Whipped Cream Difficulties

Ah, the promise of the new year. Ah, the promise of Gregg Easterbrook’s first column of the year. Ah, the promise of the playoffs.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

The remaining playoff games, and the Superb Owl, are likely to be played in the cold.

Your columnist will be freezing his keister off at the Super Bowl next month and, if I’m not shivering too much to take notes, will report what the experience was like. (A coming TMQ will detail why I never use the press box, the press box being the worst possible place for sportswriting.)

We wonder if freezing his keister off will make TMQ rethink “cold coach = victory” and “cold cheerleaders = victory”. We doubt it, but hey! The promise of the new year!

The first outdoor cold-weather Super Bowl may prove anything from great entertainment — it’s fun being snug at home watching football played in snow — to a total fiasco.

Personally, we’re rooting for “fiasco”.

In either case, the coming month of frigid gridiron action is a reminder that alone among major team sports, football is played in all elements.

Be savage again. (For best effect, read this while doing your best John Facenda impersonation.)

In other news, the playoffs proved that the NFL is taking concussions seriously. This also gives TMQ an opportunity to rant, once again, about the NFL’s obligation to set a good example for high school and youth league players, and about the NFL’s “extensive public subsidies” conferring such an obligation. You know, yet another of TMQ’s standard rants. One wonders if he has this one in AutoText.

Offense rules. But (yet another TMQ evergreen) high scoring teams tend to peter out in the playoffs.

TMQ readers know my compromise with my Baptist upbringing is to be pro-topless but anti-gambling.

You don’t say? Actually, you do say, Gregg: every. single. year. Take the home team if you’re betting.

Sweet: New Orleans. Sour: Kansas City. Sweet and sour blitzes: Green Bay – San Francisco. (Hey, we’re kind of hungry now.)

Hey, did you know the Superb Owl is actually being played in New Jersey? Don’t worry: TMQ won’t let you forget.

Have a fun fact or quirky observation about Jersey? Tweet it to me @EasterbrookG. For example: Did you know that New Jersey is the only state with highway rest stops named after Walt Whitman and Vince Lombardi?

We’d actually be more interested in knowing how many states have named rest stops. Also, TMQ left out the Joyce Kilmer Service Area. (“I think that I shall never see/A lovelier place to take a pee…”)

Questions left unanswered in TMQ’s item about the Prelude:

• Is there a sister ship – excuse me, floating facility? If so, what is it named?
• What are the plans for decommissioning something this big 25 years from now?
• Won’t this be a gigantic target for terrorists? What are the contingency plans, if any? (Hey, we have nothing against LNG production. We just think the Prelude sounds like a floating bomb.)

…ticket prices keep rising in terms of hours worked, which may be among the reasons three of four postseason host teams of last weekend struggled to sell out their stadia.

This comes across as TMQ using the prices of regular season tickets to make a point about playoff tickets. Which is kind of comparing apples to grapes. And there may have been other factors involved in the slow ticket sales for last weekend’s games; TMQ does touch on the weather briefly.

“…Today the typical Super Bowl ticket costs 82 hours at minimum wage, two weeks’ pay.”

The current minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. 82 hours @ $7.25 an hour = $594.50. According to this article, the lowest priced 2014 ticket was $500 (face value). Those are already sold out. So the situation may be even worse than TMQ presents it as being. Then again, what value is the TMQ letter writer using for Super Bowl ticket costs: actual face value, or cost of tickets purchased through a reseller?

To be fair, we think TMQ’s other points are valid: improved TV technology makes the in-home game experience better, especially when compared with the hassle and cost of actually going to a game.

Forget the games; the stadium experience is a product, and the league keeps trying to charge more for less quality.

So how does the NFL improve the stadium experience? More facilities like JerryWorld? Better ingress and egress? Mass transit? Back off on the obtrusive security screening? Free WiFi? Starbucks in the stadium? Cut beer prices? (YES! Dime Beer Night at Lincoln Financial Field! That would be epic!)

(We would actually buy a plane ticket to Philadelphia if they combined Dime Beer Night with the One Direction concert.)

Why did San Francisco win? The usual TMQ reasons: “cold coach = victory”, chicken-(salad) kicking, and poor officiating.

Yeah, we actually saw that Stanford play and wondered, “WTF was that?”

The football gods have been smiling on the Hoosier state, providing both Peyton Manning and Luck, and many other good performers. The Colts have made the playoffs 13 of the last 15 seasons, league-best in that period; New England is second-best at 11. Put another way, in the last 15 years, the Colts have made the playoffs twice as many times as Arizona, Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit combined.

Put another way, the Colts have made the playoffs six and half times as many times as the Houston Texans. NOT THAT WE ARE BITTER OR ANYTHING.

(Also, to hell with the football gods.)

“Michael Irvin, Philosopher”.

Weather does not equal climate.

Climate-change deniers shouldn’t claim weather tells anything; those who favor climate change action shouldn’t pretend weather matters, either. The White House makes the silly all-caps claim that THE WEATHER IS GETTING MORE EXTREME.

…

Don’t trust the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is politicized and dogmatically anti-American. Trust the National Academy of Sciences, which is red-white-and-blue and has a track record of being right about science and technology issues. Trust the National Climatic Data Center, which is not in any way shape or form affiliated with the United Nations or Al Gore, and which says 2013 was the warmest year globally through the 134 years that good records have been kept.

And TMQ throws a slow fat one across the plate:

TMQ Vows: By 2020, I Will Reduce Factual Errors 17 Percent Compared to 2005 Columns

Well, let’s see. If TMQ stops writing about guns, the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and the failed pilot for “Wonder Woman”, by our calculations, that would be about a 25% reduction in factual errors. Maybe more; we’re not sure we trust our numbers.

California has a statewide goal of, by 2050, cutting greenhouse gas to 80 percent below the level of 1990.

That sounds like a goal California can reach, given that people are fleeing the state en masse. (Bonus link for you: “Los Angeles is a city in decline, strangled by traffic, weighed down by poverty and suffering from “a crisis of leadership and direction,” according to a report released Wednesday by a 13-member citizen panel.”)

The football gods keep chortling. One wonders what they do in the off-season; do they train for sustained chortling? Offense wins games. Why did San Diego win? Mostly, chicken-(salad) kicking.

So there are other blends of Johnnie Walker that you can get in Asian airport duty-free shops. Interesting. We may have to put a bug in someone’s ear next time he goes to Asia.

Wonder what would happen in a blind taste test where one glass held Gold Route scotch and the other held Jet A aviation fuel.

We’re not going to say it would be the first thing to happen, Gregg, but very high on the list of things that would happen in such a blind taste test would be a punch in the mouth. Possibly followed by a scientific experiment involving fabric, Jet A, and a lit cigar.

(Also, one of TMQ’s readers actually found a place that serves smoking bishop. Sadly, it is in California.)

TMQ is slightly ahead of the curve on “Friday Night Tykes”. (FARK didn’t get around to it until today.) For once, TMQ covers a television show that actually has some relevance to his column!

The key question is simpler: Why isn’t what is depicted viewed as child abuse? If this series is even close to reality, law-enforcement officers belong at the practices and games shown.

1. TMQ is talking about a trailer, which has probably been edited in a way intended to get people watching the show.
2. TMQ is talking about a trailer for a “reality series”, so we have no idea how much editorial and editing intervention went on behind the scenes.
3. If everything folks are saying about this show is true, TMQ is right: some people need to be arrested.
4. Where are the parents in this? What parent would put up with this shit? Well, sadly, there probably are parents who would. But the parenting question is one that TMQ ducks.
5. Dear Esquire Network employees: what is it like not having a soul?

The NFL’s clock problem. Duke sucks. “…why is the horse collar illegal?” Are you kidding me, Easterbrook? “I’ve watched way too much football and not seen a runner injured by a horse-collar tackle.” Yeah, TMQ’s just trolling here. LaMichael James should have been called for “batting”. We have no joke here, we’d just like to see an NFL player called for barratry.

Five seconds is a lot by modern football standards, but the acceleration of life makes it seem “all night!”

Yeah, that’s what she said. (You’ve been a great crowd! Try the veal, and remember to tip your waitress.)

Next season, Use Best Record Wins; If Records Equal, Home Team Wins. You not only don’t waste precious time thinking — you don’t even need to know who’s playing.

We’re thinking about doing a test of this postulate in 2014. TMQ apparently hasn’t tested it since 2009. Also, don’t you need to know who’s playing so you can tell who the home team is, and which team has the best record?

Saturn. Riley Cooper. Speaking of Riley Cooper, how did the Saints win? Defense.

(On an unrelated note, we just got an email from our credit card company inviting us to spend “Big Game Week” in the “Chase United VIP Lounge”. Two things here. One, Chase apparently isn’t willing to pony up the bucks so they can use “Super Bowl”. Two, the “Chase United VIP Lounge” is at…Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar.)

The 500 Club. More chortling. The 600 Club.

Of the head coaches who labored under Snyder, not a one remains an NFL head coach. Steve Spurrier returned to the college ranks; Norv Turner and Terry Robiskie are NFL assistants; Joe Gibbs does his stuff with NASCAR; Marty Schottenheimer and Jim Zorn are OOF — Out of Football. Schottenheimer’s last football gig was in 2011 as coach and general manager of the Virginia Destroyers; Zorn was last seen auditioning for a CFL position. Schottenheimer is 200-126-1 as an NFL head coach, and no one wants him.

Wow.

Wouldn’t you take $25 million over five years repeatedly to be embarrassed in public? Most people would.

We’re not clear on the syntax here; is that repeatedly being paid $25 million over five years to be embarrassed in public, or taking $25 million over five years and being repeatedly embarrassed in public? We kind of think maybe we’d take the $25 million over five years once; after that, we should be set for life, and wouldn’t need to be repeatedly paid $25 million for public embarrassment.

(Does this man have an editor?)

“Single worst play of the season – so far”: Andy Reid.

Next Week: TMQ starts a religious denomination that is pro-topless but anti-gambling.

“Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.”

Tune in next week, when we start a religion that is pro-leaving everybody else the f–k alone.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 8th, 2014 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Clippings, Mixology, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.