Tag: ek Holiday

It’s that time of year again when all remotes turn to…

Animal Planet for Puppy Bowl XI of course (aw, who’s a cute little puppy.  Why you are.  Yes you are.).

Ok, you can stop making kissy faces and talking baby talk (though I don’t know why they call it baby talk, babies never talk that way) because I have deadly serious fake news to report.  It seems that Meep The Bird, your courageous sideline tweet commentator (@MeepTheBird), is being sued by Disney over the intellectual property rights to the name Meep.  Disney’s contention is that is that ‘Meep’, the cute blogging bird, infringes on it’s trademarked Phineas and Ferb character Meap, the cute alien Galactic Peacekeeper.  It is speculated that Matt Groening and Faux will soon join the battle on behalf of their Futurama character, Nibbler, who looks cute but is actually a voracious carnivore of an ancient alien species that poops dark matter and is locked in an eternal struggle with giant flying brains.  The case is likely to be resolved in one of the TPP/TTIP Investor-State Dispute Settlement courts.

Remember- I only report the most scurrilous rumors.

Though it’s also on continuous repeat until 5 am tomorrow.  There will be over 55 puppy participants-

All have already been adopted, but there are plenty more.

Bissel Kitty Halftime Show!

Over 20 Kitties, led in a mesmerizing display of kitty cuteness by Katty Furry.  International Business Times–

TMZ reports that her getup was created by a famous pet clothing designer who is also known to have worked with socialite Paris Hilton’s pampered pets.

As if you needed more there are also Nigerian Dwarf Goat cheerleaders!

The big difference this year is that they’ll be dividing the puppies into teams making for a truly competitive (and wagerable) sport.

So get your awwww… faces on and couch potato the next 2 hours of insufferable adorableness.

So, who do you hate the most?  The Bolts who left Baltimore high and dry in the middle of the night or the Patsies who dinked around Hartford so they could Stadium blackmail Massachusetts?

I say I hate them about equally.

I’ll give the Bolts the rooting nod today though because they’ll just be meat for the Packers (who look set to win after the first half) or for the Seahawks who, as I said below, I find unobjectionable.  The Bolts are an inferior team that’s been lucky so far.

Unfortunately I think the Patsies will end that streak today.  Tom Brady is a bit long in the tooth but he’s still one of the best in the league and, free of worries about drafting a Quarterback, Belichick has been able to use it to build the Patsies.  They have weaknesses, but not many; and can be beaten, but not easily.

Game starts @ 6 pm on CBS

Ok, maybe that was a little bit over the top.  I make no excuses for my rooting interest in the Packers, part of which is genetic (I’m only half troll), but most of which is based on my anarcho-syndicalist politics.

The Packers are “the only publicly owned company with a board of directors in American professional sports”.  They are one of only 7 publicly traded companies (Atlanta Braves, New York Rangers, New York Knicks, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Seattle Mariners, and the Toronto Blue Jays) which are required to fill out annual reports for the SEC and other regulators.  Until 1965 they played at City Field, Lambeau is the name of one of the founders (the other is George Whitney Calhoun) and first coach.

“No shareholder may own over 200,000 shares, a safeguard to ensure that no individual can assume control of the club.”  “Shares of stock include voting rights, but the redemption price is minimal, no dividends are ever paid, the stock cannot appreciate in value, and stock ownership brings no season ticket privileges.”  The last time they sold shares the price was a flat $200 and as of 2005 over 111,921 people owned 1 or more of the 4,749,925 shares.

Now some people may think that all they do in Wisconsin is drink-

Well, they drink a lot, but the Summer is short and the Winter nights long dark and cold and without much else to do.  There are other hobbies however like eating Brats and Cheese and writing songs.  I was looking for a simple sample of their fight song and I found these pieces in the Rap, Polka, Punk, Southern Rock, House, and Lil’ Wayne categories (yes, he has his own category).

Now if I only knew who Lil’ Wayne was.

And they make cookies.

Cookies!

I’m sure the Seahawks are a fine team and fully worthy of their fans devotion and loyalty (in the sense that Billionaire Paul Allen, Microsoft, and any franchise that hasn’t Bolted deserve it), but I must say that my heart is in Green Bay with the Packers and Cheeseheads.

The Seahawks are everyone’s pick to win (7.5 points) which is only fitting for the top seeded team.  They have a good offense that totally confounded the Packers in Game 1 of the season but the Packers were sporting a new defense that has since been abandoned and have performed much better.  The real story is on the Packers side of the ball where the #1 offense will be facing the #1 defense.  Aaron Rodgers is still feeling the effects of being stepped on in the Lions game, so there is that.  Still, I rate the chances about even especially if the Packer D can get their act together.

Coverage on Faux starting @ 3 pm.

Nothing to see here.  Bolts will go down gasping @ South Park.

Richard asks me if I’m carrying a grudge.  You’re damn right!  The whole game is reprehensible.

Doesn’t mean it makes for bad sports live blogging though.  Fans may check in at the Bolts (boo, hiss) or Mile High (you want to share that with the band man)?

Game @ 4:30 pm on CBS.

I should hope by now I don’t have to explain why I’m a total cheesehead since the accident of my troll birth and political sentimentality is fully exposed so instead I’ll share a story from my past life as capo di tutti.

It was about playoff time and we had one of our quarterly meetings at a “hotel” in Hartford that was really a training dormitory for one of the big insurance companies with end of the corridor common rooms of the campus style suitable for “hospitality”, also of the keg chugging beer pong college type (it was a ‘fun’ club).

We were favored by a comely visitor from an isolationist local and since everybody appeared to be shunning her I did my little leadership thing and spent a lot of time making sure she felt welcome in our midst.

Now normally I was the diest of =hards but on this particular occasion I heeded the entreaties of my new handlers and staged a gracious exit before the festivities had hardly begun.

Hardly?!  After I left comely visitor was assaulted by the harridan wannabe spouse of one of my sponsors (the one who could get us thrown out of an airport bar, who else?) and accused of adultery which would have been true if my Irish friend (?) had been married to the Xanthippe instead of merely co-habitating (which is a sin in the eyes of the Church guys, just saying).

Words were said, people grappled, and eventually car keys were siezed and tossed out of an open window into the night.

So at about 4 am, when I was about my groggiest, there came a knock on the door.  Do something about this… now.

Umm… sure, yeah, could you repeat that while I wipe out the sleep?

I parked adultery gal on my bed (I was using the chair to make phone calls for you filthy minded) and listened to her tale of woe and called the front desk where they very politely (I would have told me to piss up a rope and that my crew of social outcasts was responsible for every scratch) told me that the janitor would be in about 7 and that searching for the missing keys on the 4th story roof would be much more effective in the daylight.

Keys found floozy vanished which I suppose was the best for me since I’d already spent an enormous amount of political capital keeping her hidden and quiet, but on the other hand WTF since I’d already fired and replaced my exec (from which she never recovered) and her boyfriend (who also never recovered and speaking of adultery she was sleeping with him and not my brother her public ‘boyfriend’) and suffered the resignations of all that had been associated with their faction which I soon enough found out had been stealing 10s of thousands I had personally donated to keep the organization afloat…

Not that I’m bitter.

But more to the point it was clear I’d need a nap so I called to the front desk and told them I was not moving that Sunday and they would just have to clean up around my prostrate form which they were surprisingly ok with.  I like those guys.

Mid afternoon I roused myself to tune in a playoff game and considered how lucky and privileged I was to enjoy that moment.

So I took another nap.

Oh, ‘Boys @ Cheeseheads.  Did I mention that Airport Drunk was a total and vociferous ‘Boy toy?  Makes me proud to be a Packer fan.

I don’t mind admitting I kind of want the Panthers to win so that the Packers have another home game but I don’t expect the Seahawks to co-operate.  The Seahawks are, after all, the defending Champions and they’re really a much better team than the Panthers.

The Panthers have also lost their inside rushing defense in the person of 311 pound Star Lotulelei, one of those Pacific Island monsters who broke a foot this week in practice.

And then there is Century Link Field, one of the loudest Domes in the league.  The Pack will not be daunted by that, but the Panthers are younger and rawer and less used to distractions.

So here’s hoping for an upset, not that I dislike the Seahawks, but that I actively support the Pack and am a total cheesehead.

The game is on Faux starting at 8 pm.

Look, I have my reasons to hate the Patsies and like the Ravens the primary one being that the Ravens, since they are new, haven’t dinked around cities the way the Patsies have.

Oh, and Bill Belichick and Pat Brady are steroid addled assholes, but that’s so common in Throwball it’s hardly worth mentioning.

The truth is that I’d be very surprised to see the Ravens walk off the Foxborough turf victors.  Belichick has used Brady to build himself a buffer of talented role players without wasting time and money on a Quarterback hunt and it shows in the system which should last (given good luck and Robert Kraft staying out of the way which he seems inclined to do) beyond both their careers.

I still think they’re all thoroughly horrible people and brain damage only accounts for some of it although it helps.

The game is on NBC starting at 4:30 pm.

Now normally I’d have no trouble at all rooting against the ‘Boys since their fans are the biggest assholes in professional sports- ignorant, loud, and irrational.

On the other hand I haven’t much forgotten the Lions’ Ndamukong Suh stepping on Aaron Rogers.

We won’t get a rematch of that if the Lions advance.  As the lower seed they’ll face the Seahawks and the Packers will get the Panthers.  If the ‘Boys advance they’ll face the Pack at Lambeau where General Winter will crush them as they deserve to be crushed.

Game time 4:30 on Faux.  Consider this an open thread too.

I think we’re all pretty clear by now that I don’t like franchise shopping and extorting communities for stadiums that teams ought to be buying with their own money because, except on rare occasions, they sit like great white elephants on acres of parking that could and should be parks except for 8 days a year when they suck all the money out of the municipalities they’re supposed to be such an engine of prosperity for and deposit it all in the off the books coffers of the team owner’s concession stands.

And of course if I ever needed a team to illustrate that story it would be the Bolts.

Other than that there are only 2 teams I actually like, one because of geography who are not in the playoffs and likely never will be again as long as Tom Coughlin is coach, and the other is the Packers who get right what every other professional franchise in any sport get wrong.

So it’s not that I don’t like the Bengals, it’s that I don’t much care about them one way or another unless they’re playing a team I really hate.

Like the Bolts.

The Bengals could win.  The Bolts defense is nothing special, but the Bengals Quarterback is a choke king who has 1 Wild Card win for 4 appearances in the last 4 years.  In today’s game he has a $1 Million bonus riding on the outcome.  It will be interesting to see if that motivates him.

The game starts on CBS @ 1.  As yesterday there is no guarantee I’ll be around to live blog, so it’s open thread.

Probably not around for this one either.  Forget the hype about Le’Veon Bell, he wasn’t going to be much of a factor anyway.  The Ravens suck on the road, but they have great run defense.  Fortunately for the Steelers they have Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown.

The Ravens may be a contender next year, now they are a tune up for the Steelers and a rest day for Bell.

Game @ 8 pm on NBC.  This is an open thread.