Oh no! Tony Danza’s teammates appear skeptical of his field goal kicking ability! Prove ’em wrong, Tony. Kick your way into their hearts and be the phenomenon you were born to be. (If memory serves, Danza unlocking full-on Phenomenon powers would turn him into a genius with telekinetic super powers and a remarkably drippy Eric Clapton theme tune.) Onward to Week 11!
And Ties? You Bet!: The Niners/Rams game last week ended in a tie. Did you know that a game could end in a tie? Of course you did you sparkling diamond. Did Danny Amendola know? Nope. And why should he? Ties are a communist plot invented by Europe to destroy America’s desire for results. Boo ties! Things should be solved the old fashioned American sports way: pistols at dawn! That’s how the Akron Pros won the first ever NFL Championship and there ain’t nothing wrong with bringing it back. Y’know, aside from the legal and moral reasons and stuff.
Expect An Empty Seat If Jamaal Charles Ever Stars In Equus: Eric Berry would rather not spend time around horses, thank you very much. I get that, I’m not a horse guy either. That said, I’m sure the horse is just the same as a human in that it has little interest in being stuck at Arrowhead Stadium either. Wait a second, there’s nothing in the rulebook that says horses can’t play football. A horse kicking people in the head is much better for the NFL than Brady Quinn or Matt Cassel playing quarterback.
Unnecessary Lightning Graphics All Up In This Piece: One thing I have a perverse love for is POWER RANKINGS!!!!!(lightning bolt hitting a crown made out of a robot king’s skull)!!!!!!! Power rankings are fun because they always include weird graphics where they throw team logos on a screen that looks like a weird Zeus powered stock exchange. It’s a fucking glorious slice of madness. Speaking of presentation stuff, NFL RedZone also has a weird graphic thing that happens when they go split screen. You’ll get two games at once, but they are shown inside a screen that looks like a red blood cell factory. It ‘s hard to pull your eye away from the red globby circles rolling along on the twin conveyor belts. It’s someone put the Osmosis Jones DVD menu screen on an endless loop.
Ad Break: Featuring Protagatron and Antagatron! Also featuring a very lazy product naming department! And the catchiest tune this side of Wang Chung! (Life Advice: You never want to be on the wrong side of Wang Chung.)
Silver Ladies Among The Gold: I saw a silver lady this summer. I’m not sure if that’s the proper term, “silver lady”, but she was one of those people that paint themselves silver (for art!) and does whatever silver people do. Sometimes they’re robots, sometimes they’re “models”, sometimes they’re part of an elaborate Silver Surfer sex game that is getting increasingly out of hand. Silver people used to be a neat thing to see, but now you kind of see them everywhere. They are in danger of becoming the novelty facial hair of people.
My girlfriend and I spotted the aforementioned silver lady while riding on the streetcar. She was wearing silver clothes on her silver skin and had a silver trash can of silver items. She looked like a silver lady version of New Jack. Maybe she was on the streetcar to head to her hardcore match with a woman painted gold that resembled Balls Mahoney. (That’s what I choose to believe happened.) She just sat there in her seat, waiting for her spot. It was a dull silver person sighting, except for one very important detail: she looked absolutely miserable.
Seeing a silver person? Dull. But seeing an incredibly unhappy silver person? Amazing! That’s something that ten thousand Holodeck exercises could never prepare you for. (Also the Holodeck would probably malfunction as it always does and you’d be trapped in a weird space fantasy nightmare of your own making. Plus Data would probably refuse to break character.) She just had this miserable silver pout. She had a look on her face that said: “If Lisa took the last Snapple in the fridge, I’m throwing her ass out of the apartment, bitch thinks she can just take my drinks cause we’re BFFs? No way. Not on Silver Lady’s watch.” It was like watching a terrible student film come to life. Can this silver lady adapt to a city colder than her metal touch, LOOK AT MY BOLD WORLDVIEW ETC.
She got off at her stop, trudged down the street and presumably went home to clean paint out of her butt crack from three hours. No one else on the streetcar really noticed the silver lady. Either there are silver ladies riding the streetcar all the time (that hasn’t been my experience, mostly just dudes that for some reason seek me out to explain their relationship with the army) or it’s just nothing to be worked up about anymore. Maybe it’s old hat, but I would love to see loads more silver people. Provided they all look as miserable as our transit companion. You fascinate me, silver lady.
Week 11 Game To Watch With Your Eyeballs And/Or Listen To With Your Earpowers Ravens at Steelers At this very moment, several Pittsburgh area restaurants are scrambling to come up with a shitty cash-in sandwich called The Byron Leftwich. “IT’S MADE FROM RAVEN CHUNKS N’ TOWELS!!!” At least it’s better than any form of Ben Roethlisberger themed food. I can’t emphasize this enough, dude is weapons grade gross. Roethlisberger is like Custom’s “Hey Mister”: The Guy.
Week 11 Game Not To Watch With Your Eyeballs And/Or Listen To With Your Earpowers Jets at Rams Is there anything more terrifying than a mascot wearing a suit? The answer is no. Actually, the answer is always no.
Guests Saying Junk: This week we have comedian/chef/Manhattan Room vet Phil Maynard as our special guest. He may have also been in the group Bow Wow Wow. (Legal Note: He was not in Bow Wow Wow.) Take it away, Phil!
When my girlfriend found out that I loved watching the NFL, she was shocked. She could understand hockey, as we’re Canadian, but football? Really? The NHL is locked out, so I don’t need to think about how just getting the tip in counts as scoring, I can focus on football now. But as she sat there watching a game with me, trying not to giggle at various football terms like “the tight end getting it deep up the middle” and “good penetration in the backfield,” she came to terms with my weird obsession. An obsession that started simply because Saturday Night Live thought Chicago Bears Super Fans were ripe for comedy. DA BEARS became my team.
Years went by before I moved to Vancouver and saw a few Bears games in Seattle, a city with a stadium so loud that they make “Rider Pride” look like child’s play. So when I got to see the Bills lose to DA BEARS here in Toronto in 2010, I was happy but it was still a weird feeling to see an NFL game where the home team advantage wasn’t there. There’s something to be said about changing the way a game plays out because the crowd is so loud, but I don’t have those kind of words because it’s a beautiful thing and I make dick jokes. Plus I worry that a 13th man joke would get me shanked if I ever showed my face in Regina again.
Jay Cutler/Brandon Marshall is the first real QB/WR combo I’ve ever known as a Bears fan. Those two dudes love each other, and even my girlfriend would admire their bromance if she cared about grown men being in love as much as I do. Though I’m now getting her slightly interested in football through shoes; talking about how Jay Cutler has worn orange cleats every game since his BFF Brandon Marshall got fined for doing that very thing. It may not seem too compelling since it’s so easy to hate Cutler’s diabolical diabetic face. But it’s the little things in sports that make it intriguing for me, that keep making me love these melodramatic millionaires who put their bodies on the line. Which is partially why I want hockey back. FUCK THE OWNERS! END THE LOCKOUT! BREAK MY HEART AGAIN CA NUCKS!
Great stuff, Phil. Bring us home Paramount’s Future! (h/t TheKillerWithinNJ)
Hang out with Dan on Twitter or in the comments. He’s no longer living in Regina, but you might be, which means you should check out Pass The Hat on Friday you goofburgers!