The Best of...

After being inspired by one of my new MySpace "friends", who probably is currently freaked out by my overly-friendly nature, I am starting this blog. She has her own blog, too, so you can thank her for me. Amazingly, when she started her blog, I am pretty sure I wouldn't have known what one was.

I figured to avoid losing my wonderful musings from my MySpace blog, I would transcribe (okay, CTRL + C) some of them over here for anyone who wants to read. I think alot about music, sports, politics, etc. So hopefully you will enjoy my pop-culture musings, along with a bit of my life, I guess. So here goes, enjoy!

Originally from 1/23/06:

So we found out that the Seattle Seahawks and the Pittsburgh Steelers will play in Super Bowl "XL", which I've noticed no one is calling Super Bowl 40. The fact that the Roman numerals are also a clothing size is just too damned amusing to most people. Being the nerd I am, I figured this double entendre out about 10 years ago, so the joy is sadly lost on me. I do wonder, though, if we'll experience this phenomenon again in 10 years...or in 960 years for that matter. I'll give you a minute to think about that or research...

As for the game: Being a lifelong Falcons fan, I am used to the annual decision regarding which Super Bowl participant I should pull for. Only once have I had the joy of rooting for my home team in the game of games. It's been relatively easy many years, because there always seems to be a team I despise, or am annoyed by, playing. The Seahawks and Steelers really don't get my blood boiling, though.

A group of people are coloring my decision, as they always seems to -bandwagon fans. No doubt, Pittsburgh has alot of them. I don't mind native Pennsylvanians, or someone from a border town in Ohio or W. Virginia pulling for the Steelers, but you would swear that person doesn't exist. I've met Steelers fans from Illinois, N. Carolina, even New York...but not Pittsburgh. Kinda weird considering their stadium is always full.

I know why, of course, because the Steelers were the team back in the day, they won 4 Super Bowls before anyone else, and had that blue-collar swagger that appealed to many. And it definitely appealed to fans who can't get up the cajones to pull for a losing team. Growing up in Atlanta...that's all I knew how to do.

I work part-time with one of these creatures. A guy from NYC, where they have not one, but two, teams in the city (and 3 in the state). For some reason, he's a Steeler fan, and even nauseatingly refers to them as "we". I talked to a client today, a native Chicagoan, who's a Steelers fan. I really had to bite my tongue.

Bandwagon fans in general make me want to karate chop them in the throat. Generally, though, I just end up hating the teams they like. In the NFL, it's Dallas, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Miami. In baseball - of course, it's the Yankees. I know the Braves have alot of bandwagon jumpers, but they escape my rule by virtue of being from Atlanta. If I lived in Iowa, though, the sound of Skip Caray's voice would make me want to projectile vomit. Let's not forget college...Duke, N. Carolina, any big school from Florida, etc. I could go on, but it would just be masochistic.

Oddly, I don't mind the Steelers as a team. I like their coach, and alot of their players. I even like their unis...I just can't sit in a sports bar near any of their fans.

So you can guess, I'm probably going to pull for Seattle. I have my reservations, though. The Seahawks didn't exist until 1977, the Falcons showed up in 1966. The Seahawks winning would once again remind me of how hapless the Dirty Birds have been. On top of that, until the playoffs it was really hard to believe that Seattle had those run-of-the-mill crazy football fans.

You figured everyone there was too busy drinking coffee, debating environmental issues, developing delicious new microbrews, or wondering why Mudhoney and The Screaming Trees never made it big to actually care about football. Wrong I was. Judging by the pandemonium at Qwest Field yesterday, this is the most talked about thing in The Emerald City since Stephen slapped Irene on The Real World. It's a pretty isolated city in terms of US geography, too. I think it could swap places with Vancouver tomorrow, and we wouldn't notice until Microsoft started labelling everything in French.

The thing they have going for them, though, is me telling people 3 games into the season that they were my dark horse team to make it out of the NFC. I was laughed at a few times, so it's nice to know I was right. They had an easy schedule, and forced all these East Coast playoff teams to fly all the way out there to play in their surprisingly loud stadium. The reason me being right is significant, is that I never am. I love sports, but I couldn't predict who will win the coin toss in the upcoming Super Bowl, and that's 50/50 odds.

Either way, it should be a good game. A good game, of course, that is dragged out incessantly by commercials that try too hard, a half-time show with an over the hill rock band, and plenty of instant replay reviews. So find a party, and if you live in Georgia, make sure to get your beer on Saturday!