Monday, February 07, 2005

A Special Kind of Despair

First of all, congrats to all the overfed Patriots fans out there, and my sympathies to the Iggle fans trying to come to grips with the fact that their terrific season ended in heartbreak. I feel your pain, believe me. Pretty much a dog of a game, both teams played lousy in the first half, and tho there was a brief flurry of magic in the 3rd quarter ultimately the game came down to the fact that although McNabb threw for close to 400 yards he had a terrible game. He stunk out the joint in the first half, especially on that duck he threw at the goal line that Harrison picked. This just after another pick had been called back on a penalty. He came off the field pointing to himself and with that goofy smile on his face, and I remembered where I'd seen that smile before--on Kordell Stewart's face, countless times. Knew the Iggles were doomed at that point.

And I'm sure all of Philadelphia still echoes with the sound of millions of outraged voices screaming, "HURRY UP!!! WHY ARE THEY HUDDLING UP!!?? THERE'S ONLY 3 MINUTES LEFT!! HURRY UP!!!!!". I loved how Freddie Mitchell caught his one inconsequential pass of the game and paused to dance and preen instead of hustling his ass back to the line for the next play.

A few questions:

1. Why is it that Bill Walsh and Joe Gibbs and Bill Belichek are routinely called "geniuses" and "innovators", yet Chuck Noll, who won more Super Bowls than any coach and transformed a laughingstock into the greatest team in NFL history, is rarely even mentioned? Noll never even won the NFL Coach of the Year award. If there was any justice, that award would be called the "Noll Award" after the least appreciated great coach in the annals of the NFL.

2. Robert Kraft calling Patriots fans "the greatest fans in the world" made me laugh, as it always makes me laugh when the victorious owner makes that entirely predictable and ludicrous statement. Had the Eagles won Jeff Lurie would no doubt have spoken the same inane words. The Patriots aren't even Bostonians #1 sports team, maybe not even #2, while in some cities (Pittsburgh, Denver, Green Bay, KC) their football team is followed with a quasi-religious fervor. I'm not saying New England fans aren't great fans, but calling them the best is silly, a silliness I can excuse based on the circumstances.

3. Was it me or were the commercials really lame this year? And what does it say that a rabid sports fan like me should pay such close attention to the bits that delay the resumption of the game? Our society is doomed. I certainly am.

4. Something's gotta be done about these halftime shows. When Paul McCartney starting singing "Hey Jude" I thought we might have the first 2-hour halftime show. Who the hell cares about having a 48-minute concert during the middle of the biggest sporting event of the year? And all the chorographed fans waving their arms back and forth and the firework nonsense...totally lame. Bring out a dog catching frisbees and I'm happy.

The best part of the Super Bowl was touring my friends' Mike and Kate's new house, which is bigger than my high school and has a receiving room you could play badminton in. While we were looking out the window we saw 3 deer sitting outside placidly chewing, and it didn't seem outside the realm of possiblity that we might have put on tweed shooting jackets and Mike handed out fowling pieces for us to go out on the grouds to bag ourselves a doe. Nice place. It also didn't hurt that Matt and Kris (well, Kris) brought a pot of her diabolical buffalo chicken cheese dip, which is to me what crack is to the crackhead. Come the day when I am sentenced to death, buffalo chicken cheese dip could serve both as my last meal and as the means of my execution. Just leave me a big vat of it and I'll save the state the trouble of putting me out of this world. Sooooo fattening, and sooooo good.

After I wrote my previous post I played a cheapie $5 SNG before going to bed, and an irritating experience it was. It's not that I got knocked out in 6th place--well, that's part of it. We had ourselves a friendly little table--but too friendly, by a half. There was this guy who, after every hand (and I mean EVERY hand) typed "nh" in the chat window, whether the "h" was "n" or not. A half-dozen hands in the guy to my left went all-in against another guy when the flop came jack high. The guy to my left turned over QJ, the other guy had aces. Another jack came on the turn and once again aces let a man down. "nh" the jerk typed, tho it hadn't been so "n" for the guy who got knocked out.

A few hands later Mr. Suckout was at it again, going all-in with 77 against QQ and flopping a set. "nh". I won a $60 pot by betting out after the flop. "nh". Some guy folded to a re-raise. "nh". Mr. Suckout knocked out ANOTHER player, this time by spiking a queen when he held KQ against AK. "vnh" the moron said.

"Dude," I typed, "if you don't shut up I'm gonna shove my "h" up your ass, and it's not going to be "vn"". But I didn't send it, mostly because I don't want to get my chat suspended and, well, I don't wanna be shoving my hand up anyone's ass, no matter how irritated I am.

Tho I was tempted when I got knocked out. I flopped a king with AK and Mr. Suckout called my bet. We went down to the river with no straight or flush possibilities and when I made what I thought was a value bet he set me all-in. Knowing he'd call with anything I pushed in my stack and he turned over J-2, having hit a jack on the flop and his deuce on the river. And I was out. "vnh" the obsequious moron typed, and I resisted replying with "FU". Jerk.

To soothe my nerves I sat at a juicy $.25/.50 table (nearly SEVENTY DOLLARS IN PLAY!) and I soon won back my SNG buy-in with some savvy moves. There was this one guy who was bitching non-stop about a bad beat he'd taken a few hands before I sat down, and it is he I refer to in the title of this post. I think his cowboys lost to Q4 when the other guy hit a 4 on the river. Beats like these are de rigeur at lower limits, you simply must accept them and move on with life, but this guy couldn't. He kept bitching and moaning, "How could you make that call, Why do I keep losing these morons, I lose with every good hand I have, I should play garbage like everyone else, I guess I'm going to lose all my money tonight...".

He didn't stop the whole time I was there, and it was pretty pathetic. It didn't help that his avatar was a picture of the loser Stephen Root played in "Office Space". If you tilt that bad playing quarter poker, maybe it's time you take up Boggle. It's all a matter of perspective, no matter the stakes you want to play well and win, but this guy's lamentations were painful to hear. For the shark his misery would be as blood in the water, but I guess I'm made of flimsier stuff. I'd booked a tidy 14BB win (which sounds better than seven bucks) and so I logged off and went to bed and dreamland, where there are no chatting morons, just chainsaw-wielding homicidal maniacs chasing me through an endless darkened labrynth.

posted by Gene @ 11:54 AM   |