The SHORTY AWARDS- "Honoring The Best On Twitter"

From THE NEW YORK TIMES...."Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Now Twitter has the...Shorty Awards"
Its the Second Annual "Shorty Awards", honoring excellence in 140 characters or less. And no, I'm not making this up!


Read More.....about THE SHORTY AWARDS

Quick Hits For January 6, 2010- BCS Championship Edition

As I tip my big toe back into the real world after taking an extended celebration of the Christmas/ New Year's Holidays....and not having much ambition or desire to get back in the political trenches for a while...its time for some (DRUM ROLL PLEASE) "Quick Hits"

(1)"Unreal World World of Sports, Pt1". I'm a fan of WFAN (New York) radio's Mike Francesa, even though he'll take a shot at a person or a sports team that I might might think as being fair. And, to be candid, I did refer to his show on these pages as being a "bully pulpit with bully being the operative word". That was probably after he slammed Rutgers for some reason- he can't help himself; it must be in his DNA.

But I find myself agreeing with Mike 95% of the time. Yesterday Francesa made a plea to the BCS and the NCAA- enough of stretching the BCS bowls past New Year's Day through the next week until the BCS Championship Game in the first week of January.

This year the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl were both played on New Year's Day, last Friday. There were several lower tier bowl games on Saturday (the International, the PapaJohn's.com, and the Chick-fil-A), and Sunday was the last day of the regular NFL season. The BCS games resumed on Monday with a great Fiesta Bowl won by Boise State over TCU, and Tuesday gave us the Orange Bowl, another entertaining game where Iowa beat Georgia Tech.

Sadly....few people really cared about those last two games. They were lost in the shuffle of the pairings for the upcoming NFL playoffs, decided on Sunday. These games were supposed to be showcase events leading up to Thursday's championship game between Texas and Alabama. The idea was to let these games stand alone as a reward- and a showcase- for the programs involved. Instead, the opposite has seemed to happen- apathy from the sports world with the exception of only the most die hard college football fans.

Back in the day the major bowl games were all held on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. By midnight on New Year's Day, we had an idea who the new champion of college football was going to be, even though they were unofficial titles bestowed by the Associated Press and United Press International (later by USA Today and by the Coaches' Poll). New Year's Eve and New Year's Day were all about college football- it was like a second Christmas for the college football junkie, it was the time we looked forward to all season.

And by tampering with this imperfect system, the Lords of College Football have managed to diminish the product they sought to extol. By stretching the BCS bowls past January 1 the NCAA and the BCS blundered badly. Playing major bowl games on the day after the day after the day after New Year's they managed to marginalize these games. There are 12 teams alive in the NFL for the post season, and January belongs to the NFL- college football becomes a footnote, with the exception of the championship game, which serves as a diversion for the NFL fans until Wild Card Weekend.

The BCS needs to return its four non championship games to their original home, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Play the Fiesta and the Sugar on December 31st, and the Rose and Orange on Jan 1st. Then play the BCS Championship game on the first Monday after New Year's Day, or the Monday after the Sunday the NFL season concludes. This would restore the tradition to the games that they have known for decades. If its all about TV ratings, and the greed and poor judgement of corporate sponsors...and I suppose it is...this will never be remedied.

And that's unfortunate.

(2) As far as the BCS championship game. I'm picking the Texas Longhorns to beat the Alabama Crimson Tide 27-17.

Why?

Very simply, I like Texas coach Mack Brown a lot. And I don't care much for 'Bama Coach Nick Saban at all.

Hey, if you want in depth analysis, go to ESPN.com.

Those guys are a helluva lot smarter than me.

(3)"The Unreal World of sports, Part 2"- Today on Mike and Mike on ESPN radio Greeny and Golic had a minor debate about fans and the craziness attributed to them. Golic, a former NFL player, didn't seem to "get it"....fans really think they can change the outcome of a game from their actions- and Greeny concurred.

What Mike Golic doesn't understand its about karma, or the Butterfly Effect, or alternate universes and quantum physics- I know this because I believe this myself. For example, if I'm at my computer while watching the Yankees on TV, I have to stay there until the conclusion of the game, because if I don't give them my full support from my seat in my computer room, the space/time continuum will be totally messed up, and they'll lose because I wasn't where I was supposed to be.

Yankee fans worldwide will be up in arms, and it would be my fault.

If I go to a Rutgers football or basketball game and they win, I must wear the same clothes I wore to the game to the the next game to keep the karma going. If the weather turns colder I'll wear the original clothes under a layer of outerwear. And if I do this and they lose, it can't be my fault....its because one of the 50,000 other fans didn't wear the same clothes from last week.

But just to be on the safe side, after each loss I'll change outfit, and repeat the process until we have an appropriate winning streak going.

Yeah, I know how weird it sounds. But it could be much worse. Take, for example, another WFAN personality, Joe Benigno. Joe B is an avid Knicks, Rangers, Mets, and Jets fan- and he has said on air there is a curse on him. He believes his love for his teams is the source of much of the agony he experiences on this earth.

If you're a sports fan, you "get it".

The Buddha once said "Life is suffering".

The Enlightned One must have been a Mets fan.

Its Bergwood Nation!

You all know Bergwood and his buddy Hamm. They're the two not so bright tailgaters in the ALLSTATE INSURANCE commercials. Billy Mays and Sully they are not- two guys usually found in a parking lot prior to a college football game who collectively worship the ground former FSU coach Bobby Bowden walks on.

Here's a video featuring some outtakes with "The Coach"....Daddgumm!!!!



I had no idea these two guys have become so popular. ALLSTATE has given the boys their own website, bergwood.net, and their own FACEBOOK page.

But with celebrity comes danger....and sadly, Bergwood has a semi-dangerous female stalker!

Check it out!

On The 11th Day of Christmas......I'm Struggling To Get Back To "Normal"

"Eleven Pipers Piping"

Are you feeling like me? Are you debating on just how much longer to leave up the Christmas lights, the tree, the Santas, all the Herald Angels, and all of the other trappings of the seasons? We've spent to much time doing too much for such a small window of time.....all that hustling around trying to get it up and working properly- just to take it down so soon to get back to what we regard as normalcy.

My usual rule of thumb was wait until the traditional 12 of Christmas to come and go before I start tearing things down. But there are other considerations. Such as....its not going to get above freezing for a couple of days. I don't get the extension ladder out to take down the outside lights unless its 40 degrees.

And there can't be any bowl games or NFL playoff games on either....I have my prioritities, you know.

Quite frankly, I really don't want to talk about politics for awhile- the healthcare mess has really soured me on talking politics- and that's just as well because I'm finding few nice things to say about most of the cast of characters in the Beltway. That goes for both parties.

So tomorrow I'll celebrate Three Kings Day, the 12th Day of Christmas...and lament the fact that I have to rejoin the ranks of the world's citizen bloggers because the The Holidays, 2009-10 Edition, are all over.

And Its almost time to come kicking and screaming back to the unreal real world.

As David Hedison said in the original 1958 version of The Fly....."HELP ME!!!!"

Political group to run college football playoff ads - ESPN

Not being content with having a disfunctional federal government, a new political action group will take aim at college football's Bowl Championship Series.



Read more....from ESPN.com

The Year o' the Tiger Has Begun...

Happy New Year from all of us here at Tattoosday!

2009 was a banner year for us as we reached an even broader audience, racking up 317,000 hits, almost triple what we had seen here in 2008. We're looking forward to welcoming even more visitors in the coming year.

Yesterday, I paid a little visit to Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studio on the Lower East Side where, as I mentioned in the previous post, the good folks were inking tiger tattoos to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Tiger. At $50 a pop for these tiger specials, the artists had a steady stream of clients asking to get their tiger stripes for the upcoming year.

Despite frigid temperatures with single-digit wind chills, clients were still drifting in when I left later in the evening.

I did get to watch as Shon Lindauer worked on Jennifer, who added this cute little tiger to her collection of over thirty tattoos:


Jennifer was born in the Year of the Tiger, so it seemed appropriate to take advantage of this super deal that the artists at Thicker Than Water were offering.

It was also great to see Peter Caruso again, who tattoos at the shop three days a week. Pete appeared here on Tattoosday and subsequently inked this piece on me last Spring. He even had his own set of flash for the January 2 promotion:


As I bundled up to brace myself against the cold, customers were drifting in from Avenue B and a young lady checked out the flash to decide on another tiger tattoo. With a few more hours to go, it looked like the artists were going to be busy.

As for me, many may be wondering if I joined the ranks of the tiger-tattooed. Check back tomorrow to see if I have anything new to share...

Happy New Year and thanks for continuing to visit us here on Tattoosday.

Quick Hits- "For The New Decade, And Beyond, Mr. Spock"

To any and all...Happy Twenty-Ten!!!!!

(1). "Y2k"....it seems like only yesterday. And obviously there are a few young readers who have no idea what I'm referring to.

(2) Biggest story of the last decade....obviously 9/11 and its aftermath. Runnerup- the economic meltdown of 2008. Also- Hurricane Katrina, the rise of Barack Obama, the collective Bush Years, Iraq, Afghanistan, the proliferation of "reality TV"....and the how technology changed our lives forever.

(3) Holding that thought about how technology changed our lives- for some reason I was thinking about 2001: A Space Odyssey- probably because we are now in the year of its sequel, 2010. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick created a scenario in the original 2001 where the computer, "HAL 9000" actually becomes a villain when it senses that the mission of the Jupiter-bound spacecraft is in jeopardy, and begins to kill off the crew members. In the real New Millennium we don't have murderous computers trying to systematically whack us. But what has happened is a dependency on this wonderland of new technology in which we feel lost when we are denied it, even for short periods of time. Do you think that's a stretch? Well, look at what happened a couple of weeks ago with the glitch that prevented Blackberry usage. People seemed lost; some even went into a panic. How many people have the need to have their devices on all of the time, and never- ever- turn them off.

No....mankind has no morphed into robots. But there is a kind of cyborgization that is going on- the technology is starting to rule and dominate lives rather than be there to serve us. And that is dangerous on a psychological level.

"Man does not live by bread alone". But he has voluntarily added a variety of electronic appendages which it seems have taken over aspects of life...."down time" is a thing of the past, and everybody is "on", 24/7. Frankly, I don't think that's a good.....or a healthy....thing.

(4). Charlie Daniels plays a mean fiddle, Ed "Too Tall" Jones is still "too tall", and Elmer Fudd still has trouble with the letter "R". OK GEICO, we get it. The same commercials on again and again and again.

But I suppose we have to live with these new ads. The Cavemen appear to be occupied.

(5). I will give him some credit where it is due- Rush Limbaugh seems to be coming around, if ever so slightly. He was recently hospitalized for chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii. he was treated at Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, and according to a report from ABC News the doctors found nothing wrong.

But here's what I found interesting....at least he is, by implication, admitting that President Obama might be a native US citzen after all.

Stay with me, OK? Limbaugh came out with this quote at his news conference...

"Based on what happened to me here, I don't think there is one thing wrong with the American healthcare system. It is working just fine".

So he admitted to the press that he was treated by the American healthcare system, while in Hawaii; therefore, by implication, the worldly Mr. Limbaugh is saying that Hawaii actually IS part of the United States.

And if that is the case, and Barack Obama has a birth certificate (plus a birth announcement in a local paper) from Hawaii he, our Chief Executive and Commander-In-Chief, must have been born in the United States.

So to any "birthers' out there....your man Rush just dissed you and your moronic theories.

So stop mouth breathing and deal with it!

(6). I went to the Rutgers women's basketball game this afternoon and watched them almost snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A ten point lead with less than four minutes to go shrank to two with less than 15 seconds left....they survived with 60-57 win over DePaul. They still have a ton of growing up to do.

(7). The destruction in the Sugar Bowl of Cincinnati by Florida 51-24- and record setting performance by Tom Tebow- will give the critics of the Big East more fuel for their fiery rhetoric that the conference is not worthy of an automatic BCS bid. As a Big East fan, it was too much to watch. I turned it off at halftime and watched old reruns of the 1950's western HAVE GUN- WILL TRAVEL with Richard Boone for the duration. Paired with the loss by West Virginia at the Gator Bowl to Florida State 33-21, New Year's Day wasn't so good for the Big East. Today UCONN handled South Carolina rather easily 20-7 in THE PAPA JOHN's, and USF beat Northern Illinois in The INTERNATIONAL BOWL 27-3. Overall the Big East finished the bowl season 4-2. Its nice to have a winning record, and it is good for the conference. But its hard to spin a beating of the conference champion in a BCS game the way Cincy was destroyed- it was men vs boys, the Washington Generals vs the Globetrotters....it was a situation where one team didn't appear worthy of sharing the same space as the other.

And I'm pulling my punches here.

In order for the Big East to regain the respect it had before Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College bolted for the ACC the conference has to schedule out of conference better, and it has to be competitive in BCS games, year in and year out.

And that goes for my beloved Rutgers Scarlet Knights as well...no more two 1AA opponents.

(8). In closing......thank you Coach Bowden! There will never be anyone quite like you again.

"Daddgummitt!"