Are the Jets a Cinderella?

Weekly Picks

I went with all the underdogs last week and that didn't work out so well. This is probably a good week to go with underdogs again because of those extra half points on the spreads.

NEW ORLEANS -3 1/2 minnesota
Both teams have great offenses, exciting running backs and quarterbacks playing very well right now. I think this game will come down to turnovers. Brett Favre and Adrian Peterson seem more turnover prone than Drew Brees and the Saints.

BEST BET
INDIANAPOLIS -7 1/2 new york jets
The Jets have had a fine run but it ends here. You can't confuse Peyton Manning and you can't keep up with him by running the ball alone. And if the Jets open it up with a little more pssing, Mark Sanchez will kill them. They just don't have the weapons to beat the Colts.

Last week: 1-3 (0 points)
Season: 39-54 (36 points)
Best Bets: 0-1 (8-11)
Home Favorites: 0-0 (8-14)
Home Underdogs: 0-0 (1-2)
Road Favorites: 0-0 (16-16)
Road Underdogs: 1-3 (14-21)
Road Pickem: 0-0 (0-1)

Is This Getting a Little Creepy Now?

Senator-Elect Scott Brown was criticized by whiny liberal babies upset they lost the Senate seat and the chance to shove health care reform down the throats of the American people for "pimping out" his daughters in his acceptance speech, by saying they were "available."
Now they have some new evidence to support their claims.
This picture surfacing of Scott Brown and his daughters Ayla and Arianna.



It's obvious they are at some Hawaii-themed party which can sort of explain the seashell bikinis. But still some people might think it's a little weird to wear that in front of your father and pose for a picture with -- making him look like the second-coming of Joe Pimpson.
I'm not really sure what to think of this so I asked around and a lot of girls said they'd be around their father while wearing a regular bikini, but that seashell bra is a little too much for paternal eyes.

By the way, check out the Would You Bang? Ayla Brown. Looks like none is needed for Arianna because she looks good enough to be the cream of the crop at Faegan's at 1:45 am. For those who don't know, Arianna is pre-med at Syracuse and Faegan's is the bar where the rich kids hang out.

I Want to Give Conan a Best Friend Hug

Ed Helms stopped by "The Tonight Show" go give Conan O'Brien a special send-off with a personalized version of Stu's Song.



And here's the original Stu's Song from the Hangover.

Mrs. Poop's Hate List

Normally when you read something on this blog attributed to Mrs. Poop I took some innocent comment of hers and completely distorted it and then she got angry. But there is one case where she totally stands behind the mean thing I made come out of her mouth. Asked to form Mrs. Poop's Hate List there is only one name on it: Frank DeFord. That's right the aging sportswriter aggravates Mrs. Poop so much that she openly admits to hating him. Every month when "Real Sports" is on I save it on the DVR to show her whatever kind of ridiculous outfit DeFord is wearing. But the 2009 year-end roundtable took the cake. DeFord was wearing purple socks, and quite possibly even purple shoes (that seemed to be the implication from the conversation but it's hard to see in the pictures).




This set Mrs. Poop off. In fact I sent her an e-mail asking her to come up with the five things she hates most about him and this was her response:

"His hair
His clothes
His moustache
His teeth
The way he talks"

In case you're not familiar with DeFord he's a legendary sports writer but he's balding and slicks his hair back on the top and it poofs out on the sides. Even though he is a huge man, his clothes are often too big, and even more often they're purple. He has a pencil-thin moustache and crooked teeth. And he always talks as if he has just run five miles. And it is so funny to get Mrs. Poop riled up about him.

Best Beer Slogan Ever

A Scottish brewery called BrewDog is getting some attention for its Toyko beer which authorities want to ban because of its 18.2% alcohol content and its label which contains the best beer slogan ever:

"Everything in moderation, including moderation itself. What logically follows is that you must, from time to time, have excess."

God Is In The Details

In the Jets-chargers playoff game everyone is breaking down two coaching decisions: Norv Turner going for an onside kick with a little more than 2 minutes to go and Rex Ryan going for it on 4th and 1 in field goal range.

Ryan's team made the yard, Turner's team didn't recover the kick. And the reactionary press is praising Rex and killing Norv.



I would have chosen the opposite in both cases. But the point is an argument can be made on both sides.

But one decision for which there is no defense is getting very little attention because it turned out to have little or no impact on the game.

Norv Turner saving his final time out until after the 2-minute warning, a indefensible move that could have cost his team valuable seconds.

Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski (who is fast becoming my favorite sports writer not named Peter King) uses the Turner timeout as an example of a larger trend plaguing the leage's coaches: they are horrible at clock management.

Coaches in the NFL have no idea how to use the clock.

This is astounding to me. As you no doubt know, football coaches will spend hundreds of hours every week studying film to get the tiniest advantage in a game. They will look for almost imperceptible flaws -- a lineman looking down at specific moments, a linebacker who tends to get overaggressive on reverses, a quarterback who drops his arm on certain throws, a receiver who does not run out his routes on running plays. They are looking for any edge, even an edge that, 99 percent of the time, will not matter. Coaches coach for that one percent of the time.

And yet: They treat the clock like college students treat their alarm clock. If there was a snooze button on an NFL clock, coaches would hit it repeatedly.


Papa Poop and I have often had the same discussion about the 2-point conversion. We fail to understand why coaches still don't know how (and more importantly, when) to utilize it, because it can play such an important role in deciding a game. And its so simple.

I can't understand why guys who work 18 hours a day don't devote 15 minutes one time to understanding the simple but important concepts of timeout management and the correct use of the 2-point conversion.

I recommend reading Posnanski's entire article and his detailed analysis of the best players in baseball from 1970 until now. You will gain a new appreciation for Ken Singleton, Will Clark and OPS+.

Master Bates and Papa Poop Are in Trouble

The IRS plans to require tax preparers to pass a test and register with the government to better police a largely unregulated industry used by most taxpayers.

The Internal Revenue Service says there could be more than a million people offering tax preparation services. Most offer sound advice, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman says, but many don't and the agency knows little about them.

The new regulations, announced Monday, won't be in effect for the current filing season -- individual tax returns are due April 15. But Shulman said tax preparers will be held to higher standards in future years as the IRS steps up its oversight to help reduce fraud and errors.

"Taxpayers will get improved service and enhanced standards from tax preparers, and they'll have less risk that they'll get bad advice," Shulman told reporters. "The tax preparation industry will get more consistency and a level playing field."

Shulman said he hopes to have all paid tax preparers registered by the 2011 filing season. Preparers will be given about three years to meet competency requirements, though there is much work to be done to develop standards and tests.

Eventually, tax preparers will be required to complete annual training and will be subject to penalties for unethical conduct, Shulman said. Taxpayers will be able to check the credentials of preparers on a public IRS database.

Song of the Week

"Back in the Day" - Ahmad
“I miss those days so I pout like a grown jerk
Wishing all I had to do now was finish homework”

I think about that line a lot because I was awful about doing my homework, but had I realized how easy homework was compared to the real life problems I face now I probably would have been a little less difficult about it.

You may notice this song samples from Teddy Pendergrass's "Love TKO."

Great Excuse for a Loss

The Knicks were afraid, very afraid. And it had nothing to do with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

For two days, several players had trouble sleeping because they were convinced that their downtown hotel is haunted.

"I definitely believe it," Jared Jeffries said. "The place is haunted. It's scary."

Eddy Curry claims he slept for only two hours Sunday night because he couldn't stop thinking about ghosts roaming the hotel.

For years, guests staying at the Skirvin Hilton have reported ghost sightings and strange noises. Legend has it that sometime in the 1930s, a woman jumped to her death while holding her baby in her hands.

"They said it happened on the 10th floor and I'm the only one staying on the 10th floor," Curry said. "That's why I spent most of my time in (Nate Robinson's) room. I definitely believe there are ghosts in that hotel."

Assistant coach Herb Williams teased Jeffries and Curry for believing that the Skirvin is haunted, but Curry wasn't laughing.

"There are too many stories," Curry said. "Something is going on there."

The Future of the Free World Depends on the Outcome of the Massachusetts Senate Race

If you are listening to the news or reading the papers today's special election in Massachusetts will decide the fate of our nation.

If Republican Scott Brown wins the election to replace the late Ted Kennedy, Republicans will have 41 seats in the Senate and the ability to block a final vote on a compromise health care bill.

If Martha Coakley wins, health care passes. Coakley once had a huge lead, not surprising in a very liberal state. But latest polls show that lead shrinking considerably with Brown leading in some polls. President Obama was in Massachusetts on Sunday stumping for Coakley, a move that didn't work so well for Jon Corzine.

But I don't really care about the serious side of politics, I only care about the horse race aspect and the silly things candidates do and say, like when Martha Coakley said Curt Schilling was a Yankees fan:



Or when Scott Brown was in Cosmo:



You may remember Brown's daughter Ayla as a contestant on American Idol Season 5:



If Brown wins this election (and prevents health insurance reform from passing) it could be seen as karmic payback for Ted Kennedy. His death would be the only thing preventing his lifelong dream from becoming reality.

Golden Globes

Mariah Carey shows off her Golden Globes

Pants on the Ground

The breakthrough star of the last relevant season of "American Idol" (before Simon leaves) is General Larry Platt. Not a military general, he earned that mythical title during his battles in the civil rights movement.

His now famous "Pants on the Ground" was inspired three years ago when he saw a guy walking down a downtown Atlanta street with a baby in his arm and his pants slipping below his hips. “He had his underwear showing,” Platt recalled. The song came to him spontaneously. He started chanting the chorus to “Pants on the Ground.” “He was being disrespectful so I wanted to embarrass him,” Platt said. “He rolled his eyes and pulled his pants up a little bit.”



The song sure is catchy, and a 62-year-old trying out for Idol is a little goofy as is the song itself. But not lost in the goofiness is the social message in the song. Young African-American men won't be taken seriously in society so long as they are "walking downtown with [their] pants on the ground."


As is always the case on the internet the song has created numerous copycats, starting with Jimmy Fallon's version as Neil Young:



Then there was Brett Favre singing it in the Vikings locker room after beating the Cowboys.

A Big Ass is the Key to a Healthy Life

The kind of fat found in the hips and buttocks may actually help fight diabetes, a result that surprised Harvard doctors performing the research that produced the finding. Although belly fat is known to raise the risk of diabetes, subcutaneous fat injected into the abdomens of mice actually increased their sensitivity to insulin and even helped them lose weight, Reuters reports.

"We actually found it had a beneficial effect, and it was especially true when you put it inside the abdomen," the study's lead doctor said, referring to the subcutaneous fat. "It's an important result because not only does it say that not all fat is bad, but I think it points to a special aspect of fat where we need to do more research."

Here's a partial list of woman at no risk for diabetes: