I don’t know about you, but I really dislike the two-week gap between the NFL conference championship games and the Super Bowl. I assume there is some kind of point to it, like perhaps the league thinks that it helps build anticipation for the big event, but is it really necessary? I am pretty sure the anticipation would be there regardless. One of the main things I don’t like is that the first of those two weeks always seems to be a slow news week in sports. This week, the story I saw everywhere, aside from the continuing Richard Sherman saga, involved the cheerleaders for the Oakland Raiders and the lawsuit they have brought against the team for unfair labor practices. The whole thing seems so absurd.

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Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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10. Silver Beatles

9. The Strolling Roans

8. Guns and Ammo

7. The Windows

6. Little Head Todd and the Monsters

5. The What

4. Motley Crew

3. The Flaming Eyeballs

2. U1

1. Ezra
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, music by Bob Sullivan
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My daughter, light of my life, just missed the honor roll once. One half-grade better, and she was in the Promised Land. When I found out, I didn’t chew her out, though our conversation did get crunchy. Tired of it after a while, she hit me with this: “Like you never got a bad grade in high school?”

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Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Earlier this week, in the course of an evening prayer gathering with @dreampcusa on Twitter, one of our partners offered up a prayer for the priests in Kiev. We joined in with that request, of course … but part of me was wondering, “what’s that about?” Once our gathering closed, I went and Googled “priests Kiev,” then clicked on the ‘News’ option for search results … and I found out exactly what he was talking about, and praying for.
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Tags: religion & philosophy, trusted media & news by Jeff McDonald
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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 9AM: Contrary to apparent popular belief, a cup of coffee is not a fashion accessory. The Emperor can’t exactly prove what he is about to say (and, of course, he doesn’t need to, because he is, after all, the Emperor) but he gets the distinct impression that people are considering their to-go cup of coffee as part of their overall “look.” They seem to consider making an entrance with cup-in-hand to be some kind of subtle statement of…what? Their on-the-go lifestyle? The fact that they are suburban rock stars who need to medicate themselves with caffeine in order to keep going in the demanding face of parental taxi work? Or might it be that the brown hue of their delicious convenience store cup matches so well with their coats and kicks?  In whatever case, please don’t force the Emperor to take away coffee.

The Punishment: Those perceived by the Imperial Watchers to be thinking and acting in the way delineated above will be ground and brewed and served to the Imperial Pigs for a special winter treat.

Now, go forth and obey.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

Tags: fashion & clothing, The Emperor decrees by Chris Matarazzo
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What’s worse than a bad loser? A bad winner. One of my least favorite things in sports is the guy who mouths off as soon as he wins something. If you watched the playoff game between the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday evening, you saw Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman getting in the face of Niners wide receiver Michael Crabtree after he made the game-saving deflection late in the fourth quarter. He then gave sideline reporter Erin Andrews an earful during a post-game interview. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Maybe I should change Tuesday to be my schedule day.  Due to vacation, BSGS will be delayed a day.  See you Tuesday.

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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10. “It was a traffic study: We were studying how far you could push a Jersey guy, already stuck in traffic for eight hours, before he starts punchin’ headlights!”

9. “I figured if thousands of commuters were stranded in Fort Lee, it had to be great for the local economy!”

8. “Would you believe: ‘I don’t remember, I was in a drunken stupor’?”

7. “I had to get back at that prick Mayor Sokolich somehow, and we don’t stick horses’ heads in people’s beds anymo…I mean…ever.

6. “Last year, my wife Mary Pat asked me to make arrangements to move our weekly bridge game from Monday September Ninth to Friday the Thirteenth, and I’d had a couple drinks, and I may have dialed the office instead, and then gotten totally confused!”

5. “My ‘appointees’ were just tryin’ to impress me –- tryin’ to guess what I’d do –- so they brought everything goin’ outta Fort Lee to a halt for a week, it was huge news from Day One, and I’m Governor and I don’t hear about it for a friggin’ week?!… Yep, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.”

4. “I was just fulfilling my campaign promise to do everything in my power to keep jobs from from leavin’ Jersey.”

3. “The George Washington Bridge is the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge –- it needed a rest!!!!!!!”

2. “I thought I could get away with it.”

1. “I still think that.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, politics & government by Bob Sullivan
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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. LP-700-4: The Emperor rarely does things just for poops and wah-has, but he has decided, this week, to ban the phrase “but, wait!” from all commercials. By doing so, we will effectively put a stop to: “What would you pay for a tool that slices, dices, juliennes and raises your children while doing the grocery shopping, in space, during a meteor shower? But wait – don’t answer yet, because, if you call within the next six seconds, we’ll throw in this beautiful, red Lamborghini Veneno, free of charge! But that’s not all! We’ll double your order and throw in free, lifetime maintenance on the cars…but only if you order in the next six seconds!” Why ban this? Why not? Let the commercial writers expand their creative horizons in order to whip up marketing excitement. Pull out the crutch and watch the bastards topple, I say.

The Punishment: Violators will be run over by a Lamborghini Veneno driven by a guy who is reading a thesaurus.

Now, go forth and obey.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

Tags: television, The Emperor decrees by Chris Matarazzo
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It’s just a movie. It’s just a movie. It’s just a movie. I repeated the mantra, but if I adhered to it, and not just in this case but in general, if I got all Zen-like and hey-let-it-ride, what would I write about this year? [Read more →]

Tags: movies, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Baseball takes itself very seriously. Far mores than any of the other major sports, the culture, traditions, statistics, and history of baseball are treated as hallowed ground by not only the people directly involved with Major League Baseball, but also by the fans. If anyone messes with any of these things, whether via cheating or something else untoward, we react with virulence, while we barely bat an eye at far worse things in the other sports. This week, Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard announced that he had given his Hall of Fame vote to the website Deadspin, which allowed visitors to the site to vote on the people that would make up the submitted ballot. The reaction was very negative, as you might expect.

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Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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10. It’s so cold, you have to open the fridge freezer to heat the house

9. It’s so cold, the National Aquarium in Baltimore just realized it no longer needed all that glass

8. It’s so cold, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford spent all last night trying to snort a snowbank

7. It’s so cold, you have trouble jump-starting your penguin

6. It’s so cold, Grandma’s teeth won’t stop chattering – and they’re still in the glass

5. It’s so cold, when police tell a robber to freeze, it’s redundant

4. It’s so cold, it’s almost as cold as a Koch Brother’s heart — assuming they had one between them

3. It’s so cold, you had to scrape the window on your microwave

2. It’s so cold, we made ice cream at room temperature

1. It’s so cold, a guy would want to hold onto a witch’s tit just for the warmth!

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, environment & nature by Bob Sullivan
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Let’s face it: fans of both American and European football can be disgusting. I’m not sure what to do about soccer — it seems the riots continue and there will always be select beatings of unfortunate visiting fans. But I think I have an answer for American football…and it came to me after I watched a video of an Eagles fan (they lost) spitting in the face of a Saints fan (they won) at the end of a recent playoff game.

We can all agree that this is bad form. Perhaps we can all agree it is disgusting, no? But, perhaps — as I often point out to my writing students on the verge of their “problem solution” papers — we can eliminate the problem by simply recognizing and removing its cause. [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Chris Matarazzo
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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 4093-1.4: Everything is an illusion in media, these days — “movie magic” and all that rot. CGI. Green screens. We make every effort to create technological alchemy on screens both large and small. Yet, for some inconceivable reason, in every toothpaste commercial ever made, we are forced to endure, from the mirror’s perspective, the farce of  impossibly handsome people brushing their teeth…dry.  The Emperor doesn’t care if it is gross – enough of this deception. Henceforth, people are no longer allowed to brush their teeth without toothpaste in toothpaste commercials. Let’s see some slobber. Let’s see some good, chin-drippy, projectile spitting that ends in disgusting, dangling, transluscent strings of pearly, wobbling glory. If the ole choppers ain’t bubbly with white, spittle-frothed paste, they simply ain’t clean! Truth in advertising! Huzzah!

The Punishment: Directors of commercials for toothpaste — who don’t use toothpaste in their commercials — will be forced to brush with the Emperor’s own, personally- invented “Imperial Tooth Scouring Cream.” (A special blend of various astringent and acidic compounds, stirred lovingly into an entirely unsanitary and unwholseome creamy base that is simply called: “Mystery White Gloop.”

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

Tags: television, The Emperor decrees by Chris Matarazzo
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So often, it seems, big games fall short of the hype they receive. The age of social media and instantaneous reaction has led to a loss of perspective, I think. It seems like we have a new “Game of the Century” every week. Even with the century being relatively young, this level of hyperbole makes it hard to take any of this stuff seriously. The NFL is often the leader in this, driving a hype machine that is unmatched in sports. Occasionally, though, the product actually lives up to the expectations, and this weekend was a great example of that. The opening weekend of the NFL playoffs produced thrillingly close games in three out of the four contests. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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10. I will never again smash into somebody’s car just to knock the cell phone out of their hand.

9. I promise to lose weight – or at least stay the same.

8. I will use less deodorant and do more laundry.

7. I won’t tug on Superman’s cape.

6. I won’t spit into the wind.

5. I won’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger.

4. I won’t mess around with Jim.

3. Never again will I take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. I swear, this year, to keep all my resolutions secret!

1. No more late-night carousing with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford,
and no more all-you-can-eat buffets with Chris Christie.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
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