More Random Ramblings

I was the referee for a soccer game on Sunday that featured a predominantly Spanish speaking team. At one point, a player on the opposing team came up to me and said, "You know they are swearing in Spanish, right?" (Swearing can get a player a red card.) Um, no. Apparently, several players said "puta" during the game, which I now know means bitch. That seems like a very odd expression to say when your shot badly misses the goal. Perhaps son of a bitch, but just bitch doesn’t seem to fit. Regardless, my New Year’s resolution will be to learn Spanish swear words and the appropriate expression to tell the players that I know what they’re saying so knock it off.



I’m a little late in writing about this but Tuesday night’s Pittsburgh Penguins-Detroit Red Wings game was amazing. It's only November but the 7-6 overtime win will be the game of the year. I know there has been a lot of discussion about what to do with Jordan Staal, but if the Penguins are able to keep him at a reasonable price that fits under the salary cap, I think you have to do it. He’s only 20 years old! Of course, if he wants at least $5 million per year as has been reported, I don’t think that will be possible. The Pensblog and Empty Netters have much more about the game and the Penguins in general.

I watched exactly two minutes of the CMA Awards last night, but it was enough to see Lady Antebellum win the best new artist award. I actually heard of them since they performed prior to the Browns-Steelers game last year. I also saw Povertyneck Hillbillies perform at a Steelers game, so if they ever get back together, I’m sure they’ll win some type of CMA award.

My favorite Smithsonian museum, the National Museum of American History, is reopening next week!

Finally, congratulations to Arjewtino for getting interviewed by Washingtonian. Unfortunately, I was too late in reading the interview:

Washingtonian: Tips for starting a blog that’s not really about anything:
Arjewtino: (1) Don’t write about your cat.

D'oh!

Announcement

This blog gives me an opportunity to share important parts of my life. Whether it is writing about the various sporting events I have attended or trips I have taken, I feel like I can use this space as a forum to chronicle personal events and moments. Therefore, I am proud to announce a pending addition to our family...we’re going to get a kitten. Were you expecting me to write about something else?

Sometime over the next few days, we’re heading to the local animal shelter to pick out a kitten. Perhaps we’ll see the Obama family there. Although I grew up with both dogs and cats, I have never had my own pet. Maybe I didn’t know any better since I was a kid and not responsible for buying pet supplies or paying for vet bills, but things seem much more complex than I remember. For example, prior to the spay/neuter procedure, we have the option of having pre-anesthetic blood testing of the pet in order to detect certain conditions. For $50, we can have a mini blood screening analysis which covers six tests that screens liver and kidney functions. For $98.50, there is a full analysis of 31 tests (does Baskin Robbins perform this?) that screens blood sugar levels, CBC, white and red blood cell count, primary organ functions and liver and kidney functions. Is any of this necessary?

In addition, I remember litter boxes being basic trays on the floor. Now, there are "hooded cat litter pans" like this one pictured below. The first time I saw this, I thought it was a cat carrier. Now cats need their own privacy? Are there cat magazines or newspapers we should put in the hooded cat litter pan so that the kitten could be more comfortable while doing its business?



So to any cat owners out there, do you have any suggestions on, well, everything?

Random Ramblings

• There are moments of everyone’s life that you regret but they are generally not broadcast for millions of people to see. One such moment occurred on Monday’s The Price Is Right. The episode was taped in September and a college student made it on the stage. Just before spinning the wheel, Drew Carey gave the student, who was wearing a "Block O" Ohio State T-shirt and a buckeye necklace, the microphone. The student shared his excitement about how Ohio State would beat USC the next day. USC crushed Ohio State 35-3. At least the guy won a vacuum cleaner or something.

• I highly recommend visiting Wegmans at 2:00pm on a Monday afternoon. No lines and the friendly staff are even friendlier than they are on Sundays.

• Embarrassed by the thousands of Steelers’ Terrible Towels at the game last week, the Redskins are giving away burgundy towels to the first 50,000 fans at this Sunday’s Dallas game. Good luck with that!

• PittGirl was interviewed via Instant Message in Pittsburgh magazine. I love the fact that the interview starts with "Hi, u there?" I’m guessing that’s how Paul Long started all of his interviews!



• Thank you, Anquan Boldin. Being down 17 points going into Monday night and facing Neil Rackers in my 16-team fantasy football league, Boldin scored 29 points. I won by only 1 point.

• This Onion story titled "Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin To Staff: 'What If Ben Roethlisberger Is Bad?'" is not that funny after Sunday’s game.

• Finally, Dan Steinberg of the DC Sports Bog reports that George Mason is getting a new mascot. In case you have never seen the current mascot, Gunston, here he is answering questions. (There are more videos still available on the Mason Metro website.)

We Are; Not Going to Win a National Championship This Year

Despite the Steelers' loss on Sunday, the weekend wasn't a total bust as the University of Pittburgh and Ithaca College football teams both won. In addition, as a Pitt fan, watching the Penn State football team lose on Saturday to the University of Iowa makes me extremely happy. You see, Penn State coach Joe Paterno is to blame for ending one of the greatest rivalries in college football: Pitt vs. Penn State. After 96 meetings between 1893 and 2000, the rivalry ended because Joe Paterno decided that he wanted the schools to play two games at Penn State for every game in Pittsburgh. Rightfully so, Pitt refused. Instead, Penn State chose to play Coastal Carolina, Syracuse and Temple in its non-conference schedule. So the fact that Penn State lost and will not win a national championship during Joe Paterno’s 104th season at State College seems fair to me.

In honor of his team’s accomplishments on Saturday, I encourage you to vote for Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year. It’s not just because of the win or the fact that he grew up in Western Pennsylvania (Upper St. Clair). Actually, that is enough for me. However, if you’re looking for more reasons, the NCAA recently released the 2008 Graduation Success Rate (“GSR”) for student-athletes. The GSR for Iowa’s football team is 75%, 8 points better than the national average, and is third in the Big Ten Conference behind only Northwestern (92%) and Penn State (78%). Plus, Ferentz has served as the honorary chair of the University of Iowa’s United Way campaign and, along with his wife, recently gave a $400,000 gift to the University’s College of Liberal Arts and University Children’s Hospital.

Did I mention that Ferentz's Iowa team defeated Penn State?

Metro Discount From Bus to Rail

Lena Sun of the Washington Post is reporting that, "beginning next year, tens of thousands of Metro riders who transfer from bus to rail will save 50 cents a trip if they use electronic SmarTrip cards, officials said yesterday. The long-promised change is scheduled to go into effect Jan. 4, the same day the agency is eliminating paper transfers."

This makes me happy. Bus fares are going up 25 cents in January, but now I'll end up saving 25 cents each day because of the 50-cent (you can find him in da club) transfer reduction.

Well, maybe not. According to this chart, I'm only going to save 10 cents a day. Now I'm slightly confused, which really doesn't take much to occur.

Election Maps, Steelers and Great Authors

My life the last few days has focused almost entirely on the election and the Steelers’ Monday night game, though not necessarily in that order. I have a few links about both:

I love maps and have spent way too much time looking at the county-by-county results of the Presidential election.

From the map, only one county in the six New England states went to McCain: Piscataquis, Maine.

Conversely, McCain won every Oklahoma county, and Obama only won two counties each in Wyoming and Utah and three counties in Kansas and Nevada. Of course, winning Clark County, home of Las Vegas, was enough for Obama to carry that state.

McCain also won both Mineral counties. That would be Mineral County, Nevada where 49 total people voted and Mineral County, Colorado which had a whopping 64 voters. I spent over 20 minutes trying to verify these numbers from the Mineral County government websites, but I don’t think these counties have actual websites.

According to the Pennsylvania map from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, John McCain won Mercer County with 24,321 votes versus Obama’s 24,319. That’s a difference of only two votes. Amazing! However, the Mercer County government site actually shows that Obama won 24,955-24,792. Did they find an extra thousand people at the Grove City Prime Outlets to vote late Tuesday night?

There are a lot of angry Redskins fans in and around Washington. It’s not the team lost handily to Pittsburgh on Monday night; it’s the fact that there were thousands of Steelers fans in attendance. Personally, I thought there were a larger percentage of Steelers fans at the game I attended in Jacksonville earlier this season (I thought about 25%) than at Monday’s game, but I have seen some people put the percentage of Steelers fans on Monday as high as 30%. Much more about this as well as some fun comments from Washington fans on the DC Sports Bog here, here and here (this one is the Redskins player reactions to the Steelers fans. The offense needed to use a silent count...at home!).

In other Steelers news (sort of), PSAMP and One for the Other Thumb interviewed Amos Zereoue.

Finally, I am always on the lookout for good books to read. While I am enjoying Don’t Know Much About Anything Else by Kenneth C. Davis (I like receiving free books), which has facts and quizzes on a variety of topics, there is not a plot or protagonist. Therefore, I am thinking about reading some books by historic authors. If you could choose one book each by Ernest Hemmingway, Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck, what would you recommend? I remember reading Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck in high school, and I must have read a Dickens book at some point, but I don’t recall which one. Any suggestions of books by these authors or others are appreciated.

Random Election Questions

What is the lowest moment of Anderson Cooper’s career: Interviewing a hologram of will.i.am or hosting the Mole?

Am I the only person who thinks President Bush could be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars in a few years?

Did anyone see Joe Biden on Tuesday?

Where were all the commercials featuring the Commissioner of the More Taste League? (Maybe I’ve been watching too many sporting events lately.)

How long will it be until all the election signs get removed?

Election Live Blog

The guys at White Nerdy Wonks have set up this live blog of Election 2008. Enjoy!

Steelers-Redskins Recap

I’m going on about five hours of sleep after attending Monday night’s Pittsburgh Steelers-Washington Redskins game. Since I need to head to work sometime soon (hooray for getting two hours off to vote so I slept five hours instead of four!), here are my notes from FedEx Field:

- I saw at least a half dozen signs of Cooley for President or Portis for President. We get it; there’s an election on Tuesday and you feel like Cooley and Portis will represent the country better than McCain or Obama. That’s very clever and unbelievably original! If only Portis or Cooley were over 35 and eligible to be President.

- The Redskins announcer sounded similar to Duff Man. Of course, his enthusiasm seemed to lessen in the fourth quarter. Oh, don’t tell me to cheer when the Redskins are on defense and to stay quiet when they are on offense. I’ll cheer when I want to cheer! Basically, don't tell me what to do as I may have the Reactance Bias.



- Are the Redskins the only team in the NFL with a marching band? I don’t ever remember seeing a non-high school band perform before the game or during halftime at a professional football game.

- Byron Leftwich looked good during the second half. I just hope that he doesn’t have to play much the rest of the season.

- The primary negative about being at the game is not knowing everything that is happening. For example, there was certainly a “what the hell” moment when Leftwich started the second half over Roethlisberger. I had to call a friend in Ohio to find out what happened to Roethlisberger and he also told me that Heath Miller was hurt. I still have no idea who blocked the punt.

- Negative #2 was sitting under a speaker.

- My ticket stub for Monday’s game features a picture of Antwaan Randle-El. That was the only time I remember seeing him all night.

- If I was a Redskins fan, I would be upset with the fact that the Redskins only tried to throw the ball deep once. Maybe Santana Moss wasn’t 100% healthy, but if he’s out there, try throwing the ball deep to him or Randle-El.

- The Steelers defense was outstanding! One player who may not get much credit, but I thought played very well was cornerback William Gay. I don’t think he ever got beat and the passes completed in front on him were quick throws in which he quickly tackled the receiver after only a few yards.

- Is punter Mitch Berger still hurt? His punts seemed to be short.

- My preview of Monday night’s game on MVN was pretty accurate. If the Redskins handed the ball to Portis on fourth and goal inside the 1 instead of trying to throw it, I would have nailed the score too.

Finally, I (partially) attribute the Steelers success to the fact that I decided to wear my Steelers jacket and not attempt to wear both the jacket and the Louis Lipps jersey. My streak of the Steelers winning while I’m in attendance continues to at least 12 games over almost 15 years.

I’m going to wear my Steelers jacket proudly on the Metro and walking around Northern Virgina. It’s going to be a great day! Oh, if you are looking for free election food (and made it all the way to the end of this post), Sabine…Shot the Food (h/t lacochran) has a list. Please note that I’m not convinced that Chick Fil-A is giving away a free sandwich as I ate at the Arlington location yesterday and did not see any Election Day promotion. In addition, if you bring your I Voted sticker to California Tortilla today, you will receive a free taco coupon.

As always, a real recap of the game is available on the Post-Gazette.

I Voted - Go Steelers

Thanks to early voting in Virginia, I cast my ballot last week. Therefore, to all political candidates in the Washington DC area, you can stop trying to convince me to vote for you. You can continue to show your television advertisements while I’m watching football, but I don’t need to look. Show Chris Berman interviewing Obama and McCain during halftime of Monday night football; I don’t care. I’m not going to watch it as I’ll be at FedEx Field. I just hope that the Redskins don’t show these interviews at the stadium.

Monday night’s game is the reason why I voted early. I won’t get home from the game until early Tuesday morning, so trying to wake up, wait over an hour in line to vote and then get to work at a reasonable hour just wasn’t going to happen.

One surprising name on the presidential ballot was a Wayne A. Root, the Vice Presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket. Without knowing this individual, I wondered if it was Wayne Allyn Root, the Vegas sports handicapper who I used to hear commercials for on sports talk radio. As it turns out, Wayne Allyn Root IS running for Vice President. Who knew?

Finally, I need some advice on my attire for Monday night’s game. I have a heavy Steelers jacket as well as my Louis Lipps jersey. The team has won in games I attended when I wear one or the other, but I have never attempted to wear both at the same time. The temperature is expected to be around 50. Any suggestions are appreciated, as I know that my wardrobe, and not factors such as Jason Campbell or the Steelers offensive line, will determine whether or not the Steelers will win. If you have any doubt in my power, the last time the Steelers lost in a game I attended was the AFC Championship game against San Diego in January 1995.

Cortaca Jug 2008 Tickets

To any Ithaca College alumni out there, tickets for Cortaca Jug 2008 between IC and SUNY Cortland go on sale today (Sunday, November 2) at noon. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Sales are limited to four general admission tickets per alumnus/a, at a cost of $6 per ticket. Try finding a $6 ticket for a JV high school football game!

To purchase tickets online, you will be required to log on to the Ithaca College Online Community. Visit www.icalumni.net/cortaca2008 to purchase tickets (the "Purchase Ticket(s) button" will not be activated until Sunday, November 2 at 12:00 noon).

As for the game, it is set for Saturday, November 15, 2008 at noon at Cortland. I’ll have much more about the game in the upcoming weeks, but this is all that you need to know for now. Cortland is 8-0 and ranked #7 in the D3football poll while Ithaca is 7-1 and currently ranked #21, but will likely move into the top 20 next week. There’s a reason why this is called the biggest little game in the nation.

UPDATE 11/14: As promised, a full preview of the game is now available.

100,000 Milestone

At some point today, Sean’s Ramblings will have its 100,000th visitor. For some reason, I think it is fitting that this milestone is taking place on Halloween. Whether you visit this site multiple times a day (thanks mom) or are one of the thousands of people who have stopped by to learn about Ben Roethlisberger’s pool, Jenna Bush’s wedding plans, the Greg Lloyd Ebay auction, or why people hate Hillary Clinton, thank you.

To those people who continue to find Sean’s Ramblings by searching for pictures of a shirtless Richard Ruccolo (the guy who was not Ryan Reynolds on Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place), please stop.



Update: Congratulations to someone from Brownsville, PA for being the 100,000th visitor at 12:26pm Eastern time! For this honor, you win a picture of a shirtless Richard Ruccolo (if he allows you).

Obama Food vs. McCain Food

Although the Presidential election is still a few days away, some businesses, such as the three below, want to get into the action with their own election.

Visit your local 7-Eleven for the 7-Election (get it? 7-election instead of 7-11? clever) and place your vote by choosing either an Obama or a McCain cup of coffee. The website even has state by state results, although many "red" states have no 7-Eleven stores operated or franchised by 7-Eleven Inc.

If there's any post about food on this site, California Tortilla generally gets mentioned. In this case, California Tortilla is tallying the number of each of the candidate’s burritos sold from October 13th through November 3rd and they guarantee that whosever burrito sells the most will win the election.

The McCain-Chilada: Mexican rice, mesquite chicken, tortilla strips, velvety queso, fresh salsa, and shredded lettuce, rolled in a warm flour tortilla, smothered with green enchilada sauce and garnished with sour cream and cilantro.

The O-Chili-bama Burrito: Mexican rice, turkey chili, tortilla strips, jalapeño peppers, sour cream, and shredded lettuce, rolled in a warm flour tortilla, smothered with velvety queso and garnished with fresh salsa and green onions.

Now through, well, today, cast your ballot by ordering one of the special election omelettes at Silver Diner. The Obamalette (inspired by the candidate’s favorite hometown food, Chicago deep dish pizza – a pizza omelette?) vs. the McCainlette (indicative of the candidate’s home state of Arizona, as well as his favorite way to cook, Barbecue).

I’m sure there are more of these McCain-Obama food and drink election deals out there, but I couldn’t find any others. If you type Obama vs. McCain into Google, there are 31,900,000 results. I only got through about 13,154,120 before I gave up. If you know of any places doing this, feel free to share in the comments section.


Only five days until this is all over!

The Hank Williams Jr. Experience

I know very little about Hank Williams Jr., but I like him for two main reasons. First, the Monday Night Football theme based on his song "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" is an incredible, pump-you-up song. Second, Williams is a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. These may be shallow reasons to like Hank Williams Jr., but that works for me.

However, I’m starting to get a little worried about Williams. He sang the national anthem during the Monday night game this week while wearing a Tennessee Titans jersey. I can’t say that I agree with him wearing a jersey other than a Steelers one, but I guess that he wanted to make a good impression for everyone in Nashville (even though you would think he would already be well received by Tennessee fans based on Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year awards and the Monday Night Football song). Unfortunately, this seems to be a trend for Williams. In the video below, Williams is shown wearing a Denver Broncos jersey and a Washington Redskins jersey. Yes, there is video of him wearing a Steelers’ Joey Porter jersey, but he may be hanging out with Sarah Palin a little too much lately.

On to the video, just after the 3:35 mark, Williams states, "If [Obama’s] elected with his agenda the American restaurant business is over. Just plain and simple, it’s over." Now Williams is referring to a conversation he apparently had with an owner of a large restaurant chain, but, um, what? Neil Cavuto looks rather surprised and questions Williams by asking, "People are not going to eat," but Williams doesn’t hear him. What an odd comment by Williams from an odd interview. Just as a side note, I don’t think that Neil Cavuto will ever be confused with Edward R. Murrow as an interviewer.




h/t Messiah, now part of White Nerdy Wonks

Trivia Tuesday

We’re back on a normal schedule as I went to trivia last night. Today’s challenge is to name the highest grossing domestic box office movie in the following decades. The year the movie was released is included below.

1930’s (1939)

1940’s (1940)

1950’s (1956)

1960’s (1965)

1970’s (1977)

1980’s (1982)

1990’s (1997)

2000’s (2008)

The usual rules apply. Please do not use the internet for the answers. Either you know it or you don’t. As always, please leave your answers in the comments section below. Good luck!

Thanks to the folks at Stump Trivia for creating these quizzes.

Sean Blogs

Between watching the Washington Redskins-Detroit Lions game and monitoring my fantasy football teams, I decided to create a comprehensive list of blogs with Sean in the title. This is what happens when the soccer games I am supposed to referee get cancelled because of muddy fields. Anyway, check out the Sean Blogs!

One of the best hockey blogs out there is Sean Leahy’s Going Five Hole. The blog is so good, that I already linked to it.

Sean in Saskatchewan is Sean Shaw, who is a Professional Research Associate in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan and the Vice-chair of the Saskatoon Environmental Advisory Committee. This is the place to go for Saskatchewan politics. (I have no idea if this is true, but this is the only place I have gone for Saskatchewan politics!)

Sean the Baptist has been appointed as the Professor of New Testament Studies for the Uniting Church in Australia in the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, and within the Uniting Church's Theological College in Melbourne. Although the appointment doesn’t begin until January 1, 2009, Sean hasn’t updated the blog since October 10.

Although he is the manager/webmaster of AnimeUSA, this is Sean P. Aune’s personal website where he writes about who is the best James Bond, his hatred of Dirty Dancing and the PG Porn series. Of all of Sean blogs listed here, this is the one I will probably visit more than any other.

Sean Tiner works in advertising in Laguna Beach, California. He posts his own art on the website and recently wrote about the users of social media.

Sean and Heather, a married couple in Texas, are starting the adoption process. They invite you to join them on this journey. There is a big twist on the blog as Heather is pregnant. Well, that goes against the blog’s theme, doesn’t it? Congrats and good luck to both of them!

Sean O’Keefe’s Personal Blog written by a teacher assistant in Raleigh, North Carolina is relatively new to the blog world. He tells everyone to vote and has this quote from last month’s Vice Presidential debate:
"Also why is Sarah Palin incapable of responding to the debate where Biden is? Is she really that naieve, dumb, prone to shoot the interviewer like he/she was a moose????" Um, OK.

The Life of Sean and Emma - They are twins who just turned two years old. Awwwwww.

You may be an excellent illustrator, Mr. O’Connor, but seanoconnor.info is a lazy name for a blog.

Apparently, there is more than one person named Sean out there who is an illustrator. What are the odds? News from Sean Qualls shows some of his work including the children’s book Before John Was a Jazz Giant.

Sean’s Soapbox – Knitting, Spinning, Fiber, Politics: It’s All a Tangled Web. Now that’s a tagline! Plus, you can hear all about Rhinebeck. I don’t know what Rhinebeck is, but "the fiber and yarns are amazing."

Sean Percival’s Blog – Sean is a web developer and author with many years experience of messing around on the Internet for fun and profit. He also proposed at the top of the Empire State Building.

The winner of most successful person Sean in the blog title goes to Cardinal Seán, the Archbishop of Boston, for Cardinal Seán’s blog. Lots of pictures.

There are other Sean blogs I found out there, but they have not been updated in months or years. If you know of other Sean blogs, feel free to include them in the comments below. Please note that I am not including blogs with Shawn, Shawon, Shonn, or Chone in this list.

Steelers-Giants Recap

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a lead late in the fourth quarter at home and lost. Ben Roethlisberger was sacked five times, hit at least another dozen times and threw four interceptions. The team was 1 for 10 on third down, 0 for 4 on fourth down and had 8 penalties for 59 yards, many of them pretty stupid penalties. Plus, the Steelers defense who led the league in sacks coming into the game, failed to register a sack and rarely put pressure on Eli Manning. It was clearly not one of their best games.

However, let’s take a step back and put everything into perspective. The Steelers are 5-2 and have a one game lead over Baltimore, who they already defeated, in the AFC North. The 5-2 record is tied for second best in the AFC with New England and Buffalo behind only the undefeated Tennessee Titans. The Steelers are 5-0 against AFC teams, a very important playoff tie-breaker, which along with the Titans, is the best in the conference. Yes, the team has some work to do, but there’s no need to panic...yet.

A few thoughts from the game:

- Why was Dick Stockton so concerned about players getting out of bounds early in the game? Twice in the first half (Heath Miller’s catch on the first drive and Carey Davis’ catch with 12+ minutes left in the second quarter), Stockton stated that the Steelers failed to get out of bounds after making a catch.

- Ryan Clark and Brett Kiesel both played amazing games.

- Stupid Toyota commercial. I’m going to have "save by zero" in my head all day.

- Nate Washington has turned into an extremely solid receiver.

- The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror XIX" looks really good. Unfortunately, I feel like I’ve seen the whole episode already during all of Fox’s commercials.

- Am I the only person wondering why Justin Hartwig, the Steelers’ starting center, wasn’t able to serve as the back-up long-snapper? Doesn’t Hartwig make a living snapping the ball and then blocking the guy in front of him?

- Can the Steelers have another bye week? I’m writing this on Sunday night, so I don’t know the health status of Ryan Clark, Greg Warren, Mitch Berger and any other Steeler. Regardless, with Willie Parker and Bryant McFadden already out, it seems like the team could use a week off to get healthy.

I will be at FedEx Field for next week’s Steelers-Redskins game. If I was told that the Steelers could only win one of these two games against the Giants and Redskins, I would gladly take a Steelers win against Washington.

More about the game is available on the Post-Gazette website.

Sunday Links

At what age does it stop being fun to play in the rain? I worked two games as a soccer referee yesterday in miserable cold and rainy conditions. In the second game, where the weather turned worse than the first one, some of the 15 and 16 year-old kids seemed to be having a great time. I did not, but of course, I was not actually playing. On to the links:

According to WJLA, Presidential candidate John McCain’s brother, Joe, called 911 to complain about traffic on the Wilson Bridge. Not very smart.

I don’t want to write about the Pitt and Ohio State football teams (it’s so frustrating being a Pitt fan; I may write about this in length some day), but at least Ithaca College won defeating Utica 42-7. The win guarantees Ithaca’s 38th consecutive winning season, the second longest such streak in any level of college football. If only the Pittsburgh Pirates would have one winning season!

Jason has a video of the Wazzup guys eight years later.

Puck Daddy interviews Kevin Smith, the director of the upcoming movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which was filmed in Pittsburgh.

I was honored to be part of Cotter’s Meeting People is Easy. He does an amazing great job with this weekly feature.

Cotter, of the previously mentioned One for the Other Thumb, and I were featured in a debate about whether the Tennessee Titans will win the AFC. The short answer is no.

Finally, Terry Tate: Office Linebacker is back!





h/t Scribbled Noise for these videos.

Get Off the Express

Perhaps you have heard of the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award in which the winning college football coach receives $70,000 to donate to charity and the school’s alumni association. Perhaps not. Regardless, I want to write about one person who definitely does not deserve the award: Greg Robinson of Syracuse University.

During the mid-1990s, I attended college in central New York about an hour away from Syracuse. I was surrounded by Syracuse University sports fans who always thought that this would be the year where they would win the national title. However, each year, it seemed like Syracuse would be ranked highly, lose a few games early to knock them out of national championship contention and then finish strong, so that they would be ranked highly again the next season. Although they never made it to the “next level,” the team was always competitive and won bowl games and/or Big East titles regularly.

The mid-90s teams featured future NFL superstars Donovan McNabb and Marvin Harrison. Looking back further in Syracuse’s football history, you see legendary names like Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Joe Morris, John Mackey, Art Monk and former Steeler Gary Anderson.



So what happened at Syracuse? I haven’t followed them enough to know. I do know that Greg Robinson has not done very well. In his first year as head coach (2005), Syracuse finished 1-10. In 2006, the team was 4-8 followed by a 2-10 record in 2007. As I am typing this, Syracuse is 1-6 so far this season. Robinson may be a great person, a wonderful teacher and someone helping his players become excellent citizens, role models and college graduates. However, an 8-34 record is not very good, particularly at a school with the football history of Syracuse. Actually, that’s not a very good record for a team consisting of me and the writers of all the blogs listed in the links section!

Finally, you know things aren’t going well when the New York Times reports that the school has hired a search firm for a new coach even though the current coach is still there and has one more year remaining on his contract.

Therefore, I encourage you to vote for anyone for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award; except for Greg Robinson.

In case you were wondering, the slogan for the 2008 Syracuse football team is Get on the Express hence the title. Yes, I wrote hence!

Trivia Thursday

This is not a typo. Today really is Thursday. We missed trivia on Monday but went to another one last night instead. Your challenge is this: listed below are the artists. Name the Top 40 song they had beginning with the word "Ain’t."

1. Jennifer Lopez

2. Bill Withers or DMX

3. Diana Ross

4. McFadden & Whitehead

5. Helen Reddy

6. Rufus and Chaka Khan

7. Rolling Stones or Temptations

8. Fats Domino

9. Kid ‘N Play

10. TLC


This may be the hardest trivia ever; however, the usual rules still apply. Please do not use the internet for the answers. Please leave your answers in the comments section below. Good luck!

Update: One time deal - Since this is the hardest trivia ever, feel free to use the internet if necessary.

As always, the quiz was created by the folks at Stump Trivia.