Trash Talk, Failed Pundit Edition

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Say, did any of you notice how badly I did with predictions last week?

So here are my predictions for the week: Carolina will beat a beat up Vikings team. The fifth-round college backup coached by BillBel will notch another win.

And about that  0-3 of the title? On paper, by all reasoning, the Chargers should beat the Jets. But that last second thing is really killing them this year, so you gotta go with Favre. 

Finally, the Jaguars keep trying for that elusive break-out game against Peyton Manning. The Jags aren’t the team they were last year. But then, neither are the Colts. Two teams with swiss cheese for an O-line, the Jags still looking for their first win, in Indy?

Unfortunately, I think there are going to be at least two playoff teams from last year that’ll be 0-3 after this weekend.

Can you say 0-fer? In related news, randiego showed up again. 

And if that doesn’t make me pathetic enough, know that I fell asleep just as the Wolverines were beginning their big comeback yesterday–missed the whole damn thing. Go Blue!

I’m just going to take solace in the fact that the Lions finally got rid of Matt Millen (the TSA guard in SFO was teasing me about how long that took), and we’ve got a week to try to become a pro team again.

So rather than risking any predictions this week, I’ll just pose this question for discussion: Why is Nick Saban so much better as a college coach than a pro coach?

Emptywheel’s Trash Talk – Debate With The Dishonorable Geezer Edition

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There are a bunch of games. Half the mopes will lose. Teams from Phoenix will be among them; but with the USC burp Thursday night, it is a little easier to take. This done on the fly, so additional fun discussion will have to follow later. I am thinking you guys know how to rip the joint up without a bunch of mumbo jumbo anyway.

Trash and smash at will!

(Video: Hey Georgia Bulldogs! They kicked the Sun Devil’s butt last Saturday. Their tailback, Moreno, is seriously good)

Trash Talk: 0-3 Week

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I might as well have posted this later Sunday afternoon. After all, the big games of the week are on Sunday night (the scary looking ‘Boys against the new-look Packers) and Monday night (one of the best two-minute drill quarterbacks ever, Favre, playing a team that has lost two in a row in the last seconds of the game, the Bolts). It’s like someone actually wants us to do yard work on Sunday or something. Or maybe canvass.

Speaking of the Bolts. I haven’t seen randiego around these parts lately, ‘specially not during trash talk. I wonder why that is? I mean, I know it must suck to have the very best ref in football lose the game for you. But still, you gotta talk trash!

See, I can say that. I know my local team gave up a bunch of touchdowns at the end of the game last week–but that’s what we know to expect from the Lions.

Speaking of local teams, John McCain has officially lost MI. True to form for McCain, he’s trying to win by pandering to the home crowd–and he has chosen OH over MI. You can tell it’s pandering, too, because he bought Cindy a necklace–a Buckeye necklace!?!?!–that cost less than $1000.

McCain shopped for bargains and purchased two black Ohio State T-shirts priced at two for $20. He also grabbed a porcelain statue of Brutus Buckeye.

On his way out of the store, McCain also decided to buy a Buckeye necklace for his wife, Connelly reported.

Palin’s pandering too, like McCain claiming to be a Steelers fan, while secretly favoring the Seahawks. Seahawks!?!?! 

Biden, however, is so far above pandering that he claims Delaware can beat the Buckeyes. I mean, I hear what bmaz says about how crappy the Big 10 is and all, but … really, Joe?

Which leaves Obama, the narrow winner of the much-coveted "want to watch football with" vote. 

People would rather watch a football game with Barack Obama than with John McCain – but by barely the length of a football.

Obama was the pick over McCain by a narrow 50 percent to 47 percent, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Friday that generally mirrored each presidential candidate’s strengths and weaknesses with voters. Read more →

EW’s Trash Talk – The Big Games Start

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Week 2 is upon us, football is really back, and the big games are really starting to be played now. The first weekend you are just glad to have the pigskin back in the air, you don’t care that the games are usually not that good. Last weekend’s game between Tennessee and the Bruins of UCLA was a definite exception. Holy cow, it was a great game, especially the second half (masaccio, being a Vols fan, may not agree). Rick Neuheisel may be starting something special in Westwood, and that would be a fantastic thing for Pac-10 football, and college football generally.

Wobbly yawner games, where the cobwebs are still being shaken off, are not the case for Week 2 though, there are huge games on tap. Let’s belly up to the bar then.

NCAA – The Rose Bowl. The Grandaddy of Them All. Right here in the second week of September no less. All kidding aside, it is hard to envision a more compelling early September matchup than Number 5 ranked The Ohio State University invading the Coliseum and the Mighty Men of Troy, the Number 1 ranked USC Trojans. What can you say, the game speaks for itself. National Championship hopes are already on the line big time; even if they were not, college football games just don’t get more compelling than this. Don’t be a McCain hiding behind a skirt wimp, be open and notorious, pick a side and state yer case. Then let me give you a hint. There is a track record on these kind of matchups, and it ain’t a real pretty one for the three yards and a cloud of dust conference. That record will continue I’m afraid. Other games to pay attention to include #10 Wisconsin at #21 Fresno State, UCLA at #18 BYU, and the Ramblin Wreck from Georgia Tech at Virginia Tech. Oh, and and yet another scintillating meeting between Michigan and Notre Dame. Hard to imagine that it could live up to last year’s matchup of the un-victorious and un-tieds. But they will try.

THE BIG BOYS OF SUNDAY – Pats at Brett and the Jets tops the list. Ground control sans Major Tom looks to be in the offing for the Pats. I think they will still run the Read more →

Trash Talk Is BACK!!!

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The Brett Favre drama has kind of sucked up all the attention in the off-season, so it’ll take some time to get figure out what happened in the off-season. For this season opening trash talk thread, then, I’ll just let you all weigh in on the following questions.

Most importantly, which will have more viewers, that wrinkly white dude’s presidential nomination acceptance speech, or the Super Bowl Champs taking on their division rival?

Will anything that happens in Mile High this year electrify the crowd as much as last Thursday’s doings?

Which Manning brother will have better success this year, Venus–with a gimpy knee–or Serena–without two of the key defensive contributors from last year?

Which division will be more competitive this year, the AFC South (Colts, Jags, Texans, and Titans) or the NFC East (Giants, Skins, ‘Boys, and Iggles)?

Otherwise (since my muse has been beaten by the server gods), I send you to First Draft for this post. Since nasty nasty seems to be the mood of the last day or so, I feel okay indulging in this sort of mean-spiritedness.

There’s something I’m really, really hoping for tonight.

I hope that the football game runs long.  Really long.  So long that NBC has to cut away from it to show McCain’s speech in Minnesota.

Will there be a repetition of the infamous Heidi incident?  Not in New York or DC, as NFL contracts now require that broadcasters show games to their conclusions in their home markets.  But what about the rest of the country?  Wouldn’t it be great if NBC (the network, by the way, responsible for the aforementioned incident) cut away from the final few minutes of tonight’s NFL season opener to cover Oldy McBoring’s speech to the moribund GOP?  Wouldn’t that be great?  Man, lots of people would be pissed at McCain!  In addition to the NBC switchboards being melted by overuse, the RNC would see a lot of heat, as well.  It’s been a long year without football, as far as NFL fans are concerned, and they’d probably despise missing even a minute of the season opener.

photo by ButterflySha

Mourning The Loss Of A Giant Recently Passed – Sunset Musings II

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PrickyDespite the wall to wall coverage, not just on NBC and MSNBC, but all the networks, the hand wringing, the eulogizing, the lionization, the body lying in state at the Kennedy Center, and the funeral worthy of royalty, not enough has been said about the recent passing of a giant. Probably because all that bleating was about Saint Tim of Russert. I am talking about a different giant. A giant in my own family has passed. Granpa Pricky.

Granpa Pricky was our 24 foot tall saguaro cactus that majestically guarded the east entrance to Casa de bmaz since at least several decades before Casa de bmaz was built, and our house is almost fifty years old. Just woke up one morning and there it was, keeled over into the road. Saguaros are truly Pricky 1grand and majestic entities, standing tall as the guardians of the Sonoran desert. Granpa Pricky was not just a centurion, he was a home as well. There are now a couple of homeless woodpeckers. Actually these peckars don’t even peck wood that much. They like to perch on my chimney and wail on the metal vent cover on the top. Sounds like a freaking machine gun or jackhammer in the house. Very annoying. Metalpeckers.

At any rate, an autopsy was conducted. Any and all of these photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

The whitish material in the center is very squishy. There is simply a ton of moisture in saguaros. And we don’t even have the cacti on drip systems; all they get is rain water, and it does not rain that much here. It is kind of fibrousPricky 3 pulp like stuff. People trying to survive in the desert desperate for water cut up that pulp and put chunks in their mouth to suck the water (and there is a lot) out. The cactus does produce a red, bulbous, pretty sweet fruit that is fully edible and not bad. Granpa Pricky died on June 5. Here is a photo just taken of the same cross section depicted above.

Note how the pulp is shrinking as opposed to the outer shell and especially the spine. The spine is the circle of dowel like looking things in the middle. When you tap on the outer surface of the pulp, which has hardened, you can tell from the sound that Read more →

The Sun Always Rises

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The sun always dawns a new day, and so it has again. The day after a disappointing yesterday. Possibly we get so wrapped up in all the swirling malevolence and scorched trail of destruction by the Administration that is Cheney/Bush, the ravenous corporate robber plunderers, and the feeble enabling Democratic Leadersheep, that we forget that there is still a whole lot that is good, that still maintains, and that is worth feeling warm and fuzzy about and fighting for. Let’s all remember that it does maintain and, as Roberto Benigni would say, Life Is Beautiful.

Marcy is going to take a couple of days off to chill, do some gardening, and have a couple of pints of Beamish with Mr. Wheel. Good, she deserves it. She puts absolutely a ton of heart and effort into both this blog and the common effort as a whole. I probably don’t have to tell you this, but she does a heck of a lot more than you see on the surface, and we are all better for it. And I can tell you, in fact, I think you all personally know from your own passion, that the constant battle seeps inside of you and can consume a great deal of your soul along the way. Disappointment burns, and sometimes you just need to step back so you can realize the tremendous value and beauty of all that you are fighting for.

So, I will be minding the store for the weekend. Marcy may drop by, she may not, but trust me she knows we are all here; and I assure you she is having some much needed fun (and pulling weeds from the yard is way fun!), is working on some great stuff, and will be back Monday and raring to go. In the meantime, I will put up some substantive posts here and there and all here should feel free to use this post, and any this weekend, as a free floating discussion forum on whatever is of interest. If there is anything uniquely significant, then we will deal with that too.

Lastly, several people turned off their cloaking devices and delurked in the last couple of days to say hi and relate their thoughts. That is a good thing. If you are smart enough, and passionate enough, to read this Read more →

Don’t Tell Your Momma, Tell Obama

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Well, we got Mr. Obama’s reply to all of us. Everybody has a lot to say to Mr. Obama. Here is the place. Now is the time. Trash talk is allowed. I heard the Lakers, er Celtics just won something. Also heard Curt Schilling is done, how the Sawx gonna win without him? And hey circus freak, the French Grand Prix is this weekend. Migny-Cours is the track? Chat away.

EW’s Trash Talk – Agony In Defeat Edition

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There is a lot going on out there, so consider this a somewhat open thread to yammer at will.

The first item of business is the passing of Jim McKay.

He was host of ABC’s influential "Wide World of Sports" for more than 40 years, starting in 1961. The weekend series introduced viewers to all manner of strange, compelling and far-flung sports events. The show provided an international reach long before exotic backdrops became a staple of sports television.

McKay provided the famous voice-over that accompanied the opening in which viewers were reminded of the show’s mission ("spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports") and what lay ahead ("the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat").

McKay — understated, dignified and with a clear eye for detail — covered 12 Olympics, but none more memorably than the Summer Games in Munich, Germany. He was the anchor when events turned grim with the news that Palestinian terrorists kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes. It was left to McKay to tell Americans when a commando raid to rescue the athletes ended in tragedy.

"They’re all gone," McKay said.
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McKay was the first sportscaster to win an Emmy Award. He won 12, the last in 1988. ABC calculated that McKay traveled some 41/2 million miles to work events. He covered more than 100 different sports in 40 countries. In 2002, McKay received the International Olympic Committee’s highest honor — the Olympic Order.

McKay was simply an outstanding journalist and reporter. Not just for sports, but of any kind; he was that good. His work will live long, and we have all prospered from it. Thanks for all the thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat Jim, vaya con dios.

Now one of Jim McKay’s greatest loves was thoroughbred horse racing, particularly the triple crown races.

McKay’s first television broadcast assignment was a horse race at Pimlico in 1947. It was the start of a love affair — horse racing captivated him like nothing else.

"There are few things in sport as exciting or beautiful as two strong thoroughbreds, neck and neck, charging toward the finish," he once said.

Today is the Belmont Stakes and Big Brown is going for the triple crown. There hasn’t been a triple crown winner in thirty years, and Big Brown is a hell of a horse in what is seen as a weak field. Lets see if he can make Read more →