Super Bowl Homeboy

Everyone who knows history knows that America needed help to gain its independence. If you don’t, here’s a refresher.

1. British kill Heath Ledger before Heath Ledger kills Heath Ledger.

2. Americans, fucking pissed about Ledger’s death and slightly upset over some backalley shit King george was upto, dressed up in frightening purple and gold pajamas and started kicking some redcoat ass.*

3. Americans, though clearly intellectually superior, more courageous, less prissy and better dressed, were still outmanned. Mel gibson calls French by borrowing courier of French soldier he inexpicably hangs out with.

4. French, who by this point want to roast British on a skewer, mull over their options like the indecisive Europeans they are.

5. Tom Wilkinson figures that because he has a kick ass voice and a sweet moniker like Cornwallis, can just sit back and wait for Mel gibson to inevitably implode.

6. Though they’ve managed to battle to the brink, Americans cannot get over the final hump. Reluctantly, they decide to capitalize on the eventual, better-late-than-never arrival of Francy Pants.

SET: America.

As we take up the quest for our Independence, it is important not that we sacrifice our ideals, our spirituality or our insatiable desire to listen to Paula Cole, Prince and Van Halen mashed up in an awesome display of raw face-melting power. Rather, it is important to accept the fact that revolutions are bloody, and on some occasions, the ends justify the means.

I know what you’re thinking. Brett France Favre…WE. DON’T. NEED YA! And maybe we don’t. Maybe the wafting stench of the Louisianan (French state) will taint the sweet scent of championship and the corresponding Lombardi I’m gonna be packing in my pants. (I’m already aroused. See: Jared Allen pic below.)

But it is important to concede that while I love my country, we might not be here today were it not for the help of an experienced hand — even one that refuses to work a 40-hour week.

I was pondering the things I love about A) America and B) Brad Childress, when I came across this nugget in US News and World Report:

On the battlefield, France was an inconsistent ally. Their first forays into combat in Rhode Island and Georgia were decidedly unimpressive. But by the Battle of Yorktown [see: Gibson], the allies were far better aligned. French ships and French and American soldiers combined to win a decisive contest that ended the war. “The French were at first reluctant to get in the middle of a family battle between England and her colonies only to have the family make up and leave the French out,” says Joyce Appleby, professor emerita of history at UCLA. “Yet that’s exactly what happened.”

France had hoped that Britain would be crippled and that securing exclusive trade relations with the Colonies would help pay for the war. But the new nation double-crossed its ally, signing a separate peace treaty and resuming trade with London shortly after hostilities ended. “Without a doubt, they had accomplished something just short of miraculous by winning a war against a superior adversary, securing the support of a historic enemy, and then running roughshod over the interests of both in the treaty that ended the war,” writes historian Ted Widmer in his forthcoming book, The Ark of Liberties. “But it was a curiously nonidealistic way to advance America’s famous idealism.” Moreover, France paid for the expensive naval campaign through loans rather than through increased taxation, causing a serious economic crisis when the bills came due. It was this crisis, and the monarchy’s clumsy attempts to deal with it, that helped trigger the French Revolution.

We too will use Favreau for our own ends, and then like the wily Vikemericans we are, dump him on the curb once we’ve used up his worth to us.

As far as I’m concerned, A.J. Hawk killed Heath Ledger; the Millennium Master lent Chilly his phone; Favre may or may not be delivered into the Metrodome in a Viking ship during a modern day Yorktown; we may or may not win the Super Bowl by 17 points^; and then we will find a way to ink a deal with someone other than Favre and leave him a part of the technical record, but minimized by the textbook writers, left to fend for himself in an eventual centuries long slide into military ridicule.

EITHER WAY. WE’RE TALKIN BOUT FREEDOM!!!

* - DISCLAIMER: Pajamas may not have been purple and gold. May also not have been pajamas.

^ - May be 28 points depending on Sidney Rice’s boredom with the Patriots’ secondary

The Banks/Favre Comparison

Now let me begin by saying that I am, and always have been a Vikings fan. Not only a Vikings fan…but a fan of anything and everything Minnesota.  I was one of the 55,000 crammed into the dome proudly, chanting “Super Bowl” moments before Gary “Mr. Clutch” Anderson shattered out hopes and dreams in 1998.  I made it through the Sidney Lowe and Bill Blair years, and have stood by season after season watching Kevin McHale try his hardest to destroy our once mighty, and now depleted Timberwolves.  I waved my Homer Hanky high and proud from the post 1991 drought through to the lack luster playoff performances of the Twins in the early 2000’s.  And from what I hear, we have a hockey team too…huh?…

As far as I’m concerned the Land of 10,000 Lakes has had one hockey team and one hockey team only. Take the lightning quick reflexes of Greg Goldberg between the pipes, the raw unharnessed power of Fulton Reed, and the moral building light hearted wit of Lester Averman. Throw them together with the brash no nonsense attitude of Jesse Hall, the sultry seduction of Connie Moreau, and the heart of Charlie Conway. Toss in a dash of strategic splendor that only Coach Gordon Bombay can provide and what do you have?

A pretty good hockey team…a good hockey team…not a great hockey team.

It wasn’t until controversial acquisition of superstar center Adam Banks from their arch rivals (The Hawks) that the Mighty Ducks really began to soar. We all know what happened next, Banks provided the Duck’s with that little extra push they needed to make a legitimate run at a championship. Banks’ resilience in the face of adversity is a true testament to champions everywhere.

And now, amidst all of this Brett Favre trade controversy, I feel like a lone Charlie Conway stuck in a raging sea of Jesse Halls.

Along with the vast majority of the sporting (fan) world, I am sick and tired of the Brett Favre soap opera that has plagued our lives these past few weeks.  The man has had a hell of a career, and personally, I think that it is time for him to hang it up.  However, as we all know, that is wishful thinking.

Now, as a superfan of the team with arguably the best offensive AND defense line, the most explosive running back in the game, an improved (up for discussion) receiving core, and a young unproven, consistently inconsistent “pukka shell sporting” quarterback.  How could I not love the idea of stealing one of the best players in franchise history from our biggest division rival?

When you step back and look at the situation, the similarities are uncanny. Brett Favre is the Adam Banks of the NFC North, there’s no doubt about that. Let’s look at the facts…Brett Favre (Adam Banks) is hands down the best player on the Packers (Hawks), the Vikings (Ducks) biggest nemesis. Chilly (Gordon Bombay) is clearly excited about the possibility of adding a proven superstar to his roster. However, as it is in all high profile deals…there are skeptics (Nay sayers of District 5). Now, Mike McCarthy (Coach Jack Reilly) is understandably upset about the thought of his star play heading to a division rival, so he is doing everything in his power to keep Favre (Banks) away from Chilly (Bombay), Adrian (Fulton Reed), The Millennium Leader (Lester Averman), Jared Allen (Connie Moreau), and Fat Pat Williams (Greg Goldberg).

So Brett (Adam), it may just be you and I for a while buddy, but give the non-believers time, because we all know how the story ends. Before you know it we will all be sitting around a camp fire belting out the Queen classic “We are the Champions” while roasting marshmallows on the tip of the Lombardi Trophy.

WE’RE COMINNNNNNN!…AND WE’RE BRINGING #4 WITH US!

The words of Paula Coles mesmorising melody are ringing through my head as July turns to August, turns to September. The 48th September that the Minnesota Vikings will take the field opening weekend as the non-defending super bowl champions.

So open up your morning light
And Say a little prayer tonight
You know that if we are to stay alive
To see the peace in every eye

You may say “oh man what a gay, this guy obviously tucks his penis between his legs every night like Buffalo Bill and cries himself to sleep hoping that when he wakes up his dad will finally accept him for who he is.” Just because I’m using Paula Cole’s to talk about my feelings, but at the dawning of the Brett Favre era emotions are all I have and if you don’t like it then I hope you get a urinary tract infection this weekend.

I know we can not control what chilly and the Triangle of Authority plan on doing with the anti-Christ known as Brett Favre…I shudder to think of number 4 putting on the sacred purple and gold. One thing I can say for certain is this web site was dedicated to chronicling our rise to power. Brett Favre or not “I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over…will it be yes or will it be sorry.” We are here to champion the cause, to stoke the flames, and to dedicate this fall to something bigger than Brett Favre, bigger than any of us really…a championship caliber football team. If Brett Favre wants to crash the party and spread HPV through the locker room, go ahead…but just like getting a blow job from a toothless hooker on sunset…I’ll accept it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

photo credit: *clairity*

I love the spring and summer.  But not for those typically weak reasons like “the smell of flowers” or “nice weather outside”.  I could care less about sunshine and outdoor activity.

By far, the greatest apect of the spring and summer is the serenity of Sunday.  Sunday is probably the best day of the week during these two seasons.  There are no plans.  You can get work done.  You can relax.  Everything is perfect.

And then the football season begins.  Everything peaceful about the weekend is annhilated in an attack of shock and awe.

Enjoy the slow deteroriation of peace now that training camp is beginning.

Our nation’s bicentennial beckoned from a winter wonderland of patriotic fervor in the rugged frozen stretch of upper midwest known as Minnesota. Home of kings, pillaging patio for Vi-kings, the bloodthirsty pride of purple was as yet blissfully unaware of the dawning foreign impotence of the Carter administration or the lurking activism of Ralph Nader’s restrictive Raiders and their quest for ubiquitous seatbelt regulation.

Vikings fans didn’t wear fucking seatbelts!!!! This was THEIR team. This was THEIR country. And 1976 was just 4 days away. The Vikes knew how they wanted to enter it, damn it.

In fact, this was their universe. The Viking I probe was set to land on Mars, and the Viking X probe was set to punish the foreign cavities of all other Super Bowl 10 wannabes. Watergate hangover? The Vikings had a god damn morning hard-on. 10-0 start. Eighth division titles in nine tries. MVP of the league and offensive player of the year in Fran Tarkenton. Hungry and wiser after their Super Bowl loss to the Steelers the year before. The Vikings were hotter than Elton John in a Rod Stewart mask. (…or in Rod Stewart.)

Only one team stood between the Minnesotamerica Vikings and football immorality: RRRRRRoger Staubach and the Dallas Cowboys. With a minute to go at the Met, Minneapolis began to look forward to the reckoning.

…then the Hail Mary happened. This, for all of you jackhammers without access to The Wikipedia or a cripplingly alcoholic storytelling uncle, was the real day the music died. THE worst moment in the history of a team known for worst moments. This is Rob Schneider in a movie that DIDN’T get released. This was Keith and Mick drinking enough booze to land them in Saturday detox. This was the Joker ripping off Batman’s mask to discover beneath it….A FUCKING BATMAN MASK.

My father, then reveling in his senior year of college and eagerly anticipating the Vikings soon-to-materialize quest to erase the communist capture of South Vietnam from the public record, looked on as the Staubach Hail Mary played itself out. Before he realized it, a young Paul Allen had just unleased the petulent scream of an adolescent girl sporting a maxed out Mastercard. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

My father had the dream TAKEN FROM HIM.

As I grew up in my father’s home, an autographed authentic football signed by none oher than the 1975 regular season MVP, Tarkenton, sat immortalized in my house. Upon my reluctant acceptance of the Vikings legend, my father bequeathed to me that very football.

“Son,” my father said, his voice and spirit lost to the windy expanse of Metropolitan stadium so many weeks gone and years left abandoned, straining as if a sports-induced mesothelioma haunted his breath, “We carry this burden, because we must. The Jews have waited thousands of years for a savior who might never come. So too, shall it be written.”

My youthful idealism in flux, I took his ball and I mounted it atop my moderately overpriced armoire as I pondered such a lamented existence. “Save yourself! No…grow some balls,” I calmly assured myself.

Then came 1998. Then came 2000. Then came Tempe and Ticey and Demetrius. Then came Randy’s Raiders and fumble-pepper and Red, and “Super Bowl Homeboy” and Love Boat and pretty much every draft pick not named ADRIIIAAAAAAANNN. Then came so many tears, that one day, I forgot how to cry.

***

But now….Ooh dare I say it, the day of salvation is upon us. No history and no wisdom and no sanity and no naysayer and no mathematician and no liberal-media-Packer-apologist-anti-American-sabertooth-swindler can deny the sultry brush of greatness wafting through the Sex Panthered ’stache of Chilly the Kid.

No nattering nabob of negativity can debate the HOT 69 license plate of the camoflauged pickup of the decade, Jared Allen.

No doubter or heckler, no rival or twista can help but blast from the mountains his secret collection of Robbie WIlliams’ greatest hits as the leader of the Sharper INTmage Nation screams his moniker from the lakes of Minnetonka to the fields of Mankato: “MILLL-ENNNNN-IIII-UMMMMM!!!!!!!”

And through it all shall rise our puka-shelled patron of god’s will embodied in the flesh of man.

T. JAX. Crunchy as a cereal. Ruthless as a serial. Fired up as Nick Punto at a backyard slip n’ slide.

So I stand here before you, the son of a battered man. I stand up because more than three decades after Richard Nixon, the Dallas Cowboys, OPEC and ABBA tried to kill America, three of those four still fucking are. I stand up because the dream IS NOT DEAD. The dream is as alive today as it was when FDR spoke of the freedom from fear. It is as alive as it was when Reagan yelled to tear down that wall.

For though Scar slayed Mufasa, Simba rose from the murderous ruins to enact vengeance.

TAVARIS JACKSON. “YOU ARE MORE THAN YOU HAVE BECOME. YOU MUST TAKE YOUR PLACE IN THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.”

Tony Romo shall be slain. Tom Brady shall be slain. And all that can be good will be good again — will be good for the very first time. For, mere days after Senator John McCain’s decision to deliver his nomination speech on the night of NFL’s 2008 kickoff reverberates into the inauguration of his competitor, so too will history be inaugurated and true independence from tyranny and the shackles of injustice be shed by fathers and their sons.

I leave you with Brad Childress’ February 1, 2009, pregame speech:

Good afternoon. In less than an hour, an offense from here will join a defense from around the locker room And you will be launching the largest downfield aerial battle in the history of mankind. “Mankind.” That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the Super Bowl and you will once again be fighting for our freedom… Freedom from tyranny, oppression, or persecution… and from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Super Bowl will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the Vikings Nation declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night!” We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

Well we are here on the dawn of another Vikings season. Once again the players are all cruising down South 169, passing the Jolly Green Giant sign in Le Seuer and being greeted into Mankato by the giant Happy Chef. Those are the same landmarks that Koren Robinson saw fly by his window in a drunken blur at about 130 mph and Fred Smoot saw while planning the Lake Minnetonka boat trip that would earn our franchise a national media shit storm. Well those landmarks haven’t changed, but pretty much everything about the Vikings team has over the past couple years.

One other thing that hasn’t changed is my undying pre-season optimism for the squad. This is my favorite time of every NFL season. Its given rise to dreams of Troy Williamson’s off-season eye conditioning drills giving way to 1500 yard seasons, new rookie defensive ends like Erasmus James and Kenechi Udeze wreaking havoc on opposing quarterbacks and the free agent signing of savvy veteran corners like Dale Carter, Chris Dishman and Jimmy Hitchock finally giving us a secondary capable of winning in the playoffs. Well all of those hopes and dreams, along with plenty others, came to a screeching halt once the games actually began to mean something. Continue Reading »

In the words of the Common man Dan Cole “LETS PUMP IT UP, WE’RE COOOMIIINNN” that’s right the sound you hear is the bell tolling for the offseason…Training camp starts…RIGHT NOW.  I know all you third grade reading level Vikings fans, and the backwoods moonshine guzzling Packer fans have been discussing Brett Favre’s impact for weeks now “ooh brett favre could make the vikes a super bowl contender, ooh Brett Favre is gonna turn this thing around” and I say to all of you that are part of the 7 out of 10… the wind blowing exit doors of the metrodome are right over there because WE DON’T NEED YOU.

There are several issues facing the team this year, not the least of which is the distraction that Brett Favre has created on the eve of our 19 game winning streak.

1.)Will Bernard Berrian and sid the Kid turn out to be the new Millennium Stalworth and Swann?

2.) Has training with sprint cars improved Adrian Peterson’s speed?

3.) Has Darren Sharper lost the hunger to continue his quest to be the Millennium leader in interceptions?

4.) Will the vikings need to lose a game at some point so they don’t repeat the mistakes of the New England Patriots?

5.) Will the temptation of patron shots at Belanote derail the Jared Allen trade and give Peter King the ultimate “I told you so” boner he’s been waiting to stack Brad Childress’ throat with?

6.) Who is salivating over T-Jax bone crusher this season, and will she buy him something flashier than a spring break necklace from Daytona Beach ‘03?

7.) How will the release of Dwight Smith impact the safety of women blowing coke in back stairwells of Minneapolis night clubs?

8.) How will Zigmund Wilf not having to drive around Minneapolis after home losses impact the United States energy Crisis?

9.) How many pending paternity cases are there in the state of Minnesota after Brad Childress grew a goatee?  Will these cases be a distraction for the head coach?

10.) Do the Vikings play for 16-0 against the Giants like the Patriots of 2007, or focus on the playoffs?  I’m not sayin, I’m just sayin.

To all who endured the love boat, the Mike Tice Era, the 2005 draft class, and the kick ass offense…our time has come.  Rise from your couches, spike the nearest infant on its soft spot, and in honor of our all mighty leader even fake moon the little bastard like your at Lambeau Field….THIS IS OUR TIME!  THIS… is our country.

Check out the photo of Jared Allen wearing his NFL fan costume. I think he did a pretty good job on this little ditty.

This was taken from his Facebook photo gallery, and the album’s title was, “I can’t believe these fools pay for this — Halloween ‘07″.

In any case, I’m really excited for Jared Allen to take it the next level in Minneapolis. Here is a little taste of some other do-gooders and their reaction to the utopia of the north:

• Dwight “Stairwell” Smith
• Randy Moss
• My personal favorite, Eddie Griffin, RIP.