Guinness Day

This looks like a great shirt for getting into a drunken fight on St. Patrick’s Day. That’s the first thing I thought of when seeing the array of merchandise the NHL is rolling out ahead of March 17. The only reason to market sports apparel in a completely unrelated color to the team is because there is demand for a uniform from guys who go out and drink all day. The sports tie-in is a natural if you don’t stop to consider the origins of St. Patrick’s Day, the relative number of Irish descendents in the United States, and the role that ice hockey played in driving the serpents from Ireland. I have to admit that the color is cool and the weathered look of the shirts is cool. I would just feel way too self-conscious having anything to do with it because it is too deliberately like putting on a drinking uniform. Disclaimer: I did wear a St. Patrick’s Day T Shirt from Old Navy two years ago, but purely to take the piss out of the whole idea. I think it was pretty obvious to everyone that I was doing a parody of the people who really do that sort of thing. The fact that it was also a wink towards the 4th of July “uniforms” that Old Navy comes out with (we’ve all seen the family of four in matching white T-Shirts with the American flag on the front) wasn’t lost on anybody. It’s all in good fun, anyway. Very few can stand along the parade route in a shirt that reads “My Boyfriend Is Out Of Town” across the chest. For everybody else there is Old Navy.

The Sabres unfortunately lost their rematch against Ottawa on Saturday night. It would have been a tough game to win under any circumstances, and I think the way the team played considering all the inexperienced players they had was impressive. From the papers up there it appears that they are thumping their chests over the win in Ottawa, but frankly this was a game they were supposed to win and they should be damn nervous that they very nearly lost it. The rancor between the players, fans, and media of these two teams has taken kind of a predictable route. I’ve tried to avoid it for the most part, because the talk is pretty much irrelevant. The only thing that matters is winning. What happens over the next twenty games and into the playoffs is going to render any words or actions over the past week irrelevant. Ottawa plays Carolina Tuesday and again on Wednesday. I will be very interested to see how they respond, because that will be a huge test. Buffalo plays Toronto tomorrow. There is plenty of time to see what kind of teams Buffalo and Ottawa are.

The trading deadline is tomorrow. There is nothing quite like the excitement of watching the ticker and seeing trade announcements pop up one after the other. I would be surprised, however, if Buffalo does anything. Unfortunately, they need a tough faceoff guy up front and defensive depth, and I don’t think they are going to get it. The scariest part of tomorrow might not be Buffalo making no moves, but watching contenders get better. Carolina getting Doug Weight last year is the perfect example.

Last night were the Academy Awards, or as we call it in my house, Passover!

Hey Madder

If you could somehow get me to believe that the hit on Chris Drury by Chris Neil last night was “legal,” it wouldn’t make one bit of difference to me. I wouldn’t see Buffalo’s actions any differently than I saw them last night. This team stood up for itself and doesn’t have to make any excuses about it.

Not counting Timmy Connolly, this team was missing five forwards when they suited up last night. They watched their captain and leading scorer get knocked unconscious by an unnecessarily violent and late hit. They took a giant step last night to ensure that recklessness like that doesn’t happen again.

Bryan Murray can make comments after the game about the problem being with Drury’s helmet, and he can hide behind the fact that he put his finesse players out on the ice after the incident while Lindy Ruff responded with muscle. It doesn’t change a thing Bryan, because the Sabres decided that they had seen enough and they were going to dictate the terms of the game from then on.

Regardless of any interpretation of the rules or any resulting suspensions and fines, I would say that the biggest takeaway from this for Chris Neil and the rest of the league is the following: Don’t try this again. The next time someone thinks about being so reckless against Buffalo, I hope they think twice. Your Stanley Cup chances can melt away while you wait for the league to do something. If the league thinks this behavior is all right, then the Sabres need to let everyone know that there are consequences regardless. Hopefully what happened last night made the point and it won’t need to be reinforced.

One thing about the incident that I found utterly hilarious was watching Rob Ray stand at ice level between the two coaches screaming at each other. He looks straight ahead trying to control his expression and doesn’t move a muscle. The best way I can describe is that he looks like a fourth grader standing in between two of his teachers who are screaming at each other. That’s the level of discomfort and confusion I’m sensing.

Take a break from watching hockey fights on YouTube and check out the YouTube music video of the week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwre_xhx6ow

This is a band that we played on the old college radio station back in the day. I think this particular song came out after graduation, though. It was included on a record label mix cassette that my friend Joey Guisto sent me. I think the melody is exquisite, the song rocks quite well, and the singer’s face matches her gorgeous voice. If you like this song, check out “Swim” as well, which we had in heavy rotation at WGSU.

TDIET

A faithful Saturday Boy reader sent along the comic shown above. He is also a faithful They’ll Do It Every Time reader/submitter and thought we would get a kick out of it over here.

Speaking of wax, Huey Lewis and the News are getting a lot of requests in our house lately. My garbage- picked copy of Sports is Syd’s record of choice. Last night I tried to put on Zenyatta Mondatta during dinner and was told, “I don’t want to like the Police. I want Hooey Woowiss.” Her favorite song is “Heart of Rock and Roll,” or as she calls it, simply “Rock and Roll.” As it doesn’t seem that these concepts are completely formed in her mind, I think that to Syd, Huey Lewis IS rock and roll. And shouldn’t it be that way? It was back in the summer of ’83 when a bold Huey Lewis broke through the cold darkness to declare that although the old boy may have been barely breathing, the heart of rock and roll was indeed still beating. Now a century later, the revolution continues with another generation of youngsters. Her aunt Karen should be proud. I think you would have to be pretty cynical to be in your 30’s right now and not agree that Sports is actually a really enjoyable and catchy album.

A literally LOL’d while reading the article about Sting:

http://www.slate.com/id/2160017/

The analysis at the end kind of lost me, but the description of Sting in the first half of the story is bang on and hilarious. And I found out that Andy Summers and Paul McCartney are the same age.

Yesterday morning, the Today Show actually aired a story about a family of four who went a week without their appliances. At least the story on Monday involved the drama of cutting off a busy, active executive from nearly all forms of communication. The story yesterday was basically about a boring family that couldn’t watch television. The unintentionally hilarious part was that the family missed the State of the Union Address, so a clip of their darkened television in an empty den was briefly shown over the president’s opening words. Based on how it was shot, you would have thought they had missed something important. Otherwise, they illustrated that it’s a lot tougher washing your clothes in the sink than using a washing machine. I’m glad they proved that, because I always wondered why washing machines existed. I wonder what it would be like if the bed was never invented and you had to sleep on the floor. I wonder if it would suck.

The 30 pack of Labatt Blue I bought yesterday includes a $5.95 offer for a Sabres cap. I don’t like the new Sabres logo any more than I did, but I like sending away for stuff. Truth be told, the hat does look pretty decent, with a Labatt logo on the side. Great win the other night against Philadelphia. Beating that team will never ever ever get old. If I couldn't watch the Sabres two or three times a week, winter would be bleak.

It's typical that big events happen whenever a topical show like The Colbert Report takes a week off. Not only is today the day when tens of thousands of supporters of a christian media organization will pray for Steven to use his influence to uplift, unite, etc., but there is big news again out of Bollywood. Saif Ali Khan, star of around 40 films, was admitted to hospital on Sunday after complainig of chest pains that are apparently due to smoking. The Colbert Report is the only program I can count on to provide insight into the dizzying intrigue of Bollywood, most notibly the red hot rivalry between uberstars Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. I am praying that an update on Saif Ali Khan is Steven's first point of business on Monday.

Children and Grown Ups

I had never before had the strange experience of listening to a congested six week old cry and cough loose the mucous in his lungs. When the six-week-old is your son, it’s an especially dramatic moment. It’s not easy for him. He wakes from a long nap with all that stuff settled in there, and he becomes more and more active as he tries to move it out. It’s tiring work. I can tell he’s getting somewhere when he stops to force it back down, this time through the esophagus. Last night after waking from a nap and cleaning house the best he could, Drew was fed some of the magic stuff that mom pumped and froze the week after giving birth. This is the fatty, thick, golden milk that is stored on the far right of the freezer door. As the timeline proceeds to the left, the frozen bags turn more and more white. I thought that some of the milk nature intended for a one week old might have special healing powers. The stuff mom is producing now probably includes antibodies to whatever Drew has, so perhaps I took the wrong approach. Either way, feeding him out of the bottle in his current condition allows us to see how much he’s getting and only give him as much as he can handle. I think we will be in good shape as long as this doesn’t persist too much longer or get any worse. We never had to go through anything like this with Syd because she didn’t have any older siblings to share germs.

I read about an interesting controversy today in The Times. This year’s Newbery Medal winner, “The Higher Power of Lucky,” which is intended for 9 to 12 year olds, contains the word “scrotum.” Per The Times, “The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum. “Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”” I can understand the discomfort with having to read this passage to a group of students and answer questions about it. I can also understand the discomfort of being a fourth grader sitting in a coed classroom and having to discuss it. But I don’t understand a vocal, misguided minority trying to keep this book out of libraries so that no one can read it. Wouldn’t the sensible solution be to not include it in the curriculum (because it might not be appropriate for everybody), but make it available in the library (because it is not inappropriate for everybody)? This book exists just as surely as a dog’s scrotum. Maybe the best thing we can do is act like adults about it and set a good example for our children. Children are smarter than most people realize. If they sense your hysteria when you hear the correct term for a body part, they will be repeating it constantly (especially in front of your prudish fundamentalist bible study group).

Something about spring training having started and the springlike day we had yesterday after such a cold spell made me think of baseball cards. Spring is a weird time of year anyway in this part of the country. We get so much snowfall that there are still huge piles of the stuff in April when you’re riding around on your bicycle in a light jacket. It was that type of day that reminded me that in my childhood, this was the time of year that my anticipation of the new baseball cards coming out would start to build. It was always such a huge deal the first time we “saw what they looked like.” The design that Topps came up with was one that we would be stuck with all summer, and in fact for the rest of our lives. I can look at any baseball card from 1979 through 1990 and tell you the year it was printed. Some years looked nicer than others, but in the end it didn’t matter, because any new edition meant that my hobby had been born again. Everything about it was a joy. Riding my bike to Mesmer’s or CVS to buy a few packs, riding home with them unopened, opening them up in my garage, sorting them, resorting them, resorting them, looking through them again, and absorbing every nuance of the front and back. Then we traded them. Me and my friend Paul, with few exceptions, traded baseball cards with each other almost exclusively. It’s hard to imagine that only two trading partners could generate so much activity, but somehow we did. For instance, I would ask him every day if he was willing to trade his Wade Boggs rookie card, and he would say no. Finally after weeks or months he would relent, and we would strike a blockbuster deal. Mind you, I don’t have Wade Boggs’ rookie card now; I eventually ended up trading it back to him.

It’s a shame that my son probably won’t share that same part of his childhood. Baseball cards cost too much money. I could get 15 cards for about thirty cents. Packs are smaller now and cost a few dollars each. It used to be pure fun. Now it’s marketed as an investment. One more thing adults have ruined.

Sometimes when I’m in a drugstore, I will reflexively look to see if there are any baseball cards on the counter, especially at this time of year. I will still buy a few packs every year “to see who I get.” It’s something they always say about springtime and baseball – hope springs eternal.

Can You Do Without Today?

I caught a really pointless segment this morning on The Today Show that involved taking the cell phone, laptop, and blackberry away from a managing editor at Forbes magazine. Apparently the producers over at Today have caught on to how popular these devices are. Based on the introduction, they also read somewhere that (egads) one in eight people are addicted to the internet. The result of this was a misguided experiment where they took all practical forms of communication away from a really busy guy who has a lot of important responsibilities and really needs this stuff.

My company newsletter had a story recently about an employee in the UK who has initiated discussions about limiting the use of E-mails and instant messages. His work group has actually had dedicated days without using either. The motivation was to focus more on interpersonal communications and working relationships than on the habit of overusing electronic messaging. There have been a lot of strong reactions both for and against the idea, and the discussion continues to evolve.

The Today Show segment, on the other hand, was a confusing dead end. It was the equivalent of noticing that a family of four uses a lot of electrical appliances and asking them to go a week without power. You are left with nothing but a mindless, reality show spectacle. Watching this poor guy hunt for pay phones and shuffle slips of paper marking all of his appointments had as much meaning as watching a housewife bash her family’s dirty clothes against rocks at the riverbank. The big payoff came when the guy started to cry, describing how his six year old wouldn’t be able to reach him without his cell while he was on a trip to Denver. Well done, NBC, I hope you’re satisfied!

The Today Show is now going to be extended an extra hour on top of their current extra hour. I understand that there is a market for soft, mindless entertainment, especially at that hour of the day. I’m just bugged when it masquerades as being "important."

Parenting item: I was chatting with a coworker today who informed me that her husband sleeps on the floor of their four year old daughter’s room every night. Apparently she more or less insisted on it one night, and it must not have sounded unreasonable to dear old dad. There are a million different parenting styles, but I will never understand the stuff that goes on with sleeping. I wouldn't take my daughter's suggestion that she have cookies for dinner, so why would I seriously consider, let along acquiesce to a request to sleep on her floor? They are both terrible ideas. Apparently this guy falls asleep in there, then wakes up at some point during the night and goes into his bed. You pick your battles, but I’d put all my troops on the line to not be held hostage by a four year old in her bedroom. I can’t even picture it. I would be so embarrassed to grab my pillows and some blankets and have to tell my wife, for one thing. And I couldn’t deal with the thoughts that would go through my head after closing my eyes. Maybe something like, “I’m a grown man who worked a full day, pays for this house and everything in it, and I’m being dictated to by a child where and when I can sleep.” Oh well, reap what you sow as they say.

I hope to have a special treat later in the week – an interview with a local celebrity. Stay tuned!

Stardom In Acton

YouTube music video of the week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0EzbspTd8Q

This video is great in so many ways. The Pete Townshend who wrote “Tommy” about 15 years earlier seems so far removed from this. Townshend might not have known it at the time, but The Who were done (as much as they ever were done). Bowie is about to release “Let’s Dance” and U2 is about to release “War.” I expect it’s not too far after this footage is taken that Townshend appears on televisions across America shouting “I want my MTV!” It’s the 80’s – check out Townshend’s hair.

The way the video is shot is great, too. I love the British street scenes and the “day in the life” feel of it. The guys walking the streets and the quick cuts fit the pace of the song. Little details like the guy on the roller skates are a great touch. I don’t see how a video like this could have worked with anyone else of Townshend’s stature. He is able to pull off being a regular guy (even when he is stopped to sign an autograph, he ends up missing his bus).

Snow

The weather forecast actually came true and I was able to follow through on my plan to work from home today. Most of the snow didn’t fall overnight. The biggest accumulation happened during the day and I was able to watch it come down from the plush window seat I am denied at the office but allow myself at home. The midweek variety was a treat. The first blizzard of the year is an event, but as others around the state will concur, it gets old long before the accumulation reaches four feet. It looks like all we are going to get is another four inches.

I went out with Syd for her first real experience playing in the snow. She didn’t take to it at first, but once I started making snowballs and hitting the house she started to see the possibilities. Her personality is a mix of girly girl and bravado and I hope she continues to grow into that.

Today was so out of the ordinary that I ended up having to do the opposite of what I typically do on Fridays. I had to remind myself that I have to go to work tomorrow. What a buzzkill. One of the best parts of my week is a moment that happens on a Friday evening when I’m engaged in the middle of something and instantly the realization fires in my brain that “I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.” The narrative thought is exactly those eight words – I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. But before my brain assigns words to it, I am just overcome with an instant of total relief. The cool part about the whole thing is that sometimes if I’m just home on a Friday and I’m making dinner or the evening just has a midweek sort of feel to it, this realization can hit me two or three times. And unlike heroin (or so I’ve heard) it feels just as great the third time as it did the first time. On the flip side when there is a snowstorm and I’m working at home in my sweats and the day has a special sort of Friday feeling to it I have to tell myself, “You have to go to work tomorrow, and the day after that too you schmuck.”

Leadership

Our so-called leaders at the federal level could learn from New York State Governor Elliott Spitzer. He’s showing more fight than I ever expected.

Less than two months in office, Spitzer is putting members of the assembly who are impeding his reform agenda on notice, whether they are Republicans or Democrats. The most recent imbroglio occurred when the legislature nominated one of their cronies for comptroller over more well-qualified candidates. Spitzer is calling out legislators who supported this nomination one by one. His approach is to go to the legislator’s home district and bash them on their home turf. He was in Syracuse last week to complain directly to the Syracuse Post Standard about Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli (a fellow Democrat). "Bill Magnarelli is one of those unfortunate Assembly members who just raises his hand when he's told to do so, and didn't ever stand up and say, 'Whose interest am I representing?” The next guest on Spitzer’s version of “You Got Served” was Westchester’s George Latimer. Watch to see if the governor comes to your district to give you a report on your representative. Today, Spitzer is expected to hit Assemblyman Bob Reilly (D-Colonie); later this week, he's slated to head to Niagara Falls to criticize Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte (D-Lewiston).

All the Assembly can do is whine that Spitzer is not playing by the rules, which are the rules of the state government that was judged most dysfunctional in the country by the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law. When the Assembly Republican Leader and Democratic Leader both complain about Spitzer’s tactics, you know he’s on the right track.

This is just the start. I think if true reform is going to happen, the voters of the state need to let the assembly know that we won’t tolerate an obstruction of true reform, and those who get in the way are going to be voted out. You don’t have to have a political nature to just be totally sick of the taxation in this state and the loss of jobs. State government is run for its own sake at our expense and it’s enough.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/497049p-418915c.html

Five Minutes

Starting tomorrow each member of the house of representatives will get five minutes to make a speech about US involvement in Iraq, specifically the president’s plan to increase troop levels by 25,000 Americans and to increase funding by $100 billion. Multiply the 435 members of the house by 5 minutes each and they should be done about 500 billion minutes from now.

How does Bush’s “surge” policy get five total minutes’ consideration? After four years of failure in Iraq and unprecedented criticism from high level military and administration experts, Bush finally responded only after the Republicans lost both houses of congress. And his response is more of the same with greater loss of life and money.

The most pathetic part of the whole thing is that despite all of this, one third of Americans still approve of the job President Bush is doing. I figure that these are mostly red state “love it or leave it” types who run the college football coach out of town when he ends up with a winning season but doesn’t get the proper bowl bid. There is more than enough protest from alumni and local yahoos when the football team isn’t producing. But there’s unlimited patience with Bush in these same places. He’ll turn it around!

On the much brighter side, I would like to pause to recognize someone very special who is making a difference:

http://answers.yahoo.com/info/unicef/;_ylc=X3oDMTFzb3ZyYzh1BF9TAzM5NjU0NTEwOARfcwMzOTY1NDUxMDMEc2VjA2Zwc3AucHJvbW8Ec2xrA1B1bHNlX3NwZS5wcm9tbw--?guest=milano

Alyssa, sign me up!

Fame - What's Your Name

When given the choice between spending time with his family and having sex with Demi Moore or spending time with his family and keeping Ashton Kutcher around to have sex with Demi Moore, Bruce Willis has apparently chosen the latter. I don’t know if this is good or bad or healthy or unhealthy. All I know is it makes me more and more uncomfortable. Thank God that one of them thinks he’s Brian Urlacher and the other one thinks he’s Walter Payton. The thought of them both showing up in the same jersey is enough to give me the vapors.

I have yet to find an explanation why attempted kidnapping and murder and mental illness are funny when the person happens to be an astronaut. Letterman and Conan is one thing, but I’m surprised the extent to which the “straight” media is playing this up for yuks and then congratulating themselves about it. There are a lot of news segments being produced about the news segments on this story. The media seem really enamored with the puns they’ve come up with. Yep, she’s “spacey” all right, good one! Not everyone can be or should be funny, as ESPN has proved for years.

I finally got a chance to watch The Colbert Report with guest Bill O’Reilly. Recorded Stewart and Colbert programs are great for late nights with infants. A lot of what I had read was critical of both O’Reilly on the Report and Colbert on the Factor. I thought it was funny. I think some people expected that Colbert was going to use it as an opportunity to get aggressive with O’Reilly and make him look bad, and they were disappointed. I was surprised, though, at how short the segment was. Bill Gates was on the Daily Show for two segments. I figured O’Reilly deserved two segments with Colbert.

Also, it’s official: March 20th is Steven Colbert day in Oshawa, Ontario. Go Spirit!

My Back Pages

YouTube music video of the week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DLJdKto1OA

I am such a mark for this stuff. Let’s have a tribute concert with every living legend of rock and roll, and then at the end let’s bring them all out on stage together and they can each take a verse of a Dylan song. I remember seeing this concert when it happened and I had never even heard of the song before. When I found this clip again I was just blown away.

Valentine's Collateral

If nothing puts a smile on your face or a giggle in your belly like one or more talking animatronic holiday-themed creatures, then come over to my house because it’s like the Country Bear Jamboree, Valentine’s style!

TRY TO RESIST the furry pink hippo with the fat woman’s voice that insists over and over again in sing song that you give her a hug!

TRY TO HIDE YOUR EMBARRASSMENT as the lion in boxer shorts repeatedly tantalizes you by opening and closing the front of his robe to “Can’t Touch This” as recorded by the original artist!

PLEASE DON’T PRESS CHARGES as the zebra with the French/Greek/Algerian accent launches into a barrage of innuendo that leaves even the most resilient one month old in tears!

And for fun no matter what the season:

STARE AT YOUR FEET UNCOMFORTABLY while the irreverent “Trailer Park Easy Button” alternatively shouts that you are either full of horseshit or a peckerhead!

Don’t wait, because the magic will be gone just as fast as the good money that was spent to bring these items into my home! Those who act now will get free admission to our upcoming Easter display. We’re sure you’ll agree that nothing reveals the power of God’s only son being crucified on the cross and rising from the dead to grant us eternal life than a battery-powered bunny that hops around and makes puns!

Simmons' Rules

Bill Simmons wrote and published a list of 20 rules for sports fans in February 2002. I will summarize a few now and a few later.

You can't purchase a blank jersey and put your own name on the back unless you want to be an enormous dork.

Don't wear cheap-looking replica jerseys or flimsy-looking bargain basement hats. Show some pride. (He should have specifically mentioned people who nuke their replica football jerseys in the dryer, vaporize the numbers and letters, and wear them like nothing happened).

Don't wear replica championship rings as a conversation starter. Don't carry someone's baseball card in your pocket as a conversation starter. (Kind of an esoteric rule. Everyone knows Bob Costas has always carried a Mickey Mantle card in his wallet. People expect him to at this point, and I doubt if he ever brings it up anymore. Costas should be grandfathered).

You can wear the colors of the visiting team as long as you're not obnoxious. (Simmons states he once sat in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium wearing a Sox hat, Bruins sweater, and Celtics shorts, but he was left alone because he wasn't going overboard. I think that's the epitome of going overboard. More to his point, games would be more fun to attend if everyone realized that home and away fans have the same rights at games).

If your team wins a championship, there is no limit on the amount of championship gear you buy.

Be very careful using the term "we" with your favorite team. (I think I did this when I was a kid but I can't stand to hear it now).

If your team wins a championship, you can't complain about anything related to that team for five years.

You can follow specific players on other teams, as long as they are not playing your team. Just don't go overboard with memorabilia and specifically jerseys.

It's OK to root against your team if they are hopelessly out of it so you'll get a better draft pick or you're hoping the coach or GM will get fired. (I think there has to be a long history of failure for enough bitterness to develop to make this OK. There were some Giants fans hoping they would lose this year's playoff game because they wanted Coughlin fired. Once you're labeled a fair-weather fan, you're done).

Don't boo your team unless there are similar circumstances to the previous rule, or if your talented team seems to be going through the motions and you want to wake them up. (I think booing needs to be done as infrequently as rooting against your team. I'm embarrassed for fans who boo a player when he strikes out his first three at bats then go crazy when he hits a home run in his fourth at bat. People should be following the sport on a deeper level than that. And forget about booing your hockey team as they sleepwalk through yet another power play. Your boos will be drowned out by whatever music/video has been preprogrammed).

Superbowl Monday

Thanks to all who sent their best wishes on the launch of my own little space here on the internets. I just hope to fill the much-needed void that Larry King left when he stopped writing for USA Today.

It’s very cold and windy around these parts. As I got ready for work this morning my wife suggested that before walking up our daughter, I call day care because most of the schools in the area were closed due to the cold and she didn’t know what “their policy” was. Since there wasn’t any snowfall, I said that as long as people were going to work, daycare would be open. Then she replied back, “But I don’t know their policy.” I’m still not really sure what she meant, but it’s funny and cute in the way that things people say in their sleep typically are (our son was up all night). I do know Ned Flanders’ policy on school lunches, however (putting the stew back in student).

The Superbowl ad fan contest was won by Gino Bona, who was a year behind me in high school. The ad that was actually produced and shown yesterday was a lot different than what Gino had pitched. From the Buffalo News:

"It's different, but I like it," Bona said. "I understand all the changes that were made . . . My ad was more sophomoric. The final product is a little more sophisticated and endearing. Instead of making you crack up, it will make you smile."

I actually thought Bona’s vision of the ad was much better than the actual spot. You can still see the pitch and the ad on the NFL website. Bona’s original concept was clearly fans saying “goodbye.” He had the fan putting the foam finger away in the closet, not just looking at it sadly. He had the fan letting the air out of his inflatable chair, not just a deflated chair being dragged across the ground. The actual ad was very passive and seemed to just have a lot of sad looking people. I think it lost its impact. I really liked the concept of fans ritualistically packing it in. Even those elements that they kept were changed. The fan washing off his face paint in the shower became a man getting blasted with a hose. The dog wearing team apparel because a horse with team logos painted on. I expect that’s where the big shot professionals figured that “bigger was better,” but again I think it fell short of the original idea. I am glad for Gino, though. He has definitely eclipsed the fame he achieved at St. Joe’s with his band “Climax.”

The goofballs at Challenger, Gray, and Christmas are at it again, estimating that the Superbowl is costing American companies hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity. A Slate article debunking this is here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2138333/

There is also an interesting article in the Baltimore Sun about the players who won the Superbowl playing for the Baltimore Colts. They sound like men without a country:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/football/bal-sp.history05feb05,0,4761414.story?coll=bal-sports-headlines

Hipster For Hire

A friend of mine is a staffing manager and she sends me hilarious stuff she finds on Monster. The cover letter below is great. Not sure if this guy is Generation Y or Z.

“To Whom it may concern, Howdy. How ya doing? Yeah, I know, I should be getting on with the cover letter thing, but come on, how many of these things do you have to read a day before they all start sounding exactly the same? So, I could re-iterate all the pleasantries and self-aggrandizing comments you've seen a thousand times before in a thousand other cover letters, or I could just wing it and try a little free form. 'Kay. Here goes. My name is …, and on average I like rainy days more than summer days, and I could probably eat dumplings for every meal. Seriously, I love them. I miss the old episodes of 'Ground Force' on BBC America , the ones with Alan Titchmarch. I think that the double kiss on the cheek is secretly a French sign for loathing. I usually read around three books at the same time, which generally impresses people, but what I don't tell them is that it takes me about three pages to remember what the heck the book was about anyway. I spend way too much time on the computer, and am heavy into futurism. Yes, I like comic books. I like 15 year-old Laphroiag and English Meade, which really makes me a total nerd. And if I had a million dollars I'd buy myself a pony. Made of gold. With rockets. Please review the attached resume, and I hope to hear from you shortly.”

First, let me get the cheap joke out of the way: I wonder if this guy is heavily into the futurism of unemployment?

What I find really funny though is that theses types of people look to differentiate themselves from other applicants by trying to be funny and interesting, but there is never anything funny or interesting about them. Save it for your blog, nerd!

My friend also sent me a cover letter from an old hippie who thought he could get a programming job by bragging about working security at pop festivals with the Hells Angels, which is kind of like bragging about being on iceberg lookout for the Titanic. Apparently I’m supposed to be impressed that he went to “adult camp” with Wavy Gravy, but I’m not supposed to have heard of Altamont?

The Superbowl this year has been played up for two weeks as an opportunity to crucify either Rex Grossman or Peyton Manning. Grossman will be “the worst Superbowl quarterback ever” or Manning will be compared to other “losers” like Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. Do people ever talk like this before the World Series or the Stanley Cup Finals? It’s just part of the reason that the game doesn’t really appeal to me.