Baltimore

2013 Pigskin Picks of Profundity…..Week 5

Damn you Boise State!! The Broncos were the only thing standing between me & my first ever perfect week with these picks, but when they scored a touchdown with 7 minutes left in the 4th quarter last Saturday I knew both Zach & I were doomed. Fresno St. had enough time to come back and win the game with 2 minutes remaining, but they weren’t able to cover the 3 points. Oh well…c’est la vie. I did win a head-to-head matchup in which I picked Stanford and Zach chose Arizona St., so that provided some measure of comfort. For the week I ended at 4-1 and Zach ended up 3-2, making our season look thusly:

Your Humble Potentate of Profundity  =  11-9

Zach  =  9-11

Now on to the task at hand.  At this point the season is beginning to take shape. Most teams…both college & pro…have shown us just enough so that it’s becoming clear who is good and who’s going to have a tough road. Theoretically that should make these picks a bit easier, but I know from experience that that is a little too optimistic. At any rate, there are atleast 9 or 10 games that pique my interest this week so I had a tough time narrowing the choices to just five, but I am really making an effort to spread the love and not pick games involving the same teams all the time. Enjoy!!

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Florida  (-13)                      at            Kentucky

florida gators imageThe Gators just lost their starting QB for the season to a broken leg and a key defensive tackle due to a torn ACL. Against better competition those Kentucky-Basketballlosses might be a killer, but with this week’s opponent being the Wildcats I doubt if Florida has too much to be concerned about…except, for our purposes, covering the points. I’m going to go out on a limb and say Kentucky gives a spirited effort, meaning they lose the game but not by two touchdowns. Zach doesn’t think Florida’s personnel deficiencies will be a big deal and believes that Kentucky will only be competitive in the first quarter.

My Pick          Kentucky

Z’s Pick           Florida

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Oklahoma (-3.5)               at            Notre Dame

This might be one of the best games on the NCAA schedule thus far in 2013. The Irish come into the game 3-1 but I think many people might say they have been the NotreDame1more impressive team. The Sooners are 3-0 but struggled to beat my WV Mountaineers, a team that can’t seem to score a touchdown most of the time. I am shocked that the Irish aren’t favored. Zach thinks both of these teams are overrated but believes Oklahoma is the more overrated of the two.

My Pick          Notre Dame

Z’s Pick           Notre Dame

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Wisconsin                            at            Ohio St. (-7)

WisconsinBadgersI’m really looking forward to this one. Good old-fashioned smash mouth football with the occasional big play and lots of solid defense. The Badgers Ohio_State_Buckeyesare 2-1 but really should be undefeated (remember the incompetent refs screwed them at Arizona St.). The Buckeyes are 4-0 but really haven’t played anybody. This game is in Columbus, which is a huge advantage. I picked Ohio St. #2 in my pre-season rankings, and if they continue winning that may just be where they end up. But my vibes are telling me that this is going to be a very close game. Ohio St. may or may not win, but if they do I think it’ll be by the slimmest of margins. Zach is a Michigan fan and thinks that Ohio State hasn’t played anybody yet (he’s right), but is willing to overlook the pain it causes him and pick the Buckeyes.

My Pick          Wisconsin

Z’s Pick           Ohio State

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Baltimore (-3.5)                                at            Buffalo

Buffalo_Bills_HelmetThe defending Super Bowl Champion Ravens are 2-1 but have clearly regressed since last season, although last week’s 30-9 demoliotion of Baltimore_Ravens2the Houston Texans was impressive. Meanwhile, the Bills are an impressive 1-2…if there can be such a thing. Rookie quarterback EJ Manuel has been solid and will continue to get better. Buffalo could easily be 3-0 if a few balls had just bounced their way. I’m going against the grain one more time and picking the underdogs to finally put it all together. Zach thinks the Bills will keep the game close in the first half but eventually Baltimore will pull away for the victory.

My Pick          Buffalo

Z’s Pick           Baltimore

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Seattle  (-3)                         at            Houston

Not only did the Texans get beaten handily by Baltimore last week, but they really didn’t look that spectacular in their two wins. It took a 17 point 4th quarter seattle-seahawks1comeback to beat the San Diego Chargers and overtime to get past the Tennessee Titans. Conversely the Seahawks have barely broken a sweat in going 3-0. Houston will almost certainly put forth their best effort of the season, but I just don’t think it’ll be good enough. Zach concurs.

My Pick          Seattle

Z’s Pick           Seattle

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Heroes & Heels…..A Special Double Feature

Sharp eyed citizens of The Manoverse may have noticed that there was no H&H published for March. As usual I missed the deadline, but instead of just missing it by a day or two we were a week into the month before I had the time & inclination to even ponder writing the piece so I decided to just skip the whole deal. However, the good news is that means today you get a double dose!! You’re welcome. At any rate, these are the people & stories from the past couple of months that I feel deserve either praise or a healthy dose of derision. Enjoy.

 

Dennis Rodman

You remember Rodman. He was an above average pro basketball player in the 90’s that was even more infamous for his off court antics, but he’s been out of the spotlight for a few years. That all frowny-facechanged a couple of months ago when…for reasons seemingly unknown to anybody…he traveled to North Korea and apparently became fast friends with “supreme leader” Kim Jong-un. Rodman went so far as to suggest that Jong-un wasn’t such a bad dude because he is a basketball fan and that he “just wants to be loved”. The retired rebound master plans to return to North Korea this summer so that he & Jong-un can “just hang and have some fun.” Call me crazy, but when Dennis Rodman is taking the lead in American diplomacy it’s not a good sign.

 

Glenwood Gardens Retirement Home

I spent 6 months in a nursing home at the young age of 33, and it honestly made me reconsider my position against euthanasia. That being said, I would like to think that if my life had ever come frowny-faceperilously close to ending prematurely while I was there someone would have stepped up and taken the necessary steps to prevent my untimely demise. But apparently such things are against policy at this Bakersfield, CA facility, where an 87 year old resident died a couple of months ago after she went into cardiac arrest and a nurse refused to administer CPR even after a 911 dispatcher pleaded with her to do so. I wouldn’t feel a bit of remorse if every “skilled’ nursing facility in the country was shut down and then burned to the ground, but hopefully there is a special place in Hell reserved for the idiots who work at this dump.

 

Jim Carrey

Hollywood is seemingly filled with liberal morons and Carrey has proven to be no different. He has frowny-facerecently gone on a rather vociferous anti-gun crusade, which included a supposedly funny video belittling gun owners, The Constitution, and the very dead Charlton Heston. He also made several insulting comments about gun owners on Twitter. Here’s an idea Jimbo…maybe you should shut your piehole and concentrate on making a decent movie that won’t bomb at the box office like nearly everything you’ve been in for the past decade.

 

Park Elementary School (Baltimore, MD)

There have been several of these types of incidents recently but for some reason I made note of this one specifically. In early March a 7 year old student at this school was suspended after he chewed a pop tart into a shape that a teacher thought resembled a gun. The child said that was not what he had frowny-faceintended to do, but here’s the deal…even if he had intentionally done so to my knowledge no one has ever been shot by a pastry. The politically correct anti-gun nutjobs in this country are way way way out of control. Personally I think that everyone responsible for this fiasco should be terminated and never allowed to work in the education system ever again. If I am ever blessed to father a child I will very seriously consider home schooling because quite frankly I’d be scared to death to let my offspring be indoctrinated by the asinine joke that public schools in 21st century New America have become.

 

Senator Rand Paul

On March 6 the junior senator from Kentucky engaged in an old fashioned filibuster that lasted nearlyThumbs_up 13 hours. Apparently he was protesting President Obama’s stance on use of drones against Americans and blocking (temporarily) the nomination of a new CIA Director. I won’t pretend to know all the particulars about the issues involved, but it was nice to see a politician stand up (literally) for his beliefs and act in the way that one would hope all our elected representatives would on our behalf.

 

New Rochelle, NY City Council

In April this group of mental giants voted to order a Gadsen flag removed from a local armory because they believed it to be a Tea Party symbol. First of all a Gadsen flag…for the 3% of residents in McDowell County, WV literate enough to know about this new fandangled internet thing and read The frowny-faceManofesto…is a historical American flag with a snake symbol and the words “Don’t Tread On Me” that was designed by a South Carolina Congressman during the Revolutionary War. In other words it predates the Tea Party by about 230 years. Secondly, what exactly is wrong with the Tea Party?? What is so bad about believing in smaller government, lower taxes, & a balanced budget?? And what about Freedom of Speech?? You remember…The First Amendment, The Constitution, etc.?? Oh yeah…that’s right…liberals hate all that stuff just like they hate America, and this group of liberals proved it.

 

AJ Clemente

On Sunday April 21, 2013 young AJ Clemente began his journalistic career as a news anchor in Bismarck, ND. By Monday morning that career had come to an end. One of the first things Clemente did was drop an F-Bomb on live television. And then he proudly announced to the world that he had recently graduated from West Virginia University. I am an alumnus of West Virginia’s other statefrowny-face school Marshall University but I live close to WVU and have been a Mountaineer fan my entire life. It is embarrassing to me that a school in my home state would produce such an idiotic graduate. To Clemente’s credit he has self-deprecatingly taken his lumps in a very public way after a clip of the incident became a hit on YouTube. He’s making the rounds on television, with appearances on Letterman, The Today Show, & Inside Edition. I am not suggesting that the young man should have to pay for his mistake forever, but maybe he should try a gig doing print or internet news…safely away from a live microphone.

 

Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard

More Hollywood assclowns. These two are actors of some fame. She starred in the TV show Veronica Mars a few years ago and has done a handful of movies that mostly tanked at the box office. He stars in a pretty decent NBC show called Parenthood and has also been in a few bad movies. They’ve been a frowny-facecouple for several years and in March welcomed a daughter. Good for them. Congratulations. Of course they aren’t married and have publically announced that they will not get hitched until the state of California legally allows gays to marry. Well okay…kudos to the happy couple for believing in something and sticking up for what they believe in, but like so many of their peers in the entertainment industry they choose to self-righteously support sin, debauchery, and “alternative lifestyles” that go against the Word of God. Supporting same sex marriage is more important to them than their own relationship and the opportunity for their daughter to grow up in a stable home with married parents. Wow…talk about misguided priorities.

 

Nebraska & East Carolina Football

Both schools’ football programs deserve kudos for allowing young terminally ill children to participate Thumbs_upin their spring games and fulfill a fantasy by scoring a touchdown. The small stuff really is huge sometimes.

 

Cheryl Sabb at Cedar Hills Elementary in Jacksonville

A young 4th grader’s father was stunned to find one of his son’s school assignments on which he’d frowny-facewritten in crayon “I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure.” Turns out that after a guest speaker had instructed the young crumb crunchers about our Bill of Rights the teacher…Ms. Stabb…had the entire class copy down that sentence. You see liberals are all about separation of church & state, except when the religion is liberalism and then they do not hesitate to indoctrinate their students, whether they are in grade school, high school, or college.

 

Chris Broussard

It is likely that I will have more to say in the near future about the big story where an active NBA player Thumbs_uphas come out of the closet, but I want to take this opportunity to give some respect to Broussard, an NBA analyst for ESPN who stated on television the following


“Personally, I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly premarital sex between heterosexuals, if you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, then the Bible says you know them by their fruits, it says that’s a sin. If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals, whatever it may be, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I do not think the Bible would characterize them as a Christian.”

 

Every single word spoken by Broussard is the absolute truth, but predictably he has been lambasted by the masses as a bigot and a homophobe. Atleast liberals are predictable. Broussard had to know that he’d get creamed for his honesty but he said it anyway. Bigtime kudos to the guy, who will most likely be looking for a job in the near future. But atleast he can be secure about knowing that he’ll spend eternity in the loving embrace of the One True God.

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Heroes & Heels…..February 2013

Oops I did it again. Ah well…I won’t bore you with my lame excuses except to say that hopefully the snow stops soon, the sun shines more brightly in March, and I awaken from my hibernation in time to get the next edition of H&H published on the final day of the month which is the way this is supposed to work. Anyway, these are the people & stories that either dominated the news or for some reason caught my eye during the short month of February and earned either my praise or my scorn. Enjoy!!

 

 

Douglas MacArthur Elementary School

The school in question is in Alexandria, VA and recently had a 10 year old boy arrested after he brought a TOY gun to school. Actually I’ve seen a few of these types of stories lately and it really frustrates the living daylights out of me. I understand the sensitivity to guns frowny-faceafter the tragedy in Newtown, CT, but for goodness sake children aren’t even allowed to use their imaginations and play anymore. When I was a kid we played Cops & Robbers, Cowboys & Indians, and all kinds of other games that were sure as heck a lot healthier than most of the idiotic video games little ones play nowadays, but apparently the lunatic fringe on the left doesn’t agree.

 

Dr. Ben Carson

Dr. Carson is Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. In 1998 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award in the United States) by President George W. Bush. A few weeks ago at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, with President Obama just a few feet away, Carson gave a fantastic Thumbs_upspeech that became a viral sensation. He was highly critical of political correctness and floated his ideas about health care, making it quite obvious that he isn’t exactly a fan of Obamacare. Dr. Carson…who just happens to be black…is proof that critics of President Obama don’t dislike him because we’re racists…we dislike him because of his policies & beliefs. I have long said that I have no problem with a black person being President but that we simply elected the wrong black person (twice). Dr. Ben Carson is exactly the kind of person around whom conservatives can rally.

 

Chris Rock & Amanda Peet

Liberal celebrities using their fame to advance leftist causes is nothing new. Last month these two mental giants got together with a bunch of other gun haters and said a bunch of frowny-faceidiotic things about gun control. It is certainly their right to say whatever they want, but it is also my right to chastise them for their intellectual shortcomings. Rock in particular was in rare form, calling President Obama “our boss” and equating the President & First Lady with “our Mom & Dad”. No Mr. Rock. I have my own parents and I have a boss. The occupants of The White House are neither. We fought a Revolutionary War for a reason…maybe you should read up on that a bit.

 

The Groundhog(s)

As I write this I am looking out of one of the windows in The Bachelor Palace at a rather frowny-facerobust spate of snow. Odd, since back on Groundhog Day both the nationally recognized Punxsutawney Phil and our local harbinger of weather French Creek Freddie both were said to have seen their shadows indicating an early spring. Evidently groundhogs are liars and not to be trusted.

 

Aaron Klein

I am not sure exactly when this occurred, but I saw the story at the beginning of February. Mr. Klein is the owner of a bakery in Oregon and is currently under investigation by that Thumbs_upstate’s attorney general. Why?? Well, because Klein is a Christian and recently declined to make a “wedding” cake for a gay couple who were getting “married”. Klein faces a possible $50,000 fine and flat out said that his faith is more important than politically correct legalities and is willing to lose his business rather than violate his principles. Kudos.

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Everyone knows that Mayor Bloomberg has been successful in getting sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces banned in NY City. What folks are just now beginning to understand is just how wide of a net that ban entails. Apparently pizza places will no longer be allowed to frowny-facedeliver 2 liter bottles of soda with customers’ food, and families can no longer share one big pitcher of pop. On top of this stupidity Bloomberg is now targeting Styrofoam, which he is actually kind of behind the times on since McDonald’s stopped using that more than two decades ago. This guy is a real piece of work. He’s just a political whore (he’s been a member of both parties and is now an independent) who abuses his power to restrict the freedoms of citizens. I don’t care how awesome The Big Apple is…I have no interest in ever going there until this idiot is long gone and his draconian laws have been reversed.  

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