At the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, one of the honorees was Carole King. Imagine that you are the planner for the event, and someone told you to use “Natural Woman” as the finale to King’s portion of the event. Who do you ask to sing it, but Aretha?

The look on Carole King’s face is amazing, and it only gets better as the performance goes on. I can easily see Carole going to the after-party, telling everyone who comes up to her “Aretha sang my song!”

I’m back, having put together an emergency pumpkin pie and given it over to the oven.  I was invited over to friends’ to eat later this afternoon and hate to show up empty-handed, even when they say I can.  Having been out of town about 10 days working I landed in my living room about 0300 today with the makings of T’giving dinner, a bundle of dirty laundry and a to-do list about 30 items long.  The invite came in after the turkey thighs and such had gone into the oven, so I just let them roll b/c I can eat them any time.  Having gotten “food” out of the way I can now continue the trash.

Fatty Matty is limping onto the field, down 4 with about 8:00 left.  A far more interesting situation than I’d expected to see this late in the first game.   I would like to see the Lions in the playoffs, if only as a change of pace from All Cheese, All the Time.  Oh, well.  3 and out.

But on to something closer to my heart.  I don’t think I’ve commented quite enough on the beauty of Philly demolishing Jackass Jerry’s Owboys Monday night.  I was really tired – on the road, working long hours and living out of a suitcase – and fell asleep at halftime.

So, I missed the best part.

When you lose the second half 30-0, you deserve to be in the cellar.  I suspect later today we’ll see the Owboys continue to slide, stumble and cartwheel down the basement steps.  As you no doubt know my rooting interests are #1 Stillers, #2 Who’s playing Dallas? #3 Iggles, etc., so any week with a Stiller win and 2 Owboys’ losses goes in the books as one of the better weeks in history, period.  Here’s to another Owboys’ loss, today.  [Time to reduce the oven temperature for the pie.] Many will no doubt attribute the Owboys’ losses to King Roger and his Lords of Discipline sending Elliott off to the suspended list, yadda yadda.  Sure, they’re missing a major offensive weapon, but that ain’t all of it.  Dallas was teetering on the brink of collapse – internal collapse – way back when it became clear some discipline would land on Elliott for whatever it was The League decided he needed to be disciplined for.

Here’s where Jerry comes in and makes it worse.

Everyone knew Elliott was going to be suspended for some length of time.  I’m a nobody and I knew.  It was all over ESPN.  Everyone knew King Roger was going to hold off dropping the hammer until after Jackass Jerry got his Yellow Blazer in Canton, so as not to detract from Jerry’s Big Day.  So, what did Jerry do?

His ego deluded him into believing that He Was Special.  That King Roger would not whip Him, just like he did Kraft (formerly another of his biggest supporters).  That He and His Owboys didn’t live under the same shitty rules, Roger’s Rules of Disciplinary Whimsy, if you will.   So, rather than taking his medicine like he told Kraft, he decided to fight it.  When Jerry and Elliott sued before the arbitrator’s decision came down – almost certainly frivolous litigation if you ask me – it got worse.  That the Owboys got in front of a Texas judge who must have weighed his popularity with Owboys fans more heavily than the binding, or persuasive, effect of the Brady v. NFL precedent just helped push Jerry further into his delusion.  Stopping the arbitral process … just delayed the inevitable.

I have little doubt Jerry’s lawyers covered their asses by writing letters memorializing their opinion that going forward before the arbitrator decided the case was likely unsupported by precedent or even contrary to it, so when Jerry turns around and sues them for malpractice they can point to the cover letter and say “we told you so, and you said to do it anyway, so we did it.”  That assumes they haven’t been beaten down by years of repping Jerry, and simultaneously addicted to being the lawyers for The Dallas Cowboys (doubtless a high-status thing in Texas), such that they do his bidding in all things without even a cautionary word, let alone “no”.  Or, “so we did it”.

But the months of lawyering only did two related things.  One, it left the Owboys without their best RB now, during the critical weeks of the schedule when his impact would have been helpful or more.  Two, it diverted attention from building the collection of players into a Team.

Compare to how the Patsies dealt with losing Brady for four games last year, following the Deflategate debacle.   In Jerry’s own words, they took their medicine.  and a bitter dose it was, seeing as how King Roger used a physics/ideal gas law adviser who was the analog of Lysenko, Stalin’s Geneticist.  And then he created a whole new violation for spoliation, going all ex post facto on Biebs and Kraft.

If you want to get a flavor of why the early Americans pulled their flintlocks off the mantelpiece, got into pitched battles with regular troops and Hessian mercenaries, spent winter shoeless, scurvied and starving in Valley Forge, and rowed ore boats across an ice-choked river to march miles in an ice storm and fight, consider the dudgeon of fans of the Patsies or the Ideal Gas Law when confronted with Goodell playing George III.  In the greater scheme of things, football is less important than, say, paying for a tax stamp on your newspaper.  By how much, I’ll leave to you to discuss.

But the Patsies went into the season knowing Brady would be unavailable for the first four weeks.  They worked with Garoppalo and Brissett during the preseason – and Brady, too – but built their team around adversity.  They made Brady’s suspension into something akin to an injury, or like the Stillers’ handling of Big Ben’s early-season suspension several years ago.  What came of it?  Garop showed himself a capable NFL QB.  Brissett, until he was hurt in game 4, likewise.  They went 3-1 in the 4 games Brady was suspended.  And then they went on – turning their and their fans’ hatred of King Roger* into motivation – to make massive headaches for the sound editors making the Super Bowl highlights video, trying to edit out King Roger being booed off the podium after handing Terry Bradshaw the Lombardi.  *(I’m told, by people who know, that King Roger’s neighbors – Patsies fans all – continue to shun him and his wife, making that clifftop seaside lair a very cold place, even by Maine-winter standards.)

NB:  I think I said so at the time but Roger’s display on the podium, having some broadcaster hand over the hardware and ducking out instantly, was one of the more craven displays of physical and moral cowardice ever captured on video.  Even if the rightsholders won’t let you see it.

But, but, but, you might say:  Elliott’s suspension came down only weeks before the season, not months like Brady’s.  That’s true, but I will counter by reminding you that a QB is both far more important as a part of a team and his position is far more complicated than that of an RB.  Or, said another way, it’s a lot easier to replace a RB a couple weeks before the season than a QB (particularly one at Brady’s level) months before the season.

But Jerry doesn’t know when not to fight, and it’s all his fault his team is missing a very good RB during the critical weeks of the season.

I think the Owboys have put out bounties on opposing teams’ placekickers.  That’s 2 in 2 games, both in the same week.  Roger needs to investigate.

Dinner’s ready….  Gotta go.

I’s the ‘Etha’ part of her name makes all them ain’t awake think Miz Franklin has ‘gone under’.

An’ think how much trouble them owners coulda saved themselves if they had responded to the “take a knee” phenomenon by having Miz Franklin do the Anthem:

Ones wouldn’t stand for the Anthem would stand for her, wouldn’t they?  Problem solved…

Unless, of course, she had took a knee on their request…