NFL Week 9: The hotter-than-Hades parlay

I've come to expect the heat. That's what you get when you move to the desert. So even though it's Halloween and there's frost on the pumpkins back in the homeland, the AC still kicks in here from time to time, I jumped into the unheated pool last week and didn't seize up and sink to the bottom like a stone, and pants are definitely for the overdressed.

We've had a couple weeks of above-normal temps -- a good 10 degrees above normal, in fact. And just when bliss is scheduled to arrive, in the form of high temps in the low 70s and cool nights requiring an extra blanket, we're headed to Phoenix for a wedding this weekend. High temps there will be in the mid-90s -- pushing record highs, of course.

Maybe I'll stay cool watching my football picks come through for me this week.

• Cardinals-Rams over 48.5 -- Neither team plays a lick of defense, the Rams are finding themselves under Jim Haslett and Kurt Warner returns to the scene of his greatest professional success since he faced a shelf of Campbell's tomato soup cans in 23.4 seconds, a Hy-Vee record that stands to this day.
• Giants -8.5 vs. Dallas -- When your QB choices are Brad Johnson and Brooks Bollinger, and you're not Brad Childress circa 2006 (or even if you are), you're screwed.
• Eagles -6.5 at Seattle -- Philly killed me a few weeks back with a late cover at San Francisco. They'd better do it again. Cover, that is. Not kill me. That would suck.
• Colts -5.5 vs. New England -- This means more to the Colts than the Pats. Even if they're not rubbing Tom Brady's pretty mug into the turf, the Colts will enjoy running up the score on the Hoodie.
• Redskins -1.5 vs. Pittsburgh -- Lotta chalk this week. I just think the Skins are good enough at home to pull this out by at least two.

Last week: 1-3-1
Season: 17-21-2

Joe Buck is a tool, reason No. 7,487

Monday night's World Series game provided yet another shining example of what a tool Joe Buck is. With the wind blowing and the rain falling, the Phillies held a 2-1 lead through 4-and-one-half innings.

Now, in a normal situation, like in a regular-season game in June, if the home team is leading after the visitors have batted at least five times, the game can be considered "official" and if the weather doesn't permit further play, the umpires can call the game and the home team would be credited with a victory.

But this is the World Series -- specifically, a potential clincher for the Phillies. If you really think the brain wizards at MLB, Inc., are going to let a Series-deciding game be called due to weather, with the World Championship essentially handed to the Phillies after anything less than nine innings, you're crazy.

Or you're Joe Buck. Because once the Rays were retired in the top of the 5th, Buck couldn't stop blurting out, "It's an official game! Remember, it's official!" Meaning, "The umpires could call this thing at any minute and the Phillies would be World Champions!"

Of course, you probably know by now that the Rays scratched out a run in the top of the sixth and the game was suspended until Tuesday night, when it will be picked up with the score tied 2-2 in the bottom of the sixth. But instead of letting it lie, Buck had to delve back into his own personal fantasy world and say something to the effect of, "The Rays are lucky they tied the game before the umpires had called it, or this thing would be over and the Phillies would be World Champs. And what a black eye it would be for Major League Baseball to have to award its championship in such a manner."

About a half-hour later, Commissioner Bud Selig confirmed in a press conference that if the Rays hadn't scored in the 6th, the game would have been in a "rain delay" that would have lasted as long as necessary. He said there's no way MLB would allow a World Series game to end before nine innings had been played.

So, back to Joe Buck. My biggest issue with him is the smug, know-it-all attitude that oozes through the TV screen every time he's on the air. In this instance, he didn't offer any contingencies, he didn't say he was speculating, he didn't say that in the regular season, this is how a game could be called early, and wouldn't it be interesting to see what MLB would do with that rule in the post-season ... nope, he just blundered ahead like the know-it-all that he is, likely giving Rays fans chest pains for a full inning before their heroes tied the game in the sixth.

I'll be interested to see if anybody else on the sports blogs makes a big deal out of this on Tuesday. It seems like it might be one of those wonky things that only baseball nerds like yours truly would care about. Then again, the Deadspins and Awful Announcings of the world did get kinda bent out of shape this summer when Buck admitted he rarely watches sports anymore and doesn't care much for baseball. Tonight's performance in the booth in Philadelphia pretty much confirmed that for me.

Week 8: The "Ho-leeeee Crap" Parlay

Sorry I didn't post this week's parlay earlier -- see the previous entry if you're wondering why. But once I regained my bearings I found five games that I thought I liked -- here's how they turned out:

• KC-NYJ under 39 -- I figured a gimpy Breffarve and a wet-behind-the-ears Tyler Thigpen would keep this total down. Turns out I figured wrong.
• Bills-Dolphins under 42 -- Two good defenses, two run-oriented offenses. I got that one right -- by a point.
• Panthers -4 vs. Arizona -- That one was a push, although I probably deserved to lose it, given that the Cards missed an extra point.
• Falcons +8.5 at Philadelphia -- I felt good about the Falcons keeping that one close, and they did, but a late TD run by Westbrook blew their cover.
• Giants-Steelers over 42 -- This one came up a touchdown short.

Last week: 2-3
This week: 1-3-1
Season: 17-21-2

A real jaw-dropper

If you see me walking around town with a bandage on my jaw this week, it's because I scraped it on the driveway after the shock of Friday afternoon.

I mean, imagine that you're expecting two dear friends to be flying in for a weekend visit, and you're cleaning the house and getting ready to pick them up at the airport in two hours. Then imagine that your wife calls to say she's coming home from work early. Then imagine that a bus pulls up in front of your house and 10 of your best friends pile out to help you celebrate your 40th birthday (which is still seven weeks away).

After I picked my jaw off the pavement, we had an incredible weekend filled with fun, drinks, gambling, good food and great times. Fortunately I had enough beer in the fridge on Friday to nourish the thirsty crowd as we sat poolside and had a good laugh at my cluelessness for a couple of hours. Then it was dinner and blackjack at Green Valley Ranch before we got a good night's sleep.

On Saturday, we had a poolside grillout and watched some great college football games, then met up at Planet Hollywood for some cake, World Series action, and more blackjack. After a Sunday brunch, most of the crew took off, but those who stuck around for Sunday spent the day watching NFL and World Series games, playing more black jack, and dining on lowbrow (In-n-Out) and highbrow (Settebello pizza) food.

And with all apologies to Lou Gehrig, today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth!

A bed of bunk

The recent controversy surrounding U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and her comments regarding anti-American views in Congress has been fascinating to watch. Within three days of her appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" show, where she made the incendiary comments in response to a question from interviewer Chris Matthews, Bachmann's opponent in the upcoming election, Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg, raised more than $800,000 in campaign contributions, the money reportedly flowing in via the Internet from around the country.

Anybody who's followed the career of the gay-bashing, Bible-thumping, global-warming-denying Bachmann is not surprised by her viewpoints. The longer she stays in office, the more she starts to resemble Joe McCarthy in pumps -- or J. Edgar Hoover on casual Friday.

But the story did bring to light another interesting phenomenon from this campaign. On Tuesday, Bachmann tried to clarify her comments (falling back on the old "blame the media" canard, shockingly), and the StarTribune story reporting her backtracking included the following passage:

"I'm a staunch Republican supporter of hers, but I think it's going to be a factor," said Don Watkins, 72, a retired business owner. "When you look at the money the Democrats are pumping in, it's going to have an impact, no doubt about it. Whether it will cost her the race or not, I won't venture."

As for the merits of Bachmann's earlier concern that Obama may be anti-American, Watkins said, "I get a lot of e-mails on the subject, a lot of it's pretty negative regarding Obama. There's ways to check out information, but I don't have time to do it."

This highlights a point that I've been pondering for awhile now -- the misinformation out there about Barack Obama and the public's willingness to believe it. Snopes.com is a fantastic website that was founded as a collection of urban legends that we've always heard about and started to spread like wildfire once the Internet and e-mail became ubiquitous.

In election years, it's not uncommon that more and more of these urban legends concern political figures running for office. Snopes relies on regular citizens ("Joe the Plumber," if you will) to send in the e-mails they've received regarding these figures, and the good people at Snopes will research the "facts" and anecdotes to determine their veracity.

As of today, Snopes lists 42 different entries about Barack Obama -- most of them along the lines of, "Barack Obama was born in Kenya" or "Barack Obama is a Muslim," or (my personal favorite) "Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ."

Meanwhile, the McCain page includes 11 such entries, including a couple that were intended to make McCain look good but proved false. Really, only four of the 11 entries debunked myths intended to attack McCain, compared with 24 Obama myths debunked and another nine that were proven at least partially false.

So, of the 42 Snopes entries examining e-mails flying around the country about Obama, 33 of them were found to be partially or wholly inaccurate. And yet, these e-mails keep flooding the in-boxes of potential voters around the country.

Why is that? Could it be that Republicans are looking for a reason to believe that Obama is a horrible person, some "fact" (no matter how demonstrably false) they can fall back on when people ask them why they support McCain over Obama? That seems more likely than the possibility that conservatives are just more gullible than liberals -- there's a willful ignorance on display here that is not accidental.

And if a 72-year-old retired business owner doesn't have time to check out these claims, what hope do we have for the rest of the voting public?