Week 1: The Adventure Begins

Elaine: Listen, lemme ask you something. When you're with a guy, and he tells you he has to get up early, what does that mean?
Jerry: It means he's lying.
Elaine: Wow...
Jerry: Why? Is that what he told you?
Elaine: Yeah, last night. Oh, come on... Men *have* to get up early some time...
Jerry: No. Never.
Elaine: Jerry! I'm *sure* I've seen men on the street early in the morning.
Jerry: Well, sometimes we do actually have to get up early, but a man will always trade sleep for sex.

Seinfeld, “The Smelly Car”

This past weekend’s opening festivities reminded us of this classic Seinfeld dialogue. From Thursday night’s Steelers-Dolphins clash through the lesser of our two Monday night games featuring the Chargers and some high school team from the Napa Valley, we were riveted to our comfy couch, mesmerized by the pomp and pageantry that is professional pig-skinnery.

(Sorry—we couldn’t resist that final ‘p.’ Personally, while we concede that pig-skinnery is not a word, we still like having thought of it, and we even think we hear Keith Jackson’s voice when we imagine it being said.)

Sadly, between obligations to family members and our employers (you didn’t think we made any money off this, did you?), our feast of football fanaticism has left us little time for such luxuries as sleep and hygiene. (Handy stuff, that Febreze.) So, while our weekly introduction should be a longer, more involved affair, this week, we’ve decided that a little sleep will probably profit us more in the short run.

Next week, we’ll be more developed. We promise.

And now, on to the games…

Miami @ Pittsburgh: Much has been made of Nick Saban’s inexplicably slow release of his red challenge flag in Thursday night’s game. We at the Weekly Update have a theory: We believe that Mr Saban may have been included in the study that found that dapoxetine can significantly compensate for a problem that is much more common among men than you would think, or so they tell us. (Hey, we’re all grown ups here. Stop that giggling.) Obviously, Mr Saban is used to having a, shall we say, quicker release than he was able to display Thursday night. And let us be honest, can we really hold this against him? He has sought help for his, er, issue, and if that means that he takes a little longer to whip his flag out, well, we say more power to him. He'll come around eventually.

Philadelphia @ Houston: For the first series, the Texans looked like a decent team. For the rest of the game, they looked much more like…the Texans. Let’s just keep that in mind while we fall all over ourselves praising Donovan McNabb for his masterful performance. As the Nike “Briscoe High School” commercial shows, if you put an NFL team (and an all-star team, at that) up against a high school team, the results can be a little lopsided.

Denver @ St. Louis: OK, the Broncos lost. Still, Mike Shanahan showed us once again why we like him so darned much. With a little over three minutes left in the first half, on fourth and one on their own 30 yard line, Shanahan had the Broncos go for the first down. They got it—their first first down of the second quarter.

With this display of manhood and fortitude, Mike Shanahan gets Week One’s “Robert Johnson Award,” a new feature of the Weekly Update. Recently, we became acquainted with the complete recordings of the seminal blues genius Robert Johnson, and we discovered that many of life’s mysteries are addressed in Mr Johnson’s lyrics. We plan, each week, to apply one of Mr Johnson’s lyrics to that week’s NFL action, in hopes of illuminating the deeper truths that permeate our national pastime. (And no, baseball isn’t our national pastime. Don’t get us started.)

In “Stones In My Passway,” Mr Johnson tells us,

I got three legs to truck on, whoa, please don't block my road
I got three legs to truck on, whoa, please don't block my road
I been feelin' strange 'bout my rider, babe, I'm booked and I got to go

If ever a man in the NFL had three legs, that man was Mike Shanahan this weekend. Congratulations, Mike!

Cincinnati @ Kansas City: We were tempted to write a joke about Trent Green’s horrific injury (it involved Carmen Miranda and “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”—you’d have loved it), but the more we thought about it, the more we realized that we shouldn’t joke about such things. We’re all about positive karma here at the Weekly Update (or at least we’re about it as much as smart asses can be), so instead we’ll simply point out that the cruelest joke of all is Kansas City having to suffer along with Damon Huard at quarterback.

Seattle @ Detroit: We weren’t expecting much from Detroit—luckily—but we always enjoy those black Detroit jerseys. We were expecting much more from Seattle. We knew that they’d be cursed, that their season would dissolve into a foul, putrescent miasma of unrealized expectations and dashed hopes, but we thought they’d at least have a honeymoon weekend against Rod “Sgt Rock” Marinelli’s Lions. Let us be the first to say it: We were wrong.

(OK, so we aren’t the first to say it. Fine. Be that way.)

Atlanta @ Carolina: We have made no secret of our admiration for the Carolina Panthers. (We were aghast to learn that one of our friends lives within walking distance of Bank of America Stadium and yet has no plans at all to watch a game. You’re killing us, Shannon! Killing us!) And we understand that sometimes, even teams we like will stink up the joint. (Remember, we are old Oilers fans.) But to stink it up that bad? Against the Falcons, for crying out loud? Ouch.

Also, a note for our readers: Michael Vick has been nominated for our All Prick Team. We whole-heartedly endorse the nomination. We are not the first to note his less-than-stellar abilities in relation to his salary and his reputation, and we do not think we will be the last. Antwaan Randle El is a better athlete, we believe, both as a runner and as a passer.

And no, we are not jealous. Not much, anyway.

Baltimore @ Tampa Bay: OK, talk about nominations for the All Prick Team… Ray Lewis, Jamal Lewis, Ed Reed, Chris McAlister, Terrell Suggs, Brian Billick… One wag even nominated Steve McNair, whom we refuse to place on the ballot. There are teams that serve as lightning rods for prickicity, and Baltimore, friends, is one such team. This is a team that acts like it desperately wants us all to believe that, to a man, they each have three legs to truck home. Sadly, however, saying you have three legs doesn’t make it so, and walking funny isn’t proof, Ray.

With that said… Damn, the Ravens shellacked the Buccaneers, didn’t they?

New Orleans @ Cleveland: Ahh, the game we were all waiting for! The clash of the titans! (No wait, that’s the next game.) This was one of those games that the Saints and Browns fans were really looking forward to, because at the end of the day, their team (knock wood) would be undefeated! And tied for first! Enjoy it, Saints fans—you won’t get to bask in that glow for too long.

New York Jets @ Tennessee: Oh, here it is, clash of the titans. (Get it? Tennessee Titans? Here at the Weekly Update, our humor is professional grade…) For Tennessee, bad sign number one: Kerry Collins. Bad signs number two through seventeen? Still Kerry Collins. The announcer (we fear it may have been Solomon Wilcots, who will haunt us unto our dying day*) noted, “It’s the players around Collins that have to raise their level of play.” As our sainted mother would say, “No sh*t, Sherlock.” They better not be waiting around for Collins to raise his level of play. (Like the old joke says, you can’t raise the dead.) And a missed PAT? Echoes of Ian Howfield…

*Another example of The Wisdom of Solomon from Sunday’s game: “It’s important to know where he stepped out of bounds in order to know where to spot the ball.” And this man is paid for his analytical skills.

Buffalo @ New England: Granted, we at the Weekly Update are sensitive to rampant Brady-love, but when we tuned into the game just in time to hear Phil Simms gushing over how he could tell from Brady’s body language (“His head’s down! He’s relaxed!”) that he was getting in “the zone,” we almost lost control of several orifices. We have yet to hear a television analyst talk about Tom Brady without lapsing into Sally-Brown-swooning-over-Linus-van-Pelt speak: “Isn’t he the cutest thing? He’s my sweet babboo!” We laugh, and yet we weep.

And then we root for Dick “Grim Reaper” Jauron, who almost made us very happy indeed. If only he had a quarterback.

Commercial Break: At first, we thought the series of Mac vs. PC commercials featuring Justin Long (Mac) and John Hodgman (PC) was clever. Soon, though, we began rooting for Justin Long, whom we actually like, to injure himself. This, friends, is not a good sign. We are not violent people here at the Weekly Update. We don’t enjoy other people’s misery. (Unless of course they’re pricks, and then it’s sweet, sweet revenge!) We rarely wish ill fortune to befall others. (Again, with the prick exception.) But these spots are starting to cause us to think horrible, cruel, violent thoughts. Your point was made, Mac people—now move on!

(We’d like to make the same point about Geico’s “famous people” spots. Little Richard? Hilarious. Burt Bacharach? Creepy. Verne Troyer? Sad. You’re done now, Geico. Move along, folks, there’s nothing more to see here.)

Dallas @ Jacksonville: We find ourselves in a quandary here at the Weekly Update. We fully expected to make comic hay out of a fictional movement to replace Drew “Run? Me? Who The Hell Are You Kidding?” Bledsoe with Tony “You Don’t Know Me, But I’m Not Drew Bledsoe” Romo. We were even planning to dub the movement “Romentum.” (Clever, we thought.) And then it actually happened. And now we find ourselves without material come Tuesday night deadline. Damn you, Drew “Who Are These Guys In The Black Jerseys And Why Do They Keep Catching My Passes?” Bledsoe!

Chicago @ Green Bay: Another game where, apparently, a high school team wandered unsuspectingly onto the wrong field. A high school team, oddly enough, with a really, really old quarterback… Also we were, frankly, surprised. We had “second quarter, game one” in the “When Will Rex Grossman Go Down With His Season-Ending Injury?” office pool. We believe that Brian Griese picked “first quarter, game one,” so we assume that he is even more surprised.

San Francisco @ Arizona: We did watch some of this game. (When one pays for the Sunday NFL Ticket, one feels a responsibility to watch as much of each game as possible.) We couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to stick with it, though, so we aren’t sure what all happened during the course of the game. All we could think of was, as with last year’s uniform changes, the new stadium in Phoenix (or whatever Suburb of the Damned it’s actually located in) strikes us as just so much lipstick on a pig.

Commercial Break: While we enjoy Miller’s “Man Law” spots as much as the next smart ass, we can’t help but wonder as we watch: exactly how many facelifts has Burt Reynolds had? Look at his eyes! They’re almost on the sides of his head! We find ourselves staring at Mr Reynolds during these commercials, much as we wish we could stop.

Indianapolis @ New York Giants: Now, who were the quarterbacks in this game again? Oh, that’s right—we remember now! We kept watching, hoping, praying, but no one threw a battery at Coughlin. No players creamed him on the sideline. No firefighters stormed the stadium to beat him to a frothy pulp for wearing that FDNY cap, thereby besmirching firefighters—men and women who actually have souls and who care for their fellow human beings—across the land. It is just this kind of aching disappointment that makes us wonder, sometimes, if we are wasting all of our time and energy on our crusade against the Evil One.

Minnesota @ Washington: We (and here, we mean the "national viewing audience” we, not the snooty royal “we” that we adopt in these rantings) spent an awful lot of time looking at and talking about Tom Cruise Monday night. It’s not like the game was bad or anything, so we (back to the snooty royal we) were a bit surprised at the attention being paid to Mr Cruise. (And, luckily for Mr Cruise, there were two sets of the Metro DC Yellow Pages in the skybox, so he was able to see over the railing after all.) Roone Arledge was spinning in his grave.

(Note: We had almost a full page of anti-Kornheiser rantings to include in this week’s Update, but we decided that we could better spend our time and energy. We haven’t come up with a plan yet, but we know there is a better way to spend our time and energy out there, and by Godfrey, we’re going to find it.)

San Diego @ Oakland: It is the height of cruelty for ESPN to put Bonnie Bernstein (sigh!) on the last game of the night. We were forced to dream sweet, sweet dreams of Bonnie all night long… Damn you, ESPN! And double damn you CBS for letting her get away! We shudder to think how empty and meaningless our Sunday afternoons will be now…

But more importantly (forgive us, Bonnie), sometimes one might feel compelled to ask us why we stay up so late on a Monday night to watch every single stinking play of the game. Well, Marty Schottenheimer provided the answer for us. It is well-known that Marty despises the Raiders. He works his teams into a frenzy heading into Raider games. He may never win a Super Bowl, but if he can just keep creaming the Raiders, he’ll die a happy man. With fifteen seconds left in the game, Oakland was threatening to score. (We are using the term “threatening” pretty loosely here.) It was fourth down. Art Shell decided to forego the field goal and try to score a touchdown. (We admired Art for this call, by the way. God knows his team hadn’t done anything up to that point to give anyone confidence that they could drive those last few yards—we would’ve gone for the field goal, ourselves, to avoid the shutout.) The camera focused on Marty as he stood on the sidelines, shouting instructions in to his players. What inspirational words did he have?

“Don’t let them in the f*cking end zone!”

You’re aces with us, Marty.



PS This week, a comedy gold mine was released on DVD. Do yourself a favor and buy this thing. (At the very least, put it in your Netflix queue.) Trust us.