Yea, but Jay Leno claims he's the Brett Favre of Late Night TV, so that kinda blows my whole point...

Aside from adding my support to Conan O'Brien - especially given the thoughtful wit employed in today's written statement where he lays out why he thinks NBC sucks - the time has come to reflect briefly on the Green Bay Packers.  Or, more specifically, on the end of their season in the Wild Card game loss on Sunday to the Arizona Cardinals.  If ever there was a game that neither team deserved to win, it was this mess.  The Cards pulled out a 51-45 victory in Overtime of the highest scoring game in NFL Playoffs history.  To this very day both teams are insisting that they suited up their Defenses.   Some people have even gone so far as to complain about the missed incidental face masking which maybe should have been a penalty, even though Aaron Rodgers then trumped that doofus complaint by kicking up the ball like a hacky-sack right to the Cards linebacker Karlos Dansby.  No matter what might or did or someone imagined happened in an alternate universe replay of that game, Rodgers kicked this season out the door with the most appropriate metaphor of a play in Packers history.  The statistics were all amazing.  The heart was all empty.  Team executives, coaches and a healthy majority of Packers' fans will say that this is a great young bunch of players.  I don't disagree that this team has the ability to enthuse.  But cheering for this year's version of the Packers is like getting all pumped up for a "Caddyshack" sequel or a new Kelsey Grammer sitcom or, heaven forbid, a run by the Cowboys at the Super Bowl.  No, this Green Bay Packers season is one that will forever remain cemented in place thanks to one unfortunate memory.  This was the year that fans at Lambeau Field booed Brett Favre as he played his way to an impressive victory.  For the Vikings.  I'm still nothing but a Packers fan.  It tastes awfully different saying that, though, given that lingering memory.  

It is an essentially human thing to cheer for athletic competitors, especially ones that you identify with on a personal level based on proximity, history or just plain adoptive fun.  Cheering for the Packers this year took on a new level of identification that I think on some karmic level utterly doomed the experience.  We were expected to cheer for the Packers out of a sort of guilty denial.  As in "sure we know there's some major league bad juju going on here, but if you don't support them then all those years of cheering for good and bad teams will be cast aside and you'll be a Judas just like that 800-pound purple gorilla no one wants to acknowledge".  To that I say "good day, sir."  I will not be a party to this madness.  Nor will anyone else until next year.  Because Mike McArthy is a moron, Ted Thompson tortures puppies and anyone who thinks they had a chance this year almost certainly has at least one Favre jersey still hanging in their closet that they're pissed they won't ever be able to wear again.

Hope you also get something big off your chest today, even if it couldn't be any less important in life's grand scheme.  Rock on.

Like shooting fish in a barrel. Lined up by the millions.

Two quick shots. Iran is obviously on the top of everyone's must watch list. I can't offer anything new. But neither, it sadly appears, can anyone with a news network or political office. For all of the last nearly a decade demonizing Iran's theocratic and political leadership, we got bupkis. Same goes for North Korea, but that's a whole other ball of chickpeas or dung. Since no one else seems ready to make an informed statement on the matter, here's my offering. These public protests aren't going away. The election results will be increasingly seen as fraudulent and the government will become more violent in its fight for survival. What's my source material? The graphic novels "Persepolis" and the equally brilliant animated movie based on them. Watch them and you'll have as much insight as me.

Secondly, the whole "Fire David Letterman" absurdity circus is as cynical as anything perpetrated by a Republican since the coining of the term "War on Terror". Dave is laughing his way to the bank as his ratings go through the roof. The person most upset by this whole manufactured storm of bullshite has to be Conan O'Brien. Who I love, but I must say that his show has been on a downhill slope since it opened big. Sarah and Todd Palin's political savvy isn't even in the same species as Dave's. They've handed Dave gold and are stupid enough to claim it's moosepoop. And anyone clamoring for retribution from a manufactured controversy should look down. Because they're not standing in gold.

Hope your own ratings stay on the rise today. Rock on.

The 15th Anniversary? - Steel

I'll share something of a secret with y'all. Which makes it no longer anything of a secret at all. Nonetheless, 15 years ago this upcoming Monday, I arrived in Seattle for the first time. If ever there was a future worldly goofus just off the turnip truck even after years of being barely exposed to the world at large, it was this here fella arriving in GrungeCity the week prior to starting grad school at U-Dub. I distinctly remember spending the night of September 14th at an especially crappy Motel 6 in Boise, Idaho after a day's drive post-stay with a college friend in Colorado. After what tasted like a horse "burger" and a jigger of spit mixed with my "Scotch and soda" at a nearby "restaurant", I settled in to that poetic late night hotel room TV glow and watched the premiere of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien". The next day, I arrived in Seattle in the late afternoon and went to the campus office for especially bleak campus housing (6 post-undergrad guys in an apartment, unshared locks on every cabinet, despair unshared before nearby Happy Hours, blah blah blah). Maybe I'm sounding too vague and self-involved. Sorry. Just wanted to share.

Hope your own location provides insight today. Rock on.