Tommy Handsome...And His Balls

Can you imagine being the first ancient Egyptian to take the hieroglyph for ball and carve it where the hieroglyph for testicle was supposed to be.  You call all your Egyptian friends and mummies over to see what you've done and they're just like "Dude, that's genius.  We have so many balls in regular life, if we make it so that balls also means testicles, that's comic gold for the next 10,000 years.  Why didn't those stupid aliens who built our pyramids think of this?"

NBC's pre-game was six and a half hours long.  Six.  And a half.  Hours.  That gives a guy a lot of time to think, and he's what I came up with.  Handsome and the Hoodie.  A new sitcom coming to ABC in the Fall.  Brady and Belichick are banned from football for being cheaters and forced to live together in a small two-bedroom apartment in a Boston suburb.  Hijinks ensue.

Brady embarks on an acting career, but can only get roles as a corpse on procedural cop dramas (cut to David Caruso whipping off his sunglasses and glibly exclaiming "looks like someone sent this handsome devil straight to hell!"  Cue The Who).  Belichick takes a job at one of the fourteen Dunkin Donuts locations within walking distance of the apartment, and constantly fights with his boss because he wants to create 91 different types of donuts so he never has to work with the same exact combination of available donut flavors more than once.

Eventually, Brady gets his big break, being cast in one of the new Star Wars movies as the galaxy's most handsome man, but he gets the flu, so Belichick has to take his place.  Belichick immediately gets cast as the new darth vader, leaving Brady to run the Dunkin Donuts.  Look for plenty of Gronk guest appearances.

Hey, did you know there's another team in this game?  It's true, they're from Seattle or Portland or somewhere rainy like that.  Sports journalists seem genuinely surprised to see them, with Cris Collinsworth inquisitively musing "Hey, who are those guys?  I thought this was just about the Patriots and football inflation levels".

6:29PM: It's nice to see Lindsay Lohan alive and speaking in full sentences.

6:30PM: Marshawn Lynch has a small Tupperware container of Skittles on the sideline.  How is he not everyone's favorite football player?

6:34PM: Jonas Gray is inactive for this game.  It's like he made a deal with satan where he could rush for 200 yards in one NFL game but then nothing good ever happens to him again.  I'd say Jonas isn't a great negotiator.

6:36PM: Seattle almost screwed themselves with a roughing the kicker penalty.  The Seahawks, as good as they are, are one of the most undisciplined teams in the NFL.  You have to wonder how good they'd be if they could just stop taking stupid penalties.

6:39PM: The crowd in Arizona is decidedly pro-Seattle.  I'm surprised by that since Arizona is in Seattle's division, but I guess people just really hate the Patriots, and while I don't personally feel that way, I sort of get it.

6:42PM: "Hey, I have an idea for a commercial! Kate Upton!"..."...and..." "No and, just Kate Upton".  "OK yeah, that's a pretty good idea".

6:44PM: Collinsworth seems mildly obsessed with Belichick's #2 pencil.  Is he taking the SATs after the game?

6:45PM: Collinsworth just referred to Kam Chancellor as "the hammer".  Kam's wife has already told him 100 times that she's not calling him that.

6:51PM: People who have been paying attention to football this year know that Seattle doesn't really rush the passer that well and it isn't that surprising that they aren't pressuring Brady too much.  Apparently Collinsworth is not a person who has been paying attention to football.

6:53PM: Brady just threw the ball right to one of Seattle's DBs.  Right to him.  Jeremy Lane got hurt at the end of the play, but it's not like he was going to have two interceptions in the game, so his job's mostly done already.  Sidenote: The NFL doesn't give a fuck about knees.  As long as you don't hit a guy in the head, you can do pretty much whatever you want.  Unless you're hitting a quarterback, then you can only hit him in a 2 inch sliver of his body between his waist and his ribs.

6:58PM: After one quarter, points for nobody.  Somebody better go deflate some footballs, the NFL does not want a 9-6 superbowl.

7:05PM: They're making a new Terminator movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  California voters must be so proud.

7:08PM: New England isn't really having trouble moving the ball.  They just need to not give it away this time.

7:11PM: Touchdown! Brady to LaFell.  Both of these teams make a strong argument against spending money or high draft picks on big time wide receivers.  Where are the Cowboys right now? Or the Lions?  Or the Bengals?  Or any team with a receiver that anyone ever wanted?

7:16PM: Jason Statham, The Rock and Vin Diesel star in Incoherent Grunt: The Movie.

7:18PM: Seattle's offense is a mess right now.  The look like the Jets have looked for, basically, my entire life.

7:22PM: That Nissan commercial was an awfully long walk to nowhere.  Emotionally manipulative commercials only work on me when animals are involved.  You can't get me with humans.

7:27PM: Paul McCartney is at the superbowl.  I find that disappointing for some reason.  Like he should have more important Paul McCartney things to be doing.

7:31PM: Russell Wilson just completed a pass to a guy I've literally never seen in a Seahawks game this year.  I'm pretty confident Russell Wilson could throw a football through a brick wall.

7:33PM: Touchdown Lynch!  It's nice how Seattle's offense can basically just show up whenever they feel like it and everything's still cool.

7:36PM: The commercial featuring Walter White is currently the leader in the clubhouse for me.  Commercials don't have to be so complicated.

7:39PM: The two minute warning is one of the strangest rules in any sport.  "Hey, what if we just stop the game with two minutes to go in each half" "Why?" "I don't know, just for commercials and shit."

7:44PM: First really bad penalty of the game for Seattle.  I predict many more.

7:46PM: Wait, there's a Katy Perry performance and a pointless halftime show?  How long is this halftime?  I do have to go to work at some point this week.

7:48PM: Gronkowski touchdown.  If Gronkowski wins the MVP, I'm finding a way to start a riot.  He's the worst.

7:57PM: We've had 6 seconds left in the 1st half for about 5 minutes now.  This is why people who don't really like sports wind up really hating sports instead of just feeling indifferent.

7:58PM: Seattle makes a gutsy call to throw it into the end zone with 6 seconds left instead of just settling for the field goal and it gets them 7 instead of 3.  I hope Mike McCarthy is taking serious notes.

8:01PM: Time for the superbowl halftime show, brought to you by Pepsi and boobs.  Pepsi: It's how people who don't like Coke get diabetes.  And Boobs: They're what Katy Perry does.

8:13PM: Katy Perry is wearing an outfit that defies description while riding a mechanical tiger with satanic red eyes.  Can you imagine trying to explain why this is happening in the middle of a football game to someone who just refuses to understand marketing tie-ins.

8:24PM: I'm going to give the halftime show a solid B+.  Katy Perry was perfectly watchable.  Lenny Kravitz just played his little guitar and didn't bother anyone.  Missy Elliott was a welcomed addition.  I really don't have any complaints.

8:29PM: Market research conclusion for superbowl ad agencies: People are really into dads this year.  I think the fact that Cliff Huxtable turned out to be a rapist made people appreciate their own dad's ability to not be a horrible human being.

8:32PM: I've decided I'm stopping this at the end of the 3rd quarter.  I'm tired and I've had a headache for like 8 days and nobody's going to read this anyway.  Also, according to the TV, we're all going to die from snow poisoning tomorrow so what's the point.

8:34PM: Another catch by this Matthews fellow.  Where did they find this dude?  I imagine Russell Wilson spent the last two weeks telling Pete Carroll "Hey, you know that good receiver we have?  I think we should really use him."

8:37PM: Seattle settles for a field goal and takes their first lead.  Kudos to the New England defense for hanging in there.

8:41PM: Market research note #2: Voice-overs.  People love that shit.

8:47PM: Brady throws the ball to a Seahawk again.  I'd say that one was more on Gronk than Brady, but then again, I hate Gronk, so...

8:49PM: Are we sure Chris Matthews isn't actually Calvin Johnson or Dez Bryant in a mask?  What's happening here?

8:51PM:  Russell Wilson has never been tackled.  He just slides when he feels like it.

8:54PM: Touchdown! Wilson to Baldwin.  At least most Pats fans are probably getting a day off tomorrow.

8:58PM: Just be honest Budweiser.  Your beer is shitty but it's cheap and widely available.  When you try to tell me that you work really hard at brewing it, that just makes me feel sorry for you.

9:03PM: Punt for New England with about 3 minutes left in the third quarter.  Things looking bleak for the Patriots.  Usually when one team dominates after halftime, I'm inclined to say the other guy is getting out-coached.  Hard to believe about Belichick, but...

OK I think this is probably a good stopping point.  New England looks beaten right now.  Either they're going to make a big comeback which I'll want to pay attention to, or they'll continue to suck and I'll want to make fun of them, and I have to live here.  Enjoy the 4th quarter.

Boston Convert

As I'm writing this I'm getting ready for game 2 of the Rangers/Bruins series.  First of all, if you aren't watching the hockey playoffs, honestly, what's wrong with you?  Whatever you're doing instead just isn't nearly as important.

Anyway, as I've tried to figure out who I'm rooting for in this series, I've come to a shocking revelation about myself.  I think I'm becoming a Boston sports fan.  True story.  It seems ridiculous to just switch all rooting interests to a whole new town, but let's go through it one by one.

The Celtics are the easiest one.  I've always been a Celtics fan, except for that brief period in the 90's when there were only two basketball fan identities (Bulls fan or Bulls hater) and I was a Bulls fan.  My parents were never that into sports (except for my mom and the Rangers, and we'll get to them in a minute), so I inherited a lot of my rooting interests from my grandmother.  Because the Celtics are implicitly Irish, we rooted for Boston.

Sidenote: In hindsight, there also might be something to the fact that, in the 80's, the Celtics pretty much cornered the market on white basketball players.  Really...Bird, McHale, Ainge, Walton.  It's like a who's who of useful or better NBA white guys.  I don't know, I didn't really give that a lot of thought when I was 7.

In terms of hockey, I grew up an Islanders fan.  My grandparents live like 10 minutes from the Nassau Coliseum, and back when I was like 0-3 years old, the Isles were winning four straight Stanley Cups.  So that's a pretty formative experience.  A few years ago I disowned the Islanders because of their many many uniform transgressions.  Since then, I assume in response to my outrage, they went back to the classic uniform scheme and I've been back on board.  But, they're moving to Brooklyn soon.

I'm sorry, I'm not rooting for a hockey team from Brooklyn.  Especially after they change their name to the Hipsters or the Skinny Jeans or whatever and incorporate irony into their new uniforms.  No thank you.  Plus, I'm from Queens, I don't want to root for Brooklyn anyway.

And the Rangers and Devils?  Come on.  Listen, the Rangers suck.  And the Devils, they're even worse.  I had a girlfriend in college who loved the Devils, and even when someone I loved loved the Devils, I still fucking hated them.  They are perpetually unwatchable.  The uniforms are awful, and even though they don't play like they did in the 90's anymore, I can't watch them without seeing that awful neutral zone trap.  Boooooo!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, the Bruins have great uniforms, aren't from Brooklyn and aren't planning to randomly move to some other part of Boston just for fun.  I like the Bruins and I'm not having a hard time seeing myself getting on board with being a fan.  I mean, just look at Zdeno Chara.  He's like an angry giant on skates. Who doesn't want to root for an angry giant?  Also, they have a goalie named Tuukka.  Tuukka!  Come on, he has an extra K.  Everyone knows K is the best letter.  At least it is in Finland, or Sweden, or Denmark or wherever the fuck Tuukka is from.

Football is pretty easy too.  I've always kind of hated the New York football teams, and I haven't really kept that a secret.  In my football watching life I've bounced around from the Houston Oilers (until they moved) to the Tampa Bay Bucs (until they got new uniforms) to just being a fan of the NFL Redzone network (because it's seriously fucking awesome).  I can settle in with the Patriots.  I already have a Patriots jersey (although it hasn't been worn since September, and even then not by me, and the story of how I became the owner of a Patriots jersey is interesting, somewhat embarrassing, has very little to do with being a Patriots fan, and I'm not quite ready to tell it yet).

Oh, and did I mention the New York football teams are actually from New Jersey?  Yeah, that's a real thing.

Honestly, I'm not even sure why people have favorite football teams anymore.  It's like having a favorite character on a sit-com.  It's just a TV show.  When I watch How I Met Your Mother, I don't root for Marshall, I just enjoy the show.  I feel like having a strong rooting interest might ruin football for me, but I've never had one before, so I'm open to trying it.

But then there's the Yankees.  I grew up a Yankee fan.  I've always been a Yankee fan.  The '96 World Series was awesome.  And so were the other three they won when I was in college.  But the last one, honestly, the thrill just wasn't there anymore.  I've said this before.  Being a Yankee fan is exhausting.  Yankee fans only have two emotions, terrible disappointment when the Yankees don't win the World Series, and what could best be described as relief when they do.  To be honest, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a Yankee game.  In some ways, my Yankee fandom has become like a bad relationship that I'm just too much of a wimp to get out of.

Speaking of bad relationships, I can't really imagine what it's like to be a Red Sox fan.  I'm not 100% sure it would really be more fun, but I'm 100% sure it wouldn't be less fun.  Typical relationship dilemma.  Stay with something familiar, or go try something new that isn't necessarily any better and just leaves you feeling like an idiot.  As you can probably tell from the fact that I'm going to die alone, I'm not very good at this.

Some other valid reasons to switch to Boston fandom:

- I live in Massachusetts now, so there are always Boston teams on my TV.  I mean, I could just watch and root against them.  That's essentially what I did with the Red Sox my first year here, but, to be honest, that wasn't a lot of fun.

- Boston girls are almost exclusively awesome.  New York girls are, frankly, kind of a mixed bag.  Don't make that face at me!  You know I'm right.  You've seen Sex and the City.  So if you're in a bar with half Boston girls and half New York girls, which side of the bar would you rather have a common rooting interest with?  Yeah, me too.  I've also found that Boston girls are significantly more likely to be into sports, so there's a better chance of them being in the bar to begin with.

- Aerosmith is from Boston.  And so are the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.  Who's from New York?  LL Cool J and The Ramones?  Similar question.  If you got invited to watch a game and hang out with famous music people, who would you pick?  Dicky Barrett and Steven Tyler or LL Cool J and whichever Ramone is still alive?  Again, yeah, me too.

Look, to be honest, I'm not sure if I can go through with the full conversion.  I'm still stuck on the Red Sox thing.  That's not an easy switch.  But I've already decided that I'm not buying the MLB extra innings package this season, the Yankees just aren't worth $40 a month to me anymore.  So I suppose I'll watch a summer of Sox baseball and see how I feel in September.  I'll keep you posted.