Is It Christmas Yet?

I'm surfing around here on Overstock.com, and I found a Sharp Aquos 32" 1080p LCD television on clearance or something marked down from $1900 to eighthundred something, $899, so one thousand bucks. I always liked how these Sharps looked in showrooms, and it's hard to beat $1000 bucks off. Granted 32" is smaller than I want - I'd prefer to upgrade to that 40-44" range - but it's already more than I need. I'm extremely tempted to click the buy button and puke out my credit card information. Extremely. Just know that through the course of typing the remainder of this post, I will debate in my mind the merits of buying this thing right here, right now. So I might have a big, expensive announcement by the end of this thing.

I don't care what people say, I hate the Craptacular competitions Howard Stern has. No guest drives me to utter boredom worse than High-Pitch Erik. Joey Boots is a close second. I don't think Erik is nearly as retarded as people seem to believe he is, and he's a well-known shyster. His first few appearances were funny because he's a novelty, but lately he's done nothing. Boots is just pitiful. After losing the Craptacular to High-Pitch, he broke into crocodile tears and started whining about not being able to buy his niece and nephew something for Christmas. As soon as Artie offered him the $200 he'd won, Boots stopped crying and was cracking jokes again. That $200 is going to end up in the till of some liquor store owner or drug dealer. Artie Lange, you got played.

I love when they break Ronnie The Limo Driver's balls. He turns into a retarded Rainman, repeating everything everyone says to him. "Sure, sure...out of control. Ok. Sure, sure...I'm a fucking asshole. Ok. Ok, yeah, sure....jerkoff. Ok. Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm a tough guy."

Leftover observation from last Sunday#1: I love how no one on the CBS pre-game show seems to realize that St. Louis isn't on the West Coast. Yes, WC teams are 0-12 flying to the east and playing, but it's only an hour for us. I know we're called "flyover country", but sheesh. Shannon Sharpe played most of his career in Denver, a city in a timezone an hour to the west of us. It's not that big of a deal, folks. Pull out a map before opening your mouth, Marino.

Leftover observation from last Sunday#2: Just saw a commercial for an NFL Films compilation of the history of the Washington Redskins. One of the featured highlights shown was a TD celebration where all the guys jump in the air and high-five one another. This struck me as odd, seeing as how the league has banned group celebrations. They were particularly quick to douse the Rams' "Bob-N-Weave" move back in the glory days of 1999. If they don’t want people showing other teams up, being poor sports by orchestrating celebrations, then why is the NFL prominently featuring this celebration in an advertisement?

Leftover observation from last Sunday#3: Coming back from commercial FOX shows a cut of the Patriots mountain men loading their black powder rifles. Smack dab in the middle of the shot is a black dude in one of those petty coats and wearing a coonskin hat. Pretty sure they weren't over here in ye olde days of pioneers. Does affirmative action apply to historical re-enactments, even when having a black dude play a colonist is historically inaccurate? Just wondering

I love this kind of innovative coaching. An Idaho high-school football coach couldn't figure out how to game plan for an upcoming game against an opponent whose best player is all-state in like, everything. He plays quarterback, and, among other things, is his team's kicker. The best game plan they could come up with? Have one player go drill him a nanosecond after every time he kicked off.

They still lost and it earned the coach a one game suspension for unsportsmanlike play or something. I'm not that familiar with high-school rules, but what was to stop the kicker from pulling up at the last second, drawing contact, and getting a five yard offside penalty? Would faking a kickoff be like the center simulating the snap on a play from scrimmage and result in a false-start penalty?

And finally, let's close with a real chuckle. Now, sometimes I say about something funny that I "laughed for 'X' amount of minutes." Usually, it's a slight exaggeration. But I laughed for a good 4 and a half minutes about whatever is occurring starting at 0:51 mark in the following video. I thought I broke a rib, my side was stinging so bad.

How do you do that, even accidentally? On a side note, I actually like soccer, but their phony diving all the time makes it real hard to watch more than two minutes. Typical occurrence: Guy doesn't get touched, falls down like he's been a drive-by victim, gets carried off and is then seen running on the sideline thirty seconds later. A minute after that he's back in the game. It's retarded, it's insulting to anyone with an IQ above 70, and it's a very large reason soccer doesn't catch on better here in the States.

Thank you and goodnight. And I haven't bought the TV....yet.