FORT WORTH, TX – It’s Super Duper Bowl time again, when America gets to watch some football squeezed in between commercials, while chowing down on the food that made Chris Christie the man that he is.
I’m thinking that he’s a shoe-in to represent a large [ahem] constituency that have not had one of their kind [Fat Folks] as a sitting President since the days of William Howard Taft. Lord knows, we have a lot of them here in the land of the free. And they need some someone that looks just like them in the White House. Unfortunately for our chubby friend from the Garden State, his beloved Cowboys didn’t make it to the big dance. Ol’ Cris got a lot of flak for supporting the ‘Boys, but I think it’s a little overdone. After all, he was showing loyalty to his boyhood hero’s instead of bailing out like some other pols.
And since Jersey is the only state without it’s own television station… who can blame him? It’s not like he knew who to root for when he was a little Gerber by watching the boob tube.
Hanging around with Jerry Jones, however… now that is a punishable offense.
As we all know, we have a left coast versus right coast battle this year. Seattle vs Boston… or New England. Representing two towns that are, in many ways, amazingly similar.
First offl, both their coaches are complete tools.
Up in Boston, Bill Belichick epitomizes the “Get off my lawn, ya damn kids!” school of tool-dom. With a perpetual scowl and an attitude that gives new life to term “crappy,” Belichick upholds the dour outlook and just general unfriendliness that people in the Boston area actually take great pride in extending to others.
You’ll often hear about Bostonian’s “Oh, they’re just great once they get to know ya.” Unfortunately, it takes most of them about two decades to get to know ya and they are complete d!cks until then. So Bill fits right into the charm-fest of everyday interaction that passes for civility in the Beantown area.
Deflating footballs? Filming the opposition and stealing signals? Par for the course in a town where driving is considered Bushido combat, and people have actually been killed over saving winter parking spots.
On the left coast you get a mellower, new-age kind of tool. Pete Carroll. The d!ckweed you wanted to punch in the head in high school because he was driving a cherry GTO that daddy bought him… who gives new life to the word pompous.
Carroll didn’t cheat by deflating footballs. Nah. He cheated on his wife. Very publicly. Then he manged to get the USC football program put on probation during his tenure as coach there. And, as soon as the news broke, he skedaddled up to Seattle to his new position. Jagwads like him always come from places out in the land of the lotus-eaters and always land on their feet. Ya just gotta hate em’!
So, it’s a toss up on who to hate most.
Both Seattle and Boston also have technology in common. Over the last 30 years they were transformed by technology... and from some pretty low depths.
When I attended college in Boston in the early 80’s, the city was primarily known for the worst racial politics outside of Selma. They were literally transporting their kids to school with armed guards. Southie was the largest white ghetto in America, with Whitey Bulger and his merry henchmen running the show, the politics were corrupt, and the winters are colder than my ex-wife’s heart.
Then came technology….and the city was transformed.
Yuppies moved in, prices went up, the place celebrated it’s history and it became known as a hip, urban melting pot. Hey, the weather still sucks, the people are mean, and the racial tensions crackle like a bull whip… but image is everything, right?
Seattle in the early 80’s, which I visited often, was kinda on the same path.
They had a ton of unemployment since lumber, fish and planes were not selling too well then. They had a skid-row that was second to none. They had a heroin problem like no tomorrow. And it rains. And rains. And rains. And rains. And rains. And rains.
But they got lucky… Billy Gates, whose dad was a partner in the town’s largest law firm, used his daddy’s moolah to start Microsoft and put its headquarters there.
He and Steve Balmer, two of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, grew it in to a great, big whale of a company via a corporate culture that is more cutthroat than a Pirate on a drinking spree in a Barbary Coast brothel.
So… money poured in. Grunge bands rocked on. Expensive coffee spots sprouted like mushrooms in the dank, musty atmosphere.
The weather still sucks, they still do a lot of horse and there are homeless everywhere ya turn. But image is everything… So, it’s a cool, sophisticated kind of cruddy weather and impoverished winos.
And both fan bases are just… uh, a bit much.
Patsie fans are legendary for their drunken idiocy, with perhaps only the Jets rivaling them for the dubious honor of most drunken fights per game. It was Patsie fans after all, who were responsible for the rules stipulating NO BEER sales after the third quarter (and second half of night games). They were instated when they could not handle their drinking on a Monday night game a couple of decades back in 1981. They were actually banned from Monday night football from 1982 to 1994 because of this.
And Seahawk fans? The pathetic weenies stole their 12th man shtick from Texas A&M University… jeez. And even worse was the thing that they did come up with on their own; The wave. One of the most annoying experiences in sport fandom, where a bunch of bored idiots who are not really watching the game periodically interrupt the view of those true fans who are actually watching it.
Lame.
Last but not least, both town are bastions of liberal weenie politics. The kind of places where they don’t believe in the death penalty… for cows. Where people talk about how bad global warming is while on the ski lift at the local mountain. Where pretentiousness hangs in the air like the mist of a morning fog in the heat of summer… omnipresent, covering everything and everybody.
Makes it kind of tough for the rest of us… who should we hate more?
I’m going with Seattle. The wave put me over the top.
Well, hate or no hate, the Patsies have the better team and the bigger tool for a coach. It’s Patsie’s 41, Seahawks 21 as Seattle’s luck runs out…
It won’t be a slow turnin’…
Now…get off my lawn ya damn kids!
And come back tomorrow for a Junoir Blaber, who is all about love.
