100 VINYLZ: #93 - Life Is Too Short 12-inch by Too Short

(1988, Jive Records)
I just got this single this past year, out the dollar racks at Plan 9 in Carytown, showing that those eastern European looking assholes still don't know shit. This is the title track off of one of Short's best-selling albums, and easily my favorite Too Short song ever (closely seconded by "I Ain't Trippin'"). I, like anybody else, loves Short for his raunchy and simplistic perfection over top of bass fuzzy beats, with 808 kicks to match, but this song, where Short waxes philosophically about the state of the world, this was a style that he exploited every now and then later in his career as well, usually at a pace of a track or two per album.
This was from my last birthday when my wife told me to go blow some money at the record store. It's getting harder to do that, with stores closing down or moving to online sales. Some dude nearby was selling a couple thousand records out front of his house recently, because they told him at the record store he'd only get like ten cents per, and he didn't trust online because he wouldn't buy shit he couldn't see and touch, so why should he expect anyone else to? He was selling it all to move to Colorado and all he had to take was his Blazer so it all had to fit in there and a couple thousand records didn't jibe with that. People like that are few and far between. Times have changed. I was stoked to find this digging through the bins, but if I dig next year, there's not gonna be another similar find. The shit's dying out, because of the internet and also because you have 700,000 myspace producers hooking up beats now, thinking they found the best shit ever, and pilfering all the obvious records out the bins. I guess I should be thankful that shitty synthesized beats are the standard now, so dudes are more likely to invest in a Casio than a crate full of old 12-inches. Still, I miss records like a motherfucker. It makes me sad my best turntable is outside in the camper, with probably my best five hundred records, and I'm in here tapping a bullshit laptop.

100 VINYLZ: #94 - The Faces I've Been 2xLP by Jim Croce

(1975, Lifesong Records)
This one goes back to my dad too, as he played the hell out of some Jim Croce. And honestly, I still do. (I think there's a couple more Jim Croce records on this list, but I can't quite remember.) This was a posthumous double LP collection of some of his real folksy ass early stuff, and one whole side was his talking things, kind of like spoken word shit I guess, but more of a stoned dude telling you stories than any sort of direct, to-the-point effort. My dad loved that side of this record, where Jim Croce was talking about taking pills and how the Chinese would all sweep at once or swimming in condom-infested Philly water or dating fat bitches. It was good stuff.
To be honest, as a goofy ass whiteboy who writes lyrics of the hip hop variety almost nightly, I've gotten bored with a lot of hip hop influences, as it's always linguistical or word-based, and often the visual imagery is sacrificed to sing song repeat the same sounds 24 lines in a row. I've been trying to emulate guys like Croce, who, in eight lines, would paint a crystal clear picture of very common characters, but it was all so underclass and outlaw. I'm halfway glad Croce died as he did, to save us from him becoming some washed-up musician who emulated his pop successes to a fault and ended up making string-heavy character songs about characters he never saw in real life. It's better he left us.
The liner notes inside this album were extensive, at least for me at that time. I had never read a guy's lifestory inside a gatefold, and I even winged a book report (biography was the category for that month's book report) off these liner notes. There was no internet, so I could do that bullshit. Mrs. Pride was my teacher and she might've suspected, but she probably passed me for my in-depthness and selling of the angle. I was a hard worker at fucking off. Mrs. Pride has been in a coma since last spring. Her and her husband were driving home, not too far from where my grandfolks live, when some gung ho ass cop, hellbent on respoding to a shots fired call in the projects, was flying down back roads in his cruiser with no sirens or lights going, and head-onned Mrs. Pride and her husband. Husband was DOA, and Mrs. Pride, who was principal of the high school when this happened, was left in a coma. I haven't heard in a minute on her status, but even if she came to, she couldn't have been in good shape. And she was one of those teachers that was no-nonsense but not a dick at all.
Of course, Farmville, where I grew up near, was where they shut down public schools for six years in response to desegregation, and a white cop without emergency lights in a Crown Vic killing and comatosing a prominent black couple lit up tensions that are always simmering. But seriously, it's not black or white. Fuck that cop.

S14: Most Athletic Countries in Olympics summer 2008

Very simply, I added up medals, weighting gold more than silver more than bronze (3 pts per gold, 2 pts per silver, 1 per bronze) and divided that shit into the population of the countries to find their per capita medaldom, and to dispel all this U.S. vs. China bullshit. Here are the top 14 most athletic countries by Olympic medals per capita dork formula...
#1: Jamaica - 1 medal point per 104,385 citizens, anchored by Usain Bolt's big freaky ass.
#2: the Bahamas - 1 medal point per 110,333 citizens, probably in running, knowing them broke black motherfuckers.
#3: Iceland - 1 medal point per 159,678 citizens, in what I have no guess.
#4: Slovenia - 1 medal point per 225,444 citizens.
#5: Norway - 1 medal point per 227,571 citizens, leaders in summer water sports as well as black metal freaks.
#6: Australia - 1 medal point per 240,385 citizens.
#7: Bahrain - 1 medal point per 253,389 citizens.
#8: Mongolia - 1 medal point per 262,900 citizens, most likely in the grapple arts i would assume.
#9: New Zealand - 1 medal point per 267,194 citizens, second fiddle to Australia again.
#10: Estonia - 1 medal point per 268,120 citizens.
#11: Cuba - 1 medal point per 288,923 citizens, proving yet again that even though Castro communism is not as flashy as American capitalism, on the small scale, when you crunch the numbers, it is far superior.
#12: Belarus - 1 medal point per 302,813 citizens.
#13: Trinidad & Tobago - 1 medal point per 333,250 citizens, stupid Trinidadians and Tobagons, who you never hear about like motherfuckers from Trinidad.
#14: Georgia - 1 medal point per 366,250 citizens, but getting their ass kicked by Russia IRL.

100 VINYLZ: #95 - There's a Riot Goin' On LP by Sly & The Family Stone

(1971, Epic Records)
You know, when I started this shit, I was gonna do a piece of vinyl a day, and time it to end the same day of the Presidential Election, but I got all bored with it. I read a couple issues of Waxpoetics and thought, "Yeah, I should kick start this." But I was jotting down notes on the list (which is completed, just unwritten about), but that shit's stupid. I hate the fucking internet, and nobody's paying me to do this shit, and not too many people read this shit anyways. So fuck it.
It seems timely to have this album up during the bullshit Democrat Convention where people are getting all Obama-crazy like that slut on the youtubes, thinking that pushing a fucking button run by the government is gonna change their life. Fuck y'all.
And I will be straight up honest about this album... I just got it on vinyl a few years ago. But back when I was a country assed basketball-loving whiteboy in Meherrin, Virginia, I tore up the Snapper dropping the deck as low as it would go to kill the grass by my basketball goal, and I would shoot the hoops by myself all fucking day long. Two tapes were my soundtrack - Freaky Styley by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and this tape by Sly & the Family Stone. Obviously, I was a funky ass little kid. Back then, we didn't have internets, so to steal music what you would do is make up fake names and order from Columbia House or BMG, and get your music collection expanded. That's how I got this one. My dad loved it too, when he and my mom split up and me and him lived in a trailer down the road, this tape was in heavy rotation when he'd be all stoned and pretending to be a radio DJ all Saturday morning.
I love the fact that Sly Stone was dead to everybody all those years, then he jumped out at that Grammy's thing, played real quick like an old crackhead with a mohawk, then left early before their performance was over, and is gone again. Sly Stone knew what was up when he made this record - we are living in a soulless piece of shit world run by soulless piece of shit people. If he came out of obscurity, all that would mean is material products, glossy magazine PR campaigns, and all for nothing since the internet steals everything. Props to Sly Stone and props to this album, the greatest funk album ever. I have been doing homemade mixtapes in the camper, and I might just straight up jack the hole "Africa Talks to You 'The Asphalt Jungle'" song and rhyme straight over top of it, because that is almost 9 minutes of great fucking shit right there. I wish my dad was still alive to sit here and get high with me and listen to it and laugh at how fucking gay the internet is.

NFL: Preseason Preview Upper Middle Class

#9: PHILADELPHIA EAGLES
PERTINENT DATA: 8-8 last year; 20 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: As a young 'un, I was partial to Harold Carmichael and his pass reception excellence. In fact, to this day, I do not lump the Eagles into the same divisional hatred roles that I do the Cowboys and Giants.
TEAM HOSS: Brian Westbrook is the man, and everybody knows it. And being their receiver corps is still unproven and not as good as hyped, he'll still be carrying the heaviest load in the NFL. Donovan McNabb is a great quarterback, but he doesn't allow himself to run like he used to, probably out of self-preservation, so if the Eagles are to be moving the ball, it's gonna be cradled inside of Westbrook's arms to do it.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: When he played, I hated Randall Cunningham so deeply that I still can't stand him. When he first hit the league and the whole running QB thing wasn't so widely used, it was so fucking frustrating to have a normal defense, pocket collapses, and normally the QB would fall into someone's arms. But no, fucking Cunningham would scamper through a crack for 20 yards. He was a pioneer, and because of that, I have always detested his high top faded ass.
TEAM ASS: Perhaps it's because the Redskins have had a steady stream of shit quarterbacks the past decade-plus, but I hate the Eagles secondary, as a unit, and with a passion. Assante Samuel joining the mix makes me hate them even more. But if I have to pick one asshole from that secondary to hate the most, I guess I'd go with Lito Sheppard, with Brian Dawkins a close second. Sheppard just strikes me as one of those guys, that with no real visible reason, you should just never trust. He's probably fucking McNabb's wife.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: This team will continue to live and die with Andy Reid. He has ridden a good QB far to be considered the NFL's pre-eminent coach who has not won a Super Bowl (which used to be Bill Cowher's gig forever), and even without McNabb at times, the Eagles have done well. Basically, if Reid can develop a young QB and his crackhead sons don't distract him too much, he will keep the team rolling, most likely. But if there is no first-tier QB on the horizon (I don't trust that Kevin Kolb bullshit) and his sons get out of jail and go back to fucking up their lives in a very public manner, I'm sure ol' Andy will have to hang it up before the Bill Walsh coaching illuminati decide to let him get a Lombardi Trophy to justify his alleged genius.
SENIOR PLAYER: Donovan McNabb was a first round draft pick all the way back in 1999, when gas was cheap and the Twin Towers was still an acceptable term for a basketball team with two prominent centers.
THE RUDY: Save Rocca is not only an undrafted guy who is the team's punter now, but he came from Australian Rules football. That shit comes on my digital PBS station on Monday nights, and I still have no fucking idea how they score.
FORMER HURRICANE: Defensive end Jerome McDougle has not lived up to even half his potential. He's no longer a starter, and honestly, may get cut this weekend, considering his salary.
VIRGINIA BOY: Linebacker Akeem Jordan came from an hour away from where I live, at James Madison University, where they won a I-AA title while he was there. I should really take the kids to see a college football game there, as the I-AA environment is nicer than stupid UVA, where even though they've never really been that good the past fifty years or so, everybody expects them to win titles. And UVA fratboys puke right by your kids at their games.
WILD SAMOAN: Back-up linebacker Pago Togafau, who went to Idaho State. I would wager that most Samoans in Idaho are there because of football scholarships.
THE ICKY: Montae Reagor is a great name because it sounds like you threw in the names of five or six Presidential candidates from the '80s, swirled it around, and made his name. It makes him sound regal, like he'd drive a '72 Lincoln Continental painted gold.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Max Jean-Gilles, descendant of fur traders who parlayed family wealth into a majority stake in some bullshit dotcom scam.
FANTASY JERSEY: I would proudly wear one of those old school lighter green #5 McNabb jerseys. Most of my family's friends are families of earth hippies or stoner rockers or artphags - pretty much most brands of hipster dumbasses who have moved beyond the obvious overall dumbass genre into more specialized fields. So most of these people do not respect sports, so most of the kids have no idea about football. Except this one kid Ian, who is like 11, loves all the major sports and rap music. He's a good kid, and being I only have daughters, I think of him as my half-son. He is a fan of all Philadelphia teams (except he went to the Nuggets when AI got traded), and McNabb is his absolute favorite player ever. I actually painted two walls in his bedroom Eagles dark green. I tried to convince him to go old school green, but kids these days, they don't respect the old school.

#10: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS
PERTINENT DATA: 7-9 last year; 24 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Lawrence Taylor is more respected by history, but Rickey Jackson was the scariest fucking linebacker I remember from watching football when I was a kid. He had that mad dog bug-eyes-from-deeply-embedded-anger black man thing down pat. Yet, when you'd hear interviews with him, he was a nice guy. I always assume guys like that must have been molested or some shit to channel such intensity but be a solid dude, although I guess Laverneus Coles was molested, and he's not really that intense. Maybe Jackson was just beaten a lot, and molestation makes you more of a crafty scared type better at running precise routes to avoid conflict.
TEAM HOSS: Deuce McAllister is the man. Played college ball at Ole Miss, so he is the King of the Bayou I would assume. Houston rappers used to call 26-inch rims Deuce McAllisters, that's how awesome he is.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Joe Horn is an obsolete memory now, so his cellphone in the goalpost antics get lost on the world. But Joe Horn was a first class asshole, fucking his teammate's wife, and I'm sure much worse if that was what got out. Rickey Jackson would've kicked his ass.
TEAM ASS: I was set to put Martin Grammatica in this spot, until the Saints made the move for Jeremy Shockey. Shockey looks like Barney Rubble with a Fabio wig, and overvalues his importance so much, it takes away from everywhere else. He's a better blocker than you'd expect from such a primadonna, and he's a punisher to be sure, looking for contact sometimes. But he bitches and moans so much, you have to wonder how the Shockey and Reggie Bush blue-chip primadonna faction will fare with the Deuce McAllister and Marques Colston hard-working but half-silent set.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Reggie Bush is supposed to be the greatest threat to ever play the past two years - basically he's supposed to be a better Devin Hester than Devin Hester is. But we haven't really seen it yet. His marriage to Kim Kardashian seems suspect. I saw one episode of that Kardashians show, and that chick's ass was retarded looking. And I love big asses. But her shit was disproportionate, almost like an SNL sketch rather than something sexy to want to stuff my dick in. Seems like your standard trophy wife to me for Bush, a piece of pussy bling to flash at everybody. Somebody that concerned with superficial appearances ain't gonna be a tough ass RB in the NFL. But whether he's able to be a superior Devin Hester, or at the least a second-rate Brian Westbrook, is going to decide the Saints fate.
SENIOR PLAYER: Longsnapper Kevin Houser was a seventh round draft pick in 2000.
THE RUDY: Massive RB injuries last year allowed Pierre Thomas to go from undrafted kid out of Illinois to a contributing member of the offense.
FORMER HURRICANE: Hey look, it's another high-profile Hurricane guy not living up to expectations, this time in the form of linebacker Jonathan Vilma.
VIRGINIA BOY: Guard Matt Lehr came from Virginia Tech, who is known most on offense for it's big ham-fed country boys on the line, if you discount Michael Vick's fame.
WILD SAMOAN: In lieu of Samoans on the roster, I'll pick cornerback Usama Young, because Usama is a terrible name to be stuck with nowadays. Led the team in special teams tackles last year.
THE ICKY: Jermon Bushrod is one of the better names in the NFL today.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Back-up QB Tyler Palko, shipping magnate. Other back-up QB T.C. Ostrander got cut, but he probably would've been my choice were he still on the team.
FANTASY JERSEY: A black #26 customized to say DEUCE.

#11: CLEVELAND BROWNS
PERTINENT DATA: 10-6 last year; 25 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Ozzie Newsome was the best tight end when I was coming up watching the televisions play foozballs on Sundays. Plus, back then, dudes named Ozzie were bonafide as fuck. So he holds a retarded spot of gold inside my decrepit heart.
TEAM HOSS: Since he's not on the Patriots anymore, I can easily say, even with my contrarian nature, that Willie McGinest is the fucking man. I remember being a young stupid whiteboy rap fan back in the day, looking at The Source, when those first all-leather NFL jerseys came out, and I really wanted a Willie McGinest. Looking back, what the fuck were people thinking, making all-leather jerseys? I'm sure it looked pimp, but that must've been uncomfortable as fuck. And heavy.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: I've liked him as a Redskins coach, and he seems solid, but it's hard not to pick Earnest Byner for all the heart ache he caused true Browns fans in the past. Him and John Elways, those are the two faces etched into the sub-conscious of long-time Browns fans caught up on this new bandwagon of wild card contention.
TEAM ASS: I don't care how many of his children have survived eyeball cancers, Joe Jurevicius is an unlikeable white asshole wide receiver, along the lines of a Steve Largent. I'm sure he's already planning his post-NFL political career.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Brady Quinn, either the NFL's next Tom Brady or the NFL's next Ryan Leaf. I kind of hope he ends up sucking, so they are stuck with the Brady Quinn/Kellen Winslow connection in Cleveland as so full of potential yet so full of shit. Not because I hate Cleveland, but just because I like when things like that happen to other teams.
SENIOR PLAYER: Kicker Phil Dawson came over as a free agent in 1999.
THE RUDY: Kick returner Joshua Cribbs was the Browns Devin Hester impersonator last year, and I believe he was actually a cornerback out of college, but now is listed as a back-up wide receiver.
FORMER HURRICANE: Not only do the Browns have the Soldier Kellen Winslow, they are also one of the few teams to actually have a Miami QB in Ken Dorsey, who supposedly is transitioning to a partial coaching role, as a mentor for the young QBs ahead of him on the depth chart.
VIRGINIA BOY: Former Virginia Tech Hokie Nick Sorensen earns a check as back-up safety, but makes his mark like a lot of former Hokies, as a special teams star.
WILD SAMOAN: Defensive end Melila Purcell, Hawaii alum. Wait, they have a tight end named Kolo Kapanui. I pick him instead.
THE ICKY: Shantee Orr, linebacker, part-Cherokee I'm sure, like half the fucking people I know who either don't want to be as white as they look like they are or to justify their light-skin black ass complexion with something other than "some white guy raped my great grandmother back during slavery".
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: I was very sad when the Browns cut LeCharles Bentley, because he had the best industrial overlord-sounding name in the NFL. But being he is gone, Chase Pittman, back-up defensive end takes this spot.
FANTASY JERSEY: Dark brown (I'm assuming their black-looking jerseys are actually just really dark brown) #17 SIPE, just because I had like 19 Brian Sipe football cards for some reason when I was a kid. I didn't go out of my way for it, it just ended up that way.

#12: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
PERTINENT DATA: 10-6 last season last year, NFC West champions, beat the Redskins in the wild card round, then lost at Green Bay in the divisional round; 25 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Being he is now the head coach of the Redskins, it is obvious that Jim Zorn was the greatest Seahawk to ever wear those butt ass ugly uniforms. I saw a Seattle Seahawks 1979 commemorative drinking glass at an antique store a month or so ago, and almost dropped the $12 for it just because Zorn's face was all over it. Then I came to my senses.
TEAM HOSS: Tackle Walter Jones is 325 pounds of Pro Bowl man. I also have a hard time not liking back-up guard Floyd Womack, but that's because his nickname is Pork Chop, and I am a sucker for giant black dudes nicknamed after pig foods.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Normally I would just say Shaun Alexander, because that guy was the softest overrated RB ever. But for some reason he's not playing anywhere this year, even though he was NFL MVP a couple of season ago. And I have made fun of Alexander in the past for being potentially a homosexual. But that would suck if he actually was a homosexual and no other team would sign him because everybody knows it. I mean, I use homosexuality as disparaging towards another man's toughness, but I would never wish ill on them. And I don't want to get my ass kicked by a pack of methed out biker gays either. So out of respect for the rainbow flag, Alexander is okay in my book, and the man to hate is former wide receiver and current Republican Steve Largent. He fucking sucks and is the reason this country is doomed, not gay marriages. Also, why the fuck did he get into the Hall of Fame so quickly, but bitch ass reporters dragged their feet on Art Monk, even though Art Monk was a better Steve Largent than Largent was? Racism, that's why.
TEAM ASS: Julius Jones is a southwestern Virginia boy, his folks worked in the coal mines even, so you'd think I'd give him emotional daps. But he went to college at Notre Dame, which was one strike, then played pro for the Dallas Cowboys, which was two strikes. And I don't play three strikes, so fuck him. I'm glad he's all the way across the country, fucking traitor.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Lofa Tatupu just signed a ridiculous contract, after kicking ass way above his expectations throughout his rookie contract. Whether the fat contract keeps him motivated or he becomes fat himself, and lazy and less intense, is going to steer the Seahawks future, especially as their meager offense becomes another year older. They will be a defense-first team as soon as Holmgren packs his office up this coming offseason.
SENIOR PLAYER: Walter Jones was a first round pick in 1997, back when Florida State still had high profile players.
THE RUDY: Cornerback Jordan Babineaux was undrafted out of Southern Arkansas in 2004, and is their very active third cornerback.
FORMER HURRICANE: Cornerback Kelly Jennings, looking to live up to expectations. But if other Hurricanes players I've listed in this spot for other teams are any indication, he won't.
VIRGINIA BOY: Defensive end Patrick Kerney is a UVA graduate, and a tall, lanky, annoying fucker who is able to lead the league in sacks if he can keep his aging ass healthy enough.
WILD SAMOAN: Lofa Tatupu, who is one of the more impressive Polynesians in the whole NFLs.
THE ICKY: With Mack Strong's retirement last season, this spot has been opened up. Mack Strong is the best NFL name of the past decade, and if I was a wealthy Jewish guy who engineered rap groups, and I signed a duo, I would force them to change their names to Mack Strong and Art Monk. But with him gone, I'll go with Red Bryant, a rookie defensive lineman from Texas A&M, who has Seahawks connections since he's gonna marry the daughter of Jacob Green, who was like the only good defensive player Seattle had for about fifteen years there.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Ryan Plackemeier, NFL punter or Microsoft stockholder?
FANTASY JERSEY: A throwback grey Mack Strong jersey, but personalized to have his whole name spelled out on the back. I might even change the number to #69, because I was public school educated in the rural south, so that number is funny to me.

#13: NEW YORK JETS
PERTINENT DATA: 4-12 last year; 25 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Hard to argue with Mark Gastineau. He had the white underclass haircut, did his sack dance, and was a shitty boxer there for a while. I'm sure since that time he has dabbled in at least half of the following things: MMA, statutory rape, restoring a classic Corvette, co-owning a pizza parlor, karaoke DJing, and amateur porn.
TEAM HOSS: Alan Faneca just walking through the locker room door makes them tougher than they've been in forever. He's just as big an addition as Favre was, and both of them will be done after this year or next.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Although he did some good PR with me personally trying to drunkenly smooch Suzy Kolber along the sidelines that one time, I've still never thought much of Joe Namath, probably because he was in all those underwear ads in my dad's stack of Penthouses from the '70s. When I am hitting puberty and discovering full-color naked ass hot bitches, seeing some hooknosed dude in his jockeys is not cool
TEAM ASS: I don't care how well he does, and what an ol' gunslinger he is, Brett Favre exposed himself as a fucking primadonna fuckface this year, texting reporters like a middle school girl about everything going on in his "OMG, guess what Ted & Mike did?" saga. Thank god that bullshit is over.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: It's cheap to pick the coach, but Eric Mangini was the Man-genius two years ago, and a piece of trash last year. But they threw a bunch of high-priced free agents at his ass, and whether he can be a genius or not will decide the Jets future. Shit, him managing Favre's ego is just as important. How do you develop the next QB with Favre there, to keep yourself set? Favre's already ruined Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay, regardless of how good he turns out, but I don't think Erik Ainge is the future of the Jets QB position either. What will the Man-genius do?
SENIOR PLAYER: Defensive end Shaun Ellis was a first round pick in 2000.
THE RUDY: Starting guard Brandon Moore has been solidly contributing for six seasons, and was undrafted.
FORMER HURRICANE: Bubba Franks was probably the happiest fucker in town when Brett Favre joined the Jets. He's the senior NFL U of M tight end, probably in one of his last runs as he gets thick stacks of cash to play second string.
VIRGINIA BOY: D'Brickashaw Ferguson is a monster, formerly from University of Virginia, and even though NYC fans are hard on everybody and claim he ain't shit, he will come through. Or he'll go somewhere and then they'll regret that shit. Sometimes, teams are more likely to lose good players than have them succeed, and the Jets seem like that type of vulnerable to agonizing irony type franchise.
WILD SAMOAN: Defensive tackle Sione Pouha, out of Utah, perhaps another fucking Mormon Samoan.
THE ICKY: Jerricho Cotchery is a wonderful name, sounding part-biblical and part-old and persnickety.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Kellen Clemens, newspaper tycoon, using his collective editorial departments to help paint negative pictures of certain countries, thus justifying strategic invasions in the minds of the masses.
FANTASY JERSEY: A green with white sleeves #81 MONK for Art Monk motherfuckers. He never should’ve played there, but he did.

#14: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS
PERTINENT DATA: 9-7 last year, NFC South champs, lost to the Giants at home in the wild card round of the playoffs; 30 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: There has been no greater Tampa Bay Buccaneer, during the era of both jerseys, than Warren Sapp. He was a giant, goofy black dude, who in all likelihood smokes more weed than Marley, and somehow rambled his giant body into backfields on the regular. It is a both a shame as well as a mark against Jon Gruden that Sapp finished his career elsewhere.
TEAM HOSS: Warrick Dunn is a tiny little doe-eyed black dude, but it’s hard not to like the guy. He fucking buys houses for single moms. And he hasn’t fretted over a backing role in the NFL, after being a high-profile star at one point.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Steve Young bitched and moaned his way out of Tampa Bay, then bitched and moaned his way into replacing Joe Montana. Steve Young is a bitch. Don’t let the fact he sits next to people more obnoxiously white and assholish than him on the CBS pregame fool you.
TEAM ASS: Brian Griese has been a pretty useless human being most of his life. I guess it’s easier for him in Florida where his dad probably still gets crazy props though.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Fuck, I’m getting lazy, because I’m picking the coach again, in Jon Gruden. Again, we have a supposed genius whose geniusality has been questioned by incompetent seasons. They did well last year, but only as the by-default kings of the NFC South, where the Panthers and Saints played far below expectations. And Gruden’s defense is getting even older and older, which was what carried him.
SENIOR PLAYER: Linebacker Derrick Brooks was a first round pick in 1995.
THE RUDY: Earnest Graham was undrafted out of Florida in 2003, and after last year, earned starter’s stripes in the NFL. I actually had this fucker on my fantasy team as a pick-up player, and he was pretty good to me.
FORMER HURRICANE: Cornerback Phillip Buchanon, former Hurricane, former Raider, and chronic underachiever.
VIRGINIA BOY: Ronde Barber is a local legend at UVA. Tiki has been able to come back through and drum up recruiting and charity support being he’s retired, but locally, Ronde is just as beloved. They both such cute and unscary black boys, ain’t they?
WILD SAMOAN: Without a Samoan, I’ll go with tackle Jeremy Trueblood, because that sounds like he might be an Indian (drinking kind not dancing shiva kind), and indigenous types need to stick together, to counteract the white man’s poisonous religion and capitalism.
THE ICKY: Reserve safety Sabby Piscitelli sounds like he might’ve ran with the Gottis back in the day.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Andrew Economos, long snapper and Greek multi-billionaire, shipping Russian whores in freight containers to America for circulation amongst high-priced escort services.
FANTASY JERSEY: Old ugly orange (still better looking than the red and shit brown colors of now) #99 SAPP.

#15: GREEN BAY PACKERS
PERTINENT DATA: 13-3 last year, NFC North champs, beat the Seahawks in the divisional round, then lost to the Giants at home in the NFC Championship game; 35 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: When I was a kid collecting football cards, the card for one Packers linebacker actually said Mike “Mad Dog” Douglas, with the nickname on the card. He seemed quite the bad ass. And even though nowadays we have the googles to prove such false claims wrong, and you’d find out Charles Martin was the guy who pretty much body slammed Jim McMahon to the turf, I like to remember it as the Mad Dog doing it, McMahon being crippled and never recovering and never playing football again, and that’s why the Bears never won more than that one Super Bowl with that team.
TEAM HOSS: I am a fan of the dreadlocked cornerbacks whose name is unseen underneath their locks, so Al Harris is my man on the Packers. It’s really a shame they couldn’t keep Mike McKenzie too though.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Brett Favre, because even though he did good, he sabotaged this team completely this year, ruining the team for the fans. He’s like a divorced wife who talks to all the couple’s friends about how the husband would beat her sometimes, even though he never really beat her. Then about half the friends don’t really want to be friends with the husband anymore, which is how I bet a bunch of Packers fans feel now. Favre ruined the team for them, with his pussyfied posturing. On top of this, what the fuck? People act like he won 19 Super Bowls in a row. I could be wrong but haven’t they only been to like two Super Bowls with him, and only won one of them?
TEAM ASS: Actually, I had trouble finding an active player I actively hated, so I’m putting A.J. Hawk here, just because Ohio State fans are fucking cocksuckers, so it shines a bad light on Hawk, who seems to be a pretty good punisher at outside linebacker.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Ted Thompson by default now that Favre is gone, though Favre did all he could to fuck things up on his way out. I bet he was deleting solitaire programs on computers and shit. So T-double has made his choices and will have to live with it now, and he’s got a great variety of young impact players, but Aaron Rodgers stumbles, so goes Thompson, which doesn’t seem really fair, but hey, it’s foozball.
SENIOR PLAYER: Wide receiver Donald Driver was a seventh round pick out of Alcorn State in 1999.
THE RUDY: Cullen Jenkins, undrafted out of Central Michigan in 2003, now an NFL starting defensive end on an up-and-coming defense.
FORMER HURRICANE: No former Canes, and the only former Trojan got cut, so let’s just say linebacker Brandon Chillar since he played at UCLA, which means he probably meant to play at USC.
VIRGINIA BOY: Safety Aaron Rouse, out of Virginia Tech, is in his second year and working his way towards being a starter.
WILD SAMOAN: No Samoans, so we switch to African, with Kabeer Gbaja-Biamilia, or KGB.
THE ICKY: Starting safety Atari Bigby, a true child of the ‘80s. Has a younger brother named Tecmo.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Kicker Mason Crosby, dairy overlord, owner of 250 million heads of cattle and five thousand souls of illegal Mexican laborers.
FANTASY JERSEY: A home green #89 CHMURA jersey, because I dig his philosophy on child care.

#16: CHICAGO BEARS
PERTINENT DATA: 7-9 last year; 35 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: William “the Refrigerator” Perry is my favorite style of giant black guy - gaptoothed and country as fuck and always laughing. He actually has a line of hunting products now. The black redneck is a sub-culture of black dudes not often seen by mainstream society because of rap music’s heavy influence, but the black redneck is alive and strong. Shit, it’s almost hunting season, and it’s funny as fuck to go to the country store and see like 50 black dudes in camo and blaze orange hats holding rifles in gravel parking lots together. Huey Newton would flip out with excitement, except they ain’t doing shit but getting some bologna burgers before hitting the woods to score some bucks.
TEAM HOSS: Do they really have a notable player that’s not Devin Hester? He is their offense. Like my man Mavpa says, they should just figure out an offense where they punt the ball backwards to him.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: I never liked Walter Payton. I know he’s supposed to be this great humanitarian (or they just named the award after him because of cancer) or whatever, but I refuse to believe any short jheri curled guy with blinding bright eyes who had mad attitude to refuse to stay down as opposing players got up off him, so he’d jump up like a little asshole, did anything in the ‘80s other than lots of cocaine and fucked lots of white women who looked like Bo Derek. I can’t get behind that. Maybe I’m subliminally racist, I don’t know, but I just can’t get behind that.
TEAM ASS: It would be easy to say Rex Grossman, but he can’t help the fact he sucks. Brian Urlacher however, is a fucking douchebag, and I don’t even like using that word but I don’t know how else to put it. Why would you have a cop haircut and beady eyes like that unless you were a fucking douchebag? He looks like a state trooper, running all over, basically playing safety but closer to the line of scrimmage, and everybody acts like he’s the shit. He ain’t shit whenever the defensive line doesn’t enable him to do his mad dog roaming schtick though.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Jerry Angelo is the type of general manager that makes me feel comfortable with the shitty personnel decisions of the Washington Redskins. I mean, he was the only NFL GM not paying attention enough that we could dump Adam Archuleta off on him, and then he even topped that by signing Brandon Lloyd this year, who caught like two passes in three years in Washington. With all this being true, I fully expect Dan Snyder to sign Jerry Angelo away from Chicago in a couple of years, to run player acquisition for the Redskins.
SENIOR PLAYER: Center Olin Kreutz, third round pick out of Washington in 1998.
THE RUDY: Special teamser/third receiver Rashied Davis was undrafted in 2005 out of San Jose State.
FORMER HURRICANE: Tight end Greg Olsen is supposed to be the new Jeremy Shockey/Kellen Winslow, speedy and a gamebreaker at tight end. This is the year for him to start proving it, although I guess having a pair of retarded gimps battling to be starting QB might hinder his development.
VIRGINIA BOY: Back-up offensive line plug-in John St. Clair, former UVA Cavalier.
WILD SAMOAN: Reserve defensive tackle Matt Toenaina, who made a splash late last season when half the starters were disabled. I have found in my personal experiences that most Samoan dudes named Matt or John or Chris or something boring and anglo like that usually are nicknamed Sumo.
THE ICKY: Lousaka Polite, back-up running back. I think I heard his name mentioned on a game once, and the last name isn’t even pronounced like the english word, but with every vowel accented all French-like. I might’ve made that up though. Sometimes I dream dumb shit like that and take it for truth because it seems too retarded and random a dream to have actually dreamt. Why would I dream a snippet of commentary from a football game? Then again, why would I dream a sex scene with a married cherry tree (her vagina was in a hole in her trunk, and I was chewing cherries off her branches) while her pilliated woodpecker husband was pecking at the window trying to get in?
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Hunter Hillenmeyer is the most industrious overlord-like in the NFL right now. I imagine he eats babies, donates Democratic, votes Republican, and stacks gold coins in his dungeon like Scrooge McDuck.
FANTASY JERSEY: Black #50 SINGLETARY, because he kicked ass. I might get SAMURAI put on it instead, because I just saw inside the wikipedias that was his nickname, though I have never in my life heard that before.

Homemade Song of the Week - "Lime Green Chevelle" by S.E.P.

All That Glitters Ain't Gold was the third S.E.P. release we did, and one of my favorites. "Lime Green Chevelle" is a song about me having a shitty ass car but wanting a pimp ass car. I am American so I am always wanting some stupid shit I don't have, while also never happy with the completely useful shit I already have. Shiny things with decorative trim, that's what I'm about.

Dean’s Beans Coffeehouse Porter

AFFORDABILITY: I don’t know, since I’ve been buying more tasteful beers at a higher cost, my five categories seems limited. I mean, this shit had a good ass taste, as when it comes to fancy assed beers, I like porters that have that touch of chocolate to them. I get pissed every time Yuengling Porter is available at a store along my path, but like two dollars more than regular Yuengling. And Left Hand Blackjack Porter is one of my favorite beers. This had a good chocolatey taste, but was like $4 for a double deuce. 2 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: I forgot to pay attention, and usually the chocolate high-dollar porters are more for tasting than destruction. Makes for good winter beers, but I think I was kinda bored with this one. 2 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: Their label is not that great, as it is all about the coffee shop parallels. I fucking hate coffee, and hate people who drink coffee. I do not want my beers to be all rubbing up along coffeehouse types. It’s like finding out your wife used to sleep with Armenians. 1 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: The Berkshire Brewing Company is some shit I never heard of in Massachusetts. Like I said with the Tap & Die thing before, they must love beer up here, to support all these indies so well that they exist. 5 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: Bought this at the same store I bought the 40 of Tap & Die malt liquor, but for some reason my white crackhead story doesn’t translate to this beer, as it seems more hoity-toity. I know that’s not fair on my part, but I think the white crackheads were more down with Tap & Die than this bullshit. (Let’s be honest... the crackheads were probably about Private Stock more than either of those oddball things I got.) 2 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 2 &2/5 STARS!

MNZ: Ozone Issue #68

I should not be buying a fucking Ozone after that bitch Julia Beverly ripped me off on a subscription (well, actually, my wife), but then again, who subscribes to magazines anymore, especially incredibly shoddy ghetto-ass ones like this? But I will review with fresh eyes nonetheless. First thing, the west coast partial section of the magazine should just be dropped completely, because it’s useless. You can mix a Too Short interview into a regular issue of Ozone, and it will make sense, and other than that, there’s little reason to give a fuck about the west coast, especially when you built your base on obscure southern rappers galore, hoping one of them got famous to show and prove your point of how down you are. But honestly, the Rap Quest feature of local scene reports is about the best thing in any music magazine going today, and a lot like the old Maximum Rock-n-Roll scene reports. A year ago when I last saw an issue, it was only half the size it is now, the local report feature, so hopefully when another year passes and I forgot to be vindictive about the ten dollars my wife wasted (which, really, I waste that daily two or three times over anyways) and I buy another issue, I hope it’s ballooned to like 20 pages of those things. Also, the Bun B “Gangsta” song (or whatever it’s called) with Sean Kingston doing the hook made me like Sean Kingston even though I know he’s a shitty fake-ragga guy. Well, I guess they have a feature in Ozone about diamond medallions, and Sean Kingston was in this issue talking about his medallion. You know what it was? A fucking box of Crayola crayons. No shit. Recreated in diamonds at an exorbitant price. And he was really proud of it, because it was different. It was sad, and I bet Obama would lose tons of votes if old paranoid voting registered white people could see that page of this magazine, because they’d hate black people from it. Sometimes I think that’s Julia Beverly’s secret plan. Like she can be a down ass white gurl right now and get mad jungle fever prescriptions for what’s itching her, but in the long run, she’s just gonna make some cash and make black people look stupid.
Haha, I happened to read last night about this year’s Ozone Awards fight, which was Trae confronting Mike Jones for calling himself the President of Houston when he doesn’t even represent the city like he should, so Trae sucker punched him. Mike Jones was bummed because if he had known that was gonna happen, he wouldn’t have brought his mama. Man, I love the rap musics.

Tap & Die Malt Liquor

AFFORDABILITY: Like six dollars for a forty of the fortified, but since I've been on the upwardly mobile beer growth trip lately and been buying $4 22 ounce bottles regularly, I can let that slide up my five-point scale a touch. 2 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: It is malt liquor (7.5% alcohol by volume it says), and even though it's a specialty small brewer malt liquor, it still has hints of the normal ass taste all malt liquors have. I florence nightingaled my forty, but still had a light-stepping feeling from it. Perhaps it's because I'm a fucking fairy buying $6 forties though. 3 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: The label will probably not be inside the internets for me to share a picture, which is sad, because this is my absolute favorite beer label ever, bar none. First off, it's all black ink on white paper, like someone did it on their computer. Secondly, it looks like punk rockers did it on their computer. It's part of some company called the People's Pint so there's their hand-drawn logo, and it has a tap and die, like the old metal bullshit from America's industrial era, on the label. The company is located in the town I bought it at, by chance ending up there on a road trip, and it has normal goofy half-witty statements like uber-hip microbrews do (although the line "Brewed and bottled in Greenfield, MA home of the biggest tools in the world" was great for the triple entendre - real industrial tools, sexual penises, and how yankees call dumbasses "tools"), but the crusty punk patch looking art on the label just makes it so fucking great. Also of note, although it’s not label related, but it affected my score, is the fact this forty ounce bottle has a plain white plastic cap on it, like you’d find on a soda bottle, but it’s a forty ounce beer bottle. Very impressive in a retarded-looking way. 6 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Franklin County Brewing Company aka The People's Pint restaurant, which I'm sure is some pseudo-communist restaurant with the best-tasting uses of tofu within five college towns, and I'm fine with all that. I have to come to realize the internet is full of haters, sitting with focused vision on a sci-fi cybertronic window into the rest of the world, but the filtering of reality is skewed, so the haterism makes the pasty pudgy white guy mocking the world at wi-fi speed fail to realize his own shortcomings, 'cause there ain't no computers with a color setting to make a mirror. 4 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: My wife was going to a women's herbal conference in New Hampshire, and her traveling partner flailed, so we ended up just deciding to rent a car and me and all the kids would roll, we'd drop off the wife and baby and me and the older two kids would cold chill in a hotel with indoor swimming pool and do our thang like only hillbillies pretending to live the good life can. Well, the ride up was like ten hours, and we finally decided to get a room in Greenfield, Massachusetts, since my wife said in previous years, they had stayed in Brattleboro, Vermont, which was like two exits up, and it had been halfway sketchy. I distrust this rural New England sketchiness she spoke of, but I lack maternal instinct, so I deferred. And I can dig it. I hate the northeast, mostly because it freaks me out, even though it shouldn't. I have these ridiculous stereotypes etched in my brain that the entire northeast is wall to wall townships with no real rural areas and it's full of fucked up white people who have been broke since their family landed from whatever European country they came from 100 years ago - just long enough to be resentfully American (and hate anything not like them) but still talk funny as shit. And see, that's what happens, is I have those stereotypes, but the manner of speaking - all fast and jumbled and actually pronouncing the consonants at the end of words, it just reinforces my preconceptions. And white crackheads too. White crackheads scare me more than anything else. I have lived around and interacted with black crackheads often enough to find the wonderful comedic value in them. It's like a comedy routine, but only you know about it. I have spent half an hour conversing with guys holding empty antifreeze containers, needing gas money to take his wife to the hospital for her cancer appointment, at like 11:30 at night, often enough to know that a black crackhead is just a funny story waiting to be retold, albeit one kept at arm's length. Shit, I'll even give those guys money ($10 one time) because even if I don't recoup it, it's an investment in someone else's hilarious experience. But white crackheads aren't like that, perhaps becaues white people are more likely to feel entitled to shit. White crackheads just rip you off of $300 while you're not looking instead of giving you an incredible story for $3 while you're listening. I am afraid of white crackheads, and got nervous going into Connecticut, because how was I gonna protect my children. Here I am some schmuck from Virginia, looking out of place as fuck driving a Chrysler 300, and white crackheads were gonna smell me coming miles away, perhaps from the fried chicken grease in my arteries. We stopped at some truck stop to eat dinner, and it was fine enough. The waitress was sweet, but funny-talking, and I left a big tip because that shit plays big with broke asses like that. I am a broke ass too about half the time, so I understand. Wife takes the two older kids to the bathroom and I'm holding the 7-month-old, and an older yankee lady obviously of lower economic bracket is fawning over the young one. "She ought to be the Gerber baby. Look at those dimples. Oh, she has two dimples on her one cheek. She is so sweet." On and on like that, but it wasn't uncomfortable. She was nice, and who doesn't love a beautiful baby, except for internet degenerates? Right after she leaves, a dude with bad tattoos and black t-shirt comes up. "You drive?" he asks. "Nah... we're just travelling through." He goes on to say he thought he had met someone crazy as him, because he had his 11-month-old son on a two-day haul with him, which is crazy. We talked, he looked fucked-up but so do I, but he had honest eyes, which is the window to the soul and how I judge most motherfuckers anyways. It has never failed me. When I know not to trust someone because of their sketchy eyes, even if they are a good friend, it has never failed that within a few years they turn out to be sketchy or judgmental pieces of shit. Trucker dude was decent as fuck though. And so was someone else we passed outside, so I’m thinking to myself, “Maybe I got these yankee fuckers wrong. Maybe I should lighten up and open my mind and shit.” So we drive along and end up getting a hotel in Greenfield like I said, and after the kids are set up in bed and the wife is settled down, I’m like, “I’m getting a beer.” Not knowing the local beer laws and customs, I hit up the front desk, and chick is like there are two “package stores” five minutes up the road. So I’m off, fucking yankees with their beer only in certain stores. Town is nice, not sketchy, and I see the store so pull up before it and park by a Chinaman takeout joint. A couple of people milling about outside (man, what the fuck is it with every white man between the ages of 16 and 35 wearing Red Sox apparel, or maybe Celtics, or at least Patriots?), and front door is locked with a sign saying go to side door. I walk around the building and there’s a whole parking lot, and I think, “Fuck, why did I park my car by the chink spot with those sketchy yankee fuckers milling around a liquor store when there’s this nice wide open parking lot by the actual door?” But I had already committed and in situations like that, I’d rather just fuck myself completely over and push ahead with the wrong plan than backtrack. I go in with eleven dollars thinking I’d get a couple of beers, maybe a nice six-pack, of some shit I can’t get back home, being I’ve started doing these stupid beer things again. Holy fuck, there was like, seriously, a hundred beers that I not only couldn’t get, but I had never heard of before. I guess all these Red Sox/Celtics/Patriots fuckers like to drink some good beer during family cookouts, which they call barbecues, which to me is pork with a vinegar barbecue sauce and tastes great with cole slaw. Well, I pick out a couple things, including this forty, and get rung up for $10.47. I ask about the other beer, “Is this pop top or twist off?” Pop top, but the lady behind the counter finds a neck chain beer bottle opener, hands it to me saying, “Usually we charge for these, but this one’s on the house,” and she smiles, probably it being obvious from my accent I ain’t from ‘round these parts. Being she was cute, I immediately convince myself she thinks I’m in town working and she wants me to put babies inside of her; that’s just how my mind works. I walk back out the store, turn past the front, and two white women with that short hair cut that means they might be lesbians or they might date 45-year-old black guys or they might just be complete dirtbags who can only keep their hair clean by cutting it all off regularly to make the job easier, they are standing together in a huddle and look at me with that, “Oh shit, we got caught” look. I don’t give a fuck though, so I saunter by, and in peripheral vision see they are indeed breaking up a rock, right there beside the liquor store. As I pull out in my rented Chrysler 300, the one guy who was there when I first pulled up is with them now and they are squatted down, one of the lesbian haircutted chicks firing up a crack pipe. God less America. So needless to say, the overall ambiance of this beer was great. 8 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 4 &3/5 STARS!

MNZ: New York magazine June 30 - July 7, 2008

A library free bin score, the supposed Summer Issue of the mag, and the only thing noteworthy was a hilarious article called Punk Like Them about punk kids migrating to the East Village to recreate a dead scene. When I was in college, I was around mad punks, and they became a great source of hilarity for me, because most of them are very out of touch with common sense realities, and it’s not their fault so much as the environment they were raised within. But even though they lack any real accepted common sense, they are full of supposedly common man-friendly idealism that they are so quick to throw at anybody and everybody. Yet with their rebellious plumage, they push away those they so philosophically have decided they identify or sympathize with. The shit is funny. Punks are best when they just drink a lot of cheap alcohol and fuck a bunch of punk chicks; otherwise they are useless unless you need a place to crash that’s good for stealing four or five good books for reading material when you bail out the next day.

MNZ: assorted Dune Buggies and Hot VWs

There was a ton of these for a quarter apiece at a Goodwill store in South Boston, Virginia, on our ride back from North Cackylacky a month or so back, so I got a stack of eight. Somewhere, my 9-year-old picked up a game with her friends where when you see a VW bug, she yells, “PUNCH BUGGY BLACK, NO PUNCH BACK!” or whatever color it is. It caught on to where all of us think it and do it now, and we have to leave ones for the 4-year-old to get so she’s not all pissed about being four, and there’s spots in our life routines where the kids and everybody knows there’s gonna be a VW Beetle sitting there. It sucks. We made teams of adults vs. kids to try and stifle the 4-year-old’s anger, but shit, even that was stressful and made driving a pain in the ass if I had to drive past a spot where there was gonna be a VW. So we made us all one team, which went over well since they are still kids and haven’t been over-competitivized yet. And from my studies during these games, it is obvious than only women drive VW Beetles, and VWs in general because of the VW’s popularity tingeing any other model they might make.
This magazine was weird to me, because there were no half-naked women to be found anywhere, which is a pre-requisite for a car magazine, and further reinforced my feministical opinions of the VW brand. And there were some cool VWs, I guess, by default, but mostly the only thing worth a shit in any of these magazines were the Karmann Ghia’s, especially when driven by Hawaiian pimps.

Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale

AFFORDABILITY: This stuff was The Shit come fall back in my drunken yet settled down Richmond days where I had a stupid hippie girlfriend who would buy me good beer. Man, the Pumpkin Ale big bottles were the jam, from whatever that neighborhood grocery store was in the Fan around the corner (Fan Market maybe?). This chick I knew Michelle worked there and she would always hooks up the friendly discount meaning I didn't get charged for shit half the time. Then the Buffalo Bill Pumpkin Ale disappeared long enough that I wasn't sure if I had the name right and I bought a couple other microbrew pumpkin ales, that all sucked, because Buffalo Bill's had that pumpkiny ass taste. My dead grandma, rest her soul, used to fix me a pumpkin pie every holiday once I went away to college, knowing how I loved that shit. Well, the Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale started showing up again (I think I read one time it was distribution issues), and it showed up earlier than ever this year, and it ain't cheap, because it's seasonal and it's specialty beer and it's in Whole Foods. But it is actually cheaper than other more shittier pumpkin ales. 2 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: It tastes like pumpkin pies... this is sipping beer, not sloshing yourself beer. 1 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: One of my all-time favorite labels was the dude stirring a batch of beer in a hollowed-out pumpkin, which was the old label. They got some different shit now that's that pseudo-pagan tribalistic shit that probably plays big in the aforementioned Whole Foods. It is mad orange though. 2 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Buffalo Bill Brewing company is some small ass California bullshit, and really only makes it to the east coast with this one brand, and that only happens for a few months out the year. They probably subsidize their bullshit falafel hummus organic zucchini sandwich shop restaurant that is in all likelihood at their home brewery with this nonsense. I can't fault them for that. Hustle hard. 4 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: The arrival of pumpkin ale means fall and changing colors and fucking holidays where you don't answer the phone so your non-immediate relatives don't invite themselves over. It means football and coaching kids soccer and throwing horseshoes more often because the grass needs cutting less but it's still not frozen outside. Now, this batch of pumpkin ale showed up while it was 95% and I was putting aluminum paint like a fucking dog on a barn roof, but nonetheless, early arrival notwithstanding, I love the pumpkin ale, and only this one. I guess from looking at beer dork sites inside the internets, this is actually one of the least liked pumpkin ales, but those beer dorks like their "handcrafted" beers to taste like a mouthful of dried plants anyways. I never understood that. I see learning to appreciate tastes and not just sucking back cans of swill, but come on, why does the shit have to taste like fine mulch to be good? 5 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 2 & 4/5 STARS!

NFL: Preseason Preview Lower Middle Class

#17: WASHINGTON REDSKINS
PERTINENT DATA: 8-8 last year, lost in NFC Wild Card round; 40 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: In case you don’t be knowing the obvious, I am a lifelong Redskins fan, and my personal emotions are far too umbilically attached to a professional sports team I have absolutely no control over. So obviously for me, being 35-years-old, the heyday was the first Joe Gibbs era when they won three Super Bowls. And the King of that era, to me, a full-grown retard/full-blown alcoholic, is John Riggins. He was a throwback player, who could drink till four in the morning then bull rush for 150 yards. Today's athlete, with off-season OTAs and HGH injections, would never roll like Riggo rolled. And they will never have the style Riggo had. That dude was a legend. He told a Supreme Court lady to "lighten up bitch" or something like that. I don't really care if that's perfect truth, because he is a legend and that makes sense from the shadow he casts. From his Travis Bickle haircut when he was with the Jets to everything he did in Washington, there is no fucking with John Riggins.
TEAM HOSS: One thing I'll give Joe Gibbs crazy credit for in his second stint is that even though he's a wacky born again Christian old dude, he definitely openly embraced the wacky character on this Redskins team. I am hoping they continue this trend, because with crazy fuckers like Chris Cooley (who is running a beard-growing contest on his own blog, and wore those tight ass shorts last year, plus the white man's fro he used to rock), Clinton Portis (aka Sheriff Gonna Getcha aka Mr. Dress-Up aka a weird ass motherfucker), and Fred Smoot (shit talker of the year every year he's been in the NFL, plus alleged instigator of the infamous Vikings boat trip), it makes the team interesting even if they aren't champions of the world and shit. But for my favorite dude who personifies this all, I have to go with Mike Sellers, the starting fullback, who should be a Pro Bowler if the world was just. Dude dyes his beard blonde like a wrestler, went jet skiing or some shit in the Everglades in the off-season around alligators, and apparently, according to local newspaper articles, is just as retarded at home as he is on camera. On a team full of fucked-up dudes, he is the most notable, maybe not nationally, but definitely for me.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Without a doubt, the saddest moment of my life as a Redskins fan was seeing that press conference where Deion Sanders came rolling out in his burgundy pimp/preacher get-up with the gold handkerchief hanging out his pocket. There is no person on this earth related to the football that I hate more than Deion Sanders. I donate blood as often as I can, but if I found out he had some sort of blood disease that needed regular transfusion to stay alive, I would quit donating blood until he died. Just one of many wonderful aspects to Sean Taylor's short impact on Redskins culture is how he exorcised the demons of that #21 by being a straight-up ass-kicker, and not some high-stepping cocksucker.
TEAM ASS: I am not buying into this Jason Taylor is awesome bullshit. First off, I never trust Bill Parcells because that motherfucker is a sneaky like Japs. I would not be even slightly surprised if he uses the draft pick he got from the Redskins to draft some defensive end out of some shithole Division II team in Montana that ends up getting more sacks than Deacon Jones in drunken double vision. I have to admit that I do not trust yellowboned black people who talk with a white-ish enunciation. Black dudes who do it? No problem. But yellowboned ass people who do that strike in me distrust, because how can you trust a person who knows not their own culture? Is hodgepodge a culture? I'm sure it is, and my family's best friends are an interracial family with four mulatto children, who are all beautiful children that I would do anything for. But what culture is fauntleroy-footed star dancing, and twinkly eyed Sportscenter sound bites about still having heart even on a bum foot? I don't know man... I don't yet put Taylor up there with Bruce Smith and Deion Sanders as all-time totally not for-real Redskins type Redskins, but he is penciled in, and unless he gets a ton of sacks or breaks Eli Manning or Tony Romo's leg, then he's on that short list, probably even ahead of Smith.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Vinny Cerrato is the newfound player personnel dorkfuck who has been right handing and yes-sirring Danny Boy Snyder the past five years or so. He is also the guy who completely fist-fucked the 49ers into overall first draft pick contention after the Joe Montana/Steve Young Super Bowl era ran its course. Honestly, I think the Redskins are completely doomed unless there is a Potomac River helicopter crash involving Snyder and Cerrato and somehow Sean Taylor's daughter and Suri Cruise inherit the team together, and until they are 18, a trust is set up where Sonny Jurgensen, Sam Huff, Darrell Green, Dexter Manley, Art Monk, John Riggins, and Joe Gibbs make all team decisions on a rotating daily basis, with Gibbs getting Sundays so he can coach most of the games.
SENIOR PLAYER: Offensive tackle Jon Jansen was a second round draft pick in 1999. He also gets injured every other fucking game.
THE RUDY: Stephon Heyer was an undrafted rookie last year out of Maryland on offensive line who played a big-time role covering for injured millionaires on a league minimum paycheck. I am rooting hard for him to have a long and productive career in that capacity, although the Skins have some high profile rookie homo from Wisconsin or some shit that's all high in the eye of the ancient O-line coach. What this team needs is more dreadlocked black dudes, not deerhunters with bow hunting prowess. Well, really, the two genres form the yin and yang of a perfect offensive line, so I guess I can't complain too much.
FORMER HURRICANE: They've got a few of them, but with Sean Taylor the Manimal dead at the hands of errant house robbers (who must've been scared shitless when confronted with monster ass Taylor in his boxer holding a sword), there is no one more awesome from the U than Clinton Portis. I imagine he will have a breakout year and do awesome interviews with hilarious props. Also, he rushed for more yards his rookie season than Adrian Peterson. That means fuck Adrian Peterson.
VIRGINIA BOY: Wide receiver Billy McMullen was a high profile star at UVA, and has failed to live up to expectations in the NFL on a couple of teams. Now, he's filling a roster spot in preseason as a last ditch effort to show and prove before the Redskins dump him, unless one of their stupid rookies can't get their shit together before the season starts.
WILD SAMOAN: Being the Redskins lack a bonafide Polynesian fucker, the closest thing to a wild Samoan the Skins have is back-up rookie quarterback Colt Brennan, who I foresee leading the team to a thousand Super Bowls eventually.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: The Redskins defense, with guys like Cornelius Griffin and Rocky McIntosh, sound like the country club membership in 1934 of a west coast boomtown. But London Fletcher is a 33rd degree freemason, bilderberger, Skull & Bone sounding dude, who would’ve been vice president but didn’t want the ceremonial duties to conflict with him raking a fortune off some sort of shady industrial scam, depleting locals of their natural resources.
FANTASY JERSEY: I saw this older black dude at the Food Lion one time with an all-black Redskins jersey, black jersey with black letters that had a slight burgundy hue, #89 MOSS jersey. I actually asked him about it because that shit was tight and he was all elderly and slick, like he would’ve hung out with Omar Little and shit, scheming up some ghetto Robin Hood honorable code of the degenerate criminal type thangs. I would get a jersey like that, but #21, Sean Taylor.

#18: CAROLINA PANTHERS
PERTINENT DATA: 7-9 last year; 40 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: You know, the obvious choice for me would be Kevin Greene, with his bulbous head holding long hair and his free spirited yet partially retarded demeanor, but I'm gonna get all touchy-feely and say Sam Mills holds this role. Mills came out of a shithole unknown college to play for the Saints, make a name for himself, and get picked up by the Panthers when they became an expansion team. He was an undersized monster, and tore shit up for a long-ass minute, until he got the cancers. The cancers fucked him up and killed him. Never forget the cancers. The cancers also killed my grandmama the day after Christmas 2006, so I know about the cancers, and I sometimes wish I knew how these two fuckfaces running for President stood on the cancers issue. But Sam Mills made a deep ass impact as a bad ass, even with the cancers, so much so that his son has been a coach with the Panthers since before his dad's death. Sam Mills III is a coach with the Panthers to this day, even though his pops died three or four years ago, and Mills the third is only fucking 30. Sam Mills the elder (but a junior in real life at the time, unbeknownst to all of us from his nameplate) was the opposite of the current trend of oversized roaming safety who crushes motherfuckers; he was an undersized roaming linebacker who crushed motherfuckers. He didn't get the fear factor from the whistle; he made that shit by popping bitches in the helmet. Mad props to that dead motherfucker.
TEAM HOSS: You know, I don't care that Steve Smith broke his teammate's jaw in practice and got suspended. Steve Smith is the best player on that team, a real gamebreaker, but with attitude. He gets his shoes airbrushed before every fucking game, pays his fines happily, and tears shit up. It would be nice to see him live up to his heart and perform big-time again like he did a couple seasons ago, but never would I accept sports nerd homos speaking down upon the Steve Smith name in the same breath with closeted basket cases like T.O. and Chad Johnson.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: As much as I like to be a dick and glorify nonsensical violent types, there is no way to pump up Rae Carruth. I mean, if he had shot his pregnant girlfriend himself, maybe you could in a pure devil advocacy mode hype it up. But he didn't; he hired someone else. And then, if he had just been like, "Yeah, I did that shit. She was a crazy bitch, man. You don't even know. I'd do it again in a heartbeat," about it all, you could probably give him props for being unrepentantly crazy, but he was found hiding in the trunk of a car like a pure punk ass. It often makes me wonder how jail's gone for him. Jail has strange hierarchies, and famous people are prime punking material, as are child harmers, as are punk bitches. Ol' Rae seems to have the trifecta going for him. I guess that makes me feel sorry for him though, because as stupidly inconsiderate (I don't think people who don't think about shit can be evil) as he was, I would never wish constant demeaning homosexual confined rape without repercussion on anyone. Except Deion Sanders.
TEAM ASS: D.J. Hackett was an underperforming jackass at shitty Seattle, so how's he gonna be a real man in Carolina? Basically, I have few problems with most Panthers, as they are my alternative favorite team when I need one as a sign of protest against Dan Snyder's dipshit regime, and he was the best I could come up with on the fly.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: This team is biding its time until Bill Cowher takes over. I guess it was two years ago that the Steelers happened to be playing at Carolina, and we got stuck in traffic coming back from further south after the game let out, and it was amazing how much Steelers fans had taken over. There is a large contingent, larger than could travel, there in stupid Carolina. And both teams have similar franchise philosophies - steady defense #1, pounding running game #2, fill in all gaps #3. I think they're at a point where John Fox hasn't outright done anything wrong to lose his job, though he's had his job for far longer than a lot of more successful coaches, so he just needs to slip up real bad again like maybe just a touch worse than last year to finally get canned so they can bring in Cowher, who's living in Carolina anyways and probably wants to stroke his own ego and show how he can win again, even if he can't.
SENIOR PLAYER: John Kasay has been the kicker for the Panthers since their inception in 1994.
THE RUDY: Starting fullback Brad Hoover was undrafted out of Western Carolina in the year 2000. There's mad punishing big ass whiteboys in the mountains of western Carolina. Trust me; I've gotten my ass kicked there numerous times.
FORMER HURRICANE: Starting middle linebacker Jon Beason is one of the few monsters Miami's sent up to the pro level the past two or three years. I like how the Panthers are basically like the southern Steelers in philosophy.
VIRGINIA BOY: Starting tight end Jeff King's from out of Virginia Tech, which means all he really did out of college was shoot down the Blue Ridge Parkway to North Carolina and get paid like a motherfucker. And he's still close enough to shoot back up on an off-day to pull that collegiate furburger.
WILD SAMOAN: The largest two players on the Panthers roster are back-up guard Toniu Fonoti (at 350 pounds) and nose tackle Maake Kemoeatu (at 345 pounds). I bet they can fuck up some Chinaman buffets. I went to the Chinaman buffet last week, and you can see the economy’s effect. There were no steamed mussels anymore, instead it was clams. And they didn’t have baked pork either. I’ll eat the fuck out of that one kind of dim sum that you can see the beef inside, but I’m sketched out by those ones wrapped in rice paper and look like lotus flowers or anything. I mean, I’d like to check it out, but like sushi, I figure if I’m gonna get into all that, I should go to a good restaurant to try it out in a proper manner, not just dip ladles into the Chinaman buffet’s steam trays.
THE ICKY: Running back LaBrandon Toefield’s name is funny to me. But I am also half-stupid.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Julius Peppers sounds like he could’ve been a tobacco magnate making his grandchildren’s millions off the slave-like labor of sharecroppers.
FANTASY JERSEY: Carolina blue #91 GREENE.

#19: TENNESSEE TITANS
PERTINENT DATA: 10-6 last year, lost in AFC Wild Card round; 40 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Even though it was pre-Titans era, there is no greater intimidating presence as dominant black man running back as Earl Campbell. Being a kid who came of age as a football watcher in the early '80s, Earl was a smooth punisher. One reason I didn't like Eddie George was simply because he lacked the aura of Earl. Also, Eddie George's head looked like a junior mint, which kinda creeped me out.
TEAM HOSS: Albert Haynesworth is a monster of the middle of the field, and far more well-spoken than you'd stereotypically expect from a guy who gained notoriety by stomping his cleats into the bare forehead of another player one time. To his credit, it was a Dallas Cowboy, which is kinda like aborting deformed children created during rape.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Eddie George I do not like. He went to Fork Union Military Academy which is eight miles from my house (and supposedly has produced more NFL players than any other high school inside the America), and I don't like that place. I would normally expound on my disgust of Eddie, but instead I'd like to tell you about how I've involved myself into a domestic violence situation. This guy I know, whose kid I coached in soccer at age six, and worked really hard to get her to open up and try, against the influences of her yelling ass overbearing father on the sidelines, well this guy had been beating the shit out of his wife. It got to the point their oldest kid videotaped it to be all confrontational. Now this is in the realm of uber-Christian homeschooler parameters, where he is king, which is how he's gotten away with beating the fuck out of his wife, who is half his size easily, all this time. Seriously, I'm not smart when it comes to picking fights, and I wouldn't pick a fight with this guy because he's like 6'5" and 280 of solid. He works at FUMA in some capacity or another. Well, after his kid video'd him beating the shit out of his subservient wife again, and confronted him with the video, he beat the shit out of the kid. To his credit, it was allegedly the first time he beat the shit out of any of his kids physically. Well, in true country ass fashion, the wife and kids hid behind some hay bales while he was sleeping, and snuck off. They were in hiding and shit, but some people I know got their organic homegrown milk from them, and was in contact with some people they knew, so I called up a dude who was a cop friend I know, not to snitch, because no snitching, but to get some helpful domestic services numbers and shit to pass through the grapevine to this lady, because I'm sure in a subservient Christian sheltered environment where her husband would point parcels of the bible saying women were secondhand to menfolk, she had little faith in her right to not get beat, and the kid getting beaten just triggered emotional maternal instincts that would eventually get overridden by familial duty. And I fully expect her to go back to him, even though he told her time and time again he'd find her and kill her if she ever went to the authorities, and I have no doubt he'd do it, too. So my second oldest kid starts under-6 soccer this year, so I'm coaching that age group again. I wonder what wonderful drama awaits me in the long run this time around?
TEAM ASS: Back-up quarterback Kerry Collins is a born loser who hates black people and secretly drinks up Vince Young's voodoo offerings, making jokes about Jobu needing a refill, hoping to become the starter and lead the team to a miraculous 19th overall pick in next year's draft. Also, he is a recovering drunk, which is a stupid thing to recover from.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: The Tennessee Titans' future rest completely upon Vince Young, and his ability to be a smarter quarterback than he looks and sounds like. One of the most disappointing things about Michael Vick's dogfighting brouhaha is that eventually, just through sheer numbers, Vince Young will appear to be a superior later model of the Michael Vick style QB, when in actuality Young is more like a mongoloid Michael Vick, albeit a loveable and non-threatening mongoloid. Vick's prison sentence set back the run-happy black quarterback movement five years at least, ten years more likely, and I bet Randall Cunningham is pissed, because he's less likely to be around when the path he blazed finally reaches its peak.
SENIOR PLAYER: Craig Hentrich has been kicking it like Billy Jack in punting situmacations since 1998.
THE RUDY: Fullback Ahmard Hall was undrafted out of Texas three seasons ago, and makes strong ways for the crowded backfield behind him.
FORMER HURRICANE: Well, no Hurricanes, so I'll go ahead and shift to USC Trojan alum instead like I threatened in the intro week. And there is no more amusing and wacky Trojan in Tennessee than LenDale White. That big, goofy bastard is far more interesting than Reggie Bush.
VIRGINIA BOY: Safety Vincent Fuller was probably supposed to be a bigger deal out of Virginia Tech than he’s ended up being, but he is holding his spot tightly.
WILD SAMOAN: All-Pro center Kevin Mawae is the old guard of Hawaiian ass motherfuckers playing in the NFL, in his fifteenth year.
THE ICKY: Without a doubt, tight end Alge Crumpler, who has the best most retarded name in all of the NFL.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Starting cornerback Cortland Finnegan, jew manager of many of the Grand Ole Opry’s biggest star. Well, that’s not right of me. Finnegan is a very non-semitic name, as is Cortland Finnegan a very non-african-american name, but being he is an NFL cornerback, I can only assume he is black, due to the Jason Sehorn Rule (aka no more shitty ass white dudes playing cornerback; they have to play safety only).
FANTASY JERSEY: Powder blue #34 Earl Cambpell joint, Oilers style. Fuck this Titans soccer jersey bullshit.

#20: BUFFALO BILLS
PERTINENT DATA: 7-9 last year; 45 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Could it be anybody but O.J. Simpson? I resent the Def Comedy Jam stereotype that all white people hate O.J., because that's my boy. Naked Gun, stabbing cheating bitches, interstate chases, stealing cable TV, bumrushing a hotel room to steal back some shit he already sold but now feels bad about... O.J. is like my dream friend - the kind of guy you wouldn't invite to cookouts in the back yard because your wife hated his bullshit, but if you were gonna meet up with the boys out at a bar to shoot some pool, you know you'd call his ass.
TEAM HOSS: If Marshawn Lynch was from the "How Many Emcees Must Get Dissed" era, I'd pick him easily; but he's more of a Maybach black man than wayback black man. So I'm going with fat ass Marcus Stroud, who came over from the Jacksonville Jaguars, to try and give the Bills defense some fucking heart.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: I have always thought of the defensive tandem of Bruce Smith and Darryl Talley as a pair of guys who look like they'd patrol the late night streets of mid-sized cities, looking for runaways to group fuck and turn into lifelong lost causes. And knowing they played in the NFL's cocaine era just makes me even more sure of this. Google up some face shots of these guys - Smith with his bug eyes and Talley with his El Debarge by way of a strip mall haircut - and there is no doubt about their evil ways. I'm just glad they played in Buffalo so that they could cross the border and rape and pillage Canadian souls so that I am less likely to have to deal with the mess they left behind in their wake. Being I have to choose one for this spot, I'd go with Bruce Smith over Darryl Talley, because he looks more like a ringleader, whereas I could see a dude who looks Talley being like, "Nah, I don't know man, that sounds fucked up," then talked into it after smoking a fat joint and doing a couple of rails in between cups of gin on ice.
TEAM ASS: Linebacker Paul Posluszny has a heavy consonant last name and came from Penn State as a high profile superstar in the making, but can't live up to that potential, like most Penn State stars of the past fifteen years. You take that background and put it in one of those butt ass ugly Buffalo Bills uniforms and that makes for a first class suck ass.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Marv Levy is an old ass man who went to four Super Bowls and won none of them, yet somehow he has clout behind the scenes. If he somehow miraculously can do as managerial puppet master what he couldn't do as actual coach, then the Bills are on solid ground. But most likely they are fucked until he and his even older ass owner circle jerk buddy literally pass on the torch to someone who has the foresight to change their eurofag uniforms and instill a winning tradition between the snowbanks of Orchard Park.
SENIOR PLAYER: Defensive end Aaron Schobel was a second round draft pick in 2001, right before 9/11. Long snapper Brian Moorman also joined the team that offseason. That means the Buffalo Bills have two players, only two, who were on the team when 9/11 happened and the conflicts in the Middle East started up.
THE RUDY: Usually the undrafted starting types play fullback or outside linebacker or some shit, but Jabari Greer slipped out the draft out of Tennessee, but clawed his way into the starting lineup after Nate Clements bolted Buffalo for big, fat 49er paychecks.
FORMER HURRICANE: Special teamist/wide receiver Roscoe Parrish, sporting a very 1979 black guy name.
VIRGINIA BOY: Fullback Darian Barnes comes from traditionally black college Hampton University, which has been producing far more NFL players in recent years than a small, less than a decade removed from Division I-AA school should expect to make.
WILD SAMOAN: Defensive end Shaun Nua, who I thought might be Samoan, and played at Brigham Young, and it seems like a bunch of those Samoan dudes who get to America play in the state of Utah because they’re Mormons too. Samoan Mormons... imagine a crew of 320 pound dudes in those black slacks and white shirts walking around town, sweating like pigs.
THE ICKY: Running back Xavier Omon sounds like a white rapper with a sci-fi bent originally from some college town in Iowa, but moved to Chicago because he hooked up through myspace with a producer who did two tracks for Lupe Fiasco a few years back. He’s gonna hit it big.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Duke Preston is a guard, and sugar industry magnate.
FANTASY JERSEY: Old school #32 SIMPSON, but I doubt NFL Shop would allow for it.

#21: DENVER BRONCOS
PERTINENT DATA: 7-9 last year; 50 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: I have always been a Karl Mecklenburg fan, because I've always assumed he was this Bill Romanowski-style white guy defensive degenerate, just he never got busted for it. Also, when my dad died, he lived in a Mecklenburg County, Virginia, which I always change the words of that John Prine song to say. Although, I have to admit I just google searched Mecklenburg to make sure I was spelling his last name right and I guess he's some sort of motivational speaker for high schools now, which is mad gay. Hopefully he's just a drunk ass, pill-popper trying to Mark Chmura some high school honies at the Comfort Inn though.
TEAM HOSS: I was set to go with Travis Henry and his Ol' Dirty Bastard style father figuring, but he's been long cut from this milquetoast ass team. So in that case, I'm gonna go with Tom Nalen, the pre-eminent dirty offensive lineman of a team built upon dirty offensive linemen play. Nalen would fit in well with those late '70s dudes who bit calf muscles to take linebackers out and shit.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: John Elway is one of my all-time least favorite players, and when I imagine Deion Sanders getting AIDS, it is usually because he has a sore on his dick and John Elway is fellating him with cold sores on the interior of his mouth and he is an unknowing HIV carrier. The horseface angle seems too obvious, so I'll let that one pass. Actually, I was a big fan, though not a practicing one, of arena football until that one year when John Elway and Jon Bon Jovi became the famous owners of arena league teams. That ruined the arena league for me forever, and I'll never come back, unless Art Schlichter and Todd Marinovich become co-owners of an expansion team together, preferably in the rural midwest to appease fans of the Iowa Barnstormers pissed after their team got displaced to NYC.
TEAM ASS: I am so enamored with Clinton Portis that I will go against football logic and badmouth Champ Bailey. At that time, he was wanting money equivalent to a wide receiver, because he was what was considered a shutdown cornerback. That's some serious jew agent thinking there, even if he ran back a couple interceptions a year for TDs. I was not bothered by seeing him go, because he was short-time anyways, wanting the ridiculous money he wanted (which probably is pretty low by now's standards though), and his flat ass face never put on funny glasses and pretended to be a vampire.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Loveable quarterback Jay Cutler has shown promise enough to make pigskin pundits be like he's one of the solid next level young QBs who will help take his franchise back to the heavenly glories that ol' horseface took them to. Whether he lives up to that or not will probably extend or cut short stupid child molester Mike Shanahan's overrated coaching career.
SENIOR PLAYER: Center Tom Nalen, one of the forebearers of their chop-blocking dirty ass O-line, was a seventh round draft pick in 1994.
THE RUDY: Selvin Young was undrafted out of Texas last year, and will help Shanahan continue to stroke his own ego about how he can take running backs out of a bucket of recycleable bottles and get 1000 yards out of them.
FORMER HURRICANE: Linebacker D.J. Williams is one of thoes high profile former first round picks that hasn't done bad enough to get booted just yet, but hasn't exactly lived up to collegiate expectations, which means he'll be a high profile free agent linebacker at some point whenever his contract runs out, since teams don't let actual good players go anymore really.
VIRGINIA BOY: John Engelberger wasn't even the best defensive end coming out of Virginia Tech the year he was drafted... that would have been Corey Moore. But Moore blinged up, flamed out, and disappeared. Last I heard, he got shot somewhere in Tennessee. Meanwhile, Engelberger has crafted an almost decade-long career for himself, mostly in San Francisco, but the past few seasons in Denver.
WILD SAMOAN: Without a real Samoan, I revert to Plan B, which is terrorist-sounding motherfuckers, which means either linebacker Niko Koutovides or safety Hamza Abdullah.
THE ICKY: You know, I think rarely have I ever picked against Ebenezer Ekuban for having the greatest fucked-up name on an NFL team, but I just can't not pick starting defensive end Elvis Dumervil. Black guys named Elvis are already funny enough, but throw in that last name and you have a team winner. I bet he got ragged on hard whenever his mom called out the front door for him, angrily using his whole name for the first time for new neighborhood kids to hear it. "ELVIS DUMERVIL - WHERE YOU AT, BOY?" and then mad laughter and relentless hazing at school for years. Shit, that's probably how he ended up tough enough to be a D-end.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Fullback Peyton Hillis, whose child slave sex offerings at a Bohemian Grove rendezvous in the '80s to east coast Anheuser execs led to Coors being offered nationally. Mark Harmon was made their commercial spokesman because he just happened to be there having sex with the kid too.
FANTASY JERSEY: I would only wear one of those old ugly orange Broncos jerseys, none of this new soccerfag bullshit. And I guess the only one I could decently wear would be a Bill Romanowski one. I think I might've said that about the 49ers too, but who the fuck can remember? This is the internet... if no one's got a youtube video of a duck eating Doritos while pretending to read my football post last week, it's probably lost to the world already, if it was ever found.

#22: ARIZONA CARDINALS
PERTINENT DATA: 8-8 last year; 50 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Being a big fan of giant white guys with shitty dispositions who mangled opposing black dudes mostly out of a hatred for anything across the line of scrimmage but potentially also the channeling of an underlying racist mind frame, I'm gonna have to go with Conrad Dobler. He was before they went to Arizona, but was so was everything else noteoworthy about this franchise.
TEAM HOSS: I have a markdown #21 Cardinals jersey with no number on the front nor name on the back (but with the NFL patch, which I'm told I could sell inside the ebays for some coin), so I guess by default I'd say Antrel Rolle is my man on the Arizona football team. But really, I'd say Matt Leinart, but I'm gonna talk about him later and I'm trying to be all faggy and have different dudes for each category.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: When Dan Dierdorf was on Monday Night Football (when that was the pre-eminent football game of the week), I would've said him easily. But when he moved to CBS to do regular Sunday games, I started to like the ol' double Ds. But Neil Lomax, who was a big strong-armed, half-retarded quarterback destined for failure long before Rex Grossman came along, never redeemed himself. I remember back before QBs could be retards or black, when Lomax had those big ass wristbands with all the plays on there, and that was some shit to make fun of. Nowadays, I guess it's considered okay, because you see QBs with forearm wristbands with like laminated sheets on their arms that they can flip open and consult when the play is beamed into their microchips.
TEAM ASS: Kurt Warner is an annoying piece of shit, even as the grizzled old veteran.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Here's where I talk about Matt Leinart. He catches flack for having pics with two chicks drinking or not being dedicated to the very serious craft of professional footballism. I say fuck that noise. Matt Leinart is a credit to real men because all he really wants to do is get paid for doing just enough, clock some womenfolks, and do it all with his drink being got on as well. He's young, good looking, and parties in a godless manner with various vaginas - the polar opposite of stupid Kurt Warner. So long as the Cardinals embrace a fun-in-the-sun team mentality, allowing Leinart to thrive, they can find massive success I imagine. Edgerrin James seems like a good fit with that, and a much better mentor for the young Leinart than Warner.
SENIOR PLAYER: Pro Bowl safety (although doesn't half the league make the Pro Bowl now, with injuries and cancellations?) Adrian Wilson was a third rounder in 2001, and thus is the longest tenured fucker on this oddball menagerie of underachievers.
THE RUDY: Back-up safety Aaron Francisco was undrafted out of BYU in 2005, and has been good enough to keep a roster spot, but never good enough to start.
FORMER HURRICANE: Edgerrin James is one of the more The U swaggering players in the NFL. He will always be the best former Hurricane on any team he's on, and it's even more appropriate when you think about all the blonde co-eds floating around Arizona for him to diddle around upon.
VIRGINIA BOY: Tackle Elton Brown was always a big, goofy fave of mine when he played at UVA, but it's hard not to get behind rookie running back Tim Hightower, who came from nowhere to help Richmond have a good I-AA run last year, and earned himself a shot at the NFL in the process. If the University of Richmond wasn't full of so many ultra-rich, ultra-white assholes, I'd probably not even mention Elton Brown. Not that UVA doesn't have the same disease.
WILD SAMOAN: Starting guard and former USC Trojan Deuce Lutui, who came as part of the same draft class as Leinart. Every high profile blue chip quarterback prospect should come pre-equipped with a 330 pound Samoan to block for him.
THE ICKY: Back-up wide receiver Jamaica Rector, who sounds like a made-up character in one of those crappy urban realism novels that are always in the markdown bin at bookstores nowadays.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: Safety Oliver Celestin, using migrant coyotes bringing in steady, easily exploitable labor, to keep his industrial labyrinth humming at a high profit.
FANTASY JERSEY: Straight up, I'd gladly sport a #7 LEINART jambo in the white with red sleeves, because I like this young gigolo Matt Leinart. He's like the new Jim Druckenmiller, cavorting with young women and having questionable alcoholic tendencies, but he has the potential to succeed in such a manner. I bet Suzy Kolber, with her slut eyes, would kiss Leinart.

#23: OAKLAND RAIDERS
PERTINENT DATA: 4-12 last year; 50 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: I bought the Ken Stabler autobiography at a junk store a few years back, and Stabler was great, as you'd expect. But the best thing I got from his book was how when Ted Hendricks came over as a free agent linebacker from the Baltimore Colts, everyone was wondering if he'd fit in with that Raiders style. And the first practice, everyone showed up, but there was no Ted Hendricks. Then, up on the hill, everybody sees him, in full football uniform, except for an actual spiked helmet like on the Raiders logo, sitting on top of a horse, that he rode down to the practice field. That story alone, even if Ken Stabler embellished it or made it up completely, makes Ted Hendricks my favorite Raiders player ever.
TEAM HOSS: I was gonna say some "longhaired country ass whiteboy" bullshit about Robert Gallery, but fuck it, I'm just gonna jump on the bandwagon and say Darren McFadden is gonna be more Adrian Peterson than a motherfucker. He's gonna make Reggie Bush look like a chump ass. He's gonna help the Raiders win 7 games this year, which is saying a ton for a player playing for a team paralyzed by the only NFL owner worse than Dan Snyder.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: I've always considered Marcus Allen a far more appropriate egotistic personality to play the role of O.J. Simpson, who has far more redeeming comedic talents. Although I did see Allen make a cameo on a rerun of the Bernie Mac Show a few weeks ago. He wasn't really funny though. It's also weird to me to think of the same white slut chicks fucking NFL stars and hair metal guitarists back in the day. That's a strange cross-cutting of circles.
TEAM ASS: Wide receiver Ronald Curry was a high profile basketball/football dual-sport recruit out of the Hampton area in high school, and he committed to Virginia, but then reneged and switched to North Carolina, and even though I probably like the state of North Carolina more than my own home state, and living near UVA the past eight years has made me loathe them with a passion. But I still hold it against Ronald Curry. Fuck him.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Well, beyond the obvious of Al Davis' old out-of-touch ass riding around in a golf cart, the future of the Raiders is gonna depend on whether JaMarcus Russell's big ass can be a pro QB or not. Darren McFadden is a running back, and he'll get his luster, and it might be bright, but there's always another shining RB floating around Division I college football. But QBs are harder to come by, and Russell was a questionable member of that #1 pick club, but Al Davis is willing to live with a strong-armed 255 pound QB. How the fuck do you have a quarterback bigger than a fullback?
SENIOR PLAYER: Polock kicker Sebastian Janikowski was a first round pick in 2000. I'm sure Al Davis will keep him until he dies since he wasted a first round pick on a mediocre, troublesome, overweight kicker.
THE RUDY: Tommy Kelly was undrafted out of Mississippi State in 2004, worked his way into the starting line-up, and just got a new contract so ridiculous that even he made public comments about how shocking it was.
FORMER HURRICANE: William Joseph, who washed out in New York with Giants, and was part of their offseason purging of Hurricane players, is getting a second chance in Oakland, the homeplace of NFL second chances. Well, I guess there's Dallas now too, but Jerry Jones and his old white guy imitation of Michael Jackson's face is not as fun as Al Davis.
VIRGINIA BOY: Speaking of second chances, DeAngelo Hall was run off from Atlanta as part of their offseason purging of Va. Tech Hokies players, but Al Davis threw a golf cart pull-along wagon full of money at him and now Hall feels loved again in Oakland. He'll do well there, and they will either end up being a pretty tight somewhat anonymous defense, or the most overpaid stupidest half of the ball in recent memory, with Hall and Kelly dripping fresh bling.
WILD SAMOAN: In lieu of actual Samoans (shocking for NorCal), I give you the tag team of former California Bears of starting cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha and O-lineman Adimchinobe Echemandu. It is obvious that while USC is building up a rep as being good to Polynesians, Cal is turning towards recruiting in Nigeria or some shit.
THE ICKY: Terdell Sands parents were not cool to him, or were just too stupid to think about what they were naming the kid. I'm sure it's one of those hybrid names, like his father's name was Ladell and his mother's name was Terri. And he probably does the T.O. thing and says, "It's TEAR-dell, not TUR-dell." But whatever man.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: I think a guy named Cooper Carlisle was Secretary of Labor under LBJ.
FANTASY JERSEY: #99 SAPP, in evil ominous black. You will not be forgotten, you big fruity stoner. I think what sucks about the NFL coverage on network TV is how vanilla it is. Why the fuck would you pick Michael Strahan's gaptoothed dork ass to annoy people with his color commentary as a former professional, when Warren Sapp is right fucking there?

#24: CINCINNATI BENGALS
PERTINENT DATA: 7-9 last year; 60 to 1 odds to win the Super Bowl this year.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Icky Woods, because he could shuck and jive in a greatly comedic manner. Plus, his name was Icky.
TEAM HOSS: Deltha O'Neal is no longer the starting headhunter racking up fines like he once was, but he's playing his third corner role better than would be expected from a former glory hog. And on a team full of assholes I don't really like, he's about the best I can find on their roster.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: Cris Collinsworth was an annoying white bread fucker when he played, but now as self-important, pretentious ass know-it-all that’s on my television four out of every five minutes in between games during football seasons, god fucking damn. I used to wish he’d shut up but now I wish he’d get crushed by construction cranes. Smarmy ass motherfucker.
TEAM ASS: Chad Johnson is an overrated piece of shit all the way around. He's overrated, most oftenly by himself, as an elite receiver; and he's overrated by hipster dumbasses of the sports variety as being a wackily great character into today's football landscape. His antics, much like T.O.'s actually, are the feeble cries for attention of a soft-spoken man obviously trapped inside the closet of repressed homosexuality. Like doing that fake cover of himself buck naked for ESPN magazine - a mag whose subscriber demographic is ENTIRELY ADULT MALES. I do not hate all homosexuals, but I do hate repressed homosexuals, because if you are something, be that, proudly. Jump into a room full of assholes with doorknobs made of dickheads. Although, it is gonna be funny to look back on him putting on that Hall of Fame jacket, when the closest he's gonna get is attending the ceremonies when... well, no Bengals will probably get inducted. Maybe he'll go to look at Michael Irvin's bust though.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: The Brown family, without a doubt. Marvin Lewis was my easy pick, as this ship is either gonna sink or barely stay afloat with his career this year. But then Mike Brown forced Chris Henry's delinquent ass back on Lewis. What the fuck is up with the Brian Billick coaching tree? Billick is supposed offensive mastermind but coaches a team with an absolutely impotent offense kept alive by a punishing defense. Then Marvin Lewis, defensive general for the ages, goes to Cincinnati, and they lose games where they score 40-plus points. I guess they came from the Denny Green tree though (I think, but I don't wanna look it up, take it for gospel since it's on the internets) and Green was the king of strange contradictions, where good teams were bad and shitty teams did wonderful.
SENIOR PLAYER: Tackle Willie Anderson was a first round pick in 1996, and by the end of the year, could have played in more games as a Bengal than any other player ever.
THE RUDY: Punter Kyle Larsen came as a college free agent out of Nebraska in 2004.
FORMER HURRICANE: No Hurricanes, but they do have Miami of Ohio alum John Busing as a back-up safety/special teamerist.
VIRGINIA BOY: Linebacker Ahmad Brooks was high school player of the year when he came to UVA, and was supposed to make them a defensive juggernaut in the ACC. He ended up getting booted off the team after all sorts of shady, egotistic actions. He was taken in the supplemental draft one year, which usually only entailed NFL Europe players back then, and he's worked his way into the starting lineup. But he's not really been what he could be, and probably never will be. His pops was former Redskin, Perry Brooks.
WILD SAMOAN: Dane Uperesa is a 300-plus pound offensive lineman from Hawaii with a vowel-heavy surname, so I can only assume he is descended from the island kings of the Pacific.
THE ICKY: Frostee Rucker is a great ass name, almost as good as Icky Woods. If Frostee could start doing a wacky dance whenever he got a sack (which is rare), I might would change this category to The Frostee.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: T.J. Houshmanzadeh imported Afghani rugs through California ports and sold them for dollars on the penny to gold and oil barons spending newly mined money like mad.
FANTASY JERSEY: I'd love one of those ugly ass orange tiger stripe sleeved jerseys with #84 HOUSHMANZADEH barely fitting across the back. I'd probably make it misspelled by one letter too, just to see if anybody noticed.