I Hate Being Right

One of the most lackadaisical, bumbling displays of hockey I have ever witnessed.

Why do the Flyers (I'm looking at you Downie) have such an aversion to playing the "North-South" (a term I hate) game? Why did they insist all night on passing side to side instead of dumping it down low? Why do they look like an entirely different team than the one that won the first two rounds? Where the hell did Joe Beninati and Darren Eliot come from and can we send them back?

So either they roll over in Game Four or they raise our hopes by winning one on home ice, but it's over.

At least The Office is on. Ha! The one where Michael grills his foot and Dwight gets a concussion!!

Concussions aren't funny to Flyers fans....

I had hoped that a GIS for "Flyers Girls" would cheer me up. It didn't. But here you go.

Now With 43% Less Rage...

As I try to recover from serious injuries inflicted by Definitive 1000 Item No. 989 (see below for more details, and Sweaty, you left out that 1973 Buick that we augured through), I find myself turning my thoughts inward once again, but in a nice way this time.

So dust off the Haggadahs and the scale models of the pyramids you made out of kugel. It's time for another installment of Jewbacca's Four Questions:

Mmmmm....kugel

1. If Bonita Applebaum married Bob Dobalina (Mr. Bob Dobalina) would she keep her own last name?
Personally, I don't see why she would. Bonita Dobalina has such a nice ring to it.

I can't remember important things because I have had Bob Dobalina (Mr. Bob Dobalina) stuck on a continuous loop in my brain for perhaps 11 years now.

For those of you who do not understand how this could be, take a peek below, at your own risk:



2. Can we all agree that "take it to the next level" and "X brings X to the table" should be banned?
These are nails on a blackboard annoying for me. Seems to me that these used to be strictly sports cliches that have been co-opted by the rest of the world. It used to be that a team needed to "take it to the next level" to win in the playoffs or that "our tentative first round draft pick brings speed and quickness to the table."

Now it seems that everyone has decided to use these awful cliches. I swear I heard a cop say on the news the other night that they need to take their investigations to the next level to stop the skyrocketing homicide rate in Philly and Bush say that Putin brings a lot of anger to the table in regard to the missile defense system in Europe.

3. In that new Heineken commercial where the guy is on his way into the party with that new keg thing and the big sandwich and the other guy steals the keg and claims he brought it, why doesn't guy No. 1 punch the other guy's lights out?

Is it because it's imported? Foreign people are more peaceful than Americans? Drinking a nice domestic beer like Bud Light will apparently expose you to an actual rock being thrown at your head in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors or an angry guard squirrel, if commercials have taught me anything.

Stand up for yourself import boy.

Take her Bud Light and you'll have a fifty foot woman stompin' yo' ass.

4. If the guy that invented the Blackberry moves the Predators to Winnipeg will they be the Jets again?

Or would he take a page from the New York MLS team (Red Bulls) and name them after a product like, say, the Blackberry?

You know where this is going don't you? Winnipeg Blackberries. Blackberry, blueberry. Blueberry, raspberry. Raspberry, Schnozzberry. Schnozzberry, Dingleberry.

And there you have it. The Winnipeg Dingleberries. Mr. Balsilie, may I suggest you avoid future problems and simply go back to the Jets.

You don't want to know what a GIS returns for "dingleberries." Please enjoy these Canadian swimsuit models instead.

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Maybe I AM the Crazy One

Ladies and gents, break out the Manischewitz (Concord Grape, none of that fancy Elderberry), make yourself a hillel sandwich and...go ahead we recline tonight. It's time for another installment of Jewbacca's Four Questions!

1. What the heck is up with parents today?

Disclaimer right off the bat: I am not a parent. Many of the Friendly Friends are, however, so maybe they can set me straight. But what I cannot fathom is how parents today coddle their children.

Case in point: National Spelling bee in D.C. and the favorite manages to misspell clevis. So instead of teaching her kid how to lose gracefully:

Samir's mother appealed his dismissal, based on subtle differences in how the word's final syllable can be pronounced, but officials rejected her appeal.

And this, after her mature, thoughtful son realized:

"The first thing I thought was c-l-e-v-i-s, and if I had been slow and cautious like I always am, I would have got it right," he said. "But I just outsmarted myself. It was an easy word. I just made a stupid mistake."

By the way, this is a clevis pin

I hear stories about kids sports leagues where they don't keep score and every kid gets a trophy. Why shouldn't parents take these opportunities to teach their kids that there are winners and losers. Lord knows I got enough lessons about that from most of my athletic endeavors as a kid. I didn't get a trophy, ever. I didn't ever do well enough at any sport to avoid being next-to-last picked. But you know what, I learned that we aren't all winners (unless we try, of course).

When I bombed sovereign at the county spelling bee at the Plymouth Meeting Mall in second grade, my parents did not file a protest or a grievance, they told me to buck up and study harder next time and that they were proud.

Then they made me sleep outside tied to a tree for a week. Now, I never misspell sovereign.

2. Did they solve all of the rest of Pennsylvania's problems while I wasn't looking?

So the whole casino gambling for property tax relief thing is fixed? The god-awful state of mass transit in the state is all better? The soaring murder rate in Philly and other cities in the the Commonwealth has been grounded?

What's that you say? No??

How do you explain this article from the Inqy then:

Carroll was prompted to draft the bill - similar to one being considered in New Jersey - when the star player on his 12-year-old son's team came to the plate recently swinging a metal bat as the lawmaker coached first base.

Carroll found himself worrying about the child on the mound. He prayed the hitter would be walked.

"I was afraid of what a ball hit up the middle would do," he said. Carroll (D., Luzerne) also realized that as a legislator, he was now in a position to do more than pray.

Sweet. Jumpin. Jebus. This is what our elected officials in this fine state are up to. The article goes on to say of course that of the 160 million plus at-bats in Little League last year there were 23 reported injuries to pitchers from batted balls and that all of the studies done that show aluminum bats cause the ball to travel faster than wood were done with high school and college players.

But it's good to see that our pols will be tackling this issue because some guy who probably played baseball as well as I did as a kid is afraid of the ball (like I was) is one of those pols. I mean, come on, why waste time on the budget impasse when you can legislate what bats kids use in Little League.

Fine coach, I'd be happy to use that wooden bat instead of the aluminum one.

3. Why are Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears news?
Seriously. Can anyone please explain this to me. I just flipped past CNN Headline News to see that Lohan's possible painkiller addiction was a top story. Why? Why? Why?
I really have nothing else to add to this question. I mean, come on: War in Iraq, escalating tensions in Iran and Russia, gas prices skyrocketing, the environment crumbling and all of the other sleep disrupters going on in the world and these three nothings are top stories? Yikes.

Please. It would have been too easy to give you Paris Hilton. Enjoy instead this picture of THE Paris Hilton.

4. What in the heck is wrong with Massachusetts?
Besides the fact that Boston is located there I mean. A couple of Lite-Brites around the city shut it down for days, they can't dig a tunnel without killing people and charging the taxpayers roughly a gazillion dollars, they have the most ridiculously annoying baseball team and fans, and now this:

A faulty bank fax printed a message that was misinterpreted as a bomb threat Wednesday, leading authorities to evacuate more than a dozen neighboring businesses and a day care center.

Wow. You really need to click here and check out the fax.

Why do people in Massachusetts think that they are in constant, imminent danger of being blowed up? Their accents are annoying sure, and contrary to their beliefs the sun does not shine out of Dice-K's ass, but I really don't think that any of that calls for a bombing. A paddlin', definitely, but no 'splosions.


Thanks for your time. You can go back to eating all that fancy leavened bread now.

This Place Really Bugs Me

That's right folks, this place bugs the Dickens out of me. And by this place I mean the world itself. Let us delve into another edition of Jewbacca's Four Questions. And no double dipping the bitter herb, if you know what I'm saying....

1.Has anyone noticed the double standard in effect with media coverage of the various wars and the Virginia Tech tragedy?

I read an article in the paper today about an Army Staff Sergeant serving our country in Afghanistan who questioned why flags over there were lowered for the victims of the VT shooting but they aren't for soldiers killed there. I cannot agree with him more. There is no reason why the flags shouldn't fly at half staff for fallen soldiers as it did for the victims of VT. I have no quibble with this.
But that got me to thinking about the general media coverage of the two. Repeatedly, pictures were broadcast and printed showing victims of the shootings in various stages of bloody disrepair and distress. But long ago the president who has offered various justifications for an unjust war decreed that the media could not broadcast images of the flag draped coffins of those killed in the "just" war. So even though the soldiers coming back in coffins had died fighting in a so-called justified and blessed war, we as media consumers can't handle seeing flag-draped coffins.
Why is that? Probably because it would more rapidly mobilize opposition to the war.
The soldiers who died and are sent back in boxes deserve to have flags flown at half-staff and deserve to have pictures of their return broadcast to remind us of the tragedy that is the bungled mess we've made of the middle east just as much as the innocent victims of the Blacksburg shootings. And that is the double standard of which I speak.

At the very least, we could remember that people are actually dying in Iraq and Afghanistan

2.Why do Philly sports fans feel the need to boo EVERYTHING?
Now, I am one of them. I am a Philly sports fan. Have been my whole life. And I've done my share of booing. I've booed the mites between periods of the Flyers and I've booed bad calls. But why do we do this? I was listening to the Phils tonight on the radio on the way home and heard the "faithful" booing both Ryan Howard for striking out and a dude who had the audacity to drop a foul ball hit to him....in the stands. By the way, the Phils won. And the season is less than a month old. And the Phils have won four straight. Yep...it's time to boo!
On a side note, it may not break the Curse of Billy Penn, but the Kixx did win the MISL (or whatever they call it) Championship. Congrats.

I swear on all that is holy, put "Philly Sports Fan" in a GIS and this is what you get. Got your backs FFMatt and Sweaty.

3.How are the oil companies allowed to charge what they do for gas?
I'm soooooo very tired of the standard reasons: plant maintenance, Hurricane Katrina, expensive additives, unrest in oil producing regions, etc. Why not just level with us: They charge what they do because they can. We have no choice. The CEOs of the oil companies have gotten used to record breaking profits quarter after quarter so why stop? They could charge the mythical $4.00 per gallon tomorrow with no actual justification and we'll keep paying. We are sheep, the oilmen have no incentive to develop vehicles that run on a renewable energy source and we'll pay whatever they say.
And don't give me corn based fuels as a panacea. The amount of energy and fertilizer that will go into producing the volume of corn we'll need will probably pollute the planet beyond if we just kept using fossil fuels.

An American Beauty pumps her own gas??

4.How does one explain the existence of Dick Cheney without the accompaniment of the actual Apocalypse?
No seriously. Someone please explain this to me. I don't get it.

And that concludes the Seder. Good luck finding the afikomen!

Find this puppy and my Nana was good for at least a buck.

Things That Bother Me

I know this may seem somewhat hackneyed, but I am truly filled with much rage a lot of the time. It is usually over stupid things, but these stupid things manage to stick in my craw until I go on a kill-crazy rampage and end up getting tasered....again.

I find that spouting them off really helps. Problem is, if I do that to Mrs. Jewbacca one more time she will probably be the one tasering me. So here are my latest gripes, in a handy Four Questions format. And no I don't know why this night is different from all other nights. It ain't Passover anymore.

In no particular order:

1. Since when do sponsors no longer "sponsor" things?

How exactly does Home Depot "build" College Gameday on the "worldwide leader?" Does the crew from the local HD come out to the various stadia in one of those rip-off rental trucks with some plywood and the animatronic Lee Corso and actually hammer together the set? Does the HD have a video production unit I'm not aware of? Why can't HD just sponsor this waste-of-time show like the good old days. Another example is the website for the upcoming ATHF movie. I love the Aqua Teens. They are number one in the hood 'G, but how exactly does Volkswagen "power" the movie's website? Is the server hooked up to surplus V-Dub engines? Again, VW may be the sponsor of the website, but how does it power the website? A local radio station here has commercials for a new online car shopping site that is also powered by something other than electricity...it's powered by CBS Radio? WTF? How does an entertainment/communications/media conglomerate power a car buying website? It doesn't. Just say it's sponsored by CBS Radio. There are countless more examples, each one chipping away at my sanity a little bit.


2. If my beloved Flyers finish as the worst team in the NHL, how do they manage to only get the second pick in the draft?
I know the mechanics, I know how the lottery works, I knew the percentages going in and I know that the 2007 Entry Draft Class is not on par with recent years. I know all of this and more. But still, how does the worst overall team not have a 99.999% chance of getting the first pick? Again, I understand the notion that certain teams may tank games at the end of the season to grab a better pick, but so what? If a team is in a position to even be able to tank at the end for the sake of a better pick, then obviously the season didn't really go as well as planned, eh? So giving every non-playoff team a chance to move up five spots isn't really going to make much of a difference. Take away the lottery and a team isn't going to go out and play poorly just to draft first overall. Maybe when the season is mathematically headed for the outhouse they won't play as hard, but they will continue to call up minor leaguers and sign their Major Junior prospects whose teams missed the playoffs to give them some exposure to the AHL or the NHL. This always helps a team to some extra L's as the season winds down. And don't give me the league makes money off the lottery like the NBA argument. The NHL lottery is held behind closed doors at league headquarters.

First Overall Pick, Hockey-Hair Draft, 1989

3. How does John Mayer = alternative music?

My musical tastes range pretty far and wide. Mostly I listen to a few tried and true artists and groups (The Beatles, BNL, DMB, Elvis Costello, Bowie, U2) and one radio station (WXPN 88.5...holla) for my musical needs but I do enjoy the occasional country-jazz-rap-classical fusion song. In the car I enjoy the so-called "shock jocks" (O&A, Kidd Chris), but during their interminable commercials I tend to float a bit on the dial. I usually hit XPN and then move on if it's not doing it for me. I saw a billboard for something called "Skin Radio" on 1340 AM in my local broadcast area. This is supposedly "alternative music." During commercial breaks in the talk shows listed above I checked this station out. According to them alternative radio is "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden circa 1994, "Everything Zen" by Bush circa (oddly enough) 1994 and....John Mayer's latest assault on the eardrums. And it's in full specturm, high-fidelty AM sound! Can music peddlers please never say the term alternative again? Needless to say my AM dial will only be used for news, baseball and hockey broadcasts from here on out.

I swear this came up in a Google Image Search for "John Mayer"

4. Why do people feel the need to post rants on blogs? I mean, who really cares?

Hmm. Got me there.