Chuck Norris

I am not counted among Chuck Norris' fans. As a matter of fact, I rather dislike him due to the unholy turd burger called "Walker Texas Ranger." I do believe it is the worst show to ever have been broadcast over airwaves. Nevertheless, Chuck does have his admirers and they write things I did not know about Chuck Norris. 30 things, to be specific (click here).

I really cannot add anything about the list; it speaks for itself. Maybe I can forgive Chuck for his crappy show after all... if any these "facts" are true, Chuck Norris does indeed rule.

Michael Vick SUCKS!!

I have to admit: I haven’t been following Pro Bowl voting very closely. Imagine my surprise when I read the following item in Tuesday Morning Quarterback’s column, “Last year, Michael Vick made the Pro Bowl despite being 21st in passer rating; this year he made the Pro Bowl despite being 24th.”

What??

There are a lot of Vick apologists out there and they always point out what a great athlete the man is. While that’s all well and good, there’s no “miscellaneous athlete” category in the Pro Bowl, he’s being voted in as a QUARTERBACK. Excuse me for pointing this out but quarterbacks are supposed to complete forward passes and marshal their team to victory.

Just so I’m being clear: I’m not saying Vick isn’t a phenomenal talent – I’m simply questioning his effectiveness at his position. His passes are consistently off target and his decision making is questionable. He’s only a threat when he’s scrambling and while that’s a nifty skill to possess, it is something that’s desirable as a surplus ability rather than your only tangible skill. I mean, Drew Bledsoe is as mobile as a block of granite but who’s having the better season as a quarterback? Whose team is in contention for the playoffs and whose is already eliminated? On the other hand, a decathlete might have great speed and arm strength but would he have the ability to read defenses and make accurate passes? I mean, if athletic skill were the only prerequisite for being an NFL quarterback, why aren’t teams raiding track and field competitions? Simply put, because it takes something more to be a quarterback and Mike Vick is apparently missing that “something.”

Just how bad is Vick’s as a passer?

Check out his season stats and career totals:

Comp Att Yds % YPA TD Int Sack Rating
2005 199 363 2297 54.8 6.33 15 12 30 74.1
Career 711 1318 8916 53.9 6.77 51 38 139 76.1

Now take his career numbers and compare them to other football giants such as, oh… I don’t know:

V. Testaverde 3691 6526 45252 56.6 6.93 269 261 408 75.2
B. Johnson 2323 3758 25551 61.8 6.80 153 102 213 84.2
T. Dilfer 1646 2953 19352 55.7 6.55 106 117 236 71.3

In plain language, Vinny Testaverde, Brad Johnson and Trent Dilfer all have greater career completion percentages than Vick. Vinny and Brad have higher Yards per Attempt and passer ratings than Vick. No one, I repeat, NO ONE is accusing these guys of being great QBs but they are in large part, statistically better than Vick.

The Vick apologist will then say, “hey – say what you want, he wins.” My answer is two part:

Number one, who does he beat? Len Pasquarelli writes this about the Falcons 2005 season, “The Falcons defeated just two teams, Minnesota and Miami, that currently have winning records. Their eight victories came against franchises that have an aggregate record of 41-77 -- and none of whom is headed to the playoffs.” That’s not really that impressive…

Number two, does he really win? I mean, he’ll be watching the playoffs from home just like I will be. This is in spite of a rushing attack that was ranked 1st in professional football and a decent defense (ranked 18th in the league – right in the middle. Not great but not bad either). Where did Atlanta’s passing attack rank? 28th in the league, that’s where. Atlanta is sending five other players to the Pro Bowl: Warrick Dunn, Alge Crumpler, Rod Coleman, Keith Brooking and DeAngelo Hall. That’s tied for second most in the league so it’s not as if Vick’s supporting cast sucks. When looked at objectively, the only true weak spot on the Falcons team is the quarterbacking. How can you see it any other way? Need more evidence? Among quarterbacks that had at least 100 pass attempts this season, these fellows had higher QB ratings (from nfl.com):

• Trent Dilfer
• Kyle Boller
• David Carr
• Brian Griese
• Chris Simms
• David Garrard
• Jamie Martin
• Brad Johnson
• Kelly Holcomb

Not exactly murderers row is it?

Then a Vick apologist might say, “yeah but that’s just this season. What about the other seasons?” Well I don’t have the Falcons record for the 2001 season (Vick’s rookie season) and, even though I looked up all the other shit, I was too lazy to look this up. In my defense though, he only started 2 games that year and threw more interceptions (3) than touchdowns (2). Oh, and he also put up a lowly 62.7 passer rating. As for the other seasons, the breakdown is as follows:

2002: 9-6-1 (won 1 playoff game)
2003: 5-11
2004: 11-5 (won 1 playoff game)

That’s 2 playoff wins in Vick’s five seasons. That’s not the end of the world, but it’s simply not enough to consider this guy the next coming of Jesus Christ. Say it with me folks: Michael Vick is insanely overrated.

Oh! Son of Bitch!!

"Hory clap, a pothole!"








"Oooofff!"








"Son of bitch!"








Ok - insensitive jokes aside – the photographer of this series is finding himself in hot water for these shots. It seems the dude knew there was a giant pothole that was covered over with rainwater and just kicked back with his camera ready for an unsuspecting bicyclist rather than doing the honorable and warning him.

It raises an interesting question though: what would YOU do? Obviously, you’d be doing better by your fellow human beings to warn them of the danger that lies ahead. On the other hand, the pictures are well shot and (dare I say it…) funny. Also, the photographer claims that his picture highlighted a problem that has since been fixed. He says without the pictures, the pothole still wouldn’t be filled in.

It is quite the dilemma. Unfortunately I have to get my camera, dig a hole and cover it over with leaves so I can’t give this any further consideration.

Shit, I almost did this just the other day…

This article explains a suit Kristina Roberts has filed against her boss, Jorge Garcia. It seems Mr. Garcia jizzed on Ms. Roberts. He says it was consensual but she claims otherwise. Really, these two paragraphs are all the explanation needed:

“Kristina Roberts, 37, claims she was alone at JEG Advertising with her new boss on Sept. 9 when he approached her while holding his penis.

‘Plaintiff was sitting at her desk doing the work she was given earlier that day when Mr. Garcia came up behind her,’ her civil suit says. ‘He asked Ms. Roberts to turn around, and when she did, defendant proceeded to ejaculate onto her and her clothing. Mr. Garcia apologized and stated that he did not mean to do that.’”

Seriously, who knows if this dude is guilty or not? It could be that they were fooling around (consensually) and now she’s seen an opportunity to extort some cash from the guy. However, if she is telling the truth, this could be a very simple explanation for all of this. I mean seriously, just the other day I was walking around the office with my cock out of my pants – I was hard and close to coming too. I just narrowly avoided getting the mess on one of my co-workers. This guy’s claim that he “did not mean to do that” is totally plausible.

Totally.

How NOT to sell tickets.

Today was supposed to be exciting. I had applied for tickets to the World Cup when the first lottery was opened up but failed to be drawn for tickets. Now that qualifying has finished, FIFA has released tickets to the soccer federations of the nations that are officially in. That means, more tickets have been released to the US Soccer Federation. So how do they handle it?

At first everything seemed ok. I mean, they organized a pre-sale to official Soccer Federation members and closed off ticket requests to everyone else. This agrees with me since I’m a member and screw you if you’re not – I want my tickets before you. So they send out a special invitation via email with instructions saying the forms can ONLY be sent via post or fax. If you live five feet from the Federation building in Chicago, you cannot just walk up and deliver your application, you can’t fill in an online form and you can’t even email back your completed form. Still doesn’t sound too bad though, right? This is where everything broke down.

I realize that there aren’t too many hardcore soccer fans in the US but the demand was still going to be reasonably high. That is to say, the US Soccer Federation should have had more than ONE FUCKING FAX MACHINE TO TAKE ORDERS. You read that right, one machine. One machine. They assured fans that they had taken steps to accommodate a high rate of request. One fax machine does not cut it.

Then things got worse. After hours of futile fax attempts, internet rumors start circulating that the ONE MACHINE has broken and is down. The FAX MACHINE BROKE!! If that wasn’t bad enough, the US Soccer Federation made no announcement about this either via email or on the website. No word of it at all. So, being the skeptic, I decide to investigate this rumor. I called the Soccer Federation’s office because, seriously, who’s going to just take internet gossip for gospel fact? I called and spoke to a nice lady who did confirm that the fax was down. That means I now have to next day air mail the application because it’s a first come, first serve basis. Jumping Jiminy. I’m still in shock about the whole thing. How on earth can you set up a system that dictates the best option will have ONE MACHINE dedicated to it and then have no backup when it goes down? Grrr.

A weekend in Phoenix.

I was in Phoenix this weekend for my buddy Steve’s bachelor’s weekend. The weekend was made possible by Brinkman, who let me crash at his place for a couple of nights.

Night one was quite uneventful. Brinkman and his wife were actually away at her company’s holiday party but they left a key for me to get in. When I arrived, his dogs were barking at me like they were going to tear me to pieces. As soon as I was inside the house though, one of them was super cool with me and actually wouldn’t leave me alone because he wanted to play fetch. The other dog, who was barking so violently moments before, was now deathly afraid of me. Great. I was supposed to bring the dogs in and Kallie was too scared to come near me. I had to leave the door open and ignore her while I played video games. She eventually wandered in and it makes me think of how the inability to rationalize makes animals so dumb. I mean, here was her buddy, Achilles, and he’s already in the house and playing with me. Kallie was incapable of noticing her buddy was kicking back with me and I was doing him no harm but she was still terrified of me.

In any event, the next day was a good time. It started off at a bar where we went to watch the UA basketball game. Steve is one of nine people in the universe that doesn’t have cable so we ended up in some shithole but it was good because it gave us the opportunity to start boozing. After the bar we went to the park to play sloshball. Good times. A keg at second base, no movement along the base paths without a beer in your hand, you have to skull a beer at second before you can proceed – what’s not to like? I guess for one thing, it’s hard to bat with a beer in your hand and a cigar in your mouth but in the grand scheme of things, these aren’t terrible things. Also, my team won after an epic comeback and walk off run in the last inning. Awesome.

The night went south after that. We were… in Phoenix somewhere, I don’t know exactly where. Brinkman and I had to go back to his place to shower for the night’s festivities at Mill Ave. We got the plan from Steve and Chris and headed out to some place that I think was called Big Bang or something similarly stupid. Steve had eschewed the usual tradition of strip club in favor of joining his fiancée for a joint night out. I’m guessing the choosing of the bar was left up to her as we ended up at a dueling piano bar. What. The. Fuck. I appreciated the musicianship; at times it was quite entertaining. But then I remembered that I wasn’t retarded and piano versions of sororstitute classics like “Blister in the Sun” and “Margaritaville” were dumb. As I was lamenting my bad fortune, Brinkman texts me with the following message “dude – it’s not too late to get out of here and go to a straight bar.” Awesome, way to save the night. I do feel bad about leaving Steve and his assembled crew but I did need to get out of there. I’m guessing if I was super, super, super drunk the Big Bang concept might have been slightly entertaining but since the layoff from drinking caused us to sober up considerably, Brinkman and I were in no mood for such tomfoolery.

Sunday was a relaxing day. Brinkman had Direct Ticket and TIVO so we were able to watch the Steelers game (my team) and the Vikings game (his team) at the same time without missing a snap of either. It was nice to see the Steelers end the Bears streak though it was hardly surprising for anyone who’s seen more than three consecutive seconds of any football game. That is all the understanding needed to know that the Bears had no chance. 21-3 was a nice final score too (yeah I know the papers say 21-10 but I refuse to acknowledge the 3-play, 80ish yard TD drive. It was too stupid to believe it really happened so I’m simply refusing to admit that it did. Sue me.)

My last impression of the weekend is simply this: Phoenix is fucking big. When the weekend was being planned, Steve was originally talking about going out to a bar near his house. Brinkman said there was no way we could do that and ever make it back to his house. I was confused. Then I drove from Brinkman’s to Steve’s Saturday morning. Though both locations are well within the greater Phoenix area, it was a 45 mile and hour long journey. Huh? Crazy. When I was leaving Sunday afternoon, I asked Brinkman if there was a shortcut to get back to I-10. He said, “well… you can take the 101 to the 202 and then merge to the 60. That’ll get you back to the 10 quicker than if you drove down Power and took 60 the whole way.” What the fuck? No thanks, I’ll take the 60 all the way rather than switch freeways 47 times. Which does bring up one last thing: there are oodles of freeways in Phoenix. The drive to Steve’s place took forever because of the spatial distance, not for any lack of ways to get to the destination. WHY DOES TUCSON NOT SEE THIS AND EMULATE IT. How is it that I live in a city with one “cross town” freeway that only skirts around the very edge of the city? Oh yeah… because there are a bunch of backward asshats here that want to maintain the quaint small town charm. Well here’s a concept for you eggheads to wrap your feeble minds around: a city with a population nearing 1 million is no longer quaint! It is fucking big and needs a reasonable transportation plan.

Enrique Iglesias blowback (that didn't take long!)

So I’m reading my emails today when I get a message about the Enrique Iglesias post below. It is from a female who shall remain safely anonymous. She wonders:

“Why do all men have such a problem with small penises? There are men that aren’t as well equipped as Nelly, but from a woman’s perspective: it’s the technique that matters…”

She also goes on to make the point that fingers aren’t very big but they can do the job. Ok, point taken. And honestly – I had never really considered that before, so score one for her. The second thing that struck me was… Nelly? What? How on earth does she know Nelly is packing? Is it because he’s black? I know I’m not Mr. Pop Culture Knowledge or anything but have I missed something here?

Nevertheless, this little wang thing is something I haven’t really considered because my penis is large enough to effortlessly crush cinder blocks, coconuts and moderately sized stones with. I’m really still at a loss to explain why dudes crack on other dudes for having small peepees. It's just something that's been done from the beginning of time; something instinctive.

In any event, I still think that she’s being a little to glib about it, even from a woman’s point of view. I mean really, say you’re a girl (or Andy) and you’re fooling around with a guy and it comes time to do the dirty and you find his full two inches staring you down. You’re not disappointed? You don’t feel like a kid on Christmas morning unwrapping what he thought was a cool toy and finding socks instead? Sure, you may eventually accept it but there’s no moment when you honestly think, “that’s it?”

But after thinking about it for a while I’ve decided that a guy’s penis is the essence of his manhood. It’s the very thing that separates men from women, so when you’re lacking downstairs, you’re that much closer to being a girl. And if you ever happen to lose your junk in a horrible machinery accident, or your immigrant wife thinks cutting it off is the suitable response to your yelling at her – you may as well jump off a bridge because life isn’t worth living anymore. If your little buddy is so small that you won’t even notice it’s gone, the same rule applies even before you lose it.

Guys – do you have a better reason why dudes talk shit about other dudes with little pieces?

"But I'm still sleeping with Anna Kournikova so screw you!"

Ok - time for some comic relief. Apparently Enrique Iglesias has no dick. I mean, we all could have guessed as much from the shit music he puts out - but really: he's come out endorsing extra small condoms. Extra small condoms.

Extra small condoms, in case you didn't catch that.

I heard about this and thought to myself, "well... that doesn't necessarily mean he has a small wang, maybe it's just your run of the mill, ill-advised name association gimmick. After all, how much Campbell's Chunky soup does Donovan McNabb really eat? I'm sure that doesn't stop him from taking the money and running..."

Then I read this quote:

"The next product I'm going to put my name on is extra-small condoms. I can never find extra-small condoms and I know it's really embarrassing for people."

So - it's not just small condoms, it's extra-small condoms. Who freely admits this? Who freely admits this when they're dating Anna Kournikova? He could have kept that shit to himself and we'd all be none the wiser.

What's next, 50 Cent is going to come out with his own line of dildos and vibrators? Wait, that already happened too...

Fellas - there is such a thing as over exposure.

A changing of the guard? Not so fast...

Aaaarrrrgh! Fuck the Bengals!

Wait, let me rephrase that: pardon me if I don’t jump on the Bengal bandwagon just yet. Yes, this is me as a bitter Steelers fan and poor loser but still…

What exactly have the Bengals accomplished? They’ve got a good record but who have they played? Let’s look at their schedule and results

• Beat Cleveland (shitty team)
• Beat Minnesota (shitty team – particularly at that time)
• Beat Chicago (good team – not so good at the beginning of the season though)
• Beat Houston (shitty team)
• Lost to Jacksonville (decent team)
• Beat Tennessee (shitty team)
• Lost to Pittsburgh (good team)
• Beat Green Bay (shitty team)
• Beat Baltimore (shitty team)
• Lost to Indianapolis (good team)
• Beat Baltimore (shitty team)

There isn’t a particularly impressive win in that whole bunch. Which brings us to today’s game. They beat the Steelers and they deserved to win. But they played flawlessly (no turnovers and few penalties) and beat a Steelers team led by a gimpy Roethlisberger with the help of four turnovers and a huge special teams play. Even considering that, they only won by one touchdown and the Steelers were in the game with minutes left.

Four turnovers to zero. One score victory. I am not ready to start fellating the Bengals just yet. Put another way: if these teams meet again in the playoffs and the Steelers are healthy, I still feel pretty good about their chances.

Don’t get me wrong though, the Bengal offense is legit and you can’t hold the turnovers against them – that wins games and a “W” is a “W.” But as for some sort of changing of the guard in the division? I don’t see it yet.

Other thought from today: at what point does Green Bay realize their season is lost, Favre is the past and they eventually need to get Rodgers some reps? Favre made stupid mistakes AGAIN, got hurt and STILL Rodgers didn’t see the field. Time to start thinking about the future guys…