I feel like I have to write something about the Cardinals historic victory on Sunday, but I'm especially pressed for time this week so I'll just list off a few brief observations from my Sunday spent in front of the TV watching football.
- The Cardinals game started better than I possibly could have imagined, and then the 2nd half started. The Eagles comeback played out exactly the way I thought the whole game would, i.e. Cardinals D unable to get off the field and Warner looking like he shat himself as the Eagles blitz him with apprx. 30 players each down. I should have know what was coming. Soon as the Eagles took the lead I felt sick to my stomach and I was certain the Cardinals were done. In fact I was upset at myself for allowing the Cardinals to sucker me in for the umpteenth time. And then something remarkable happened. For the first time in my life time, actually for the first time in anyone under the age of 61's life time, the Cardinals proceeded to not crumble in the face of adversity. They actually rolled with the punches and put together a remarkable game winning drive that seem to defy all logic. The Cardinals showed grit, determination and a good deal of testicular fortitude while holding on to the ball for 8 minutes as they drove down the field for their game winning touchdown. That drive went against everything the Cardinals have ever stood for and it was a microcosm of this entire post season run. It was the definition of clutch (damnit now I sound like Jason Whitlock). Forget all the hyperbolic media quotes about how amazing the Cardinals going to the Super Bowl is, what's truly remarkable is how the Cardinals got there, namely with that drive. I allowed myself to believe that the Cardinals could win Sundays game, but I never imagined they would have won it like they did. Now I normally hate the 2 weeks leading up to the Super Bowl and the ungodly amount of hype that comes with it, but this year I'm actually looking forward to it. I can't wait read all the overly done and poorly written profile and puff pieces, because this year they're going to be about MY team. Right now I'm so excited that I don't even care that they'll all be extremely redundant and be littered with phrases like "These are not your father's Cardinals", etc. Normally I avoid this type of journalism like the plague, but over the next to week's I'm going to devoured all of it. I plan on reading just about every word that is written about the Cardinals because a.) this has never happened and b.) it may never happen again. So I'm just going try to live in the moment and soak it all in.
- The AFC Championship game bored me to tears. Maybe it's because I was exhausted from rooting for the Cardinals or maybe it's because the Steelers were infinitely better than the Ravens (seriously if the Steelers could have punted effectively and if Swede would have caught that wide open touchdown pass then they would have won the game by 30+) but I could barely get into the game. Even when the Steelers were up 2 and the Ravens had the ball with under 6 minutes left, you knew that the Steelers were gonna stop them and close it out. The game just lacked any real excitement, except..
- For the hit at the end of the game on McGhee, which may have given me a concussion
- It's gotten to the point that I'm going to have to stop excepting samples all together just to avoid being in a Pizza Hut commercial. Between them and Howie Mendel, they're gonna make fools of this entire nation.
- CBS dubbed their inauguration coverage "Change & Challenge". How very astute. Apparently they chose that over "A Black President. WOW."
- Regardless of your feelings on said inauguration, let's all just be thankful that now 99% of Americans will go nearly 4 years without having an opinion on politics. So really it's a win-win for everyone.
- Perhaps my favorite moment on Sunday was when Jim Nantz said “Joe Flacco. Well it hasn’t been a shaky start…” after a Flacco incompletion. At that point in the game Flacco was 1-9 for 2 yards and had thrown and Interception. No, that’s not a shaky start at all, that’s an out and out train wreck. Or a quarterbacking abortion. But definitely not a shaky start.
- Since this country is about to be over saturated with Super Bowl coverage, I'm going to try an abstain from writing anything about it. However, I'd be remised if I didn't at least give a prediction for the Cardinals first ever Super Bowl. Now I have little to know football knowledge, although I was starting QB for my Pop Warner flag football team when I was 6, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Anyhow, I think this is a terrible match up for the Cardinals. The Steelers have the cornerbacks to match up with Fitz, Boldin and CO. and they're front 7 is impossible to run against and to block for an extended period of time. Warner is going to get lit up. In fact there's a good chance he may get split it half, horror movie style, by a Pittsburg blitz. Unless Big Ben and the Steelers offense has a plethora of turnovers, I just don't see anyway that the Cardinals can win this game. In the end I suspect they'll lose by about 10, but the outcome of this game really doesn't matter. Because just by making it to the Super Bowl and by overcoming all the adversity they faced along the way this team has proven that, these are not your father's Cardinals.
Until We Meet Again
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Growing Up Cardinal
In Which I Try and Explain What It's Like to be a “Fan” of the Worst Run Franchise in Sports and How Their Surreal Rise to Prominence has Affected Me
(Edit. Note: I actually am a Cardinals fan. I didn't just jump on the bandwagon during the past two weeks and this isn't some frivolous attempt to be culturally relevant like Rick Riley's truly awful article on Beer Pong)
Webster describes a fan as “an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, past time, or celebrity, etc.”. When it comes to my fandom of the Arizona Wildcats, Phoenix Suns and the Arizona Diamondbacks, I feel like this description undersells my over-the-top, border line religious support of those teams. But as far as my NFL team, the Arizona Cardinals, is concern, well that's a different story. For most of my life I've lived in Arizona and I've been a follower of the Cardinals, which wasn't always easy considering 95% of our home games in the metal coffin known as Sun Devil Stadium used to be blackout on local TV because they never came close to selling out unless the Cowboys or 49ers were in town. I've always rooted for them over any other NFL team* and was generally rewarded for my support about 5 times per season. Now going back to Webster's definition, it's truly hard to admire such ineptitude, in fact to call the Cardinals inept seems like an insult to inept teams everywhere. I'm not being over-exaggerating here, after all The Cardinals have only had 2 winning seasons in my life time. In a league that's actually over active in promoting parity, such incompetence is truly something special. The Cards have raised the bar on how to run a franchise into the ground. You'd have to be a masochist to be an enthusiastic devotee of such a putrid team. So really the only part of Webster's dictionary that applies to me is “follower”. Yes I care about the team and have been let down so many times that I've lost count and have been desensitized over the years. Given the years of numbing defeats this team has dealt me then it's understandable why the Cardinals unprecedented playoff surge has felt more surreal than gratifying for me.
Quick tangent: I read an article from a Phoenix paper earlier this week about how the problem with the Cardinals these past 21 years wasn't their horrible owner Bill Bidwell being cheap, but it was the fact that Bidwell just didn't know how to win. WHAT!?!?!?!?! That’s the best excuse they could come up with? If by some chance it’s true that Bidwell didn't/doesn't know how to win, then how dumb is he? How did this guy make enough money to own an NFL team? I mean continuing to own an NFL team and not having a clue how to win makes about as much sense as me saying "Well I don't know how this whole stock market thing works, but I'm gonna pour a lot of money into anyway", and doing that for 21 straight years. I mean this is truly unbelievable. Even if it was true at the beginning of his tenure, don't you think he would have figured something out in his 21 straight years on the job? I mean honestly, this was one of the sh*ttiest articles I've ever read. I would have found it more believable if you had told me that the reason the Cardinals were so bad these last two decades was because Bidwell's mom was sick so he couldn't fully concentrate on running the team. I’m honestly, it’s great that the Cardinals are finally winning, but let’s not rewrite history here and try and portray Bidwell as anything but one of the worst and most frugal owners in sports history.
Ok, tangent over.
Anyhow, I still don't fully believe that the Cardinals are playing in, let alone hosting, the NFC Championship game. For starters, this is a team whose greatest accomplishments are finding new and interesting ways to lose games (and ending Steve Young's career). Some sports teams, like the championship era Yankees or Cowboys always found miraculous ways to comeback and win the seemingly unwinnable games. Since moving to Arizona in 1988, the Cardinals have done the exact opposite. They’re practically the antithesis of those aforementioned dynasties. Even last week as Jake Delhome was submitting the worst playoff performance of all-time**, I still never felt comfortable until there was about 3 minutes left in the game. Only then could I relax and actually allow myself to think that the Cardinals would win.
For the past 5 days I've been trying to come up with an analogy of what the Cardinals improbable run to the NFC Championship game has been like. Here's the best I could come up with: Imagine you had a close relative, for this example's sake will say a cousin, who's roughly the same age as you but has always been a colossal f*ck up. By the time he was 10 he was already smoking cigarettes and getting into fights at school. When he was 13 he go drunk on Thanksgiving and challenged your dad to a fistfight. A few years later during Christmas Dinner he left the table and went and took a dump in your living room. Since then he's been in and out of rehab and every time it looks like he just might be clean, he relapses, generally in the most public and embarrassing of fashions. And no matter how sad, upsetting, obnoxious, and all in all hopeless he may seem, you still care about him and keep tabs on him because he's family. Then one day, without any warning, he's out of rehab for the umpteenth time and doing great. You're expecting him to relapse at any moment, but it looks like he may actually have his life together. And now he's written a book, and Oprah just selected it for her book club. He's the talk of the literary world, he's doing the talk show circuit and all that jazz. This whole time as you're watching from a distance you’re incredibly proud of him, and yet at the same time you’re thinking “that's the same guy who took a dump in my living room a few Christmases ago”
(Note: This analogy is wholly fiction. As far as I know this describes no one in my family. immediate or otherwise.)
And that's what it's like right now to be an Arizona Cardinals fan. You're proud, amazed and yet complete bewildered because it goes against everything you've ever known about the Cardinals. Regardless of what happens Sunday, this has been the best Cardinals season of my life time. I suspect they'll probably lose by 10ish, but then again I thought that about the last two games. In fact, I feel like the Cardinals will lose by about 10 in 95% of the games they play, but that's neither here nor there. So, um, go Cards.
Until We Meet Again
* With the exception of few years in which I was a young child and allowed my father and older brother to influence me and I rooted for the New York football Giants and Dallas Cowboys over the home town Cardinals. What can I say, but 'when I was child I reasoned like a child', etc.
** That might actually be an understatement. Calling it the worst performance of all-time doesn't fully capture how truly sh*tty Delhome was.
(Edit. Note: I actually am a Cardinals fan. I didn't just jump on the bandwagon during the past two weeks and this isn't some frivolous attempt to be culturally relevant like Rick Riley's truly awful article on Beer Pong)
Webster describes a fan as “an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, past time, or celebrity, etc.”. When it comes to my fandom of the Arizona Wildcats, Phoenix Suns and the Arizona Diamondbacks, I feel like this description undersells my over-the-top, border line religious support of those teams. But as far as my NFL team, the Arizona Cardinals, is concern, well that's a different story. For most of my life I've lived in Arizona and I've been a follower of the Cardinals, which wasn't always easy considering 95% of our home games in the metal coffin known as Sun Devil Stadium used to be blackout on local TV because they never came close to selling out unless the Cowboys or 49ers were in town. I've always rooted for them over any other NFL team* and was generally rewarded for my support about 5 times per season. Now going back to Webster's definition, it's truly hard to admire such ineptitude, in fact to call the Cardinals inept seems like an insult to inept teams everywhere. I'm not being over-exaggerating here, after all The Cardinals have only had 2 winning seasons in my life time. In a league that's actually over active in promoting parity, such incompetence is truly something special. The Cards have raised the bar on how to run a franchise into the ground. You'd have to be a masochist to be an enthusiastic devotee of such a putrid team. So really the only part of Webster's dictionary that applies to me is “follower”. Yes I care about the team and have been let down so many times that I've lost count and have been desensitized over the years. Given the years of numbing defeats this team has dealt me then it's understandable why the Cardinals unprecedented playoff surge has felt more surreal than gratifying for me.
Quick tangent: I read an article from a Phoenix paper earlier this week about how the problem with the Cardinals these past 21 years wasn't their horrible owner Bill Bidwell being cheap, but it was the fact that Bidwell just didn't know how to win. WHAT!?!?!?!?! That’s the best excuse they could come up with? If by some chance it’s true that Bidwell didn't/doesn't know how to win, then how dumb is he? How did this guy make enough money to own an NFL team? I mean continuing to own an NFL team and not having a clue how to win makes about as much sense as me saying "Well I don't know how this whole stock market thing works, but I'm gonna pour a lot of money into anyway", and doing that for 21 straight years. I mean this is truly unbelievable. Even if it was true at the beginning of his tenure, don't you think he would have figured something out in his 21 straight years on the job? I mean honestly, this was one of the sh*ttiest articles I've ever read. I would have found it more believable if you had told me that the reason the Cardinals were so bad these last two decades was because Bidwell's mom was sick so he couldn't fully concentrate on running the team. I’m honestly, it’s great that the Cardinals are finally winning, but let’s not rewrite history here and try and portray Bidwell as anything but one of the worst and most frugal owners in sports history.
Ok, tangent over.
Anyhow, I still don't fully believe that the Cardinals are playing in, let alone hosting, the NFC Championship game. For starters, this is a team whose greatest accomplishments are finding new and interesting ways to lose games (and ending Steve Young's career). Some sports teams, like the championship era Yankees or Cowboys always found miraculous ways to comeback and win the seemingly unwinnable games. Since moving to Arizona in 1988, the Cardinals have done the exact opposite. They’re practically the antithesis of those aforementioned dynasties. Even last week as Jake Delhome was submitting the worst playoff performance of all-time**, I still never felt comfortable until there was about 3 minutes left in the game. Only then could I relax and actually allow myself to think that the Cardinals would win.
For the past 5 days I've been trying to come up with an analogy of what the Cardinals improbable run to the NFC Championship game has been like. Here's the best I could come up with: Imagine you had a close relative, for this example's sake will say a cousin, who's roughly the same age as you but has always been a colossal f*ck up. By the time he was 10 he was already smoking cigarettes and getting into fights at school. When he was 13 he go drunk on Thanksgiving and challenged your dad to a fistfight. A few years later during Christmas Dinner he left the table and went and took a dump in your living room. Since then he's been in and out of rehab and every time it looks like he just might be clean, he relapses, generally in the most public and embarrassing of fashions. And no matter how sad, upsetting, obnoxious, and all in all hopeless he may seem, you still care about him and keep tabs on him because he's family. Then one day, without any warning, he's out of rehab for the umpteenth time and doing great. You're expecting him to relapse at any moment, but it looks like he may actually have his life together. And now he's written a book, and Oprah just selected it for her book club. He's the talk of the literary world, he's doing the talk show circuit and all that jazz. This whole time as you're watching from a distance you’re incredibly proud of him, and yet at the same time you’re thinking “that's the same guy who took a dump in my living room a few Christmases ago”
(Note: This analogy is wholly fiction. As far as I know this describes no one in my family. immediate or otherwise.)
And that's what it's like right now to be an Arizona Cardinals fan. You're proud, amazed and yet complete bewildered because it goes against everything you've ever known about the Cardinals. Regardless of what happens Sunday, this has been the best Cardinals season of my life time. I suspect they'll probably lose by 10ish, but then again I thought that about the last two games. In fact, I feel like the Cardinals will lose by about 10 in 95% of the games they play, but that's neither here nor there. So, um, go Cards.
Until We Meet Again
* With the exception of few years in which I was a young child and allowed my father and older brother to influence me and I rooted for the New York football Giants and Dallas Cowboys over the home town Cardinals. What can I say, but 'when I was child I reasoned like a child', etc.
** That might actually be an understatement. Calling it the worst performance of all-time doesn't fully capture how truly sh*tty Delhome was.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
The Problem with Jane Austen, Women in General and (to a lesser extent) Humanity as a Whole
(Ed. Note: All stats presented here are based on conjecture, guestimation or complete fabrication.)
So the other day I was facebook chatting (which I'm told is very impersonal) with a female friend of mine and I noticed that her "status" said something to the effect of 'of all the men Jane Austen wrote about, Mr. Darcy is the one I most love'. Now it was probably worded more articulately and more clever than that, but you get the general sentiment. This of course got me thinking about Jane Austen* and Mr. Darcy (or all the male character she's ever written, since they're all essentially some variation of the same two dudes). And while my mind was wondering I came to the realization that Mr. Darcy is primarily responsible for 92% of the heartache suffered by literate women and men (or women) who pursue literate women.
As you've probably guessed, this all boils down to unrealistic expectations. I realize this has already been covered by a multitude of people, done best by Chuck Klosterman in his essay "This is Emo", so with that in mind I'll keep my observations brief and at the very least try to add something new to the discussion.
Anyhow, my beef with Mr. Darcy and Ms. Austen is as follows: The character of Fitzwilliam Darcy is complete and utter bullsh*t. Here's a man who changes from a grade A, narcissistic prick to the most loving, selfless, kindhearted human being not name Jesus or Gandhi to ever exist in the matter of a couple hundred pages. And what brings about this dramatic transformation? Well, he was verbally 'put in his place' by some poor girl with a presumably alcoholic father and a floozy of a mother. This is probably the most unbuyable character development/transformation of all time. People don't change that dramatically, ever, regardless of the century or locale. Generally speaking, if people change at all it's a slow, strenuous process and it usually takes a few years before any of the said changes become even remotely apparent to other people. Change is never this dramatic or this rapid. But it's not just the speed of the change that is so unrealistic.
As the reader, or viewer, for those of you who just saw the movie adaptation, we're suppose to believe that this rich, arrogant guy changed his personality entirely in order to woo and then marry some attractive poor girl who delivers quick one-liners and has a highly volatile family No guy has ever changed this much for a girl. In fact, no where in recorded history will you see a man changed half this much for a girl or anything else. 98 out of 100 times that a guy changes for a girl he does so in order to sleep with her** and once he has done that the changes quickly wane or disappear completely. Not even true love could dictate such a dramatic transformation, especially not in Victorian era England.
By writing a character as unrealistic as Mr. Darcy, Jane Austen is setting up women and ,based on her own history, herself, up for failure. Since Ms. Austen is a very good writer, literate girls all across the globe are now convinced that men actually can change. She essetenially ruined girls perceptions of men the same way Garden State ruined the Shins. All the Shins wanted was to be another indie rock band out of the Pacific Northwest with clever lyrics and catchy guitar hooks. Then Garden State came around and all of a sudden they're suppose to be some life changing band that gives you a deeper understanding of life and an instant connection with girls like Natalie Portman. I mean who can live up to such expectations? I'm fully convinced that Garden State is wholly responsible for there being only 3-4 good songs on the last Shins album. Likewise, Austen is wholly responsible for women thinking that men actually have the ability to change. And all the while men are trying to make these dramatic, wholesale changes in under to gain favor with women. They always fall short, it'd be impossible for us not to. The whole things is just one giant circle of unfulfilled expectations and disappointment for both parties. And it never ends well. In fact it can only end with mountains upon mountains of compromised by everyone involved.
And that's why you should never read or associate with those who read Jane Austen. And if you have children, advice them to do the same. She is, intentionally or otherwise, pure evil.
Until We Meet Again
* Whom I have read. What do you want from me? I was in 8th grade, home schooled and my Jane Austen loving mother made my curriculum. I literally had no choice.
** Maybe once out of 100 times the changes actually stick, the other time the guy changes and then realizes he's gay
So the other day I was facebook chatting (which I'm told is very impersonal) with a female friend of mine and I noticed that her "status" said something to the effect of 'of all the men Jane Austen wrote about, Mr. Darcy is the one I most love'. Now it was probably worded more articulately and more clever than that, but you get the general sentiment. This of course got me thinking about Jane Austen* and Mr. Darcy (or all the male character she's ever written, since they're all essentially some variation of the same two dudes). And while my mind was wondering I came to the realization that Mr. Darcy is primarily responsible for 92% of the heartache suffered by literate women and men (or women) who pursue literate women.
As you've probably guessed, this all boils down to unrealistic expectations. I realize this has already been covered by a multitude of people, done best by Chuck Klosterman in his essay "This is Emo", so with that in mind I'll keep my observations brief and at the very least try to add something new to the discussion.
Anyhow, my beef with Mr. Darcy and Ms. Austen is as follows: The character of Fitzwilliam Darcy is complete and utter bullsh*t. Here's a man who changes from a grade A, narcissistic prick to the most loving, selfless, kindhearted human being not name Jesus or Gandhi to ever exist in the matter of a couple hundred pages. And what brings about this dramatic transformation? Well, he was verbally 'put in his place' by some poor girl with a presumably alcoholic father and a floozy of a mother. This is probably the most unbuyable character development/transformation of all time. People don't change that dramatically, ever, regardless of the century or locale. Generally speaking, if people change at all it's a slow, strenuous process and it usually takes a few years before any of the said changes become even remotely apparent to other people. Change is never this dramatic or this rapid. But it's not just the speed of the change that is so unrealistic.
As the reader, or viewer, for those of you who just saw the movie adaptation, we're suppose to believe that this rich, arrogant guy changed his personality entirely in order to woo and then marry some attractive poor girl who delivers quick one-liners and has a highly volatile family No guy has ever changed this much for a girl. In fact, no where in recorded history will you see a man changed half this much for a girl or anything else. 98 out of 100 times that a guy changes for a girl he does so in order to sleep with her** and once he has done that the changes quickly wane or disappear completely. Not even true love could dictate such a dramatic transformation, especially not in Victorian era England.
By writing a character as unrealistic as Mr. Darcy, Jane Austen is setting up women and ,based on her own history, herself, up for failure. Since Ms. Austen is a very good writer, literate girls all across the globe are now convinced that men actually can change. She essetenially ruined girls perceptions of men the same way Garden State ruined the Shins. All the Shins wanted was to be another indie rock band out of the Pacific Northwest with clever lyrics and catchy guitar hooks. Then Garden State came around and all of a sudden they're suppose to be some life changing band that gives you a deeper understanding of life and an instant connection with girls like Natalie Portman. I mean who can live up to such expectations? I'm fully convinced that Garden State is wholly responsible for there being only 3-4 good songs on the last Shins album. Likewise, Austen is wholly responsible for women thinking that men actually have the ability to change. And all the while men are trying to make these dramatic, wholesale changes in under to gain favor with women. They always fall short, it'd be impossible for us not to. The whole things is just one giant circle of unfulfilled expectations and disappointment for both parties. And it never ends well. In fact it can only end with mountains upon mountains of compromised by everyone involved.
And that's why you should never read or associate with those who read Jane Austen. And if you have children, advice them to do the same. She is, intentionally or otherwise, pure evil.
Until We Meet Again
* Whom I have read. What do you want from me? I was in 8th grade, home schooled and my Jane Austen loving mother made my curriculum. I literally had no choice.
** Maybe once out of 100 times the changes actually stick, the other time the guy changes and then realizes he's gay
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