John McClain wears the Santa suit. Every year.
Sep 10, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Pancakes McTard, Weak-ass arguments
McClain isn’t the blow-hard douche bag that Richard Justice is. He actually has a sort of likeable personality. Part of you secretly wishes he would feel-up your grandmother so that she would stop complaining to you about the staff at her nursing home. Uh, I mean McClain is buying in to the silly manufactured controversy that Justice’s buddies at ESPN help to inflate - that Sage Rosenfels will save our season while Matt Schaub will drive the team over a cliff at the next opportunity.
According to McClain, the next game is the biggest in Gary Kubiak’s coaching career! Really though, isn’t the next game always the most important game when your franchise has never had a winning season? When do you just look at a game on a schedule and say “Yea, we can afford to lose that one”? Especially one of the first two games of the year, in any year?!
This next game is probably the most important game since… the last game we had after a loss. Wait, that doesn’t make for an interesting article… let’s scrap it and insinuate that a coach that has brought respect and admiration to a punch-line franchise, that has improved the team’s record every year, has his job on the line in the second game of his third year of coaching. McClain fucking referenced Taps, the song played at funerals held for veterans by a Congressionally-mandated Honor Guard, as a song for the Texans’ season. After two games. Get real.
Well, now that McClain has established that it’s Gary Kubiak’s personal Super Bowl, of course if we lose the game, heads must fall, right? And which head would be better than Matt Schaub’s? As we’ve learned before, every loss can be entirely blamed on whichever quarterback started the game. Those other 21 players? Fuck ‘em. Matt Schaub should be able to pancake-block James Harrison and Terrell Suggs his own damn self. You’ve got two arms, Matt! Block with your left and throw with your right!
Is John McClain really this dumb? Of course not; his name is McClain, not Justice. He’s just intellectually dishonest.
How many games has Schaub started for the Texans? Twelve? And he’s already willing to ditch Schaub. And for what? Who watched that game last week and thought, “Boy, if only we had Sage Rosenfels in there, we would be winning this thing”? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. It’s more like “if we only had two Girl Scouts in the secondary and a welcome mat at left tackle, we could have won.”
If I worked in the Texans’ public relations department, I would think long and hard about issuing an ultimatum to the Chronicle reporters that reads something like this:
“Richard Justice and John McClain serve in an important capacity for the Houston-area sports fans by providing up-to-date information on the Houston Texans and other local sports teams. However, these columnists do the Houston Texans, the fan base, and the newspaper they represent no favors by writing articles based on faulty logic and manufactured controversy. The newspaper industry has seen a declining circulation in the past few years. Perhaps this sort of journalism is the product of a looming sense of desperation, in an attempt to gin up more subscriptions. The evidence doesn’t seem to suggest that this is a sound strategy, however. Besides, everyone knows that DGDB&G does a way better job covering the Texans - at least they link to the other websites they steal material from. The Houston Texans staff will resume interviews and comments to Mr. Justice and Mr. McClain when they have confirmed to us that they will cease such dishonest tactics.”
John McClain and Richard Justice have primo jobs. They write the sports columns for the only newspaper in the nation’s fourth largest city and a top-ten media market. The both of them have opportunities to shine as objective, analytical sports columnists, but this is the sort of shit they churn out in a remarkably consistent manner. Other than contacts within the Houston-area sports teams’ front offices, what do these guys bring to the table?
John McClain can play Santa Claus at the company Christmas party every year, I suppose… but I’m not sure if that’s the reason you let a guy waste this much newsprint and bandwidth on your behalf. Every workplace has that guy. Does anyone think these two clowns at the Houston Comicle are in the same class as the San Francisco Chronicle reporters who broke the BALCO story?
P.S. - Obviously, Richard Justice is the guy that hangs out in the break room most of the day, sneaking bites from your left-overs in the fridge, eye-fucking every woman that leaves the break room in between denegrating them with references to shitty 80s movies while they are gone.
Jellyfish
Jun 2, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Little Dickie Justice, Pancakes McTard, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., Righteous Indignation, Token
If you’ve been following the comments on Jerome Solomon’s “Will the Texans win eight games” blog post, you are (a) as bored as I am and (b) no doubt aware of the back-and-forth that has transpired between Solomon and Mark (1Tex) as well as between Solomon and Solis.
Long story short, Mark took Solomon and the Chron to task for being so needlessly negative and pointed to a pro-Texans article from the Dallas Morning News as proof of getting better Texans coverage elsewhere. Solis then added that the Chron’s negative approach and subpar coverage of the team was why so many people were anti-Chron at this point. Solomon fired back that the same article had been posted on the Chron, that the Texans coverage on the paper was not negative, and that Mark and Solis sounded like they were whining.
Mark and Solis each responded, basically pointing out that Solomon was missing the bigger point here, to which Solomon replied that there was no “point” and likened the idea that people agreed that the Chron sucked to the KKK. (No, seriously.)
In all, it was your typical “Chron writer gets defensive about how poorly the paper covers the team” discussion. It would event be post-worthy were it not for this line from Jerome:
Courage to run what you say? You are nuts if you think I don’t run comments from people who disagree with me.
That’s good to hear. I mean, one wouldn’t want to think that Jerome was selectively approving comments in order to avoid having his argument shot down. Nope, he is better than that; he runs comments from people who disagree with him.
Unless those comments come from me or BFD.
Right after Solis’ first comment, BFD wrote the following:
Cmon, there’s really no reason to try and use logic on this here site. Wasn’t it JS who called Texans fans morons, or something similar, last year? Pancakes was “liveblogging” the Saints game last year, but obviously wasn’t watching the game. And RJ still can’t let go of his unrequited man-crush of VY.
The coverage here is pathetic and condescending with a bunch of reporters who are more excited about the Cow-pokes than they are the team they are supposed to cover.
That was written at 11AM on Sunday. As of 1:40PM on Monday, it still hasn’t been posted. Shortly after BFD, I added a comment of my own:
I also agree with 1Tex. It’s no secret among Texans fans that the Chron’s coverage of the team is horrible. Heck, look at any Texans blog, Texans message board, or just talk to any fan who cares enough to follow the team on a daily basis.
Obviously, Jerome misses the larger underlying point that 1Tex is making–the Chron’s coverage of the Texans should BLOW AWAY Texans coverage on other news outlets, yet it never does. At best, we get the same “oh, the team isn’t that good” tripe that we get everywhere else in the ether of the internet.
On top of that, we get a DALLAS COWBOYS BLOG on the Texans main page. Between that, a guy who lives to make insipid videos, a writer that will never forgive the team for not drafting Radio Young, a piece of eye-candy that has never once written anything remotely insightful, and a guy who literally called the Texans fanbase “losers” last year, it is little wonder that Texans fans feel like the Chron’s coverage is subpar.
I think every Texans writer at this paper should thank the deity of his/her choice that there is not a another major daily paper in Houston.
That comment also to that internet comment graveyard in the sky. I would have chalked it up to our being a collective persona non grata at the Chron and left it at that, but Jerome had to go and make it sound like he wasn’t filtering. So I emailed him, asking where my comment was if he was so willing to run opposing viewpoints. He replied that the problem was my inclusion of the atexansblog.com URL in my header.
Fine, I sent a new comment, basically mirroring my last one with some added responses to what he’d written in the interim and I was sure to leave my URL out. I was even somewhat friendly in this version.
I also agree with 1Tex. It’s no secret among Texans fans that the Chron’s coverage of the team is horrible. Heck, look at any Texans blog, Texans message board, or just talk to any fan who cares enough to follow the team on a daily basis.
Jerome misses the larger underlying point that 1Tex is making–the Chron’s coverage of the Texans should BLOW AWAY Texans coverage on other news outlets, yet it never does. At best, we get the same “oh, the team isn’t that good” tripe that we get everywhere else in the ether of the internet without much in the way of additional, insider-type articles that a local paper should provide.
On top of that, we get a DALLAS COWBOYS BLOG on the Texans main page. Between that, a guy who lives to make insipid videos, a writer that will never forgive the team for not drafting Radio Young, a piece of eye-candy that has never once written anything remotely insightful, and a guy who literally called the Texans fanbase “losers” last year, it is little wonder that Texans fans feel like the Chron’s coverage is subpar.
*****
“And to say that the Chron’s stories on the Texans are shrouded in negativity is a bit disingenuous, considering the team has never had a winning season.”One has nothing to do with the other, Jerome. You don’t have to have a winning season for articles following your best season to date to remain positive about the upcoming year. The team was .500 last year and, for the first time ever, seems to have most of the pieces in place to challenge any other team on any given week. Given that, which makes more sense–to talk about how the team has a better chance than ever to win at least 9 games OR to keep pointing out how they haven’t won 9 games in any previous years?
“Journalists are not supposed to write like fans of the team and say all is well when things are falling apart.”
Nor are they supposed to keep talking about how Mario Williams is a bust and wrong pick when he is dominating opposing teams and making the people who drafted him look like geniuses. They are supposed to write objectively about what is actually happening. So, when things AREN’T falling apart, by your rationale, the writers should not suggest that they are. (Unless you really think things are falling apart right now, which is a ridiculous assertion.)
Look, I don’t disagree that the paper should not aspire to be Pollyanna Sunshine 100% of the time. And I don’t think that negativity is necessarily the biggest problem facing the Chron (though it is certainly an important issue). The problem, as I see it, is that (a) the coverage provided that is good is–more often than not–written by the AP or someone unaffiliated with the paper and (b) the stuff written by Chron staff reeks of negativity so often that the occasional piece that isn’t gets lost in the mix.
That was two-and-a-half hours ago. Still, nada. About thirty minutes ago, following the brilliant KKK mention, I added:
The KKK comment is ridiculous and does nothing to further the debate. If you can’t see why it doesn’t work in the context of this debate–I can already hear you typing “no it’s not, both are examples of people with similar opinions”–then this conversation is pointless.
As for arguing that Solis’ (and others’) OPINION is wrong, how can you take that stance and still argue that people shouldn’t call you an idiot because you don’t like MMA? Your OPINION is that MMA is not entertaining, right? You back it up with other opinions–that it is about violence, that it is boring–but in the end it is still nothing more than opinion. And opinions are a matter of taste, not a matter of fact that can be argued.
Oh, wait, I forgot that it was perfectly acceptable for Chron writers to be hypocritical. See, e.g., Justice’s positions on Mario.
Of course, since you still haven’t posted my last comment, despite my removal of the URL, I doubt this one goes up either. And, yes, that is a thinly-veiled challenge.
I won’t hold my breath that either of these gets posted.
In the end, I can’t even pretend like this is surprising. After all, both BFD and I have taken many, many shots at the Chron and its staff over the past 13 months, so I guess they are justified in shutting us out of their comments if they want to. Whatever. Just don’t sit there and pretend like you are running all of the comments, even the negative ones, when you most certainly aren’t. THAT “is a bit disingenuous,” Jerome. If the people in charge won’t let you run DGDB&D comments, then say so. Hell, I’d have more respect for you if that was the case. Otherwise, I am going to assume that you and your cohorts are spineless and incapable of anything resembling the rational debate you claim to be willing to engage in.
Matturbating
May 2, 2008 Bloggerating, Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Self-Referential Stuff
Because he is far less lazy than I, BFD beat me to doing a post in the same vein as Orson’s. Still, because I think anything that casts light on bloggers as an informed, educated, non-basement-dwelling entity is a good thing, I am going to copy BFD’s format and answer the questions about myself.
Why the fuck do I blog: The short answer is because when I started this thing, there weren’t nearly as many Texans-centric blogs as their are now, I thought I could add something to the mix, and it gave me something to do while I sat at my desk pretending to work. The longer answer would add: because I like to write, I like to try to entertain people, I have all these bizarre ideas running around my head (see, e.g., anything written about Will Demps), and I enjoy getting feedback from others.
Why do I blog anonymously?: I don’t. It’s Matt Campbell up in this, bitches. In the long run, not maintaining a level of anonymity might bite me in the ass, but I don’t think so. I don’t post anything about my job (other than taking the pictures of some dude’s junk) and I still get all my “real” work done. In the beginning of this blog, I felt like full disclosure would give me more credibility.
Do I live in my mother’s basement?: No. Much like Texas, there are very few basements in Arkansas once you get out of the mountains because it rarely gets cold enough for the ground to freeze. I live in my own house with the wife, two kids, two dogs, and a goldfish that is apparently immortal. I am also fortunate enough–long story–to already own said house outright. Also, my mom doesn’t have a basement.
So, why the fuck is it OK for you to blog?: Because there are a large number of people who want to read about the Texans and, as detailed here and elsewhere, the Houston Chronicle does a horrendously shitty job of providing entertaining and informative discussion regarding the team. Am I the best person for the job? Doubtful. But I am willing to do it, I think I do a pretty good job most days, and I have a co-blogger who was also willing to host the URL. It’s the perfect storm, baby. And the fact that we’ve gotten 84,000+ hits (despite being banned in many fascist workplaces) suggests that maybe we are doing SOMETHING right.
Have you been spayed or neutered?: Nope. I’m still as potent as ever.
Religion/Politics: The only reason I haven’t been real open on these issues is I know how touchy other people can be about your answers. I don’t want to alienate or drive away readers simply because of something that has nothing to do with the blog. I will mention, however, that I was born Catholic, but it didn’t stick all that well and that I have never, ever voted straight ticket in any election. So there.
Edumacation: Business Admin (Accounting) degree because I dicked around and dropped out for a year and that was the quickest way to get done when I went back. JD from Washington University in St. Louis. I honestly have NO idea how I got into a school that good.
Career: Investigator for a local government agency. Freelance writer for two different legal periodicals. Blogger. Soon-to-be BBQ mogul.
Family: Wife and two kids: a son (9) and a daughter (2 mos.)
What do I look like?: I’m 5′7″, chubby, and I look like I am about 18 (I’ll be thirty next month).
Dramatic Ending: I really got nothing here. I started this blog (which, by the way, turns 1 tomorrow) as an outlet and a chance to connect with some Texans fans. It has become bigger than I ever really thought it would. If it continues to grow and we manage to piss off some “establishment” writers along the way, all the better.
Little Dickie Justice, age 12, still doesn’t get it
Apr 10, 2008 2006 Draft, Anger, Broken Record, Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Little Dickie Justice, Reggie Bush, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., Vinsanity, age 12
Promoted from our boards, the awesomest thing ever on the internetz. Evar.
According to kozanack, who gets today’s award for raising my blood pressure, Little Dickie Justice was on the radio yesterday and…well, I’ll let koz tell his own story:
I was driving along today, channel surfing on my car radio, and sort of half way paying attention to the blather. Suddenly I realized the host (Justice) was trashing the Texans because they had the opportunity to increase the level of interest in pro football with the casual fan here in Houston, but screwed the pooch. He followed that by saying that Drayton and Les Alexander had confided in him that the Texans would be on top of the sports world here in Houston in only they had taken Vince or even Reggie instead of Mario. Then he went on to say one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
He said that even though last year Mario clearly outperformed both Reggie and Vince, Vince was the right pick at the time, and the Texans blew it. He went on to say that even if Mario turns out to the best decision in the long term, Vince was the right choice at the time, so the Texans blew it. Basically, even if Vince bombs, anyone other than Vince was the wrong choice, especially Mario.
I think the first thing we should all be is thankful that Justice does not have any actual influence on our football decision-makers.
Matt and I have lamented before on Little Dickie Justice’s obvious homo-erotic man-crush on VY, not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. Just because I think Maria Sharpova is gorgeous does not de facto mean that she’s the best tennis player in the world. But that seems to be about 51% of Justice’s argument (Maria, call me!).
The other 49% seems to be, and this is more speculation than anything, that because Vince is a hometown hero, he would be better from a marketing standpoint. Now, of course, this completely discredits whatever Reggie Bush argument he might have, but I’m trying to pry open a walnut-sized mind here, so give me a break.
Back to Vince. Drafting Vince would’ve been, specifically, a marketing ploy. This means that this second half of Justice’s argument is that marketing is much more important than winning. Now, I could go back and do a regression analysis of the relation between winning and attendance, but as fans, we don’t need that analysis. We already know better: winning teams put fannies in seats. Period.
Could you imagine an offense with 2 INT to 1 TD Young? Heck, let’s say we drafted both Young and Bush and his awesome 3.7 YPC and complete inability to run between the tackles (a kinda necessity in a zone blocking scheme, donchaknow). What would you guess for a record? 3-13? 2-14? Again, be thankful Justice isn’t in charge of these decisions.
What bothers me most, I think, is that it exposes Houston’s traditional print media as a bunch of moronic crybabies who are still pouting three years later that they didn’t get their way. As I’ve said before: if I was wrong every day of my life and didn’t understand the basic concepts of my job, I would lose my job instantly.
Little Dickie: you were wrong then, you are wrong now. There’s no way you can rationalize this one to your advantage, and every time you open your mouth, you embarrass yourself. Mario > VY + Bush. The end.
And I just had to get the following on our front page, courtesy and permission of DiehardChris:
Well done, Chris. Well done.
Meka Leka Hi Meka Hiney Ho
Apr 9, 2008 Bad Juju, Blasphemy, Dancing With the 'Tards, Faggination, Houston Chronicle, Might as well piss off as many religions as possible, Putting people on notice, Revenge of Durga!, Tempting Fate
I do not mean to alarm anyone, but it seems that DGDB&D is the most powerful blog in the universe. Sure, there are blogs that get way more hits. There are blogs that entertain without making dick jokes. There are even blogs that people are willing to pay to advertise on.
But there are NO other blogs that have accidentally reincarnated a Hindu goddess.
SAINI SUNPURA, India — A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said today. [***]
Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.
Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told The Associated Press.
“Lali is God’s gift to us,” said Jaipal Singh, a member of the local village council. “She has brought fame to our village.”
Village chief Daulat Ram said he planned to build a temple to Durga in the village.
This blog’s reliance of Durga to do the dirty work that certain Christian deities were unable or unwilling to do is well documented. Thus, I take full credit for the return of this goddess to Earth. The negative among you might think that this is a rather ominous sign for me. To that, I say p’shaw! This is a sign that Durga realized she needed to be on Earth to properly dispose of Petey Faggins. Her attempt from the ethereal realm of, um, wherever Hindu gods reside had the unintended consequence of injuring Dunta Robinson. She won’t make that mistake again, Petey. No sir, she’s here and she’s taking careful aim, sucka. You dead, dawg.
In related news, as reader Brent pointed out, it’s rather ironic that the Chronicle’s coverage of a Hindu goddess is much better than their coverage of a certain local football team.
What’s that, Lassie? I haven’t posted anything substantive in a long time?!
Apr 3, 2008 2008 Draft, 2008 Season, Bad Idea Jeans, Blasphemy, Corky Johnson, Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Megan Manfull is retarded, Please let the season start soon, Rules, Super Mario, The Fred
As if you hadn’t noticed, I have REALLY been slacking off over here of late. I don’t have an excuse for it other than actual work at work is cutting into my sweet, sweet blogging time. I am contemplating lighting the place on fire just so I can get a vacation.
In any event, I’ll try to be better about it leading up to the draft. For now, allow me to bust out the old bulleted list.
- ***I have been fairly open about my hope that the Texans take a defensive tackle (read: Kentwan Balmer) at 18, followed by a DE in the third. Not to rehash old arguments, but my reasoning basically goes that a space-eating NT would make life easier for Amobi and Mario, thus making life easier on the secondary, AND I think Earl Cochran might have enough talent to become a rotational DE. All that said, I just took a peak at Anthony Weaver’s stats for the last two years and I am starting to think that the “Draft a DE first” crowd is on to something. One fucking sack in two years? Seriously?!? I mean, I knew the dude had been more or less invisible, but jesus titty fucking christ, even I could get one sack in two years. Hell, with Mario opposite him, Weaver should be able to vulture one or two sacks per year just by way of falling on QBs who are scrambling away from our good DE. And he’s the highest-paid Texans? Fantastic. I am getting angry…better move on.
- ***As first mention by new-BRBer, SOLIS, the Texans re-signed C.C. Brown. I’m of two minds about this. First, C.C. has basically been asstastic for most of his Texans tenure, so one wonders just why the team would throw dollars at him. On the other hand, though, his biggest problem (and the primary cause of his asstasticness) is not a lack of talent but a complete lack of understanding how to position himself. This being the case, C.C. might fall under the same “Ray Rhodes project” label as Jacques Reeves. In any event, I guess I like the idea of giving him a year under a good teacher before kicking him to the proverbial curb.
- ***Ray Rhodes cannot fix Petey Faggins. Jesus himself could not fix Petey Faggins. If Jesus and Durga had a baby and that baby married the current Dali Lama, the spawn of that relationship could not fix Petey Faggins.
- ***Someone emailed me this article from 2001 about Megan Manfull. Pretty boring shit, really; it’s the kind of stuff you would imagine in a fluff piece about “oooh, look, girls can write about sports, too!” What did stand out, however, was one quote from Manfull herself.
‘My mother taught me so much, Megan said. ‘I got started in seventh grade on our junior high newspaper. I thought it was fun, and I’d come home at night and she’d give me her lessons from her high school classes. I learned to put questions together and do interviews. I was the only junior high reporter turning in stories with quotes and sources in them.’
See, kids, this what we call irony. Manfull’s memory of starting in print media was that she was the only one citing sources and using actual quotes and now she is part of a paper where such tactics are again missing. This isn’t so much “funny ha ha” as “funny sad,” I guess.
- ***Finally, in generic NFL news, the league approved a number of rule changes for next year. A couple are common sense stuff–FGs are now reviewable, teams can defer after winning a coin toss–but three could have some actual impact. First, one defensive player is allowed to have a radio in his helmet (aka The Spygate Rule). SOLIS already covered this one. Second, force outs have been eliminated, meaning that player has to land in-bounds for a ball to be complete, regardless of whether he was pushed out by the DB or not. This could be huge–larger, more physical corners will become more valuable; smaller, lighter WRs will be at a disadvantage along the sideline; and jump balls along the sides or in the endzone will become even less likely to be completed. Finally, the five-yard facemask penalty has been removed, meaning that incidental contact is ok, but that any twisting or turning of the head will be 15 yards if flagged. Other than Corky Johnson, our team plays pretty clean and smart on defense, so I think I like this change and that it will–if anything–benefit the guys in Battle Red.
The Titanic was “stopped safely” when divers found it.
Mar 19, 2008 Awesomeness, Beer, HPD, Houston Chronicle, Jacoby Jones' beer bong
Question: If I am driving around at 3AM with a BAC of .13 and, upon stopping at a red light, I lose consciousness with the car still in gear, would you say I have merely “fallen asleep” or would I be “blacked out like a motherfucker”?
Because I am thinking it would be the latter, but this Chron article suggests it is the former. Even better, there are assertions that the whole thing was done with the utmost care. No, seriously.
Richards said Jones was cooperative and seemed remorseful. He was taken into custody and charged with driving while intoxicated. The bail, set at $500, was paid later Sunday morning.
[Jones' attorney, Chip] Lewis said Jones was stopped safely and was wearing his seat belt when officers found him (emphasis added).
Really, Chip? Stopped “safely?”
Eeshirt-tay Ontest-cay
Mar 9, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
Considering I have been incredibly lazy around here lately (due in no small part to my sleep being in three-hour intervals), I am going to give myself a little credit for being only eight days late in announcing the winner of
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
The winning entry, submitted by The Count, will be made into a t-shirt shortly and I will post the link. I will also mail one of the shirts to Dick himself (and to The Count) and, with luck, some form of hilarity will ensue. (Note: The authors of this blog take no responsibility for any lack of ensuing hilarity.)
UPDATE:
If Anna-Megan could read, she’d rip us off, too.
Feb 25, 2008 2008 Draft, Bloggerating, Dancing With the 'Tards, Fuck the Cowboys, Houston Chronicle, I really dig my readers, Megan Manfull is retarded, Pancakes McTard, Roster, Secondary issues are primary, Teams that aren't the Texans, The Future
Now, I know that at least once before, I wrote a post about the Chron ripping off something that happened here and passing it off as original. I was subsequently accused of being overreaching, paranoid, and narcissistic (none of which I can dispute). Whatever. Let’s ride that horse again.
I got an email from Jersey Bill tonight, pointing out a little similarity between a comment he made and a column written by Megan Manfull. Bill writes:
I honestly believe it is a testament to Al Gore’s Internet that this could happen. Notice the post date and time [of this Megan Manfull column]. I put up the same thing about 3 hours before she did in BFD’s CB post. Now, I’m not claiming that I had inside knowledge and this an exclusive. I’m saying that a goof who likes to read a blog about the Texans throws out the same question, and on a nothing doing day, it ends up in a major media website. This pretty much takes another stomp at the dead horse, but how lazy could these writers be? I wouldn’t mind that much, but all these smarmy writers takes shots at fan sites and blogs whenever they get a chance.
Interesting. Let’s investigate. First, Jersey Bill’s comment on BFD’s post about CBs.
Jersey Bill replies at 24th February 2008, 3:42 pm :
Brian Kelly (Bucs CB) opted out of his contract and Michael Huff is available via trade. Wouldn’t it be nice to grab those two with one fell swoop? Certainly would change the draft board.
Now, for Megan’s missive.
How does safety Michael Huff sound for Texans?
There are reports around Oakland that former Longhorns safety Michael Huff is on the trading block. With the draft full of offensive tackles and cornerbacks, the Texans will be looking for safeties in free agency. Anyone want to see Huff become a Texan?Posted by Megan Manfull at February 24, 2008 07:25 PM
Is it completely plausible that Manfull heard the rumor elsewhere and thought it would provide thought-provoking fodder for her blog. I realize that. At the same time, it is awful convenient (as Bill points out) that on a day when next to nothing is happening other than the combine, Manfull writes a blog entry about something that was posted here three hours prior. (This is where I would say “verrrrry interesting” and stroke my long white beard if I were an evil mastermind.)
It’s ok, Megan. There is no shame in reading DGDB&D. Well, other than some of the stuff BFD writes, that is. All we ask is that you give a little nod or hat tip or some kind of Lilith Fair fish taco wave or whatever.
***
In other, related news, I hope to have some sort of rundown of Combine results tomorrow or Tuesday. My wife and this damned fetus are in “well, it could fall out at any point” mode, so I promise nothing. Actually, that’s not true–I promise a Romo-Simpson wedding post at some point real soon. And if Pancakes does the fake conversation before I do, I will kill a puppy.
Battlelicious
Feb 23, 2008 2007 Season, 2008 Season, Fuck the Cowboys, Houston Chronicle, Money Money Money, Rosie Rosenfels, Roster, The Schaub Experiment
[T]he team won’t hesitate to start [Sage] Rosenfels if he outplays [Matt] Schaub this season.
“That to me always plays itself out on the football field,” Smith said. “I don’t think you can let finances, ego, I don’t think you can let anything stand in the way of playing the best football player because that is going to win you football games on Sunday.”
I suppose, on its face, that statement is far more enlightened than what you get out of most general managers. Lord knows, you’d never hear something like that out of Dallas, even if Jesus Christ himself was the second-string QB. (Not that Jesus would ever deign to play for the ladies up north. Maybe I should have used “Troy Aikman’s assbaby” as my hypothetical QB. Whatever.)
ANYWAY…like I said, that is a pretty enlightened statement for a GM to make. Do I buy it? Depends. If you are asking whether I believe that Sage would get to play if Schaub flopped, of course. If, however, you are asking whether I think Schaub and Sage enter this season on equal footing with the starting QB job up for grabs, my answer is “hell to da naw, dawg.” Which I think means “no.”
Without rehashing all the same Schaub v. Sage arguments, can we all just agree that pretending like the QB you mortgaged the farm for this time last year is going to be given every chance in the world to succeed is asinine? Better yet, can we agree that if Sage and Schaub turn in identical pre-season performances that Schaub is the guy you go with? Finally, can we assume that I am just doing a paragraph of nothing but rhetorical questions so it looks like I have posted more?
Oh, yeah…about that t-shirt contest
Feb 5, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Douchebag Tom, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
Friday marked the closing of entries in
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
With no further ado, I present all of the submitted designs. Vote in the comments with the following rules: 1. No anonymous votes will be counted. 2. Only vote once. 3. Feel free to try to circumvent #2, but be clever about it. Voting will close March 1, with the winner announced March 5ish.
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Finally
Feb 3, 2008 2007 Season, Colts Shmolts, Free Agency, Houston Chronicle, Predictions Guaranteed To Go Wrong, Super Bowl 2008, Teams that aren't the Texans, Tempting Fate, Up yours 1972 Dolphins
Over the last two weeks, there have been roughly 15,163,167 maudlin stories written about how “after the Super Bowl, we enter the long, dark winter of the offseason.” Said stories almost always talk about how great football season is (which is true), how any weekend with football is infinitely greater than any weekend without (which is arguably, usually true), and how the Super Bowl is the culmination of that greatness (which is a complete fucking lie unless your favorite team happens to be in it).
Don’t get me wrong–I love the Super Bowl. But not for those reasons. I love the Super Bowl because it is a social event where people who would never even watch an NFL game come together with those of us who watch way too much to drink, shoot the shit, laugh at commercials, and eat copious amounts of food. (In fact, the reason I am awake right now, at 4:30 AM on a Sunday was because I had to get the smoker started so the pork will be ready for kickoff.) More than THAT, however, I love the Super Bowl because it is the end of the bullshit.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to find shit to write about your team in the two weeks of Super Bowlgasm? Pretty fucking hard. Like “teaching in Port Arthur without a bulletproof vest” hard. Hell, even Chron.com is overrun with stories about the Pats and Giants and the gap in Mike Strahan’s teeth. For these two weeks–or more, depending on your team–there has been little to no coverage of anything that wasn’t Super Bowl related. This makes sense, I guess, but it still blows.
But, come the end of tonight’s game, all that is over. We can finally get down to brass tacks when it comes to free agents and the draft. After the Super Bowl, we start getting 40-times and workout monsters. We get overpriced free agents and incentive-laden one year deals. In short, we get everything that matters to anyone who didn’t watch his favorite team today. The end of the season is nothing to bemoan, people. It’s something to look forward to with great anticipation. Because the end of the Super Bowl means the real beginning of he 2008 season.
Last Fortnight: 1-1
Regular Season Record: 156-91
Playoff Record: 8-2
Super Bowl Pick
New York Giants v. New England. Brady’s foot. Plaxico’s mouth. Moss‘ pimphand. Belichick’s hoodie. Coughlin’s ineptitude. Tiki’s vagina. Does that about cover every tired story or did I miss one? Like everyone else, had there not been the two-week layoff between the title games and today, I might have tried to convince myself into taking the Giants. That defense–especially the front four–has been playing out of their collective tits for weeks now. Plus, Eli seems to have made the “leap” from punchline to potential star.
Thankfully, the fourteen-day rest gave me time to come to my fucking senses. First, Eli is still a Manning, right? The only reason Peyton was even IN the Super Bowl last year is because Reche Caldwell sucks at historical levels. Manning did his damnedest to give that game back, but he couldn’t overcome Ol’ Bugeyes’ complete inability to catch TD passes. Second, Tom Brady is NOT a Manning. Instead, he’s apparently a golden god who gets to live the life every one of us pretended to be living when we created players in Madden. “Yeah, I’m the QB. I date Super Models. I’ve won a bunch of Super Bowls. Everyone wants to be me. I’m kind of a big deal.”
But the main reason I can’t pick NY? Tom Coughlin. It’s not that he sucks in a vacuum, though he does. It’s that he is woefully less talented than Belichick. This matchup, with this layoff, is like giving Stephen Hawking and Corky Thatcher two weeks and telling them “OK, now give me a mathematical model of a black hole and explain how it relates to dark matter.” I have few rules in life, but one of them is this–always bet against a retard. Pick: New England
Update: Or not.
Two jokes, one design
Jan 30, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts, You remind me of ____
With one day remaining before the deadline, Liston offers another t-shirt design for the
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
I will repost all of the designs on Friday. Remember, you have until Friday morning to submit designs. You know you aren’t doing anything productive right now (or else you wouldn’t be reading this); why not make a t-shirt design?
Moron^2
Jan 13, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Douchebag Tom, Fuck the Cowboys, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
SOLIS offers up four more t-shirt designs for the
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
Says the artist, “It’s based on the theory that Tom is acually Richard Justice.”
Vista View
Jan 4, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
The Count offers another entry in the Lil’ Dickie T-Shirt Extravaganza.
Off and running
Jan 2, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, I really dig my readers, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
I seriously love you people. Two more entries in the t-shirt contest, this time from reader Brent.
I ain’t your pal, dickface.
Jan 2, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, I really dig my readers, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack.
We interrupt what will shortly become a near-obsessive focus on the 2008 draft to bring you the first entries in The DGDB&D “Design a Richard Justice T-shirt” Contest. The following were submitted by Liston. (Remember to get your own submissions in by February 1st.)
Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines. Raphael is cool but rude–gimme a break!–and Michelangelo is a party dude!
Dec 30, 2007 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, McTard, Richard Justice is a talentless hack.
Created during a typically disjointed conversation with Liston (and cemented by the most recent article), we here at DGDB&D are pleased to announce:
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The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
Allow me to explain.
As we all know, Richard Justice is a knob-gobbler and a talentless hack who has absolutely no business as a sports writer for a major metropolitan newspaper. Hell, he has no business as a sports writer in a paper of any size if you buy into the idea that the media is supposed to report and appear to be unbiased. Whatever.
But, rather than continue to bitch about him, I want you, the reader, to design a t-shirt along the same lines as the photo essay. By which I mean come up with something visual that represents just how awful Richard Justice truly is. The winner not only gets their t-shirt for free, but will also have his or her t-shirt sent to Richard Justice himself.
Rules:
- 1. All submissions are due by February 1. They will be posted on this blog as they come in, however.
- 2. They must be some sort of visual humor. Writing “Richard Justice touches babies” won’t work; having a picture of him ass-grabbing a toddler would.
- 3. I need the submission in .jpg or .gif form if possible.
- 4. Winner will be picked by popular vote and will be named on March 1.
- 5. Be funny.
That’s it.
For inspiration and to study up on the suckiness that is Lil’ Dickie, see:
Photo Essay On Richard Justice, by Matt
Chronic 2007, or “Dedicated To All Of Those With Big Egos”
Or pretty much anything he’s written about the Texans
Dey call me “Mr. Boombastic,” simply fantastic
Dec 29, 2007 Athletes who don't stab people, Houston Chronicle, Morlon Greenwood
A momentary lapse in my no-Chron policy because this one is just too good:
Linebackers coach Johnny Holland calls Greenwood “the ultimate pro” and “a true warrior,” adding: “If you pick one player on our defense to model yourself after, it would be him. He’s one of the smartest guys I’ve ever been around. He’s never missed a snap in a game. He never misses a day of practice. He’s never late for a meeting. And he plays special teams. I wish my kid would grow up to be Morlon Greenwood.”
Did we forget to mention that Greenwood is also a rapper in his spare time? His videos are easy to find on YouTube or his MySpace page. “Ultimate56″ — that’s Morlon. He’s a mystery man in more ways than one.
Embedding is not working, but here’s a link to his YouTube videos.
And here’s a link to his MySpace page.
And–I’ll do you one better than the Chron did–here’s a link to his actual music label website. (The logo looks like the lovechild of Cobra Commander and Simba. Sweet.)
Nine Eleven Cowboys?! I’m sure McClain is happy orgasmic.
Dec 18, 2007 2006 Draft, 2007 Season, Athletes who don't stab people, DeMeco Ryans, Fuck the Cowboys, Houston Chronicle, Pro Bowl 2008, Super Mario
Just a reminder: Pro Bowl rosters are announced today at 3PM (CST) on the NFL Network. If DeMeco and Mario are omitted, someone dies.
(Also, Teddy Bruschi? Seriously? And Dwight Freeney? Boy…online fan voting is a GREAT idea. )
