This Week's Picks

It is coming to your city, if you want a little zing in your zang-zang. It is time for the start of our favorite professional sport: College Football

If you don’t count the death of Joe Paterno and the practical death Penn State football, the discovery that the least charismatic coach in the SEC was a horn dog, the announcement that big time College Football will finally have a playoff and that UGA/LSU/TENNEESSEE kicked STAR players off of their teams for various felonies/misdemeanors (all of which involved Wacky Tobacky) nothing much happened in the off season.

Now this nation, which is going through a Presidential election, turns its lonely eyes to this one particular game that kicks off the season which kicks off hours of watching TV commercials about solving the vast problem of male impotency by sitting in twin tubs in your back yard.

Of course, this game is the Kutztown vs. St Anselm.

Kutztown is a public university in Kutztown, Pennesylvania which is a “quaint borough with an overall area of roughly 1.6 square miles. The campus is in a beautiful rural Pennsylvania Dutch community". Nothing says ‘party’ to a young person more than the words “quaint borough”and "rural Pennsylvania". St Anselm is a small school in New Hampshire that tells perspective students: “Whether you want to be a doctor, teacher, nurse, or lawyer; start your own business or make films—or you simply know you want to make a difference and you want to figure out the best way to do it, Saint Anselm will tell you that you didn’t build that or do it on your own”. When they played last year, Kutztown won 56-30. You could say they kicked some Anselm.

This week’s picks!

Dawgies vs. Bulls and/or Bills: Last year, Georgia started the season with a game against Boise State, which was a huge mistake, particularly if you remember the Dawgs uniforms looked like one of those bad LSD trips you heard about in the 60’s. The University of Buffalo is no Boise State. Dawgs win.

Buzzy vs. Turkeys: Georgia Tech, led by Head Coach Paul (Happy Face) Johnson, will have a good season this year. Honest. It is just won’t start out that good. Virginia Tech wins.

Urange Tigers vs. Wartigereagleplainsmen: Clemson is one of those teams that always looks good early in the year and then explode into an awesome sea of badness. Plus, their head coach is named “Dabo”. I generally never pick an ACC team over a SEC team. I won’t this time: Auburn wins.

The Tears vs. The Werewolves of Raleigh: This is a big year for Tennessee Head Coach Derek Dooley who needs to do something to impress the Volunteer Nation besides wearing orange pants. Winning football games might help. They’ll win this one. Tennessee wins

Chickens vs. The Commode Doors: I can’t say enough about the job Steve Spurrier has done at South Carolina. Although he is a paranoid psychotic, I love the guy and can do a fairly good impression. Vanderbilt almost had a winning season last year. I can’t do an impression of Vandy Head Coach James Franklin, but I’m happy to report that he started his coaching career at …Kutztown. If there is any team that going to go to the SEC Championship to get beat by either LSU or Bama (besides Georgia), it is South Carolina. Chickens win.

Meechigan vs. Bamy: All Alabama did last year was win the BCS Championship without winning their conference or their division. They lost a lot to the NFL, but Bama just reloads. Michigan seems like they are back. They just aren’t back far enough. Bama wins.

Nerds

It has been 35 years since I graduated from high school, which means I am an official old coot. Thank you. Now get off my lawn.

It seems like yesterday I was tooling around Marietta listening to “Sweet Home Alabama” on the radio. In fact, it was yesterday and 1977. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that song and “Hotel California”, I could retire the national debt.

There was this girl in my class. She was the fairest of them all. She was pretty and sweet and kind and had a sense of humor. She was way out of my league. However, she treated me well. She dated one of the handsome boys in the class and they made the cutest couple: Mr. and Mrs. Steve and Suzy Suave.

Graduation Day came and went. Suzy went one way. I went the other. I saw her at our 10 year reunion, but I don’t remember talking to her that much. I was too busy trying to convince people that my new wife (Lori) was not blind.

At the 20 year reunion, I was at the buffet line when Suzy Suave came up to me. She was still as pretty and lovely as ever. We had, as we say in the South, “the nicest little chat”. I saw my wife out of the corner of my eye. It is not what you think-it was not the stink eye. It was the "I'm going to make fun of you for the rest of your life". When I sat down Lori said, “I. Didn’t. Know. You. Knew. Suzy. Suave.” and laughed at me. I told her, “I didn’t either”, but my ego was going “Yay! Yay! Attention from Suzy Suave. Yay! That’s great”.

Ten more years pass and we’re at my 30 year reunion. I saw all of my old gang, including one guy who had become a country music song writer. It was funny to notice how old everybody looked while I kept my boyish charm.

I ran into Suzy. We exchanged hugs. I think that is the first time I had ever touched her in my life. Then she said these words.

“Oh, Alan, it is so great to see you. You know, you and Moody [see Humor Me 6/8/11] were my favorite NERDS.”

As the late, great Harry Chapin once said [By the way, he was one depressed human being. All of his songs were these eight minute combination dirge/sermons about feeling really bad], “One man might have been angry and another man might have been hurt”. But I was neither, I was just happy to be a favorite something of this person who was kind of a big deal at my high school.

I would admit that I did have an image of being a nerd back then. Thick glasses (check). Pimples that industrial strength Clearsil couldn’t help (check). Short (check). Goofy Looking (check). Odd body odor/bad breath (check and check). Hair that was oily and had a mind of its own (check).

However, I didn’t make nerd-like grades. I wasn’t good in math. Science was just science. Don’t hate, but Star Trek was just okay to me and it took me a while to warm up to Monty Python.

But there are worse things in the world than being a nerd. Nobody likes a jerk. Nobody likes a creep. Nerds are nice in their own weird way. Suzy Suave paid me a compliment.

Paul Ryan: Kitty Killer

Okay, I was wrong. I said that Mitt Romney would select Senator Marco Rubio as his running mate (Humor Me: May 30, 2012). I wrote, “The name that everyone talks about is Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. He is young, bright, and articulate: in other words, everything Joe Biden is not. On the down side, he is not that well known and some people think he is a game kids play at the pool (“Marco” “Rubio”; “Marco” Rubio”)” [Look, I know it is vain to quote yourself in your own blog. But, I’m cool with it.]

Hey, at least I got the letter of the last name right: Romney went with Paul Ryan, the Congressman from Wisconsin who apparently is one of those Republicans that’s handy with a calculator. He wrote the House Budget, which recommends throwing old people off of cliffs to save Medicare. This is more than the Senate Democrats have done, which is to focus their laser like attention to Mitt Romney and his amazing ability never to have paid any tax (including sales tax) in his life due to his super Mormon mojo. (“Look into my eyes…do not add 7% to my grocery receipt..”)

Ryan poses an interesting problem for Democrats. The template Democrats have used nationally to describe Republicans is that Republicans are D-U-M dumb. This goes back at least 60 years to the Eisenhower-Stevenson race in which the man that liberated Europe was presented as a total doofus compared to the intellectual from Libertyville. (Man, that Liberal Arts degree sure comes in handy when writing a humor blog). Reagan, of course, was stupid. So was Dad Bush. We thought Kid Bush took stupid to a whole new level until we met Sarah Palin, who acted like reading was a chore.

Ryan, as even Maureen Dowd would admit, is not stupid. In fact, he seems almost as smart as a Democrat. How will Democrats negatively portray this Republican? Don’t worry, the Democrats have it all figured out: they’ll just say anything that pops into their heads. They have political Tourette Syndrome-out of nowhere they’ll start blurting out all sorts of charges and claims that do not make a lot of sense.

Already, Team Obama has accused Mitt Romney of being a felon. Last week, a Super PAC headed by former Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, ran an ad that held Romney responsible for the cancer death of a Steel Worker’s wife because, well, Romney’s company once owned the steel mill but then closed it after Romney left Bain Capital but that doesn’t matter because she died and he didn’t care. On the floor of the Senate, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid said that “someone” told him that Romney had not paid any income tax in 10 years. I would think that would qualify Romney to be the Secretary of The Treasury if that was true. Even Vice President Biden has gotten in on the act by saying that Romney’s banking policies would lead to a return of slavery (“They’re going to put y’all back in chains”). They’re trying to turn Donny Osmond into a Latter Day Snidely Whiplash

If Democrats can throw this type of mud at a Mormon, think what they’ll throw at Ryan. Al Sharpton (okay, I know he’s not a head of a think tank) made a gigantic big deal over Ryan’s PX90 body (he’s too busy working out). Chris Matthews is having the vapors that Ryan read Ayn Rand as a teenager. Last time, the scandal was the VP candidate didn’t read newspapers.

I fully expect to see a Super PAC ad saying “Mitt Romney and his kitty killer running mate, Paul Ryan, wants to make your Grandmother eat a can of Fancy Feast while they push her wheelchair off of a cliff after shooting her with an assault rifle. Then Paul Ryan will go back to her house, put all of her little kittens in a paper bag, soak the paper bag in lighter fluid and put a match to it. Then he’ll steal her car and meet up with Romney at Chick-fil-A and have a chicken hate sandwich”.

The problem for the Republicans is that old adage: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get muddy and the pig enjoys it”. Right now, the pig is enjoying it too much.

The Fourth Most Over-Rated Thing

The late and great Lewis Grizzard once said, “The three most over-rated things in life are home cooking, extra martial sex, and Rock City”. Home cooking is over-rated because it really depends upon the home. Rock City is over-rated because you basically just walk around and look at rocks. You also get to see the “breathtaking” view of seven states, although, you're not sure which ones you are looking at. I’ve only seen two states the times I’ve been to Rock City: Georgia and Tennessee. Rock City owes me five more states. I have to trust Grizzard’s assessment about extra martial sex being over-rated because I’ve been a good boy, however I would like to add one more to the list: The Olympics.

I like The Olympics as much as anybody. By that I mean, I watch it and then forget about it for four years.

The Olympics this year is being held in London, England. The opening ceremonies were an odd mixture of the very stupid mixed with the bad idea. It supposedly started in the pastoral England-gave some perfunctory lines from somebody named Shakespeare-then went straight into the Industrial Revolution. I couldn’t tell if this was good or bad.

Then the Queen of England was involved in a skit in which she supposedly parachutes into the stadium with Mr. Bean or was it James Bond? That was followed by a Salute to Socialized Medicine. The country that gave us The Magna Carta (which wasn’t mentioned) is now celebrating The National Health Service. Thanks to The National Health Service, the wait for a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down is only six to eight months.

The games have been the games. It seems there is this thing called time and London is in a different time zone than the United States. So by the time the good stuff comes on, in prime time (imagine that) most of us already know who has won the particular event. 

I’ve seen a lot of Women’s Almost Nekkid Volleyball, a.k.a “Beach Volleyball”. Up until I was a middle aged man, I was not aware that this was an Olympic sport. Women's Beach Volleyball is two almost nekkid girls playing volleyball with two other almost nekkid girls from another countries. If you have a weak heart, you better take your baby aspirin before this event. Even in the game in which Team USA wore long sleeve t-shirts I still had Jimmy Carter sized lust in my heart.

My cynicism over The Olympics stems from the 1996 Olympics which were held here in Atlanta. How Atlanta got The Olympics, I have no idea. I remember six years of build up just to have the world come to Atlanta and tell her it stinks. The world was pretty much right. 

We went to two events. One was the Italy vs South Korea baseball game. What I remember was that the three, four, and five hitters for South Korea were Yong, Dong, and Bong. The uniforms for Italy looked like the Los Angeles Dodgers. That’s my Olympic memory of that game.

The second event we went to was the Gold Medal Baseball game between Cuba and Japan. (Baseball was the easiest ticket to get.) Our seats were in left field of the dearly departed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. I caught a practice ball thrown into the stands by Team Japan. Really. My wife saw then Georgia governor Zelbert "Zell" Miller walking around the stadium. Cuba won, I think. Team USA got the bronze medal in the sport that we invented.

After the game, we had to wait on the buses to take us back to Cobb County. We waited in a hot August night, with a five year old, for two hours. Never go to an Olympic gold medal game at night with a five year old is something I would advise all young parents. I’m not bragging, but our son did real good considering the circumstances. Once a member of the transportation team walked up and announced that if you are “pregnant or have diabetes, you can go to the front of the line”. My son asked if we were pregnant.

They finally loaded us on a bus, packed literally like sardines, and sent us on our way back to Marietta. Our son fell asleep, standing up. We should have given him a gold medal.