This Dude Should Change From Gay

What's in a name?

It depends. In the fabled song A Boy Named Sue, the central character grows up with an effeminate monniker, and grows up tough as nails because of it.

But this is different. This dude is Gay. With a capital 'G'. And I get to giggling like an orgasmic dolphin when he makes headlines on ESPN.

Len Pasquarelli just posted an article with several insufferable phrases:

"the Patriots made Gay three months ago"

"Having Gay healthy again"

"New York Jets brought Gay in for a visit last month"

"the Patriots gained Gay's exclusive rights"

"Gay is expected to compete for a nickel"

Yeah, I need to grow up. So does everyone else that gives him a rash of shit every day for it. But why not change it? In a different age, that name had a different meaning. Now it means something else entirely. If he wants to keep his family legacy, he should change his name to any of a number of synonyms. Mirthful would do. Festive or frivolous has a ring to it. Joyful or bouncy brings a smile.

But Gay? Why keep Gay? His great-great grandparents would be horrified.

Who the Fuck Is Buying These Fatheads?

Like reaching down in the back of the cab, only to find out that the hot chick that's been hitting on you all night in the bar has a dick, I find my regular morning interlude with NFL Network equally as abruptly interrupted by these freaking Fathead commercials. Even more so now that they've got the raspy voiced and delicious Alex Flanagan hosting the show.


(Down "little alba", not now, we're concentrating on a rant!)

Who the fuck is buying these Fatheads, and why in the name of all that is holy hasn't that company gone tits-up by now? Last I checked, it'll cost you $100 for the cheesey team helmet edition, or $120 if you want to get your favorite player. I mean, does the American sports fan REALLY have that much disposable income, to be ordering these over-priced, over-sized ColorForms on steriods for their kids? Or perish the thought, are grown men buying these things for themselves?

Dude, it's bad enough you had to buy the triple-XL Roethlisberger jersey to fit over your 40-year old beer gut, but is that chain-smoking, polyester wearing, fatass of a wife of yours REALLY letting you put up a FatHead in your double-wide?

My guess is that the company was started by Uselessberger and his extra-terrestrial friend Torry Holt, as their the only two pitchmen I see for the product 20 or 30 times every SportsCenter. And if they don't own the company, who was the Marketing-school drop out to choose these two to be the face of the product? If there was any backbone to truth in advertising laws, these things should be named DickHeads!

If I had my way, I'd go all Colonel Kurtz and search the villages across this nation, chopping off the vaccinated arms of anyone who owned a Fatass! Better yet, throat-tie them all to a bamboo cage and drop Chef's fathead in their laps as I casually walk by. That would be GREAT!

Man, I hate these things enough that in 10 years or so, I won't care if the Presidential candidates smoked a little grass, or got hummers from overweight interns as much as I'll have a burning desire to know if they've ever purchased or possessed a fathead. That my friend, is going to cost somebody the Whitehouse. Mark my words.

I live for the day that this company goes the way of the Pet Rock and the Flowbee, and I don't have to see Big Has-Ben or Torry Big-Lame Holt's mug in my TV screen every morning, at least 10 times and hour, while I'm getting ready for work.

And if they aren't going out of business, might I suggest the female sportscaster line, and put in my reserve order for one of the first Alex Flanagan's that roll off the Taiwanese assembly line? Heck, make it a double and send a Suzy Kobler over to my friend Captain Caveman.

Oh yeah, and Alex my dear, I've got a life-sized purple fathead waiting for you when you arrive!

My Name is URL

It's the off-season.

So The Fuck What!

Used to be, as a life-long Seahawks fan living on the East Coast, that I had to scratch and claw for any shred of news about my favorite team, DURING the season, and only really knew the names of the players the WorldWide MisLeader deemed worthy of their precious air time.

Now, thanks to NFL Network and the internet, I can probably tell you the 2nd and 3rd string option at each position on offense and defense, how they were acquired, and what's their favorite dish. OK, to be honest, that last bit of information is from the Seahawks Cookbook I picked up on one of my trips to the motherland, but you get the idea.

If you're reading this blog entry, you're like me, a rabid fan who can't get enough information on this team, 24 x 7 x 365, so I have a question for you...

What three web sites can't you live without?

For me, the answer is quite simply Seahawks Insider (aka: Mike Sando's Blog), SeahawkBlue.com, and ProFootBallTalk.com.

If my early days of getting Seahawks news 10 seconds per week on SportsCenter was like experimenting with marijuana, Mike Sando's blog is like main-lining heroine with my nyphomaniac, swimsuit model wife who owns a Porche dealership! Quite simply, it's the best source for Seahawks news anywhere. Bar none. If there's something happening with the Seahawks, Sando's got it, and usually first, and provides the information with his own spot-on, objective analysis and not the usual homerism that you get from a local sports beat reporter.

He also doesn't feel the need to feed his ego and go all negative on the team, even in the wake of monumental boneheaded manuevers like using the Transition Tag on Hutch, like Steve Kelley or the ever repulsive Les Carpenter.

While SeahawkBlue.com is only a little more than a year old, it has established itself as the best fan forum site on the internet, in my not-so-humble opinion. What makes this site so special is the fact that it is completely designed, moderated, and controlled by the people who post there, not some underpaid community college drop-out who is managing skatey-eight other forums for some newspaper or for-pay site. Everyone is welcome to post there, even fans from rival teams, but idiots and trolls are quickly dealt with. Not by banning, but by relegating them to the dreaded Smackdown Forum, which is somewhat analogous to throwing the Christians to the lions back in the day. Of course, if it were modern times, I'd take St. Francis the sissy minus seven over the Kitna-lead Lions as long as Matt Millen is still at the healm!



Getting back to the Blue though, it's much more than just a Seahawks forum, it's a true on-line community. There are sub-forums for the other Seattle-area sports teams, a lounge for elite members to get to know each other better, and for the second year in a row, they are hosting a SeahawkBlue Get-Together when the hated Rams come to town, with attendance already doubled last years group.

ProFootballTalk.com made the list because they're not afraid to post crap that a friend heard from a friend's barber's sister's cousin's tailor, but a lot of time they're right on the money. The Picture of the Day is usually creative, although it doesn't change daily like the name might indicate, and their Turd Watch and Days Without An Arrest counter are very topical in the light of the strict personal conduct policy brought in by NFL commissioner Richie Cunningham.

I used to be a KFFL.com junkie, but since they get most of their Seahawks news from Sando, I've already read it on his blog before it appears on their site. Other honorable mention goes to Kissing Suzy Kolber, which is hysterical, but with some of their content, I'm breaking about a dozen office policies just by loading their blog!

So now that I showed you mine, it's time for you to show me yours.

If karma threw you a curve, and your internet provider could only provide access to three web sites, which ones would they be?

Doctor, We Have a Pulse!

I don't know if this constitutes a revival or not, but last week I started missing this old place.

I dusted off my blogger login and started checking things out with a fresh perspective. It turns out there are some cool things that can be done with the new blogger template - just check out Pamela on the left margin if you don't believe me.

Where do we go from here? It depends on your response.

Will the dude on the left slip back into a coma? Or will the nice lady kick start his heart, lift up his towel and make this a happy ending?

If you guys write, I will keep tweaking until we have a site that's good enough to make Roger Goodell pissed. If not, I'll go back and work on my avatars.

Out with the old

As the celebrate the end of the draft and the implication that the new season is going to be soon upon us, its time to also remember that two Seahawks have recently become former Seahawks.

The first one, Jerramy Stevens, was done a while ago. In late March he was released. But, recently he was picked up by Tampa Bay, in what some would call a good move. Despite his drops and his knack for trouble making, one gets the feeling that Stevens will fit in with Tampa. He's out of the Northwest for once, and that offense needs a tight end. In Seattle, with the offense progressing as it did, Steven's lack of being able to take a hit and hold onto the ball didn't fit into the up tempo style Holmgren and Hasselbeck like to run. His blocking "skills" didn't help either.


On the same day Stevens joined Tampa Bay, it became official. The rumors that had swirled around for weeks came to an end: Darrell Jackson was traded to the 49ers. Given the longevity of the rumors, I don't know that the news shocked Seattle fans. Again, Jackson was prone to the drops and his injuries were taking a toll.

Throw in the fact that he was slightly bitter about a contract dispute, and people knew that GM Tim Ruskell would probably ship him. But, you have to credit Jackson. He wasn't happy about his contract, and he couldn't have been happy when Nate Burleson and Deion Branch were brought to Seattle. Jackson thought he was The Guy in the receiving corps, but yet it seemed as if the Hawks were trying to drive him out.

But, instead of pouting about it, complaining about it, D-Jac went to work. Nearly 1,000 receiving yards, 10 TD catches in (another) injury shortened season. The 10 TD grabs was a career high. For someone who was disgruntled, Jackson hardly looked it on the field.

To me, its kind of confusing as to why Ruskell shipped him. Ruskell likes character guys. Stevens was not a character guy, he was a distraction in waiting. Jackson was a character guy. I don't know what went on behind the scenes, but though he held a grudge, he didn't let it get to him on the field.

But, somehow, that grudge led to him being traded to a divisional rival for a fourth round pick. Ruskell, who has shown he has a golden touch in the past, had better know what he's doing. This has power trip written all over it. The GM's job should be to build a winner, and now what had been a key cog in a winner for the past few seasons will be doing his work in an enemy uniform.

This trade will be a hot topic once again in weeks 4 and 10 when the two clubs meet, and depending on where the teams find themselves in the divisional race and what Jackson has done that year will ultimately factor into whether this was another genius move by Ruskell or a mistake.

The point of the post though is that, these two players--Jackson and Stevens--though totally different, were major parts to the run to Super Bowl XL. Though Jackson was hurt most of the year, he had a big TD grab in the NFC Championship game and was Hasselbeck's go to guy early in the Super Bowl. Stevens meanwhile had his best receiving year to date in 2005, and like it or not, is responsible for Seattle's only touchdown in the Super Bowl. Never mind the fact that he was in Joey Porter's dog house (seriously, no pun intended) for most of the game.

These two players are the first "big names" from that Super Bowl team to move on. And though their partings aren't met with the sentiments that will be bestowed upon Shaun Alexander, Matt Hasselbeck, Walter Jones, or Mack Strong when they leave the game, its still something to think about. This season we'll be two seasons and two key players removed from the Super Bowl run.

Despite their trials and tribulations in Seattle, it will be weird watching a Seahawks game without those two guys in the line up. Here's hoping the 'Hawks give us reasons to forget about them