Packers by 21
Okay. So. Let’s say that Sam fires up his Mini this weekend, scoots to Las Vegas and places a bet on the Green Bay Packers game this Sunday against the Tennessee Titans. He may drop a few quarters in a slot machine or enjoy a lap dance on the way to the betting office, but that has no bearing on my story. (For those of you who aren’t football fans: Please, bear with me. I’m going somewhere with this.)
The spread is five-and-a-half points in favor of the undefeated Titans, who might be a little extra tired since they’ll be playing their second game in one week. This is mitigated, however, by the Titans’ home field advantage. Green Bay QB Aaron Rodgers is playing with a hurt shoulder but maybe it’s not so much of a liability since the 4-and-3 Pack are coming off a bye week and Rodgers has surely been icing (c’mon all you writer-types, hear me out).
By definition, the Pack are considered the underdog. If, at some point during this game, Green Bay pulls ahead—in Sam’s world, they would earn three touchdowns, the cushion at which he relaxes and stops slapping my thigh with every pathetic down—even given this, the Titans don’t suddenly become the underdog. Right? Underdog status isn’t in play. The Packers are, and remain, the underdog throughout the game.
Now. John McCain keeps muttering about his underdog status and if you look at the Wikipedia definition as applied only to current polls and the fiery display that is McCain’s campaign, and if you somehow managed to place your bet at the two-minute warning (i.e. after the economic crisis spoiled McAngry’s attempt at a winkin’ mammary coup), I suppose one could argue that he’s not entirely wrong. Which is probably why he’s never called on it and which is where I come in. Oh, to have a purpose!
I’m here to tell Mr. Maverick, Mr. I-called-my-wife-a-cunt, that he is not the underdog. Yes, he’s behind in the polls. But that doesn’t mean he’s the underdog. That means he’s losing.
Because you see, given that every single president in the 232 year history of the United States has been a white man, bets were placed and locked in against Obama—the true long-shot, the real underdog—from the beginning. Even if McCain was at one point a long shot within his own party, he brought 43 presidents and white privilege to the Big Game. And that makes him the odds-on favorite.
Is it over yet?
I’m sort of ashamed to admit it but I’ve been sucked into the vortex that is the Olympics. Normally, I skip it because the coverage is too much blatant thought control for this girl. And while I’ve enjoyed much of what I watched this past week and am now officially in training to become Dara Torres, NBC has gone to great lengths to live up to the schmaltz. In fact, this past Friday, I couldn’t take one more transparently pandering political add and finally threw in the towel before Phelps swam. I switched over to “What Not To Wear” and confirmed that black and brown can—and should—be worn together. (They’re both neutrals.)
Here’s the thing: NBC has totally gypped the West Coast. Sure, the television says “Live!” up in the right hand corner but then, I open my laptop to Google “how tall is Shawn Johnson” and my homepage tells me that Phelps won the race for which Bob Costas has been offering teasers for more than an hour.
Speaking of Bob Costas, the dude is a twerp. Was it really necessary for him to rip a page from Michael Phelps’ book in order to tell his viewing audience exactly what the swimmer eats for breakfast? Interesting information, sure. But could he have not had one of his starry-eyed interns run the book through a copy machine? There’s plenty of drama happening without Costas resorting to theatrics. And I don’t even want to talk about his interview with Dubya. My laptop will freeze if I go there and I just had a new motherboard installed.
And somebody, please, tell me, what’s with the announcers?
The guys covering the women’s beach volleyball couldn’t stop talking about Carrie Walsh’s wedding band. Did you hear about her wedding band? You know, the wedding band that she got at her wedding, that she wears on her finger? It’s a wedding band and it means a lot to her. And her wedding band got knocked off her finger during a play and the wedding band went missing in the sand, and she worried about her wedding band but kept playing because she’s a machine, a competitor, an elite athlete! And after, a troupe of people sifted that sand for the wedding band and then one guy found the wedding band and then gave back the wedding band and she was so happy that he found her wedding band that she gave him some olympic pins, an autograph and a slap on the ass. All this because she lost her wedding band. Wondering what happened next? Not to worry! She then taped the wedding band in place and in case we, the viewing public, didn’t believe that she was wearing her wedding band, the camera people zoomed in on the finger in question and there it was, the lump of a wedding band beneath the kind of wrinkly tape they put on your arm after a blood draw. Then Wedding Bandgate seguéd seamlessly into the wedding picture and a discussion—including close-up images of—the inscription on the inside of the wedding band.
I have a suggestion for the announcers: Shut the fuck up and let the women play.
Then there are the announcers for the gymnastics competition, who are a whole entire breed. They’re harbingers of doom who bring nothing but badness down on the athletes. “Here’s Alicia Sacramone on the uneven parallel bars and this routine is amazing! She’s the best on the team and we’re about to see something fantastic here! You’ve never seen anything like it before! She’s been practicing this all week and hasn’t made one error! Not one slip up! She’s been perfect! The whole team is counting on her! Now watch this next move right here, she’s known for this move! This move should be named after her she so owns it! Hold onto your labia now, viewers, because this is something to beholOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH! She just missed that bar! Her body was too far out over the bar! Oh what a disappointment! I can’t believe it! I’ve never seen her like this…” And so on, and so on.
And then.
Bela. Karolyi. The King of Konspiracy. Every time he’s on the couch with Costas, you know he’s going to talk about how the Americans were cheated, how the scoring is unfair, how he’s never seen judging this bad. How outrageous it is that (fill-in-the-blank) wasn’t standing on the podioum. We’re watching blatant favoritism of the Chinese, he tells us with characteristic passion and flying spittle. I half expected him to jump up and down on Costas’ couch at one point.
Dude, Puh-leeese. This is competition and the other athletes are—I know it’s hard to take—better. Get over it. There’s no crying in gymnastics. But wait! Last night, Karolyi started to cry. His chin quivered. He welled. And I knew, as unhinged as he is, that he wouldn’t dare say what he really felt inside: They hate us for our freedom.
You know, the freedom to change the channel and learn how to coordinate your gym clothes.
Get yer sweat on
Did anyone else spend at least part of their Sunday leaping from the couch while maniacally screaming at their television set?
I watched sports for a better part of this weekend—the second stage of le Tour and the Wimbledon finals—and all I can say is that I was in freakin’ heaven! Give me tennis or give me death. In my next life, I’m coming back as a professional tennis player. Look for me.
In case you missed it, the Williams sisters put on a good show Saturday and even though I usually root for the underdog, I sorta like watching Venus school her little sister. But the real action was in the men’s final today. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal—two of the most incredible athletes to ever meet on the grass—hammered it out on Centre Court and after more than four-and-a-half hours of play time, two rain delays, two tie-breaks, an extended fifth set, and a world record number of wedgie-fixes (more on this in a sec), Nadal took that sixth win out from under Federer’s tired feet. The whole thing was so brilliant, so thrilling, so emotionally overwhelming, that I thought for a moment that there was no reason to ever have sex again. The afterglow was that good. I almost needed a cigarette.
I was rooting for Federer, so sad. Nadal is fine but about that wedgie thing: His habit of pulling his underwear from his ass before every play is quite rather…unappealing. (Sam says it makes him “seem stinky.”) I understand his problem, however. He’s got a really round butt, like someone else I know—ahem!—and the unmentionables have a way of sliding over the butt cheeks and into the crevasse, if you will. It’s quite problematic. It’s uncomfortable, as Rafa would probably agree. It totally sucks, to be honest. So, when I’m making my rounds in the pro-circuit on my next go-around, I’ll either wear thong underwear or just skip it altogether. I think Rafa should do the same.
In other sports news, 41-year old Dara Torres is setting records, dammit! She makes getting older seem less daunting. She’s paving some roads for us older broads, isn’t she? That or setting the bar impossibly high. But she sure does personify the new meaning of what it is to be in your forties and for that, I think we should all be grateful. Certainly forty is very different for women of my generation than what it was for our mothers.
And thanks to the news of her accomplishments today, I rolled my absurdly round ass off the couch and went for the run I was going to blow off in lieu of a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream. I’m super glad I didn’t have that cigarette.
