I want to start off by apologizing for not blogging more frequently, but as the late John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I know that might seem shallow letting my regular life, family and my regular paying job get in the way of my charitable non-paying writing gig, but I’m just a selfish, cynical bastard any way. And if you hadn’t figured it out by now, then you are definitely riding the line between dopey and “why isn’t this person wearing a helmet?” Yeah I know, try decaff.

During my self-imposed exile, several things have happened that made me want to look at people in that tilted dog head stare. You know the one where your dog looks you dead in the face and then slowly rotates his head to one side while seeming to say, “WTF dude?” I mean the Super Bowl for one. Come on people, you actually believe that on any given day the Taints would beat the Colts? I didn’t. Caldwell pulled out the old Dungy everybody deserves a hug for trying so hard playbook and laid a giant-sized turd in Miami for all to see. Peyton chokes in another big one, Peyton can’t win the big games, and my favorite; Peyton threw the game for his old hometown (insert dog head turn here). I haven’t talked much football with anyone since that game, A) because there isn’t any football and B) because I still have that throw-up taste in my mouth from February 7th that I can’t seem to get rid of no matter how many Altoids I eat. I really need to move on don’t I?

At least the draft showed up in time to shine a little light into the collective black hole that is my life. We needed to draft an offensive line since our running game of late has been about as strong as Ellen DeGeneres in a strong man competition. So what does Bill do? He drafted defense in the first three rounds and grabbed only one offensive line man out of the seven rounds. Normally I’d be getting upset about now, but Bill has proven me wrong more times than not. Anybody remember the 2001 draft when we so needed defensive help and Uncle Bill drafted a wide receiver? Who knew that little boy from south Florida that everyone called “Johnny Floorchicken” due to his love of playing video games on the floor while eating buckets of domesticated fried fowl would grow up to be Reggie Wayne? And now you know the rest of the story.

While I’m on the subject of random things that rub me the wrong way, I believe they should impose the death penalty or at least a severe caning for any douchenozzle already at or BELOW the speed limit that slams on his brakes while on the highway just because he sees a police car. If you are not speeding why the #%&* do you need to slow down? If the %&*@ING cop is on the other side of the concrete wall, the barrier will not magically open up to allow him to traverse 6 lanes of traffic just to write you a ticket for going 49 in a 55. You would be better off riding a bus or just sitting your ass at home and keeping the roads safe for the rest of us.

I could write an entire book on the interesting people and things you can see at your local Walmart, but I’ll try and keep it brief. Just because you are too lazy to walk while you shop, that doesn’t give your fat ass in the motorized wheelchair the right of way all over the store. There are other people in the store besides you that have a little self respect and discipline enough left to actually walk through the store to get their super sized box of lard filled, frosting-buried Hostess snack cakes. Don’t give me that line of crap that you need the scooter to get around because I saw you leap out of that seat and run over to the refrigerator case once you realized there was only one package of chocolate covered bacon left. The only person you are fooling is yourself. Give the rest of us and that poor overworked scooter a much needed break.

Something else that is really bothering me is the media. I’m not trying to get political here, but if the BP oil spill would have happened on GW’s watch the media would have crucified him on the hour. “It is now hour 504 of George Bush’s epic failure to help save the planet. Why does he hate the American people, clean water, clean air and fuzzy puppies & kittens? Details on this in the next hour as well as an exclusive interview with a woman who claims President Bush once wouldn’t let her cut in front of him in line at the slide at recess.” Now it’s even hard just to hear the news over the loud sucking sound heard when they talk about the current president. The harshest criticism I’ve heard was “he’s trying”. GMAFB! Bush hates black people because he mobilized the National Guard and declared a national emergency two days BEFORE hurricane Katrina even touched land, but Obama waits eight days before he even publicly commented on the oil spill and then he only said he was going to send advisors to the site, EIGHT DAYS LATER! Oh yeah, that’s fair and unbiased coverage.

Alright I said I wasn’t going to get political, tough $#!+. I changed my mind. If you don’t like it, go write your own blog that I’ll incessantly ignore or only read to make fun of and point out the grammatical errors. Since when did it become wrong to defend our borders? It is in the freaking Constitution of the United States (that is the document that our current president and his friends choose to ignore when it suits their purpose) that the government is responsible for the defense and protection of our borders. The governor of Arizona is merely trying to enforce federal law. It is not racial discrimination it is a cold hard fact. Who is coming over the border illegally; the Russians, Chinese, Africans, Canadians, the French? No, it is the Mexicans. The Mexican president is appalled that we are upset over people entering the United States illegally. He can’t understand why. I’ll tell you why, the people that are leaving Mexico and entering Arizona aren’t the hard working, please let me pick your fruit and cut your grass type of Mexicans. No these are the move into your house while you are out and the slash your throat while you are sleeping kind of Mexicans.  Of course the Mexican president is upset that we won’t take his drug dealing, murdering citizens into our huddled masses and love them like our own. Did you know that the minimum sentence in Mexico for illegally entering their country is 2 years in a Mexican prison? But President Felipe expects us to welcome Mexicans illegally into our country with open arms. Practice what you preach amigo.

I really need football to center my focus and to keep me from climbing up in a bell tower with an automatic weapon to cleanse the soil of the unworthy ones. Do we even have any bell towers in Indianapolis? Is it me, or does Indy sports talk radio really suck now. WNDE is a mere shadow of its former self. The only thing I want to rack on the Jim Rome Show is Jim Rome. And can any of you honestly tell me you think Mark Patrick is funny?  The only person that thinks Mark Patrick is funny is the guy that stares back at him in the mirror and at times I have my doubts about that.  JMV, where are you? You brought an intelligent humor, smut and charm to sports radio. Now we are stuck with Mr. Pompusassington and his never ending love of himself. If JMV’s departure from the Indy airwaves wasn’t hard enough on me, the management at Emmis Communications saw it in their infinite wisdom to split up the comedy team of Kravitz and Eddie. These guys were comedy gold! How will I ever survive without hearing Kravitz’s insightful ramblings in the afternoons? (insert dog head turn here) Rumor has it our friend JMV will be returning to the airwaves of Indianapolis. When, I do not know. I was told to be patient. I can only hope it is before I Google “Bell Towers Indianapolis”.

So sayeth the Meanie

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Since the writing of this piece JMV has returned to the airwaves of Indianapolis replacing Kravitz and Eddie’s time slot on 1070 The Fan, yay.

I haven’t posted on any boards.  I have barely read any football news since the Colts committed suicide on national television.  I’m still kind of numb.  Granted it was kinda nice that New Orleans finally got a Super Bowl despite that gawd awful “Who dat?” phrase.  Jesus, I heard it so much that week that it was almost like I was an extra on the set of the Waterboy II.   Well life goes on, but I really don’t know if I feel like discussing football right now.  As Bill Polian said, it’s the past, move on.  So who am I to argue?

Since I didn’t have football to occupy my mind, I needed something else to help burn off some of the extra spastic brain energy that had built up in my think melon.  Mass quantities of alcohol and Rock Band, Beatles style, YES!  That was the ticket!    I called my band mates and had them over, started feeding the alcohol fueled machine and then put the kids to bed.  We made it through “Something” where my band mates carried their own weight all while I scored 100% on both the bass and harmony parts.  I rocked that plastic imitation Hofner bass like nobody’s business!  My drummer attempted to pick another tune for us to do, but was unable to do so.  You know drummers, not the smartest lot.  So I used my own controller to get the band going again, all to no avail.  At that moment, the lead singer pointed at my Xbox 360 and said, “What do those red lights mean?”  Yes my friends, it was the Red Ring of Death.  For those of you non-360 owners, the Red Ring of Death is a feature built into every one of Microsoft’s game consoles that activates a critical hardware failure every time Microsoft’s stock drops below $25.17 a share.  So now I had a new problem.  I had these drunk guys in my house jonesing to scream Beatles songs at the top of their lungs all while acting like they had some semblance of musical talent.  Someone suggested we go to Wal-Mart and buy a new Xbox, bring it back to my house, swap the hard drives out and take the dead one back to Wally-World.  What a great idea!  Now all we had to do was to figure out who was going to drive our drunken asses to Wal-Mart.  To answer that complex question we decided to play Wii bowling.  The loser would drive.  We decided a best out of three format was best.  After we determined the driver we needed to figure out who was going to purchase the temporary 360 to later return it.  That meant that we had to play another match set to determine the purchaser and even another to determine who was going to drive us back, because it wasn’t fair to make the original driver do again.  Well, it wasn’t fair unless he lost his ass at bowling again.  It got to be 2am and we had yet to assign all of the important positions, when the urge for Tombstone pizzas took over.  I distinctly remember telling all of them to leave their pants on just in case my one of daughters woke up before they stumbled home.  Well unfortunately, I wasn’t the first one up.  But fortunately they were all able to pass out in my downstairs without removing any articles of clothing.

I eventually got up and kicked my band mates out, but not before my daughters had drawn things on their exposed skin during their alcohol induced slumber.  A day of rest is what I had planned for the rest of the day, but my wife had other plans.  She told me her mother wanted to check out Indiana Live casino and do a little gambling.  Well, I could be up for that.  Hell, my Monster-in-Law even volunteered to drive and get a babysitter for the girls, bonus.  Saturday at the casino was packed.  Every machine was filled.  I had to wait 45 minutes just for a seat at one of the blackjack tables.  I finally got a seat and was a happy camper.  The table wasn’t very friendly and I was starting to get a little concerned, when Randy our illustrious Blue Crew President came up and said, “Looks like you could use a beer.”  Well hell yeah I could.  I took one sip of that magic elixir and I swear I heard the Popeye music going off in my head.  You know the tune that plays whenever Popeye chugs a can of spinach?  I was ready for action!  I started on a tear and could not lose.  This is just what I needed.  What I didn’t need was my mother-in-law coming up and asking me how much I had in the machine because we had to leave.  I explained to her that I was on a role and that I should at least play it out.  She didn’t care, she wanted to leave.  Just then my wife showed up.  A glimmer of hope came over me.  My wife looked me dead in the face and said, “Mom wants to go.”  You’ve got to be kidding me?  I reiterated my streak and Randy even helped plead my case all to no avail.  Randy offered to take me home and I even offered to pay for a cab.  Oh no, the Monster-in-Law had to leave and I had to leave with her or her daughter would receive the brunt of her wrath in my absence.  %#@& ME!

Oh look, morning and more snow.  So this makes what, 3 shovelings in less than 7 days?  Oh I love my life.  Nothing quite says fun like shoveling heavy snow with a surgically repaired back with no help.  Several beers, oxycontin and a heating pad later I was in a happier place, at least for a moment.

Monday came around and it was time to go back to work.  Well for me at least, the girls had a holiday from school.  I drove around in the crappy continuing snow all day and prayed for my day to be over.  I finally made it back home and the girls were still in their PJs playing the Wii just as I left them several hours earlier.  Did I mention that it snowed all day and no one touched the driveway?  I thought I would do something nice (God knows why), so I decided to make some spaghetti with my wonderful, soon to be famous homemade sauce (those of you that have had it can contest to its amazingness).  Got the sauce simmering and went out to shovel my untouched driveway, which AGAIN is just great on my surgically repaired back.  Came in made a drink.  Threw in the garlic bread and started boiling the water for the pasta.  After I placed the garlic bread on the island to cool, it was time to drain the pasta.  Apparently it was also time for Loki (my collie) to claim the garlic bread as his own from the counter.  I guess I really didn’t want any garlic bread.  At times, I think the guy upstairs really doesn’t like me.  Is it football season yet?

So sayeth the Meanie,

Yell, scream GO HORSE!!!

Alright I’ve been quiet all week, and you all know how hard that is for me.  I know my opinions and usually have no qualms about sharing them with anybody.  This has been a little different for me.  Uncharted waters in the recesses of my mind if you will.  When something jumps into my twisted little head, it usually finds its way out without much trouble at all.   Despite all my attempts at being “nice” and going the politically correct route, the levee of restraint in my mind has broken.

New Orleans doesn’t deserve to win the Super Bowl because of Katrina.  Some New York sports writing wannabe said that if you didn’t live in Indianapolis and you weren’t rooting for the Saints then you have no soul.  God is not up in heaven sporting a Reggie Bush replica jersey, wearing a giant foam Saints finger on his left hand thinking, “Yeah that storm really messed that community up.  I think I’ll give Peyton a case of explosive diarrhea.”  Not happening.  The Almighty has other things to worry about like who’s going to star in the next “Twilight” movie and whether or not Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian this week.  Let the arrows fly.

I will be the first to say, what happened in New Orleans was a terrible tragedy.  It was a terrible thing to happen.  I do not believe God intended to smite the people of New Orleans with Katrina.  For those of you Old Testament fans, you will agree with me that there probably was a whole lot going on down there that would given God ample reasons to pull out the smite card and play it on that city, but I do not believe that was the case.  The people had plenty of warning.  Weather satellites and radar tracking had the storm pegged down to the minute of its arrival.  If someone told me my home was going to be demolished in a storm and showed me proof and told me when it was going to happen, I think I would have left town for a few days just in case, but that is just me.

I think it is great that the community has come together over their team.  That is one of the reasons we watch football, for the social interaction and fellowship.  Indianapolis lost a great radio host when JMV left 1260 Sports Radio, now we are stuck with Mark “I’m my own biggest fan” Patrick.  1070 The Fan cut super Colts fan Jersey Johnny’s radio show and left us with Bob Kravitz.  Is that fair?  Katrina came and went.  Kravitz is on weekdays from 3-6 so who’s getting punished now?  We dey!  I like the argument that the Saints deserve to win because they have never won a Super Bowl.  I’ve never had syphilis.  Does that mean I deserve a painful STD?  No it doesn’t.

What happened in Indy when the Colts won Super Bowl XLI?  People gathered in the streets and hugged.  Grown men cried, and the entire community had a new sense of pride that our hometown boys had reached the pinnacle of their season.  A crowd of several hundred thousand gathered out in the freezing cold to welcome our boys home with a parade and a celebration in the old RCA Dome.  What would happen in New Orleans if the Saints won?  I’ll tell you what’s going to happen; pure and utter chaos, looting the likes of which you have never seen.  Cars will be burning in the street, windows will be smashed all over downtown, the destruction will be of biblical proportions that will make that hurricane seem more like an April shower.  Again, I’m not downplaying the terrible tragedy of Katrina, but is there anyone out there that can honestly look me in the face and tell me I’m wrong?

This game is not about what community did what, or what celebrity is rooting for whom and who they are dating.  This game is about preparation, hard work and dedication.  Sure the whole tragedy thing is a good angle to sell newspapers and advertising space, but in the end it is not what wins the game.  In the end, it’s Peyton Manning that wins the game.

So sayeth the Meanie,

Yell, scream, GO HORSE!!!

We are the absolute worst ever 14-0 team that has ever existed. Not only in the National Football League and all of football, but since way before the Greeks oiled themselves up, shoved torches in their asses and ran naked around volcanoes until the torch burnt down far enough the runner quit. The last man standing in that contest so to speak was crowned the “campione”, which is loosely translated as “the idiot with the charbroiled ass that won, but still had a charbroiled ass nonetheless.”

This year I’ve watched this team overcome adversity all season long, no matter what form it came in. We’ve won defensive battles when the offense wasn’t clicking, we’ve won without time of possession, we’ve won shootouts and we’ve done it all while having a good number of players not healthy and ready to go. But still the talking heads in the media put the same old spin on it every week. The Colts got lucky, and got a gift. That gift has come in many forms; Belichick being Belichick, the refs actually doing their job, teams giving us the victory, opposing teams penalizing themselves with stupid penalties, and the new one is that we got a gift from Chad Simpson for running a kick back for a touchdown. Isn’t that his job as a kick returner? While I’m on the subject of the game Thursday night against the Sparkle Kitties, I’d like to share with you some of the intelligent comments our friends at ESPN were saying about the victory:

–>No disrespect to the Colts, but the Jags lost this game (no $#!+?)

–>They never should have let Reggie burn them (like they had an option?)

–>The Jaguars dominated the Colts all game. If it weren’t for the return Colts lose (someone didn’t watch the game did they?)

–>You see holes in this team every week (and every week we overcome them jackhole!)

–>The defense is the weak spot on this team (if being ranked 3^rd in the NFL is weak, I’ll take that)

–>The Colts didn’t match the intensity of the Jaguars (because we didn’t wear teal?)

–>Teams will show the film of the Jags game to their players as a blueprint on how to beat the Colts. (??? Didn’t Miami present the blueprint too?)

–>The Colts confidence has been punched in the mouth and they are hurting (from what, laughing so hard?)

–>If you look at this Colts team their record may be, but they are far from perfect (Howard Cosell must laughing from heaven at how sports journalism has changed)

Wow that is some in-depth reporting there.

The hate just doesn’t come from the Four Letter Network, I’ve seen it surfing the net. People on different blogs saying how much they hate Peyton Manning. Why, because he works hard, he’s successful and gives a lot of money to charities? Is it because he has more money than most European countries? I mean I dislike other teams, but I can honestly say I don’t hate specific players. Well, all except Tom Brady. He’s such a whiney little douche bag you just have to hate his swarmy little face unless you are a Patriots bandwagoner. But if things keep trending the way they are, there are going to be a lot of empty seats on the Tom Brady fan bus.

The sports “experts” go out of their way to look for excuses why the Colts won. Are they still mad at us for all the nice things they said about us in 2005? Were they snake bitten and are now forever afraid to say anything positive about the Colts? If you remember they all said our window was closing because of the age of our team. Uh we are the third youngest if you care to check the facts. These guys spew hatred for the Colts regardless of the facts. At least when Bob Kravitz gets his facts wrong it’s not on purpose to be spiteful, it’s just because he’s stupid. There are things I don’t like in life, but I don’t go making $#!+ up about it because I don’t like it.

If you think I’m off base here, let me prove my point. Think back to 2007 and the Patriots run at perfection. It was almost like Victory Day in Europe each time the Patriots stepped closer to that perfect season. They just barely beat us, the Giants, Baltimore and Philly. The rest of the schedule comprised of two games each against the Jets, Miami, and Buffalo. In 2007 they were all pathetic. But yet the resourceful Patriots found a way to win because they were a great team. Never once was it suggested that they got a gift. They were all well deserved victories, bull $#!+ people, bull $#!+. The one thing that does make me smile is that I can walk up to a Patriot fan and say 18-1, BWWWAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!! Don’t think for a second that the media would love to see the Colts falter and the Saints run the table. I saw a video on Youtube of Skip Bayless performing an odd voodoo ritual chanting something about protecting the Saints and punishing the Colts all while slashing the throat of a chicken. Well, it wasn’t really a live chicken, it was a bucket of Popeye’s chicken. But it was pretty creepy watching him fondle the tasty fried fowl while Mark Schlereth swung a rubber chicken over his head wearing an inside out Peyton Manning jersey and dancing to the Macarena.

While reveling in the Patriots failure, that reminds me of the silver lining in the cloud that is the sports talking heads ramblings. The look on their faces after they guaranteed a loss is priceless. I swear to God it looked like Deion Sanders was going to cry Thursday night. The same for Mark Schlereth. This dude was an asshole when he was a player and he seems to have perfected the art as a sports commentator. Why do you think his title is “Sports Analyst”? It is not just a coincidence. In the pre-game all they talked about was how the Colts were going to lose. I’m sure during commercials Mark and Deion were consoling each other in each other’s arms after the Colts proved them wrong again.

So sayeth the Meanie.

Yell, scream, GO HORSE!!!