the Tops get levied? Details at 11.
• Seriously, I knew the Colts were in trouble early in the week, when everyone (else) started picking them as a semi-lock. Distinct "Rumsfeld news conference, circa April 2003" vibe.
• My friend Gary:
"Oh, well, at least The Who was great!
Wait. Never mind."
• My Poor Wife: "They should have hired a Who cover band."
• We're grumbling, so if there's any singer anywhere who should absolutely stay in the pocket it's Queen Latifa. But otherwise, let's replace "The Star Spangled Banner" with "America the Beautiful", already. And let's replace American Idol singers with dead air. Th' fuck? I understand why FOX did it in the championship round, but how does CBS wind up with an over-matched country singer?
• Why CBS should not get to broadcast another Super Bowl, even unto the seventh generation:
Katie Couric, to Drew Brees: Did you save New Orleans? Or did New Orleans save you?
• #2 was Lillian Gish:
James Brown: "Dwight Freeney has the most talked about ankle coming into this year's Super Bowl."
• Seriously, we're happy for Nawlins, but the rest of you freeloaders on the Feel-Good Express can go fuck yourselves. Especially the Press which, let us recall, had to be shamed into backing off the Looters! Looters! Looters! coverage, and just consider what it takes to shame the Press. I actually heard somebody say "Don't want a hand-out, just a hand up", which was a great Public Service Announcement tagline in the 70s, but is a wormwood, gall, and broccoli rabe omelette after we managed to bail out GM, Goldman Sachs, and the Bush-Reagan-Friedman Theory of Benign Rapine, and deny even as much health care as the insurance companies would allow to Ward Nines throughout the country, scant weeks ago. Stow the fucking piano music. Katrina was the proximate cause of a disaster built of decades of greed, racism, and a facile Exceptionalism that's supposed to excuse anything and everything the Haves wanna rain down on the Have Nots. It'd be one thing if this was an aberration caused by the Saints turning up on the holiest day of the secular Calendar. But if you're more comfortable retelling the story of Job than reporting facts, maybe you boarded the wrong career bus somewhere.
Yea, verily, but I am pleased with the outcome of the game.
ReplyDeleteI am sad for the residents of Indiana, although I still think the colts are from Baltimore.
I am sore aggrieved of watching the band of my youth put on a shitty show of mini-bits of songs that resound in my heart, and fucking disgrace themselves on teevee. Cover band indeed!
But I am so very, very happy that the other assholes in my sports bar wanted Manning to win "because he's such a nice guy." This observation brought to you by the very same dolts who think the new Mass senator is a great guy 'cuz he drives a pickup truck (just like Fred Dumbo Thompson!) and think Sarah of the North has anything worthwhile to say.
OK, so that last bit is pure vengeance, but I'm glad the Saints won.
It is the stated policy of this blog, and no back talk, that the name, color scheme, and logo of the Colts ought to have been deeded to Baltimore, which ought to fucking get over it, already, and which has no gripe whatsoever after swiping the Browns. And that for that to have occurred, Life as it is practiced in these parts would have required an ethical act on the part of a guy who owned a professional football team. If the citizenry of Baltimore, Indianapolis, or New Orleans, just to name three, want to solve the problem they'll have to start demanding ethical behavior from rich fucks across the board, and not just when moldy Bread or crooked Circuses bring that behavior to their attention. Preferably at the end of a rope. And lots of luck.
ReplyDeleteUnderstood, and may I point out that I have relatives from Chicago who have carried their hatred of George Halas to the grave and beyond, and I'm sure are still bitching about the loss of their Chicago Cardinals to whatever ear listens to such things in the afterlife.
ReplyDeleteOMG (as the kids say), I almost forgot my question!
ReplyDeleteOf all of the endless, excruciating, pointless, dumb, stupid, annoying crap they packed into the pregame fest, which would be worse: being in prison or being smirkingly interviewed by Cowher?
A present from N.O. native son, co-inventor of rock-n-roll, Fats Domino:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qz94yveXgQ&feature=related
We well understand the pain of losing and the absurdity of the NFL and American sports media.
Today, come march with us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLjbMBpGDA
Iko, a Saints fan.
And totally agree that "America the Beautiful" should be the national anthem. Ray Charles version, preferably.
ReplyDeleteI second (third) that, Iko.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone who is unsure ...
Everytime a Manning loses a game, an angel gets its wings.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I love this place and lurk here regularly. I appreciate your support for the return of the name and colors of the Baltimore Colts to Baltimore and to show my good faith, I will note that Jimmy Irsay seems like a pretty good guy and that if someone besides the idiot Dungy had been coaching the Indianapolis franchise Peyton would have gotten his 4th ring by now. BUT what Robert Irsay and Indianapolis did was NOT the same thing and to equte Baltimore and Cleveland is to miss the point entirely. Cleveland loved the Browns. Baltimore loves the Ravens as much as Cleveland loved the Browns. Indianapolis may cherish its franchise, but grown men will not weep on national television for the loss of that or any other franchise. There will not be a marching band practicing and performing for 20 years without a fucking team. For crissake did you think Barry Levinson's Diner was fiction? It is not the same thing AT ALL. Sorry for yelling.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you have Baltimore's colors. You have Baltimore's name. And now you want to turn Baltimore's national anthem over to some insipid tune like America the Beautiful? Next you'll want to ban the teaching of evolution and the reading of Menken.
Keep up the (mostly) great work.
• My Poor Wife: "They should have hired a Who cover band."
ReplyDeleteConsidering the ratio of original members to others, I think this one qualified.
Irsay's a dick. This is why it took the Paris Peace Conference eighteen months to decided on the shape of a table. His only saving graces are: 1) he's a better human being than his old man, which is no accomplishment at all; 2) he's spent a fraction of the money he's extorted from the citizens of Indianapolis on improving the team, see Ambrose Bierce's definition of "philanthropist", and lucked into Bill Polian to do it for him; and 3) his nose appears to be melting.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so there're grown men in Baltimore still living vicariously through someone else's teenage dreams from a previous century. In Chicago you can get into a fistfight if you specify your pizza toppings should not be slabbed onto 6 inches of danish dough. Means the same to me. The only difference between the Browns and Colts moves, aside from the name & accoutrements--which Cleveland won by lawsuit, having seen what Irsay pulled; as always, the first asshole to the river gets a free pass--is that Baltimore had more warning, and the Cleveland fans crying in the streets had actually been buying tickets to the games.
And the people of Indianapolis never got to vote. The first stadium--built as a lure with no specific target--was rammed through the Republican council by a Republican mayor. They're the same people made the deal with Irsay. (In fact, the major mover n' shaker who shepherded the construction, Bob Welch, was buddies with John Mecham, and had an agreement with him that the Saints would move here.) The one public opponent of public funding to be elected mayor in the interim is the guy who extended the original contract a decade before the NFL blew into town and demanded a new stadium or else they'd move the team to LA. Right. The new Barn cost about 3/4 of a billion, or about half again what they said it would, and seats the same number the old one did, but with more luxury. Of course we're laying off teachers by the busload, or would be if we had buses, and we still dump raw shit into the water supply every time it rains.
I root for the Colts, have since they moved here; they're Indy's team as much as they were Baltimore's, or Dallas' or Miami's or Dayton's. The grievance was justified, before Baltimore took the Browns. Now it's hypocrisy, if understandable, and directed at people who had nothing to do with it. Dig up Pete Rozelle and Bob Irsay and bugger their corpses to the tune of one of your war anthems, if you like. In fact, how 'bout y'all haul Irsay's butt-ugly horseshoe mausoleum east and have your way with that, too? Goddam thing mars Crown Hill, once the most beautiful spot in the city. That really ought to be enough payback for you right there.
Never played the odds, or cared about them one way or another, especially since Elway guaranteed to not lose by the spread. I did laugh at the suckers that bought into that one.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I didn't care much about this game -- I finally got the indoor digital antenna to sorta work, and when I finally remembered which local station was now CBS after the local station swap a decade ago, got on just as the confetti started dropping. Teach me to go to cbs.com where I was told that the game started at 6:00, which I interpreted as Eastern.
As for the media vis-a-vis N.O., who couldn't see that coming? We saw that locally when Columbine High won State or something a few years after the shootings, and the media had a big part in making it safe to bully again. And we saw that coming.
I could care less about the stadium/team moving crap, as real people end up paying for it, but I don't give a crap for the fans. It happened here, too, and nothing much surprised me about it, except to note that since the majority owner and largessee of the team is actually Canadian, there was a brief respite in the distrust of the Axis of Evil member to the north of us. (Which only otherwise happens when some Canadian corporation wants to leach the gold out of them thar hills, too.)
So in general, grumble, grumble, grumble.
OK. Hate the NFL. Check. Politicians do bad things with money. Check. Bob Irsay was the most evil sports owner of all time (yes, worse than Comisky, worse than Griffith, worse than Schott.) Check. When Paul Tagliabue told Baltimore to build a library instead of a stadium, I agreed with him even though I knew that it was only to protect his team in DC (whose name shall not be uttered) I am a son of New England and a non-NFLer. I have no dog in the franchise fight. I'm just saying Baltimore was different, profoundly, really different from the other cities. It may be the same as the rest of the NFL today, but it wasn't in 1983. And I think you are insightful enough to understand that.
ReplyDeleteAnd I take your silence on the Anthem as assent to its beauty, a waiver of any claim to replace it and declare you estopped from arguing for its replacement, even if it is your place. I will continue to listen for the "O's" Baltimorons shout as the last line is sung.
I'm in favor of retaining the Star Spangled Banner on the condition that only American Idol contestants be allowed to "sing" it. Every minute-long pointless melisma warbled on the words "wave" and "free" would delay the start of another local football team's losing performance by so many notes, while increasing our deserved suffering in the eyes of God for being fans in the first place.
ReplyDelete