Week 19, In Which Scientific “Debate” Rears Its Ugly Head

As the old saying goes, “seek and ye shall find.” We were a bit stymied this week, floundering about, looking for a topic for our introduction, when we stumbled upon a gem. It seems that, according to a study done last fall, public acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in most of the rest of the world. (The only country included in the study with a lower level of public acceptance of evolution than the USA? Turkey. Criminy.)

Now, we are aware of the many, many good, decent, hard-working Americans who just happen to be really stupid in this one area of life. We grew up in a small town deep in the Bible Belt, and we saw many examples of intelligent, capable people whose brains completely shut down at the mere mention of the dreaded “E” word.* Time and again, we’ve seen rational adults say, with complete candor and conviction, that they don’t “believe in” evolution, as if scientific fact were something that could be believed or not believed, each according to his own preferences. We have tried responding with, “Do you believe in gravity?”, but we have had little success with making that mental connection. “Of course I believe in gravity,” they say, “but gravity is real, while evolution is only a theory.” Only a theory. If you want to see us ram our head through sheetrock, tell us that evolution is “only a theory.” (If you want to see us propel our entire body through sheetrock, get Diane Sawyer or Tony Kornheiser to tell us that evolution is “only a theory.”)

You may be asking yourself what this has to do with football. Well, actually, not a damned thing. It’s just another example of something that cheeses us off. One of these days, we’ll sit down with a big stack of post-it notes and several colors of Sharpie markers, and we’ll try to map out the things that really cheese us off, just to find out what the common denominator is. We suspect that it will involve the ability of otherwise normal and likeable people to be completely f*cking stupid, clueless chunderheads in at least one area of their lives…

Luckily, evolution isn’t exactly a common conversational topic, so if you’re area of complete f*cking stupidity is that you don’t “believe in” evolution, we’ll get along just fine. Just don’t tell us—we don’t want to know.

* We will forever recall the day in our freshman biology class in high school when we were covering—and we use that term loosely indeed—evolution. A fellow student raised her hand and asked our teacher why we were studying evolution when “we” all knew that it was “wrong.” We waited with anticipation for our high school biology teacher to dismantle this young lady’s sad misconception of science, and when he responded with a polite version of “I know, but we have to cover this, so let’s just get it over with,” we were highly disappointed. It still ranks as one of the top five examples in our life of being disappointed with an authority figure’s complete failure to live up to his or her obligations. And, considering our political beliefs, that’s some large group…

And now, on to the games…

Indianapolis @ Baltimore: The Ravens defense apparently decided to go out of their way to provide examples of why we despise them so… Early in the game, Joseph Addai fumbled and the Ravens should have recovered, but one Raven (we think it may have been Ray Lewis himself) knocked the ball away from a fellow Raven who was about to scoop up the fumble. Later, we saw Ray Lewis twice tip balls away from fellow defenders who were mere moments away from potential game-changing interceptions. Some analysts and observers see this as evidence of the “hustle” and “intensity” that the Ravens defense plays with. We, on the other hand, see this as evidence of the “me first” attitude that pervades the prick-intensive Ravens team. We were glad to see the Ravens lose, but we are frustrated that they win as much as they do; when selfish, prick-intensive teams are successful, other teams are encouraged to become selfish and prick-intensive as well.

Commercial Break: Finally, a disclaimer during a car commercial that didn’t make us want to hurt someone… In the Ford Edge commercial (with the “I like to live on the Edge-uh” song), a disclaimer running along the bottom of the screen states, “Yes, this is a fantasy. Cars can’t really drive on buildings.” Finally! Sarcasm in a disclaimer! The attitude there almost makes up for the highly irritating music. Oh, excuse us—the highly irritating music-uh.

Philadelphia @ New Orleans: This was the most we had seen of the Saints all season long. (We have tended to watch snippets of the Saints, not complete games.) We must admit, we were impressed. We were particularly impressed with Deuce McAllister, who had a monster game against a supposedly good defense. In the past, we’ve been vaguely repulsed by Jim Johnson, defensive coordinator for the Eagles. (He licks his lips way too much—it’s like watching a lizard trying to clean his eyeball…) Anytime an offense can play this well against a Jim Johnson-coached defense, we will cheer loudly…

We were also amused by the winners of the NFL’s Punt, Pass and Kick competition, introduced at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Did anyone else notice that, in the two older categories, the girls who won looked like nice kids, while the boys who won looked like horses’ asses? Both of those boys looked like they want nothing more out of life than to play for the Baltimore Ravens. And yet, both boys looked like the girls standing next to them could have pounded them into next week…

Commercial Break: We have to admit—we are a bit confused by the new Bud Light commercial featuring the inventive fellow who has put rubber floors in his home so that he can bounce his Bud Lights without breaking them. OK, we get it, the glass won’t break and it allows us to see the nifty ways that the fellow can bounce beers to his buddies. But… Is there anyone out there stupid enough to actually open a beer that has ricocheted around a house? Don’t the folks writing these spots know what happens to beers when they’ve been shaken? The old Bob & Doug McKenzie bit “The Beerhunter” comes to mind…

Seattle @ Chicago: We watched the game, notepad in hand, and nothing even vaguely humorous suggested itself. We’d like to say it was because the game was so good, but that would be lying. Yes, the game was close, but close doesn’t always equal good. In fact, we were a trifle bored by this game. We even took a guitar break in the third quarter…

Maybe it was the stellar quarterback play, which brought to mind such epic clashes as we saw when the Texans and Browns played earlier this season—we just weren’t certain which of these guys reminded us of David Carr and which one reminded us of Charlie Frye… Maybe it was the apparently religious objection that Seahawks defenders have against actually tackling offensive players, which is a surprising objection for defensive players to have… Whatever the source, we were not impressed with this game.

But yes, it was close.

Commercial Break: The Volvo commercial with the little girl in the back seat who prattles on and on and on and on and on about absolutely nothing at all while her dad pays modest attention to her perfectly illustrates why we’ve never had children. (Apart from the biological bits about not being plumbed for that particular job…) We’ve seen enough children to know that many of them—perhaps even most of them—will talk like this, endlessly, saying nothing at all but filling that dead air, like little talk radio hosts… Our reaction, were we to find ourselves in this horrifying position, would be to stop the car, turn around to the little girl, and say, “Oh for the love of humanity, shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!”

We are fairly certain that this is what, in the manuals, they call “bad parenting.”

New England @ San Diego: We like Marty Schottenheimer as much as the next guy—perhaps even more than the next guy, since we are big Marty fans—but the Chargers played about the most bone-headed game we have ever witnessed. Between the dropped passes (looks to us like the Chargers wideouts have a Terrell Owens fanboy worship thing going on) and the personal fouls (headbutting? After a fourth down stop? Jiminy…), we were in a constant state of pique.

However, the capper—the cherry on our festering sundae of pique—had to be Marlon McCree’s interception/fumble in the fourth quarter. It’s fourth down! Don’t intercept the ball! (Unless you have plenty of open field in front of you, which McCree didn’t have…) Knock it down! If you intercept the ball, you cost your team yardage! If you knock it down, your team gets the ball back at the line of scrimmage! KNOCK THE DAMNED BALL DOWN!!

This has long been a sore spot with us. We see defensive backs intercepting balls that they should knock down on a regular basis, and we suffer a near-aneurysm every time. What made this bone-headed, me-first, Baltimore-Raven-worthy interception even worse (besides the fumble that gave New England a first down) was that it was done by Marlon McCree, who by all reports isn’t the bone-headed goofball he appeared to be on that play. Jim Nantz and Phil Simms had spent a goodly amount of time earlier in the game, for example, establishing McCree as the “coach on the field” of the Chargers’ defensive backfield. In a game full of stupid plays, this play left them all behind, gasping on stupid-dust. If there was ever a good argument for firing Marty Schottenheimer, it would be the sheer, mind-numbing stupidity that the Chargers displayed on Sunday.

And did we mention that the Chargers played stupidly on Sunday? It was the football equivalent of not “believing in” evolution…

Amazing how it all ties together, isn’t it?