Real American Heroes 2009

While I try to figure out where the last three weeks went, it's time to take a moment to celebrate America. Today is our 233rd birthday, and I'd like to acknowledge the Real American Heroes that make this country great.

Thomas Jefferson (from Virginia). For writing the Declaration of Independence. Go read it right now.


John Locke (from Tustin, California). For originally espousing all the ideas that Jefferson stole in writing the Declaration of Independence.


Windell Middlebrooks (from California I believe). For living, and encouraging, the High Life.

"Step aside mon ami."

David Hoffman and Ben Joravsky. Apparently the only two men in town willing to stand up to Mayor Richard M. Daley, the most autocratic mayor since this guy. More vigilance and attention to the dysfunctional, corrupt, wasteful form of government here will open more eyes to the fact that we cannot afford, and simply do not deserve, the Olympics.

This is Hoffman. I assume Joravsky remains unphotographed for his personal safety.

Buddy Guy. Born in Louisiana, rocking his adopted hometown of Chicago today, on Independence Day.

And rocking this pink shirt, too.

Barack Obama (Chicago, via Hawaii). For many things: repairing the damage done to our nation's image after eight years of destruction by the Bush administration, for starters. But to make this list: he wrote an excuse note for a Green Bay child named Kennedy, who skipped school to hear the president speak.

Obama: Making it cool again for kids to want to grow up to be president since 2009.

The Mouse executive who made the decision to pull this blowhard off college football broadcasts. Next, can we get rid of the guy with the biggest Cool Name-to-Awful Talent gap on the planet?

Craig Finn (Minneapolis). For writing the songs that rock my world. For giving voice to Midwesterners in New York City. It's great to see you back in a bar band, baby.

(photo taken by TM, 6/19/09 ... more on this concert soon.)

It's our birthday, Americans ... if it's hot enough where you are, enjoy a popsicle.


You'll notice I didn't mention this guy or this guy ... definitely heroes, but too obvious.

Absence, Partially Explained

Don't ya hate it when a great, funny, engaging blog goes on hiatus unannounced? Yeah, me too. However, I think I have a pretty damn good excuse. Lookit all this stuff that's been going on:

• Crushing gloomy cold and rain!
• Ribfest!
• Ravinia!
• Sarah Borges!
• Starting work!
• New kitty! (not ours...)
• Mosh pit!
• Sibling visit!
• Housewarming party!
• A rock your face off performance by The Hold Steady!
• Resume writing!
• 10-Player League baseball!
• Roller coasters!
• Canadians!
• Blood donation!
• Wilco (the album) featuring Wilco (the song) by Wilco (the band)!

As you can see, that doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging. And this list doesn't even mention reading (and digesting) many of the 328 pages that are JAMPACKED WITH INFORMATION in Steele. I'll try to get caught up as much as I can in the next few days, starting with the first few (oldest) items.

Drink Wilkins Coffee

... or else a primitive, 1960's-era Kermit will have you shot in the fucking face.


Thanks to Another Damned Blogger, who found the clip here.



In other Muppet news: apparently there's a TV show called 30 Rockfeller Plaza, clearly a behind-the-scenes look at the NBC Television Network. Yeah, well, they stole their show idea from the Muppets. (Obviously, I found this at BHGP.)

I will use any excuse whatsoever to run this picture again.

Finally, in non-Muppet news: Does anyone else from Iowa read this here and NOT think of Johnny Gosch?

The Notre Dame 2009 Football Preview

Last year, to celebrate the day Phil Steele’s yearbook comes out (aka Steelemas), I wrote a long essay about Notre Dame’s 2008 schedule and how it boded well for an improved season. Today, Steelemas Eve 2009, I already have my Steele but in honor of the day, here is my look at the upcoming season.

It's that time of the year again.

The key themes of Notre Dame football 2009 are high expectations and a ‘the future is now’ mentality. I’m going to key in on three main factors for this: the schedule, the talent on the two-deep chart and the impatience of the fanbase, born of recent history.

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Schedule. The sked was the main focus of last year’s preview, and while it is not the key factor for me in 2009, it deserves mention. I start with a look at last year's schedule as a comparison point.

Notre Dame 2008 Opponents

LY	Bowl LY?	Team	W/L	Final Record	Bowl?	Better?
4-8	No	S. Diego St.	W	2-10	No	No
9-4	Yes	Mich.	W	3-9	No	No
7-6	Yes	@Mich. St	L	9-4	Yes	Yes
8-5	Yes	Purd.	W	4-8	No	No
4-8	No	Stanford	W	5-7	No	--
4-8	No	@No. Caro.	L	8-5	Yes	Yes
4-9	No	@Wash.	W	0-12	No	No
5-7	No	Pitt	L	9-4	Yes	Yes
11-3	Yes	@Bost. Coll.	L	9-5	Yes	No
8-5	Yes	Navy	W	8-5	Yes	--
2-10	No	Syracuse	L	3-9	No	--
11-2	Yes	@ So. Cal.	L	12-1	Yes	Yes
77-75	six			72-79	six	Nah.

Italics = new coach in 2008.

(Here "Last Year" means 2007.) We knew 2008 would be easier than 2007, and the numbers bear that out. I’m not going to give credit to Stanford for “improving” from 4-8 to 5-7, or Cuse going from 2-10 to 3-9, particularly when the coach got fired.

ND’s 2008 opponents, when it was all over, went seven games under .500, and if you exclude the USC juggernaut, the other 11 squads were 18 games under .500 (60-78). In other words, ND 2008 faced a slate that was coming off a cumulatively mediocre 2007 and managed to do even worse. The Irish should have cleaned up, and it’s clear that ND under-achieved against Navy, Pitt, Syracuse and had the UNC game in hand.

Now look at the 2009 lineup.

Notre Dame 2009 Opponents

LY Record	Bowl LY?	Team	Result
7-6	Yes	Nevada	??
3-9	No	at Michigan	??
9-4	Yes	Michigan State	??
4-8	No	at Purdue	??
0-12	No	Washington	??
12-1	Yes	USC	??
9-5	Yes	Boston College	??
2-11	No	Washington State	??
8-5	Yes	Navy	??
9-4	Yes	at Pittsburgh	??
8-5	Yes	Connecticut	??
5-7	No	at Stanford	??
76-77	seven		??

Italics = new coach in 2009.

One more bowl team, but two putrid Pac-10 teams (two of the worst in Div. I-A, in fact), two struggling Big Ten teams, a big pile of unimpressive to mediocre, and just three legitimate Top 25’ers in MSU, BC and Southern Cal. Overall score: Eminently beatable.

Or think about it this way: the nine repeating members of the sked from last year went 59-55. Those schools rotating out (SDSU, UNC, Cuse) finished 13-24. Those rotating in (Nevada, Wash St., UConn) were 17-22. Any way you cut it: this is not a murderer’s row.

I want to see more of this.

Talent. The bigger issue, then, should be the on-field performance by this assemblage of talent. Although it’s been written about all over the Internet, it was my friend Steve who helped me see the quality and depth of talent on the roster. I don’t think I’ve seen the top-two guys at basically every position be so talented and ready to contribute in my short tenure as a fan.

Acquiring Steele helped put it into focus. Look at the PS#s (“Phil Steele number” is his method of judging talent coming out of high school) on the two-deep roster at the skill positions:

QB: PS#5, PS#5
RB: PS#13, PS#9, PS#2
WR: PS#8, PS#31
WR: PS#2, PS#10
WR: PS#27, PS#9
TE: PS#2, PS#2

The offensive line isn’t as impressive, but still some great numbers:

C: PS#24, PS#39
RG: PS#14, PS#13
LG: PS#28, PS#58
RT: PS#1 (Sam Young), PS#19
LT: PS#53, PS#18

The defense has PS#1’s in Steve Filer and Manti Te’o and a PS#2 in Darrin Walls, returning from a year in exile. Bottom line: the talent is there.

Also want to see more of this.

Impatience. Which brings us to the third factor: the ability of the coaching staff to finally put it all together on the field in Year Five of the Weis era. A brief history:

• 2005: Brady Quinn, Darius Walker, Jeff Samardzija (I spelled that without looking it up), BCS game, 9-3.
• 2006: same crew, BCS game, 10-3.
• 2007: everyone leaves, Weis’ inexperience as a college coach is exposed, fundamentals are awful, historic loss to Navy, 3-7.
• 2008: talented recruits begin arriving/developing, still an awful loss (Syracuse), first bowl win in ages, 7-6.

The complaints about the hangover effect of Willingham’s awful recruiting, while I believe were valid in 2007 and '08 to an extent, are gone. The team is stacked with capable athletes. Weis has the players he wants and the coaching staff he wants. Most of the key players have been in the program for three years (Clausen, Tate, Young, Kyle McCarthy, Brian Smith). To quote the coach: “9-3 is not good enough.” Or another quote: No Excuses. (For a discussion of whether 9-3 really is good enough for this team, see here.)

Last year the question was: we'll be better, but how much? This year the question is: will the won-loss record (based on my three factors) be as good as it SHOULD be?

GOT MY STEELE

WOOOOOOOOOO!

Thanks to the lovely TM (who stopped by the Clark/Diversey Borders today) it is, to quote Orson Swindle, "in hand, motherfuckers," two days before the official onsale date.

I've always loved this photo. Spencer's caption is: "Phil Steele’s College Football 2006 Preview, shortly after floating into Orson’s hand from on high."

It's even the Midwest regional cover, with Clausen, Pryor and a Michigan running back.

Here's the quick overview: ND at #7, and #9 in the Power Poll. Iowa at #20, and #16 in the Power Poll. So Steele thinks ND will end the season slightly better than their talent would predict, based on an easy slate, and Iowa will be hurt by their four tough road games (PSU, OSU, Wisky, MSU). He's got Penn St. first in the conference, then OSU and Illinois (WTF?!?!) tied at second, then Iowa.

And, because I haven't used the "MAC Attack" tag in a while: Phil likes the Bobcats to win the MAC East, saying they were "much better than (their) final '08 record and this season will fly under the radar" as his No. 2 Most Improved Team.

Full report Tuesday.

Phil gives his own magazine a thumbs up.

You're Never Too Old to Learn New Words

Everybody thinks they are average or above-average in certain categories, but until you take Statistics, you really don't understand the concept of standard distribution in a specific population.

For example, I think I have a pretty large vocabulary, what with all the writin', and the crossword-puzzle solvin' and readin' books without pictures and all that. But in a few-day span recently, I came across the same new word twice. One was in this book, written by a British guy about a British guy in London. The other was in this article about a British guy in Paris. So I figured, maybe it's a British/European thing.

So I emailed the author of the Esquire piece, Tom Chiarella, asking if he was British, figuring he was an Esquire big shot and I'd never hear back. To my surprise, Tom wrote me a nice, long note, confirming he is not British, but did live in London for a while, and picked up the word from a European author.

Anyway, we're big fans of words and rambling essays about using big words here at TMMPF. So, the word is "tumescence" and if you don't know what it means, uh, I guess you can look it up.

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PS: Regarding the setup of the article, that Chiarella gave Clive Owen his own hard-earned cash to bet the ponies, Tom wrote to me: "it really was my own money. I've had a hard time getting anyone to believe me, including Clive."

PPS: I thought about creating a new tag for this post. But then I realized, we've already got 49 tags, and when am I ever going to use again the "British term for boner" tag??

The Committee to Unify Ridiculous And Contrived Acronymed Organizations

From the newswire. --Ed.

Legions of non-profit and activist organizations have a new lobbying group to draw attention to their missions.

Announced earlier this week, the Committee to Unify Ridiculous And Contrived Acronymed Organizations, or Curacao, aims to help socially oriented programs with odd names further their efforts. Up to 100 groups with names like the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a Tufts University program to promote political engagement of young people, are expected to benefit.

"Many of our groups struggle to gain awareness in the public eye," said Curacao director Eduaro Jones, despite clunky names like the Marriage Appreciation Training Uplifting Relationship Education (MATURE) project in Georgia, a federally funded abstinence program, or the Women in Need Growing Stronger (WINGS) services for homeless and abused women.

"Each of these groups deserves a wider audience for their important causes and their clever, tongue-twisting acronyms," continued Jones, "whether it's the SUDS (Stop Underage Drinking and Sales) task force in Indiana, or Jim Abbott's disability advocacy group PITCH (Proving Individuals with Talent Can Help)."

Spokespersons from the represented agencies and programs lauded the national Curacao effort. "I know PILLARS specifically will benefit from Curacao's leadership," said Jim Westham, referring to Peers Inspiring, Listening, Learning, and Responsible Socializing, a University of Notre Dame student group dedicated to a safe and responsible college lifestyle, where he is director. "I thought 'PILLARS' was pretty good, but 'Curacao,' I mean, wow."

"This is particularly important for social services organizations," Curacao's Jones said. "If you want to draw attention to your cause, no matter how useful or trivial, selecting a word that spells out something awkward is the only truly successful way to achieve that."

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