Sports Report: Super Bowl Prediction!

As January winds down I feel somewhat obligated to post on that greatest spectacle of sport, the crown jewel of competition, the arena of artistry, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat: the Super Tuesday presidential primaries the Super Bowl.

I'm not much of an NFL fan but I did pay a modicum of interest to this season's playoffs, mainly because the Green Bay Packers had two home games - one in a blizzard and one in subzero temperatures.

I don't remember when or why I became a Packers fan. I guess it had something to do with the selection of authentic football uniforms available in the Sears catalog circa 1973. (This guy knows what I'm talking about.) My brother got the Dallas Cowboy uniform. I got the Packers. I'm sure my fandomness blossomed with knowledge that the Packer juggernaut was piloted by Bart Starr, Alabama born and bred, who taught the philistine cheeseheads what football was all about. Or whatever. It's just a blur, really.

My late grandmother bought me a Packers sweatshirt a few years ago and I wore it to Colorado for this year's Christmas vacation. It is thick and warm and comfortable and very green. It garnered a lot of attention at the airport in Texas because the Pack apparently stunk up a regular season game on the Sunday we traveled. I didn't know they were playing, much less who they were playing, but strange guys kept talking to me, saying things like You're coming back here for the playoffs, after today! and pointing at their NFL-logo'd caps like they were challenging me to a duel or something. In Denver, the pilot getting on the plane as we were exiting looked at me and said, They lost. Just like that. No Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, or Happy Holidays. No We know you have a choice in air travel and we appreciate you choosing Southwest. Not even a Buh-bye. Just They lost. I didn't know how to respond, so I muttered an emphatic Crap! under my breath like I'd just lost my mortgage payment to the bookie working out of the storeroom of the diner out on the highway, and feigned enough sincerity to get me to the top of the jetway. It worked. Flyboy bought it hook, line, and sinker, just like the loser Dolphins fan that he probably is.

Even my uncle gave me the business out in the driveway before I got both feet out of the car. The Packers? he sneered. They played like crap today! He's a farmer and a Broncos fan so he knows crap when he sees it. I still didn't know who beat the Pack, but it was a heartbreaking loss, I gotta tell ya.

Anyway, after that humiliating defeat at the hands of _____________, I relegated the sweatshirt to the back of my closet, just like the loser Bears. Make a monkey outta me, huh? But still, we made the playoffs and beat _____________ in a blinding snowstorm before hosting the hapless Giants and their Peyton-wannabe quarterback Eli Manning in the third-coldest game in NFL history. The Giants' crappy kicker missed two field goals in the second half, the last one with four seconds left in the game. OT, baby! When the Pack won the coin toss I went to the closet to lay out my sweatshirt for work Monday, because there is no way Favre is going to lose the NFC championship game at home in overtime and -4 degrees, right? I mean, it's Lambeau and Lombardi and cheeseheads and Bikini Girls, Nitschke and Kramer, Lofton and Hornung! Favre is a southern boy gone up north to teach the Yankee horde about football, just like Bart Starr! If I'd still had my Packers helmet from Sears I would have crammed it down on my head, even if it snagged on my ears, just to block for ole number 4 from the warmth and safety of my living room. (I would not, however, don one of those cheesehead hats, because that is not dignified for a casual fan like myself.) But, alas, it was not to be! Favre threw an interception and a few plays later the crappy kicker for the Giants actually got one through the upright thingies, and just like that the sweatshirt went right back into the closet. Oh, the shame.

So the Super Bowl comes down to this:














I'm rooting for the Giants, for two reasons:
1. I root for underdogs (except when they play the Packers), and Eli Manning is an underdog to his brother Peyton. They have another brother but he's not in the NFL. If he was he'd probably be a loser Viking.
2. I root for underdogs (except when they play the Packers), and the Giants are underdogs to the 18-0 Patriots. The Red Sox won the World Series, so how much success does New England really deserve? Can you say Ted Kennedy? Mitt Romney? "Big Dig"? Even if they win and go 19-0, what's the big deal? Just ask Mercury Morris.

My prediction: Giants 30 (their crappy kicker misses all the extra points) - Patriots 28.

Go dogs.

One to One Hundred

(HT: jimCutlervoiceOvers)

Review: Inside Inside

For reasons that are meaningful only to me, I don't do new year's resolutions. I did plan to do two things (at one time) here in the new year that I haven't done before: read a Thomas Merton book, and blog about a book I'm reading.

I got sidetracked at the library, though, by a hefty volume on the New Arrivals rack: Inside Inside, by James Lipton.


James Lipton is the founder and former director of the Actor's Studio Drama School, and host of Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio. I haven't had access to the Bravo network in several years, but when I did, Inside was one of my favorite shows.

This book is more about Lipton than about Inside, but in a sense Lipton is Inside, so that didn't bother me as much as it obviously bothered the reviewers at Amazon.com. But he's done much more than just his work with Actor's Studio. He wrote a novel and a literary work that has been in print for forty years, wrote two Broadway musicals, produced twelve Bob Hope specials and a Jimmy Carter inaugural concert, is a pilot and competitive horseman, was awarded a lifetime Emmy and France's Chevalier de l'ordre de Arts et des Lettres, was a pimp in a Parisian bordello (well, sort of; the nuance of the translation may have been lost on my sorry monolingual butt), and has the overwhelming admiration and respect of the arts and entertainment community. Except from maybe Barry Manilow and/or Bob Kerrey (read the book for that Inside inside joke).

The book clocks in at 492 pages and there isn't a lot of white space, let me tell you. Mr. Lipton doesn't interview actors from behind a stack of 500 blue notecards just because he has a cardboard fetish. He may have, for all I know, though he didn't feel it necessary to mention in the book. He did mentioned a bunch of other stuff, though, like how he almost crashed a plane in Alaska, got thrown off a horse, had a [Warning: NSFW] print of his naked wife published by George Plimpton in The Paris Review [I warned you], and listened to Bob Hope and Ronald Reagan exchange raunchy anecdotes in the Lincoln Bedroom after taping a dialog for one of the Hope specials, resulting in Secret Service confiscation and erasure of an 18 minute portion of the tape. Not the first time that's happened in the White House, huh? Come to think of it, it probably wasn't the first time raunchy anecdotes were exchanged in the Lincoln Bedroom either. Or the last.

But I digress. By now you must know that I am untrained in the art of the book review, so I take no shame in saying that this was a swell book. And in the spirit of Inside the Actor's Studio, I shall end with the infamous Bernard Pivot Questionnaire:

What is your favorite word? Papa
What is your least favorite word? Irregardless
What turns you on? The smell of roasting pork
What turns you off? Wastefulness
What sound or noise do you love? Sleet landing on fallen leaves
What sound or noise do you hate? A ringing telephone
What is your favorite curse word? Crap
What profession would you like to attempt? Professional book reviewer
What profession would you not like to attempt? Donald Trump's hairstylist
Finally, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Son, what had you so keyed up? Well, forget it, you have the rest of eternity to unwind.


Bravo, Mr. Lipton...

What is this white stuff in my rain gauge?

UPDATED: NWS Birmingham explains. Thanks!

Southern kids can't sled