off work, yet still I came close to not going. Wednesday night, I found myself contemplating how embarrassing it would be if I made the trek downtown and got all riled up only to get knocked out in the first round on some obscure hockey player's name. Then, in a flash, I got the inspiration to go to the Blackhawks web site and look at their roster, just to see if I could perhaps memorize the crazy surnames hockey players seem to possess. And with that, I decided that I was in. If I'm going through the trouble of doing even a little bit of studying for such a goofy event, then by God, I was going to take my shot.

I also have a tardiness problem, inherited from my dad. So I arrived at ESPNZone at 6:35P, five minutes later than I was requested. I rushed out of the train station and speed-walked two blocks to the place, and panting hard, I asked the young black girl at the front desk, "I'm embarrassed to say this, but I'm here for the Sports Spelling Bee?" "Why should you be embarrassed?" she said with a smile. "You might actually win the thing." How nice of her to not laugh in my face, as I'm sure she must have been tempted to do. She directed me to someone sitting at a desk upstairs, who gave me an entry sheet to fill out and told me to hurry into the pre-game briefing and bring her the sheet later. I stepped into a side room--coincidentally, a room where my friends and I sat and had dinner the last time I was at ESPNZone, about five years ago--and as I put on my participant's placard and sized up the competition, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't too late. The moderator for the event, a Bob Saget look-alike in a suit more expensive than my wardrobe, was giving the rundown of how a spelling bee works, and because I'm a veteran of spelling bees, I didn't think I missed anything pertinent, so that allowed me to catch my breath and relax. He said at one point that the names in the first few rounds would be rather easy and would be current Chicago sports names, so it would be a get-your-feet-wet situation. Some guy mistook that for getting a free pass in the first round, and we all had a chuckle at the idea. I figured the others competing would be nerdy white men, and I was right. There were fifteen of us, and one was a white woman, and two (including me) were brothas. Considering the prizes for the winner--a VIP party at ESPNZone, two White Sox tickets, and a trophy--I thought there may have been more, but there was no publicity for the event. I heard about it because I'm a member of a Facebook group for former National Spelling Bee participants, and the moderator of the group works for ESPN, so she posted a one-line blurb about it and put a link to the website.

I didn't have time to get nervous after the briefing, because Bob Saget led us to the front where the big-screen TVs show various sporting events in perpetuity and started the show. The sound for all the TVs was turned down, and Bob Saget let everyone know that he was aiming for us to be finished by the time the Magic-Cavaliers NBA playoff game started at 7:30P, to which I thought to myself, Man, he must have some hard names on his list if he plans to have us all eliminated in the next half-hour. He introduced the first contestant as last year's winner, and I started to get a little scared at the thought that hey, maybe there are some guys in this field that are even bigger sports geeks than me and will spell until midnight if they have to. We all stood in order of arrival against the wall and walked to the back of the line when we got a word right, so I, being #15, had to wait until everyone spelled one name before I had my crack. And when the first person got eliminated--he froze on the name Urlacher, which is dumb if you live in Chicago because he's a legend here--I thought, yes, I'm not the first guy out! The woman was about three people ahead of me, and I heard her chatting with someone else in line, telling him, "I'm gonna win." And believe it or not, that actually got me fired up. Not because it was a girl saying that, but because how dare anyone say that out loud. I took offense for some reason. I guess I figured that we're all here trying to win, so for her to verbalize her plan to win regardless of everyone else was more than a little arrogant, and besides, I'm the former Spelling Bee champ here, so if anyone has a right to victory, it's me! When Bob Saget asked me if I had a job that helped me in knowing all these names, I responded, "No, but I must admit. I am the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee champion." I heard some cheers from the people for that, then I saw a yellow flag fly towards me. The judge, a curly-haired guy who couldn't have been older than 23, had "penalized" me for being a ringer, to which I replied, "You never said that professionals weren't allowed!" I was much more relaxed after that exchange.

I have to say, they pulled some fucked-up names not only from the Blackhawks but from the Chicago Fire soccer team that would have eliminated me had I gotten those names. But I didn't. And as the competition went along and people dropped off--the otha brotha, some prick from Milwaukee, some guy in a St. Louis Cardinals cap, the girl, a guy right in front of me with those paraplegic support stilts that attach to your wrists because his legs were all rubbery, and even last year's champ, who didn't know there were two Rs in Correll Buckhalter's first name--I started to have a little more fun with each turn. At one point I wrote out the name on my placard with my finger, like the little nerds do in the actual spelling bee because they're visualizing the word, and at a couple of other points when Bob Saget read off NBA names that had been retired several years ago like Dan Majerle or Detlef Schrempf, I gave him a raised eyebrow and said, "Are you serious?" That got a laugh out of the crowd. But the reality was, either you knew the names or you didn't, and fortunately I knew all of the names I got. However, I'm old, so I don't remember the name that I got right to win. I do remember my celebration when I won--an exaggerated fist pump and four thumps of the chest with both fists like I saw Rafer Alston do for the Magic a few nights ago. I proudly held my trophy up for the patrons to see, and they politely applauded for the geek with way too much glee for winning a sports spelling bee. Then I was interviewed by a reporter for a newspaper in Indiana, congratulated by some of the competitors who stuck around for the end, and asked to fill out some release forms by Bob Saget, who also took a bunch of pictures of me and the trophy. Then I shook his hand and went right back to the train station that I just ran out of a couple of hours ago, shaking my head at how eerily similar the experience was to my win in 1990. All the same emotions--pride, joy, shame at being so happy about something so utterly meaningless, and a little bit of bashfulness at my moment in the spotlight. And the same lasting emotion when all the others have cycled through--the thought that no matter what, I accomplished something, and no one can ever take it away.

The Champ Is HERE!!!

The Spelling Bee Champ is back! For one night only...Sports Spelling Bee, Thu. May 28, 6:30P, ESPNZone, downtown Chicago...I'm in it to win it!!

Tying The Knot, Part 4: Keeping The Flame Alive

Nothing is easy about a long-distance relationship, except perhaps for the fact that my fiancee and I don't have a chance to get on each other's nerves. But one of the worst factors is that there's no physical contact. It's not just about sexual intimacy, which isn't even a component in our relationship since we are waiting to have sex until after marriage, but even the slightest bit of staying in touch is key to not feeling like you're in a loveless relationship. I was pleasantly surprised by my fiancee's attempts this past weekend to spice things up.

A week and a half ago she sent me an online article she read about how there should not be any secrets or shame in the bedroom between two married people. Anything goes when it comes to being intimate with your spouse. Many people feel that they can't or shouldn't do certain "dirty" things in bed, the article said, even when it's with their own husband or wife, when in fact the Bible says that it's part of the act of marriage and love to explore the heights of intimacy. My fiancee took this to mean that maybe we should be less inhibited about sex when it comes to talking about it or expressing desire. To that end, she sent an e-mail detailing three things she decided to do: 1, she told me that anytime I was willing to try phone sex, although she may not be any good at it initially, she was game. She had always said that she believed phone sex was something we should do only after we got married and were separated from each other for a few nights. 2, she said that she was fine with any kind of dirty talk or passionate utterances I wanted to say the next time we fooled around. Before, she has had a problem with the chance that in the heat of the moment I may say something she takes offense to, like "Suck my dick bitch!" or something to that effect. I've been very careful not to go down that road, and I won't say that it has stifled my enjoyment of our fooling around, but it would be fun to see how nasty we can get. I'm not sure if I should take her up on it, though. I have a knack of fucking things up, and it would be my luck that I find the one thing to say that makes her burst into tears or something. But it's still makes me smile to see that this article has given her the idea of having no limits to our sexual experiences. She said that her 3rd point taken away from the article would be revealed at a later date. I had no idea what that meant, and it slipped my mind after a day or two.

Then a week ago, as I'm about to play a video game, I got a text from my fiancee saying that I had something special waiting for me in my e-mail. It wasn't there yet, so I had to wait a couple of minutes, but when it arrived, I was surprised to see that it was a picture she took of herself in her bra and panties after getting out of the shower. She had scrawled "I LOVE U!" on a piece of paper and attached it to her bathroom mirror, then took a pic of herself in the mirror. This was a bit of a shock because it was out of her element to take pictures that could be construed as naughty. I was happy more for her shedding her inhibitions a little than for receiving the pic. Then I got another e-mail titled "The Girls." Sure enough, it was my God-fearing fiancee with her bra off and a devilish smirk on her face. Very arousing. A third pic came in titled "Booty," and this was her in her thong showing off her fantastic ass. (She told me later that she had originally bent over for the ass shot, but decided that it made her butt look too big. Sigh. Typical woman.) A fourth e-mail came in titled "Something To Suck," and because she was literally and metaphorically letting her hair down, I assumed this would be a spread-eagle pic of her clit, but she wasn't quite ready to go there yet. It was a close-up of one of her large nipples. I was still very impressed at her ability to let herself go free. She even promised that I could take more intimate pictures when we got a chance, especially since "it's hard taking those kind of pictures of yourself." I can only imagine.

My fiancee and I had been having some issues lately concerning how I handle my money and how I would handle it when it became "our" money. We had avoided name-calling and hurtful dialogue, but it was still stressing us out, on top of my stress from the job and her stress from job-hunting and our stress from the distance between us and the inability to plan our wedding at this time. But by this one (or four) act (or acts), she let me know that continuing to want each other emotionally and physically is still a vital part of our relationship. It worked, too. She's visiting in a week and a half, and I want her as much as I ever have.

He's Done It Again

http://jimcornette.com/Commentary.html

Jim Cornette, a long-time manager in the wrestling business, has written another all-time great commentary piece (blog post, do I dare call it?), this time about the history of "hardcore" wrestling and the damage it has done to the industry. I actually expected to hate the piece due to my neverending love and respect for the old Extreme Championship Wrestling, or ECW, of the 1990s. But after reading the article, I see the harm done by having those kinds of matches night after night. I should just find a way to link to Cornette's web site so that every time he writes a new commentary, it automatically shows up on my blog.

BTW, I'll have another blog post about me and my fiancee in the next day or two. I'm sure you 3 people still reading my blog just cannot wait.

Normal Working Hours?

I almost forgot what it was like to work Monday through Friday, morning to evening, but through a chain of events, I will rediscover the feeling. Due to the U.S. Postal Service eliminating the time shift that allowed us mail extractors to receive mail on 2nd shift, we were informed in a meeting a few weeks ago that our 2nd shift would also be getting terminated. We were handed sheets with new potential schedules and told to put our names on the sheet and rank our most and least desired new shifts. There were only two choices for full-time workers, which is what I am, and they were 7A-3:30P and 9A-5:30P. I chose the 9A-5:30P slot because I couldn't imagine waking up at 5A to get to work by 7A every day. But either way, I was excited to be leaving 2nd shift and going back to 1st, freeing up my evenings again. I had become accustomed to my life as an evening worker, but it was stifling the slightest bit of social interaction I may have had a chance to experience, and it was also not making my fiancee happy that she couldn't have a decent conversation with me after work because she and I were tired at that time of night.

I worried about not getting the 9A shift and having to work at 7A, but I would adjust if need be. Hell, I knew I'd be okay with the earlier shift the first night I would be able to be home at 6P for the start of the night's baseball games, which I'm never home to see except on my off days, Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, a couple of things happened a week ago that altered my plans. First, we were informed in another meeting that J.P. Morgan Chase had worked out some kind of agreement with the USPS to have a skeleton crew work that shift, making it possible for us to retain several people for our 2nd shift. Chase still wanted some people to move to mornings, but it was no longer necessary for everyone to have to find a new shift. They handed out new sheets for us to ponder what schedule we preferred, and now I had to make the decision: Did I really want to go back to mornings, or was I comfortable enough working evenings to stay? I chose to ask for the 9A shift again. It was just too tempting to not have to worry about getting home at night because certain bus lines had stopped running, and finding places to go on my 7P lunch break since some restaurants around my job closed by 5 or 6P, and like I said, it would make my fiancee very happy to have me available in the evenings. At the same time, I had been placed in a program where I was processing all of the courier packs of mail that were dropped on the floor, which is a lot of work because sometimes those FedEx and DHL and UPS envelopes are just stuffed with checks. But hey, processing checks is processing checks, and I have to be at work 8 hours every day regardless. I was never given a straight answer why I was chosen for this project, but I've been doing it for almost a month now, and I'm getting used to it. Little did I know how important doing this project would turn out to be.

Last Friday, I was informed by my current supervisor that I received the shift that I asked for, which is 9A-5:30P. I was excited. More chances to hang out with friends, more baseball and football games that I could actually watch, more conversation with my fiancee. Now, I assumed that I would keep the same weird days that I work, Thursdays through Mondays with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, because I've been constantly told in the three years that I've worked there that we get most of our mail on weekends and Mondays, and that's when they need the most people. And it's true; I've worked a couple of Tuesdays in the past month in order to free up a weekend day to have off instead of burning a vacation day, and the work has been so light, I've seen people arriving for work on 3rd shift at 10P be turned around and immediately sent home. However, when my supervisor told me that I would be placed in the same courier-pack program when I move to mornings, I wondered how it would work out. We get almost no courier packs on the weekends. Would I be sent back to my regular workgroup on Saturdays and Sundays, as I am now? Wouldn't it make sense for morning courier-pack people to work Monday through Friday, since we don't hardly have any courier packs on weekends? I wondered this to my fiancee, but I never spoke to anyone at work about it. Then, this past Monday, my supervisor gave me my new schedule in writing, and there it was: Courier Pack Group, 9A-5:30P, Monday through Friday! OMG!! She explained that on 1st shift, everyone in the courier-pack group works weekdays only. For the first time in 3 stinking years, my weekends are free again!

I have to wait until June 1 to start this new stage of my Chase career, but I cannot wait. All I've been thinking about the last several days is, Saturdays and Sundays off to do as I please...talking on the phone with my fiancee...stepping out and going to weekend activities with her when she's in town...watching baseball...watching FOOTBALL, which I haven't done much of the last 3 years...attending family functions and events without using up vacation days...perhaps once again joining a bowling league with my uncle, who only bowls on Sundays...spending a weekend at friends' houses, or maybe even hosting a poker weekend at my crib...getting home every day when the sun's still out...I'm not going to know what to do with myself. I suffered through 3 years of that shitty schedule, and now it's paid off, because I have to believe that I wouldn't have been chosen for the courier-pack group unless I had the experience at this job to not panic at the large volume of work and the daily deadlines that come with courier packs. Of course, seemingly everyone else at my job is unhappy with their new shifts, but we've been told that preferences for certain shifts were assigned based on productivity and quality of work, and since I don't make errors and do a decent amount of work every month, well, I guess that made me the pick of the litter. I'm a little sad for some friends who didn't get the shifts that they wanted, but I'm certainly thrilled about how things worked out for me. Sometimes, patience does pay off.

On Looking Like A Good Singer

Everyone has had a first reaction to the Susan Boyle appearance on the variety show "Britain's Got Talent." Whether it's disgust at Boyle herself, or laughing at her look, or being moved by her singing voice, or a combination of all kinds of emotions, no doubt you've got some kind of reaction. And obviously, to get almost 50,000,000 hits on YouTube, a reaction of some kind is being generated. Here's my reaction: This is all Madonna's fault.

Yes, Boyle can sing, and that's not up for debate. My problem is with everyone being so surprised that she can sing. The gasps and giggles from the audience when Boyle walked out on stage came from a place inside those folks in which they've been trained to think over the years that anyone not hot or attractive obviously can't sing. Even the damn judges on the panel, whose jobs, I thought, were to judge talent, not PREjudge talent, were stunned by her ability. And I couldn't have been angrier. See, all the pop tarts out there like Britney and Pink have contaminated the pool by becoming singing stars not because of their singing, but because of their ability to writhe around on a beach or on stage and look like porn stars while lip-synching to their mechanically-enhanced vocals. And it all started with Madonna. I say that because, before she and MTV came along in the early 1980s, I don't recall your looks having anything to do with how well you can sing. Of course, I wasn't around in the '70s, but I'm guessing that you still had to sound good to sell records back then, and I'm definitely going to assume that for before the '70s. But fast forward to today, where a judge of a talent show can actually have the temerity to say to a contestant, "I didn't think you could sing so well based on how you looked when you walked out here." What the fuck does that mean??? Someone please tell me how your looks are in any way connected to how well you can sing. Once Madonna showed how you can make it to the top of the music charts without the ability to hold a note, the floodgates opened, and Janet Jackson, Britney, and tons of others whose names I've since forgotten managed to hit our radios and make our ears bleed while horny teenage guys and insecure girls who wanted to be like those pop tarts pushed their popularity sky high. And hey, I was one of the horny guys; I wasn't a teenager when "Like A Virgin" came out, but I bought the extended version on vinyl, I still own it, and I never liked it for Madonna's vocal range, I liked it because hearing a hot chick cooing "Touched for the very 1st time" when I was nine years old make me feel tingly and warm, and I like the feeling, although I didn't understand it.

So I get that it's a marketing coup when you can make a singing star out of someone who cannot sing for shit. That's great, and congrats to everyone involved. But what's been created as a result is a situation where a woman can come out onstage looking not so hot, and people all around the world express shock and amazement when she sings well. No, my friends, that's not amazing. What's amazing is that we've allowed ourselves to judge vocal talent on how sexually charged the vocalist is. The only worse reflection on our society is the fact that I guarantee you, Susan Boyle, sometime soon, maybe this year or perhaps next summer, will get a full makeover by some marketing genius in an attempt to sell recordings of her voice, which, of course, have nothing at all to do with her appearance.

When Bad Comedy Writers Attack Good Wrestling Shows

http://www.jimcornette.com/Commentary.html (link taken from f4wonline.com)

The above link is for anyone who has ever wondered what the difference is between good, sensible, intelligent booking in pro wrestling and nonsensical, garbage, bullshit "writing" that seems to have permeated the industry nowadays. In his article "The 'Write' Stuff," Jim Cornette, who has been in the wrestling industry for almost 30 years, breaks down why the comedy writers who populate the "WWE Universe" are ultimately much more harmful than good for the business. For hardcore fans, and even for casual observers who have watched something on a WWE telecast that isn't entertaining and has nothing to do with wrestling and wondered why the hell they put such crap on TV, this is a must-read.

A quick update on me: Not much going on. I'm looking forward to a bowling event for Sick-A-Cell this Saturday at Lakewood Bowl in Richton Park, IL. I'll be in lots of pain afterwards because I'm old, but that's ok. If anyone's interested, it's $20, which gets you two games, shoes, pizza, and a raffle ticket for prizes that usually are pretty cool. Last year, they gave away an iPod. It starts at 6P, so drop on by. In other news, my job is eliminating 2nd shift, so by June 1st I will be back waking up early in the morning and going to work 9 to 5 like normal people. I got used to 2nd shift, so I will miss certain aspects of it, mostly waking up whenever the fuck I felt like it. But I will be happy to watch prime-time television once again, especially baseball and football games, and my fiancee will be thrilled to speak to me earlier than 11:15P most nights. Finally, speaking of wrestling, I caved in and ordered WrestleMania 25 a few weeks ago after waffling back and forth. I won't say it was a horrible show, but I will say that I got the feeling even before I ordered that this may be the last big show I pay for because wrestling is on the decline without a bright light on the horizon, and this card didn't do anything to change my mind about that. The best match was between two guys over 40 (Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker), and of the two men that won the double main event, one can't wrestle but is on top because he's sexy and sells a ton of merchandise (John Cena), and the other is fucking WWE owner Vince McMahon's daughter (Triple H). Yeah, I don't think I'll be back for any more PPVs anytime soon.

Blast From The Past II

In this blog entry about my experiences in the Chicagoland and National Spelling Bee, I typed the following sentence: "...while actually telling a girl that sat next to me during the contest how calm and cool I was, the gum I was chewing fell out of my mouth and onto the floor. Real smooth, Ex-Lax."

It's a small world after all...

Last Friday at about 6:45P, I was walking back into the building where I work with my dinner in tow. I had my headphones on and blasting as usual, so I kinda noticed a woman signing in at the front desk making a quick hand gesture, but I ignored it because I assumed she was talking to someone else. I then blew past three security guards trying to get my attention until I caught the last one out of the corner of my eye frantically waving his hands at me. He then pointed me back towards the woman at the front desk. I walked back and looked at the girl, and as she began to talk, my brain recognized her as someone from my childhood, but I couldn't immediately place her. She was tall, thin, black with light features, and had short wavy hair. "This is gonna sound strange," she started, "but did you participate in the Chicago Spelling Bee many years ago?" I cracked a large smile and looked in the air, shocked that a fellow contestant picked me out of thin air on the street twenty years later. But I actually didn't realize exactly who she was until we talked for a minute. There were only a couple of black girls in the Chicagoland Spelling Bee with me that year, and I didn't talk to any of them...except the one sitting next to me who confided in me that she was nervous. The one who I tried to calm down by telling her how cool and calm I was. The one who watched my Big Red gum go flying out of my mouth as I attempted to tell her how cool and calm I was. Yes, she was that girl. How crazy is that??

We shot the bull for a couple of minutes, as she recalled that she didn't know how to spell some word that I did, and she remembered the word that I got right to win it all. She asked what I was doing in that building at that moment, and I told her that I worked there for Chase. I asked what she was doing in the building, and she told me that she was an attorney for some firm there, and at that moment I started to go upstairs to my breakroom, because there's no sense continuing to talk to a girl who grew up to be an attorney while I'm counting checks for $10 an hour. "You can tell your friends about the weird girl with the long memory," she laughed as I walked away. I believe her name was Dana. I spent the rest of the evening not believing the coincidence that found me in 2009 walking past the girl who was so cute that I spit gum trying to have a conversation with her in 1990. In retrospect, perhaps I should be proud that this time, I didn't accidentally spray her in the face.

The End Of The Beginning

I know I finished the last class that I needed to earn my associates degree in December, but I had been waiting to write a blog post about how I felt upon completion of that phase of my life until I actually had the degree in my hand. And now I do.

After calling the school in January and being told that I would receive a letter in February informing me what the next step would be, I finally received said letter Wednesday. It said to pick up my degree in the registrar's office by some date in June or else it would be mailed to me. I picked it up the next day. I even bought a frame and put it in already, even though I have to buy some nails in order to place it on my wall. It doesn't read any different than any other degree I'm sure, but it's my fucking degree, so I will type exactly what it says:

"City Colleges of Chicago Harold Washington College

The Board of Trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago, Community College District No. 508, County of Cook and State of Illinois, by virtue of the authority vested in the Board, and upon recommendation of the Faculty, confers on ANDRE JAVELL ROSS the degree of ASSOCIATE IN ARTS WITH HIGH HONORS

This award is issued in evidence thereof. GIVEN AT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, ON DECEMBER 13, 2008"

Yes, I'm a little proud of my achievement. Although I would love to know why the date has to be printed as if I received the thing on that day, which is certainly not the case.

I didn't know exactly how I would feel when I put my hands on that degree, whether I would be proud, emotional, overwhelmed, nonchalant. As it happened, I was texting my fiancee while waiting for the worker at the registrar's office to bring it out. She was a little upset because, while sitting in a class to learn how to improve her skill set in order to find work (she was recently laid off), some guy was sitting in front of her clearly not interested in the proceedings. The moment they brought my degree out to me, I was texting her, "That guy, like all of us, will get out of life what he puts into it." How perfect was that? I was receiving the fruits of my labor right at that very moment. And it wasn't so much emotional as it was very, very gratifying. The emotional part came this morning when I put my degree in its frame and kind of looked at it for a second as if it wasn't real, like I was just having a dream. I said to myself, "Is this really mine?" I guess it had not hit me until that moment.

And so ends this part of my life when I decided that I shall either start doing things for me to try to improve my quality of life or I might as well just lay down in six feet of dirt and end it right there. It started, as you can read in my blog archives, in the spring and summer of 2004, when my personal life exploded like a Molotov cocktail, and I was left with glass shards all over my psyche. "Karen" wasn't giving me any answers concerning why she lied to me the entire six months we dated, "Sarah" cared for me, loved me, then dumped me, and there I was, all alone, coming off a week in a psych ward, and feeling like there was nothing left for me. In a split second, I decided to take my swollen toe, gout having set in due to the stress in my life and my bad diet, and go downtown to Harold Washington College. Two days of frenzied registration followed, and just like that, I was a college student, living for me, working for me, taking my life into my own hands instead of leaving it for cold-blooded whores to step all over. I actually had a long-term plan for myself. I actually had some goals that didn't involve which fat white chick I planned to move in with. And, five long years later, I achieved the goal of college graduate.

Now that I'm no longer living in the apartment or working in the same job or surfing the singles sites or chasing the tail that I was during the period leading up to the 2004 explosion, Harold Washington College was the last link that I had to those days, and that was only because those women indirectly pushed me into school as a last resort for me to stop ruminating about the things they had done to me. That's why it's the end of the beginning. Community college was the beginning of me seizing control of my destiny and making something of myself, and completing community college is the end of that beginning. But it's certainly not the end of my journey. By hook or by crook, by FAFSA or by scholarship or by student loan, I plan on being at Columbia College this fall, continuing my education, striving towards a bachelor's degree in broadcasting, and having fun along the way. But that's in the future. I just want to take a moment and thank Karen, Sarah, "Adrienne," "Torrie," "Laurie," The Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Nameless, "Jane," and a few others, all whom displayed some level of disrespect and betrayal to me in the months prior to and beginning months of my education. My family and friends and other co-workers had pressed me constantly to go back to school, but it's funny how certain motivational factors work better than others. You all combined to slam home the point to me that I had better start taking care of myself because no one else surely will give a rat's ass about me, no matter how much they may say otherwise in the heat of passion. You may not have meant to have that effect on me, but you did. I will forever be grateful.

Blast From The Past

Everyone has a "ran into someone I used to fuck" story. Mine wasn't very exciting, but it just happened last week, so here it is.

"Grace," the one-night stand from three years ago, works for Playboy Magazine. She was so proud of it that she gave me her business card the one night we spent together. Last Tuesday I made my way to a theater downtown to see The Wrestler (very good film). It was the same theater that "Shelley" and I visited several times during that tumultuous relationship, so if I were going to run into someone I used to go out with, I thought it may be Shelley. I feared that it may be Shelley, I should say. I even had a flashback sitting in the theater because the seat I sat in was in the same position as the ones Shelley and I sat in to watch Rent. That was an emotional movie and an emotional night. So I had to concentrate hard on The Wrestler in order to avoid thinking about that. But anyway, the movie ended around 4P, and I made my way to a bus stop to go straight home. A minute after I got to the bus stop, I felt a woman walk near me, stop maybe six or seven feet away on my right side, and stare at me for like 10 seconds. I had my earbuds in as I listened to my iPod, so I wasn't paying very close attention, but when I felt that stare, I turned and looked in the general direction of the woman but not directly at her. It took a few seconds for her visage to come clear in my mind as someone I knew, but I wasn't totally sure it was Grace until I saw her back and noticed the Playboy logo on her jacket. At that point, I took out my earbuds and started thinking in my brain about what to say to her, or if I should say anything at all. She stood there smoking and not acknowledging me at all, and I walked all around her but never closer than a few feet. I really didn't know what to do. I had some things I wanted to tell her, but I didn't know if they were things I necessarily needed to say, or if she even wanted to hear them. Finally, I chickened out. My bus came and I decided to get on it and not say a word to her. I made sure I didn't look out the window at her as the bus pulled off, because that would have been the ultimate punk move--don't say a word, but then stare her down as I'm riding away and she can't say anything.

The next morning, I woke up thinking about Grace still, and I decided that running into her must have been some sign for me to tell her how I felt after 3 years. So I wrote her an e-mail. And I detailed the fact that I didn't communicate with her after our night together not because I was disappointed in the evening, but only because I started talking with the woman who is now my fiancee right after that night, and I didn't want to ruin what was happening by tempting myself chatting with a woman I fooled around with. It was important for me to tell Grace that she was great that night and that I was immature not explaining to her why I fell off the face of the earth. I knew that she didn't necessarily need the explanation, but I had wanted to get that off my chest all this time, and I was able to do it in that e-mail. A couple of hours later, Grace responded, saying that she was stunned by the letter and didn't know what to say. I told her that was fine, and thanks for at least acknowledging it, because I was afraid she might just laugh at the stupid little boy writing after 3 years and ignore it. We then chatted via IM for a while, as she let me know that she actually didn't recognize me at the bus stop, but was staring because she was "checking me out." Hey, she screwed me, so I guess she's attracted to my type. I told her that because my fiancee is devout to her religion, we had not had sex, so she's still the last person I have slept with. "You poor baby," Grace said. "3 years! I'm getting lightheaded just thinking about it." It turns out that Grace is in a relationship herself, a new profile pic of her and some black guy in glasses side by side as evidence. Instead of reacting with jealousy as I probably would have a few years ago, I actually said, "Aw." Being settled in my own personal life made me more mature as far as seeing exes with other men goes. Grace ended our chat by saying she was very happy now. I couldn't be happier for her. And, unlike my other exes, she was able to grant me some closure.

Super Bowl XLIII

Arizona vs. Pittsburgh (-6.5)

I've heard some media folks picking the Cardinals to win this game, and there's two reasons besides the obvious--Pittsburgh is much the better team--why this is ludicrous. One, these are the same guys who didn't give the Giants a snowball's chance last year against the undefeated Patriots. I really think that these people are so shortsighted that they can't look past last year, when a much bigger underdog pulled off the upset of a lifetime, and therefore they feel that they have to go with the Cards today because, well, they have a better chance than New York last year, right? One has nothing to do with the other, you idiots. Just because you (and me and everyone else) whiffed on last year, that doesn't mean you have to spin around this year and ignore why the Steelers are favorites and just blindly go with the Cards. Analyze the game, not the moment. And two, these are also the same people that didn't give the Cardinals a chance at every level of this year's playoffs. Not a one of them was picking the Cards to go to the Super Bowl, but now that they're in, all of a sudden now they look like the team to beat to a handful of people. Where were these guys when the Cards were outclassing the Falcons, outhustling the Panthers, and outlasting the Eagles? They were coming up with every reason under the sun why the Arizona Cardinals had no chance to go any further. My excuse for not picking the Cards to beat the Eagles is, simply, I can't pick Eagles games for my life. (I've heard that Donovan McNabb will be a Hall of Famer someday, and I think that's not only wrong but patronizing because I think he'd be voted in due to pity in regards to the sometimes unfair criticism he received from Philly fans and Rush Limbaugh and assorted other voices over the years. Just because he got called out in spots just because he was the black quarterback doesn't mean he wasn't woefully inconsistent throughout his career.) In any event, the analysis for Super Bowl Cuatro Tres, as Chad Johnson may call it, reads like this to me: It's the #4 offense for the regular season in Arizona vs. the #1 defense in Pittsburgh, and defense wins championships. I said that the winner of the Ravens-Steelers game would be champs, and I'm not wavering. I just cannot see the Cards, a team that got bent over and plowed like a faggot in jail several times in the regular season, all of a sudden getting it together and beating the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Going through the NFC playoffs? Sure. Beating the 12-4 Steelers, who went through statistically the hardest regular-season schedule ever? Not happening. The defenses got harder every step in the playoffs for Arizona, with the Eagles almost stealing the NFC title game, and now it culminates in the top defense, and I can't pick them to overcome that. As far as the spread goes, I'll use this bit of logic to go with the Steelers to cover: I've heard a lot of chatter about Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger's horrific performance in the Super Bowl three years ago at the end of his rookie year, a game the Steelers still managed to win over a similarly overmatched Seattle Seahawks squad. I believe his QB rating was in the twenties, and for comparison's sake, 80 is considered good and 100 is considered great. I think he's heard just about enough of that shit. I'm calling four TD passes in a Steelers rout.

My Pick: Pittsburgh 34-17