Whipped Cream Difficulties

When we were growing up in Houston in the 1970s and early 1980s, these were the rules:

• Root for the Houston Oilers over everyone.
• Root for the Dallas Cowboys over everyone except the Houston Oilers.
• After that, it was pretty much personal preference. At the time, we were fond of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, because we are suckers for underdogs, lost causes, and beautiful women. (Tampa Bay falls into two out of those three.)

Of course, that was a long time ago, in another country, and besides Tom Landry is dead. Jerry Jones runs the Cowboys. And, in this week’s TMQ, after the jump…

The Boys looked uniquely bad.

646 words down.

Tony Romo, paid about as much as Super Bowl winners Tom Brady and Joe Flacco, does hit lots of passes but often vanishes in the clutch. The Boys were 0-for-9 on third downs. Ye gods.

We hate to sound like FARK’s own Di Atribe here, and we kind of agree with TMQ that Romo has issues. But when your defense allows 49 points, your quarterback is not the only problem. (And, to be fair, TMQ does have some sharp words for Monte Kiffin, Lane Kiffin, the Kiffin-headed smile-monty, and the Cowboys defense.)

The Bengals went for it on fourth and short. Twice. And failed. But they won anyway on a last second touchdown and unexpected two-point conversion attempt.

Historically, half of NFL deuce tries succeed — last season it was 47 percent. But that stat mainly reflects expected tries. Surprise deuce attempts from kicking formation almost always succeed.

1. Is there really an NFL stat for “surprise deuce attempts from kicking formation” that would back up the “almost always succeed” claim?
2. On the other hand, isn’t the claim that surprise attempts almost always succeed sort of a “thank you, Captain Obvious” claim? Or at least a tautology?

If the quarterback thing doesn’t work out for [Colin Kaepernick], he can always fall back on nude modeling.

Ewwwww. Why did you have to go there, Gregg?

Sweet: special teams play (Rams, Giants, Steelers, Panthers), Minnesota, Denver. Sour: Buffalo. Mixed: Cincinnati – Baltimore.

The new research projects that a Chelyabinsk-class rock might fall every one or two decades. Probably several have fallen in the past century but unobserved over an ocean.

Yes, TMQ is beating the “defense against rocks from SPAAAAAAACE!” drum again. We wonder about this. According to TMQ, the Chelyabinsk rock “exploded with about 30 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb”. If one of those exploded over the ocean, would it actually be undetectable? Would the shock wave create seismic events? We honestly don’t know.

If humanity’s luck turns bad and a space rock hits a city, the world’s ongoing failure to prepare any defense against space rocks will be seen as the greatest error of human history.

Worse than Hitler?

Remember “Remember the Titans“? T.C. Williams, the school that movie was based on, made the Virginia state high school playoffs. So?

• They haven’t been in the playoffs since the movie came out.
• “This though the very liberal Virginia playoff system annually invites about half the state’s high schools: 10 teams with losing records just made the Virginia playoffs, including Lee High School of Springfield at 2-8.”

TMQ provides a handy list of some recent government corruption scandals, a few of which (like the EPA scandal and the Army scandal) we were not aware of. TMQ missed the silencer scandal, but that may be a matter of timing.

There is a corruption scandal in Canada, hard as the phrase “Canadian scandal” seems to be to write.

Rob Ford doesn’t count?

Tampa Bay – Miami. We don’t have a lot to say about this, except: TMQ got through the entire item without using the nonsense term “genetically engineered surimi”.

“College Game You’re Sorry You Missed”. Not really, though the end sounds entertaining. But you can find that on YouTube.

“Adventures in Officiating“. We admit that we don’t pay as much attention to college ball as we do to the NFL. But it seems that there’s a trend this season for officials to call personal fouls for targeting, eject the player in question, then review the play, reverse the ejection, but let the penalty stand. TMQ seems to have noticed that as well:

This is the first season of the NCAA’s targeting rule, and so far enforcement leaves much to be desired. Officials seem now to think that only deliberate helmet-to-helmet contact should lead to ejection: everything else is OK. Morton and Goodson both should have been tossed for vicious late hits, regardless of the point of contact. It’s unnecessary roughness in any form that ought to be the leading concern.

Our thinking is that if there is enough evidence to overturn the ejection on review, there should also be enough evidence to overturn the penalty. Seems to us that these should be going hand in hand; either yards and an ejection, or nothing. Also, the safety dance.

Christmas Creep is back for a limited time. We missed it. However, we’ve been going to the range more (thanks to a friend of ours) and our aim is getting better.

As this column has noted before of literary hoaxes, though books are seen as the ultimate carriers of truth, books are not fact-checked. Magazine and newspaper articles usually are fact-checked: in most cases, book publishers require only that the author sign a statement attesting factual claims to be true. Most authors are honest, so usually this is sufficient. But for the author running a hoax, there is little cross-check.

(cough) (cough) 1972 Miami Dolphins. (cough) (cough)

What jumped out at me when I read initial news accounts of the book was the author’s claim that immediately after arriving at the consulate, he beat a terrorist to death with the butt of his rifle. This is the sort of thing that might be said by someone who’s trying to fabricate. If a bad guy is standing in front of you, it makes a lot more sense to use the rifle to shoot him than use it to hit him. Modern infantry rifles have composite stocks designed to keep down weight. They don’t make good clubs: they’re not supposed to.

Wow. This is actually a good point from Easterbrook. (Though one of our AR-pattern rifles has a pretty solid plastic stock, as does our Remington 870. We’re not sure we could beat someone to death with either, and we would certainly prefer to use the other end first. But the stocks on both seem substantial enough to put a hurting on someone. On the other hand, don’t most issue weapons these days have a “folding” stock?)

Edited to add: A friend of WCD sent us some texts that prompted us to check a few things.

If Wikipedia is to be believed (and that’s a mighty big IF) there are versions of the M4 with both fixed and telescoping stocks. The A2 fixed stock looks a lot like the stock we have on our AR-pattern rifle; we could imagine hitting someone with that. But we haven’t been able to find any mention anywhere of what type of rifle the author of “The Embassy House” claims to have had. It could have been an M4 – that seems probable. But was it one with a telescoping stock? Or the A2 stock? Or the LE stock? Or did he have an AK-47? Or a M-14? Or M-16? We can’t find any specifics. We’d try searching “inside the book” on Amazon, but there’s no book there to search.

On the other hand, here’s what the author himself says in the “60 Minutes” transcript (by way of Battleswarm):

Morgan Jones: One guy saw me. He just shouted. I couldn’t believe that he’d seen me ’cause it was so dark. He started walking towards me.

Lara Logan: And as he was coming closer?

Morgan Jones: As I got closer, I just hit him with the butt of the rifle in the face.

Lara Logan: And?

Morgan Jones: Oh, he went down, yeah.

Lara Logan: He dropped?

Morgan Jones: Yeah, like– like a stone.

Lara Logan: With his face smashed in?

Morgan Jones: Yeah.

Lara Logan: And no one saw you do it?

Morgan Jones: No.

Lara Logan: Or heard it?

Morgan Jones: No, there was too much noise.

Note that “Morgan Jones” just says he hit the guy in the face, and he dropped. Not that he “beat him to death”, but that he “hit him with the butt of the rifle in the face”. Could a single blow from a rifle butt to the face kill someone? Maybe. Jones may have killed the guy, or just knocked him out. But Jones didn’t claim (at least, not in the “60 Minutes” piece) that he killed the guy. Without access to the book, we can’t say if TMQ is reporting the “killed” claim correctly, but the discrepancy here raises our suspicions.

Check the ending of the 1955 flick “Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier.” In the final scene at the Alamo, Fess Parker kills Mexican after Mexican by striking them with the butt of his rifle as the movie fades out. “Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who knows no fear.”

And then TMQ has to go ruin a perfectly good point, since composite stocks hadn’t been invented yet. Plus, does he really think that movie was intended as a documentary?

Suddenly it seems that fourth-down resolve is all around us.

We tried setting this to the theme from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, but the scansion wasn’t right.

The USPS should lose its monopoly, and learn to compete. Companies that compete make their boxes fit their slots, and don’t drive away from business.

Yeah! The USPS should learn to compete and do things like deliver packages on Sunday! Oh, wait…

(Lord knows, pretty much every trip we make to the Post Office ends up with us wanting to choke somebody. But we’re not too happy with UPS at the moment, either.)

Chicken-(salad) kicking: Florida.

…don’t get me started on the United Kingdom still calling the people who run its navy the Sea Lords. The Royal Navy is down to fewer than 100 ships, with no fleet-class aircraft carrier — the United States has 10 in commission plus two under construction — and only a handful of vessels that could be characterized as capital ships. Yet the Royal Navy still has Sea Lords: a First Sea Lord, Second Sea Lord and so on.

Wow. How provincial can you get, TMQ? (And if you want to talk titles, we much prefer “Sea Lord”. “Secretary of the Navy” sounds like someone who takes notes during meetings, makes copies, types letters, and schedules appointments for the Navy. “Sea Lord” has some dignity to it.)

More SPAAAAAACE!

Pro football ratings are fantastic but have been flat for several years, while college football ratings continue to climb, and may pass NFL numbers.

1. Nothing grows without limit, so the idea that NFL ratings have reached a plateau should not come as a shock.
2. We strongly suspect that the growth in college football ratings is due to the increased television exposure of college football.
3. From earlier in the column: “Part of the calamity claim was empty seats at Florida’s stadium by the third quarter, though the house was packed at kickoff. The University of Miami entered its home game the same day in the top 10, and drew only 49,267 in a stadium that seats 75,000. Declining attendance at college football games has more to do with high-def flat screens and games shown on tablets than lack of enthusiasm for the sport.” Interesting. Ratings: up. Attendance: down. What’s better for the colleges: TV ratings, or attendance?

Is there some chain of events in which Baylor meets Stanford for the BCS title?

So that’s TMQ, WCD, and Ken White who would watch a Baylor-Stanford BCS title game. Highest. Ratings. Ever.

“There are no secret investing formulas!”

All the indicators are positive. RIP Blockbuster. The 500 Club. The 600 Club. Mike Smith is done. Baker 40, Graceland 16.

And that’s a wrap. Finally. It may just be us, but this seemed like a long column this week. At least we’ve managed to hold off the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 13th, 2013 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Guns, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.