Instant Coffee

Peter King is a football writer for Sports Illustrated. This is sometimes hard to believe when reading his analysis of the league. I regularly peruse his Monday Morning Quarterback column on SI.com, and most of the content leaves me shaking my head in dismay. A regular feature in King’s “column” is a section called “Ten Things I Think I Think”. The title itself is an indication of how much of a loser King is. In this section, The Ultimate Brett Favre Homer gives his thoughts of the week on the NFL. He does this every week, even though nothing will change until games are played in the fall. One of King’s “thoughts” from Monday left me in my normal state of incredulity.

I think as the days go by, I’m talking myself more and more into Jacksonville being a serious Super Bowl Contender. Maybe the most serious Super Bowl contender in the AFC.

This guy gets paid to write about the NFL? Does this guy really think the Jaguars are the team to beat in the American Football Conference? The same AFC that the Patriots are in, who were 2 minutes away from running the table last year? The same AFC that the Colts are in, who have won 5 consecutive South division titles (this is the Jaguars division by the way)? The same AFC that the Chargers are in, who underachieved last year and still got to the conference title game (one round farther than the Jaguars)? Jacksonville was lucky to get past the first round of the playoffs last year, and will be lucky to do the same in 2008. Hell, they might not even make the playoffs. In my opinion, New England, Indy and San Diego are all significantly better than Jacksonville. I also believe that Cleveland and Pittsburgh are better than Jacksonville. I think the Jaguars are going to be fighting for the last playoff spot in the AFC with the rest of the mediocre peons in the conference: Denver, Houston, Tennessee, Buffalo, the Jets, etc.

I don’t understand where King’s feeling about Jacksonville came from. David Garrard played well last year, but can he keep it up? Who is he going to throw it to? Jerry Porter, Reggie Williams, Dennis Northcut and Mercedes Lewis are not exactly what you would call weapons. Fred Taylor gave them a miracle 1,200 yards last year that will be cut in half in 2008 because of injury or age. They have an aging defense that will likely start two rookies on the D-line (Derrick Harvey and Quentin Groves). I see a lot of holes in North Florida.

King’s statement of Jacksonville being the top contender in the AFC is so preposterous that I am creating a new Oceanliner Original Feature. I am calling it Instant History. I am going to take predictions that are so bad in my opinion and put them in a time capsule to see how they stand up to the test of time. We can set the date to re open Peter King’s gut feeling exactly 7 months from today, December 28^th, 2008, which is the day the Jags conclude their regular season with an away game against the Ravens. We will then see if the Jaguars are the top contender in the AFC, or if they are just a bunch of jokers.

Inspired by this new Instant History feature, these are my quick hit thoughts of the week, all in Instant Coffee mode:

Instant Death: I went out to a Friday lunch last week at Chili’s and got the Jalapeno Smokehouse Big Mouth Bacon Cheeseburger. After consulting the online nutrition information, I could feel my arteries clogging as the burger was loaded with 1530 calories and 106 grams of fat. Add the serving of fries and the Southwestern Eggrolls appetizer that I ate half of and I clocked in with a 2400-calorie meal. And this was lunch! Excuse me while I go vomit, if I don’t have a heart attack first.

Instant Death Part Deaux: Seeing people smoking cigarettes on their way to work is so depressing. It’s 7:15 in the morning and you already need a cancer fix? Really? People that need a butt before the day even starts need to reevaluate their priorities. Like living.

Instant Embarrassment: I heard the WNBA has a new expansion team called the Atlanta Dream. Women’s sports have enough trouble gaining traction as it is. Naming all of your teams after emotions, ideals and nature is just another shot in the foot. In the WNBA alone there is the Dream, the Sky, the Sun, the Shock, the Fever (way to name your team after a disease), the Liberty and the Mercury. And this is out of a 14-team league! This is just another reason women’s basketball will never be taken seriously. Sure there are dumb men’s sports team names, but it’s not half the league. How the hell do you root for the Sky? What is their mascot? A cloud? A big storm cloud? Oh wait, they can’t do that one because Seattle already has a team called the Storm. Are the Storm and the Sky big rivals? Or is it the Sun and the Sky? Or the Sun and the Storm? Are the Mercury big rivals with all of them? Is their mascot a barometer? Are the Houston Comets rivals with the other outer space teams (Mercury and Sun) or the Earth bound nature phenomena (Sky)? Even the teams with tangible nicknames are bizarre. You’ve got the Monarchs, the Sparks, the Mystics, the Lynx and the Silver Stars. What are any of those things? This all wouldn’t be so sad/funny if all these nicknames weren’t absolutely true.

Why couldn’t they give the women’s teams’ normal names? Are they afraid huge catfights will break out if the mascots are even remotely violent? The WNBA nicknames are embarrassing, and will continue to deter whatever momentum the league has somehow sustained for 12 years now.

Instant Embarrassment Part Deaux: The nicknames of the teams in of the now defunct WUSA women’s professional soccer league were the Beat, the Breakers, the Courage, the Power, the Charge, the Spirit, the CyberRays (yes, the CyberRays) and the Freedom. Not going to go on a rant on this one, there’s no need.

Instant Awkwardness: I came out of the bathroom at the office one time obviously not thinking about anything important. I think it was a fantasy baseball trade that I was pondering. Anyway, the women’s bathroom is right next to the men’s and right as I walked out I crossed paths with a woman heading to the little girls room. She offered a smile and a friendly

How are you?

Lost in my fantasy baseball trance, I was caught completely off guard and managed to stutter,

Hi. Thanks.

Not only did I make the situation completely awkward, I didn’t even come close to responding to the right question. Oh well, chalk it up.

Instant Hilarity: Went to the Nats game on Memorial Day, which was absolutely sublime. I saw one person wearing a Vinny Castilla t-shirt Nats jersey and another wearing a Tony Armas t-shirt Nats jersey. You can’t make that up.

Instant Sadness: In 2002, the Expos (now my Nats) traded Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Cliff Lee for Bartolo Colon. Each time I hear this trade I look to the sky and think What If?

Instant Ending: Well, that’s it for this week folks. Until next time, stay safe, keep it real and don’t get a neck tattoo.

1st 1/2 '08 NVBSAS

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the Oceanliner is proud to present the 1^st ½ ’08 NVBSAS! For those of you how aren’t down with the lingo around here, this expands out to the First Half of 2008 Northern Virginia Bumper Sticker All Stars. These are decals, vanity plates and road signs that I have actually seen that make me laugh, cry, cringe or go ballistic. And so, in no particular order, lets get right into it.

Maybe the Hokey Pokey IS What It's All About!

*Hanging my head in shame*. As I referenced in my last post, this is one of those times where you want to sit down with the person who's car this is and interview them to determine whether they actually think this is a clever statement or they are just playing a cruel joke on the world by subjecting people to this corniness. If they actually think this is witty, my faith in humanity goes down even more.

Popularity is a Socially Transmitted Disease

*Slamming my head into a table*. This person must be friends with the guy who has the Hokey Pokey bumper sticker. But it gets worse, on this same car reads the following embarrassment:

Pimpin Ain't Easy

*Too angry to hurt my head*. I can at least see the appeal of a witty phrase. The Popularity sticker was an attempt at a witty phrase that failed horribly, but at least I see the intent. This one however is just too painful to deal with. So corny, so embarrassing, so unnecessary. Who are these people?

Blackwater USA

Wow, ballsy move by this guy. This is like the anti conversation starter of a bumper sticker. This is an "I'm gonna take the next exit even though its not where we are going" inducing bumper sticker if you see it. I hope there's not a laser on my forehead as I write this...

I Heart Just Plain Joe!

Am I missing something ? Is there a craze going on for the Midwestern simpleton? Women, help me out here.

Tree Hugging Dirt Worshipper

This woman did not pass Subtlety 101. Some great inadvertent irony though as she's not worshiping much dirt as she drives around in her CAR!

Fun Boot Camp For Women!

This was actually a sign I saw on the side of the road and not a bumper sticker. I can't even imagine the kind of women that would go to that. Buzz, your girlfriend...woof!

The More I Men I Meet, The More I Love My Cat

Hilarious. My fellow men and I are all devastated. You really zinged us with that one. *Trying to rub migraine out of skull*

I Love My Kids Whether Or Not They're Honor Students

Finally, a bumper sticker I agree with that also zings some loser parents out there. On the other hand, we all know this guy's kids are stupid as hell.

Well, that's the rundown on bumper stickers for the first half of '08. I'd love to hear of any turrible bumper stickers, vanity plates and road sings yall have seen out there. The more the merrier. The Oceanliner is very excited about Memorial Day Weekend. Possible plans include hiking, golf, a cookout and a the Nats game on Monday. I hope everyone out there has great plans for the weekend as well. So until next time, stay safe, keep it real and don't forget the fire sauce.

Literally

Everyone knows how much I like to rant on seemingly pointless and inconsequential aspects of life. Well folks, a recent TV commercial has riled up the Oceanliner’s engines, and now I can’t stop this banter from coming out. I get mad when I see things on TV that make no sense. It makes me want to sit down with the people that write these horrible scripts, come up with these awful ideas, and allow them to fly across our national airwaves. I want to shake these people and scream at them,

Are you serious with this crap??? Do you actually find this funny, witty, poignant, hard hitting or amusing??? Or is this some kind of sick joke and power satisfaction that you can succeed in putting this garbage on TV???

Part of me almost hopes it’s the latter, so that at least I know people don’t actually believe in some of the stuff they come up with, say write and produce. These terrible ideas can turn into shows, movies, services or products. There are countless examples of them all where you think,

This is lunacy. How many people had to approve of this terrible idea before it was official? This idea should have been killed the moment it was thought, and somehow its now real? How did this happen?

The most recent blood pressure raising example is a commercial for the esteemed online car store, Vehix.com, and their newest gimmick, the “video test drive”. This where you can log on to the site and watch a video of someone else driving a car from the drivers perspective. We can debate the worthlessness of this feature another time, but now let’s move on to the commercial.

It opens with this middle-aged woman sitting and hanging the trunk of her car with a really stupid looking hat on and she says

You can go to Vehix.com and literally take a test drive with their video test drive tool

Unh uh honey, no. It doesn’t work like that Vehix.com. A literal test drive would be exactly that, a person getting in the car and driving it. A video test drive is a fairytale; there is nothing literal about it. It’s completely fake. It is the exact opposite of a test drive in fact; watching a video on your computer instead of physically driving a car. Later in the commercial they cut back to the bowling hat lady and she says,

You are practically in the car.

You can’t get away with Busch league garbage like that Vehix.com. You can’t offer a literal service and then not offer it and instead provide a proxy. Other companies can’t and won’t do this. Imagine if a sky diving operation ran a commercial like that;

Come check out our website where you can use try our “sky dive video approximation” and literally be skydiving!

Or this:

Hey there! Welcome to BrazilianFartFetishPorn.com, where you can literally get laid! You can practically feel the farts hitting your face!

Sorry, but the world doesn’t work like that Vehix.com. The only thing that can be determined for sure from that commercial is that the marketing people at Vehix are literally retarded and that credibility for their company is practically nothing.

Wheeeuuu. Glad to get that out of the way. Now onto random sports thoughts of the week.

After the NFL Draft, I went back and checked out the first rounds of years past, both as a matter of curiosity and to see which prospects panned out and which were horrific failures. The most interesting thing I stumbled upon though was how freaking loaded the 2004 first round draft class was. It’s mind-boggling. The following list of players were all taken in the first 32 picks back in ’04:

Eli Manning

Larry Fitzgerald

Philip Rivers

Sean Taylor

Kellen Winslow

Roy Williams (the WR)

DeAngelo Hall

Ben Roethlisberger

Jonathan Vilma

Lee Evans

Tommie Harris

Will Smith

Vince Wilfork

Steven Jackson

Kevin Jones

Ben Watson

It’s a staggering list. Two of the three quarterbacks taken in the first round have won Super Bowls. The other (Rivers) has been to the AFC Title Game. 13 of them have gone on to the Pro Bowl, including 8 of the first 12 selections. I don’t know whether there was just more talent coming out of college that year or GM’s just had a great year of tabbing the best players, but it was a loaded first round. I wish it turned out to be like that every year. Then GM’s could maybe convince the public they know what they are doing.

Puzzling Judgment/Use of Resources Note of the Week: The Thursday morning front page of ESPN.com featured side-by-side pictures of Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett with a caption that read “Good to be Home”. The story was about how the Lakers and Celtics are both 12-0 at home during this year’s playoffs. It’s quite puzzling then at the pictures they chose to run with of KG and Kobe:

Could ESPN have picked two more awkward pictures? I hink not. Kobe looks like he is about to cry. In fact, it looks like the last thing in the world he is thinking about is the game he’s actually playing in. KG doesn’t look very graceful either, with a pose that looks like a cross between him bullfighting and pinching out a loaf. It’s just a little odd to me that out of the thousands of pictures ESPN had at their fingertips to put alongside that story, that this is what they chose.

Women’s Sports Note of the Week: Anika Sorenstam announced earlier this week that she is retiring from the LPGA at the end of the season. The Oceanliner wishes her well as she leaves the game after having an illustrious career. While reading the story related to her retirement on ESPN.com, I was shocked by one paragraph midway through the article,

Sorenstam dominated women's golf like few others, especially during a five-year period when she won 43 times and finished among the top three nearly 70 percent of the time. But for all her achievements -- the only woman to shoot 59, winning 10 majors and one of six women to complete the career Grand Slam -- she became most famous for testing herself against the men.

I was stunned at how shallow and insensitive the ending of that paragraph was. To demean Sorenstam’s great career with a jab at her being more famous for playing one tournament with the men than kicking ridiculous amounts of ass on the women’s tour. Maybe it’s because I’m a sports nut and know how good she is on the LPGA Tour, but I had honestly forgotten about her appearance at the Colonial in 2003. The first thing I think of when I hear Anika Sorenstam’s name is her sheer dominance on the women’s golfing circuit, then her text message friendship with Tiger Woods (where they would jab at each other for every major they would win), and then the fact that she kind of looks like a mouse. To me, the fact that she competed against the men is the last line in her bio, as a kind of anecdote. Certainly not the watershed moment of her career. Not in my mind at least.

That paragraph angers me for another reason; that the story is attributed not to a single writer but just as an Associated Press Story. It is one thing if an opinion piece made the case that Sorenstam’s defining moment was playing against the men in 2003. At least there it’s one person’s opinion and they can defend it. This anonymous AP story writes the paragraph as if its fact and that nothing can be done about it. It’s inappropriate and a coward move. I’m definitely not the biggest proponent of women’s sports, but this was a cheap shot.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. I hope everyone out there is doing well as glorious summer approaches. As always, give me a shout if you are going to be in the DC area and we can chillax. Until next time though, stay safe, keep it real and stuff your sorry’s in a sack.

Insanity in the Air

Well, it must be that time of year again. The time of year when the people at PETA go:

Man, we haven’t done anything bat shit crazy in a while. Let’s get really riled up and emotional about something really pointless and stupid.

The ridiculous outrage by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals this time is focused on the jockey who rode Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby this weekend, the horse that had to be put down on the track because she broke her two front ankles after finishing the race. Yes it’sad, kind of. And yes it’s hard to watch. But the PETA people are acting like it’s the end of the world, demanding that jockey Gabriel Saez be suspended and the $400,000 second place prize money be revoked.

There’s no need to delve into the further details of the story and its aftermath. The most frustrating aspect of this PETA outrage story and every other PETA outrage story for me is how much time and resources are wasted on such a pointless cause. Absolutely pointless, compared to what the world really needs volunteering efforts focused on. It is so great that the people at PETA are selfless enough to work for the benefit of others, but so freaking frustrating that they don’t run a homeless shelter, or raise money for fighting disease, or pick up trash or anything that would make the human world a better place. Once we solve human suffering I’m all for looking into ended animal cruelty. But we are about a billion years away from that, and everything PETA does until then is a complete and utter waste of time. Can you imagine if starving Africans in the midst of a civil war heard about an American organization devoted to animal rights?

Animals? Seriously? Those selfish bastards. Why didn’t they start a group called People for the Ethical Treatment of People? Or just give us some food or clothes like normal philanthropists? Seriously, animals? Who cares how that stupid horse died. Can we eat it at least? Oh, it’s being cremated. Animals rights huh? Get outta here. Guess I’ll go back to dying.

I’ve seen the PETA headquarters building in Norfolk and it always makes me think about how all of that money they used to construct the building and run their programs is going right down the toilet. They have so much money and man hours and use it so stupidly. It makes you want to pull your hair out

The most ludicrous aspect of the Eight Belles story is also the most hilarious. PETA contends that the jockey “should have noticed an injury and pulled the horse up instead of applying the whip”. I can only imagine what Saez was thinking when he heard PETA’s accusation:

Should have noticed? What are you, my wife? Is this one of those tricks where you say “I’ll have the chicken alfredo” but you really mean “You should have noticed my emotional fragility last night based on the shade of lipstick I was wearing coupled with the fact that I’m on my period and I talked to my mother last night”. Should have noticed? Lady, I’m a professional jockey. It’s my job to notice those things. The horse broke its ankles after the race, what else do you want me to say?

And that’s all I have to say about that.

In NBA news, Suns coach Mike D’Antoni is rumored to be heading to Chicago next season to be the headman for the Bulls. I personally think it would be a fantastic fit, based on the run and gun style of play that D’Antoni loves to employ on offense and the personnel group he would be inheriting in Chi town. I can definitely see Kirk Hinrich being a poor man’s Steve Nash, although he would have to work on his 3 point shooting percentage over the summer to really thrive in a D’Antoni offense (currently at 37% for his career). Hinrich is 27 years old and if anyone can get the most out of him in his prime, I believe D’Antoni’s the man. Ben Gordon is the perfect lights out shooter for this offense and Luol Deng would finally have a field day as the inside-outside Marion-esque slasher. Throw in Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah as the bigs running the floor and me thinks you have a scary ass team on your hands. (Quick Sidenote: Tyrus Thomas will make the nightly Top 10 every day if he plays for D’Antoni. He might even crack the 2008-09 NBA Volleyball All Stars starting lineup). The Bulls also has the selfless yet productive and effective Drew Gooden to add toughness and rebounding on the inside. A three-man frontcourt rotation of Gooden, Noah and Thomas could be lethal. Throw in Andres Nocioni and high riser Thabo Sefalosha as your back up guard forwards and there’s your 8-man core. The thing is, this team could play some defense too, which would satisfy GM John Paxon. Hinrich is a much better on the ball defender than Nash (Nash’s inability to defend the pick and roll may be why he never wins a championship), Gordon and Deng are quick and we all know Thomas and Noah can be forces on the defensive end. It might take a year for the Baby Bulls to grow up, but I’m getting giddy thinking about what D’Antoni could do in Chicago. Now I just hope it happens.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. But before we go, I’ve got a question for the people out there. Is it creepy to think a 15 year old has a sultry voice? Because I swear, every time I hear the Miley Cyrus “See You Again” song I think to myself “Man that’s a sultry voice”. Is that creepy? Or it may be the fact that I really like that song is creepy. Either way, I don’t think I’m kosher. On that awkward note, stay safe, keep it real and do the dirty bird.