The Brass Balls Program.

John Mayer busts out some hot licks in this ad, and he's a talented guitar player. So, why do his records suck? We here at S2N are frustrated, recovering musicians, and we'd love to see nothing more than this Hendrix-and-SRV-acolyte hit it big with good songs. The problem is, he's either incapable of writing them (he is a lousy lyricist; "Your Body is a Wonderland," anyone?) or so eager to put a pop gloss on his recordings that he's dumbing it down.

John, we care. We've seen you bust it out on stage with Buddy Guy and on Austin City Limits, and we thought that trio album you did with Pino Palladino and Steve Jordan wasn't half bad; in fact, we think there's something there to be aiming for. You were also self-aware enough to be a good straight man for Dave Chappelle, which means there is hope for you.

Thus, we've decided to offer our help in the form of our Brass Balls Program, inspired by rockers young and old.

1) Never be seen in public without a bottle of Jack or Jameson. You look like you missed out on the keggers while going to Berklee.
2) Two words: Marlboro Reds. We expect you to be at a pack a day in three months. Get some rasp in your voice. While you're at the smoking bit, find and meet your local weed dealer.
3) A more indiscriminate attitude to grooming would help. The longer hair's a step in the right direction. We sense you're the type of dude whose attempts at facial hair only allow for Adam Morrison-style fuzz-staches, but if you can get some good stubble going, it wouldn't be a bad idea.
4) More leather, tighter jeans. More black. Just don't head down the "leather pants" road. We're begging you.
5) Two more words: weight room.
6) Rumor has it you're hitting up Jessica Simpson again. That's kind of lame, but she's blonde and dumb, and we'd probably hit it. However, she also might be fooling around with the QB for the Dallas Cowboys. We say dump the woman already, but if you win the battle, do us a favor: don't let her sing on your records.

Follow our steps and you'll be ripping it up and raising hell with the best of 'em.

Booty penetrates the Irish defense.

What's funny is that SC beat the Golden Domers despite the fact that the talent level playing in Coliseum is less than the three Heisman candidates packing the Trojan skill positions last year. The Porn-Star in Training threw four TDs, three of them to bound-for-the-1st-round-of-the-draft Dwayne Jarrett, and the Trojan linebackers and secondary made mincemeat of any hopes Brady Quinn had of lifting the Hesiman Trophy from Troy Smith. Quinn goes 0-4 against SC for his career, and he's likely headed for more miserable experiences in California, because the Raiders are looking for a quarterback.

Also, a superfluous link to the page of the SC cheerleader squad, angels in tight sweaters, making me kick myself for attending a Div. III school and then deciding not to take SC up on that grad school thing.

Florida continues to win like they want to lose, and I think they will lose to Arkansas next week -- most of the SEC lately plays like "Which team wants to lose more?"

that joke isn't funny anymore.

Via Variety, we see the latest idea being floated to Fox after the O.J. mess is a show being hyped as a conservative Daily Show, and no matter what your politics, if it's being written about and hyped as such, mission control probably ought to call off the launch.

The reason the majority of comedy gets portrayed as "liberal" is because most of your comedians don't set a lot of arbitrary limits -- if it's funny, it's funny, no matter what the political sensibilities or implications of the target -- especially when it comes to sex, drugs, and other associated vices. Implying that there needs to be "balance" in satire in your show misses the point entirely. The creators of the show likely share a mindset with the folks that hired Stephen Colbert to perform at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, not knowing he would take the opportunity to mercilessly rake them over the coals.

They'll do fine with their built-in audience on FNC, but the creators might want to ask all those Christian rock bands how that "crossover" audience thing went....

The Book of LaDainian.

After a second straight week with four touchdowns, this time against an opponent alleged to have one of the best defenses in the league, archaeologists have released their latest discovery, found in the dry lands that comprise most of West Texas -- ancient parchment, on which is written the tales and prophecy of the one that citizens of San Diego and game participants across the land refer to in hushed, reserved tones as "Fantasy Jesus."

Some choice excerpts from the discovery are below:

1:17 - "The rumors heard during His collegiate years spread far and wide during His first years in the League: woe be unto the safety who dares cross the path of the Lord, for he shall be halted in his path with the simple raising of His arm."
4:58 - "Though He was short of stature, he struck fear into the hearts of men who would dare oppose him, causing them horrific dreams, with eyes they could not see behind His shades."
8:22 - "After making his way to the water when the Giants of York decided to tie their fates to Elijah, whom they falsely believed to be the Second Coming, the Apostle Philip waited in line for two years behind the unexpected rise of Andrew the Baptist. Philip took the repeated slights and waited with patience, for he witnessed the miracles, and knew that He can raise the levels of untested quarterbacks; He would assist Philip in his journey to lead his men when the time came."
13:15 - "Even His friends and mentors tried to restrain the pure Force and Light emanating from within; Martin, the Wise Man, would not involve the Lord in certain plays; would tell Him to conserve. But He could not be contained, and Martin realized His Light and Spirit must be set free -- this would be the only chance to challenge Elijah's brother Peytonian and his Horsemen."

we now return you to your regularly scheduled outrage.

Fox and News Corp. have called off O.J.'s book and TV special, with head honcho Rupert Murdoch agreeing with the American public that the project was "ill-considered."

I will steal and expand upon a Bill Simmons idea: the VP of Common Sense. Simmons proposed that pro sports teams hire one; I say this should be expanded to media conglomerates, to prevent obvious dust-ups and bad ideas like this was. It would prevent stupidity like this and blatant attempts at attention-whoring to gin up the publicity works...oh, wait....never mind.

goodbye, fantasy season.

Watching your team's hopes for a playoff run probably go up in smoke with an ACL injury to your QB hurts more for the real Philadelphia Eagles, but it was a very sick realization as to how much I actually put into the fantasy team this time this year -- it really was the first season I'd had enough time to give a crap and be invested in it. And then McNabb tore his ACL in a loss to the Titans after winning several weeks for me (and the Eagles) single-handedly.

What makes it worse is that the Babydaddy in Arizona is my back-up QB (although he did have two touchdowns today, it was against the Lions, and next week's game is against Minnesota), and I've already been burned by Edgerrin James' play for the Cardinals.

My opponent has Plummer tonight while I've got Gates and Kaeding. I'm actually kind of rooting against the Broncos for this -- and it's wrong in so many ways.

Update, 11/20: -- The cosmic fantasy football fucking-over is complete, as the worst possible outcome of my real-life team's QB shitting the bed came to pass, while he didn't do it enough to give me the win. Jake, you are dead to me now.

and the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel.

Earlier this week, Clear Channel announced their sale to a private investment group, which isn't notable in and of itself -- what's really interesting about the whole sale is how about 450 radio stations and ALL of their TV stations (via the division that owns them) will be spun off and sold. (Clear Channel's TV arm owns a couple of my employer's competitors; all we know about their ownership from our friends at said stations is that it makes for better initial salary numbers, supposedly.)

The consolidation effect from years of public ownership and swallowing up of radio stations has already passed in the sense that hoping to reverse it is a pipe dream. Privatizing the largest top-down conglomerate in radio and most aspects of musically related entertainment isn't going to have a discernible effect on what we see and hear in terms of entertainment -- the damage has already been done, and since it makes money, it's not likely to change. The effect of the BusinessWeek article is really to chronicle (almost by accident) just how all-encompassing the company has been, especially post-Telecommunications Act, when ownership rules were relaxed significantly. The company owned a major part of the airwaves, the promotional end of the musicians they aired, and a magazine that covered their industry.

They're going to sell the concert promotion, TV stations, and it seems, anything that isn't straight radio -- but the sentiment of the Elvis Costello lyric in the title will still hold.

the new publishing gold mine.

By now, everyone has heard of and been shocked by O.J. Simpson's book and impending T.V. interview where he hints and hints, ever so slightly, that he actually committed the murders of his ex-wife and her friend that he was acquitted of, and apparently is making a nice chunk of change off of it.

It just so happened that the old LJ friends page showed me the way, courtesy of a friend in L.A.: this is simply the new trend in publishing circles, and given the recent scandalous behavior of many public figures, this is money, people.

I make a point of not watching Fox programming if it isn't sports-related or Family Guy, so skipping O.J. isn't an issue. But, I can't wait for the specials and books for these two below:

1) Okay, So Maybe I Snorted an Eight-Ball and Had Relations with the Male Hooker, by Pastor Ted Haggard.
2) If I Wanted to Fondle Pages, Here's How it Would've Gone Down, by Rep. Mark Foley.

tell us your name and what it is you do.

Political columnist Michael Kinsley basically defined a political gaffe as an accidental statement that revealed the truth. Now, in a column about not being too sorry to see the Republicans lose control of Congress, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer gives us the epitome of a gaffe:

"Really, it's just a simple thesis: The men who ran the Republican Party in the House of Representatives for the past 12 years were a group of weirdos. Together, they comprised one of the oddest legislative power cliques in our history. And for 12 years, the media didn't call a duck a duck, because that's not something we're supposed to do."

There are several ways to address the highlighted portion:
1) Could be sarcastic. Problem is, if you read the rest of the piece, it's hard to tell if he's joking.
2) At least Mr. Meyer got it out in the open and confirmed every suspicion most Democrats have had since 2000.
3) On top of #2, this is the "mea culpa" issued before going after a new Congress, which has switched hands, viciously, for anything and everything.

None of those are good, and larger names at national news bureaus would never have been clumsy enough to write that sentence. So, Mr. Meyer, just what is it that you all do over there? Those of us at the lower levels of your business would like to know.

Saturday in the end zone.

A good four-hour, slug-em-out contest between Michigan and Ohio State lived up to the billing, and ended in a 42-39 OSU win, despite the repeated attempts by ABC and ESPN to turn it into an "instant classic," well-aided by Brent Musberger's fluency in cliche and Bob Davie's repeated examples of why not one Div. I-A school has offered him a head coaching job since being forced out by the Golden Domers. Troy Smith locked up the Heisman despite an INT and two bad snaps.

The aforementioned Fighting Irish Republican Army completed its devastating guerrilla campaign against our nation's proud service academies by exploding into the Green Zone repeatedly after an opening field goal by the cadets. The Army hoped to make inroads with the infantry on the hostile soil held by the Papist insurgents, but sadly, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you want. By the fourth quarter, the game analysts were questioning for a pull-out of the first line, while General-Coach Bobby Ross decided to stay the course. Sheik Weis, hoping to win the big prize offered by the BCS Caliphate against OSU in the Arizona desert, ran up the score.

Despite ESPN's assertions that the Maryland-BC game was over by the end of the first half, it is your humble host's opinion that it was over when Maryland's offense had the ball three times before BC's offense even snapped the ball once in the first quarter -- two fumble recoveries for TDs early on made it a 14-0 lead, and they took it 38-16.

Cal at SC is about to start, and rumor has it Erin Andrews is on the sideline tonight (yes, yes she is.). I want to throttle the analysts who are talking about a Michigan-OSU rematch in the championship game.

slow news day, huh?

You know the TomKat wedding circus has become way too big and way too much when major news networks are showing MULTIPLE satellite shots of the castle where the whole shebang is supposed to be held tomorrow.

I shed the shame of being ashamed of my line of work long ago, but even I get a bit of a shock once in a while. It's not like life and death matters are going on in other places or anything.

necrophilia in under five minutes.

Rest in peace, Bo Schembechler -- ESPN certainly won't let you. I know it's standard procedure in TV news/sports to have obits on a backlog, but, wow, overkill doesn't even begin to describe it.

"The sycophantic slags all say, 'I knew him first and I knew him well.'"

If the OSU -loving band Dead Schembechlers are now art uncomfortably imitating life, then I eagerly await the debut of Kill Shanahan.

there is no humor in this.

There is nothing, I repeat, absolutely nothing funny that can be drawn from going to prison. The filmmakers behind this obvious piece of crap should be drawn and quartered, despite the director being part of the wonderful Mr. Show and the screenwriters both coming from the sublime Reno 911.

The trailer for said flick implies all sorts of personal violations and plays them up for laughs. Anal sex should never be played for laughs. It is a serious act. Even bringing it up in the course of a relationship can sometimes be justification for being thrown out of bed and/or dumped, never mind the imprint on the mind that "he asked" that lasts FOREVER. Also, the implied pleasure it brings many people shouldn't be laughed at. Is it any wonder most movies and TV shows involving prison are dramas?

Anal sex isn't funny, people. The line of funny is between consent and assault, which means that porn is implicitly hilarious. It's like Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks.

Hold on....

(Murmurs in background, whispers in editor's ear.)

Oh, you mean anal rape? Fuck, there's tons of funny in that. Especially because it won't happen to me.

(This was actually semi-serious -- why comedic filmmakers make movies about the funny in prison, I'll never know.)

judgement day my ass.

There's a big college football game going on this week. I'm sure you've heard about it if you ventured anywhere near ESPN the past few days. It's so big that people who normally would have no business talking about anything college football-related (like me, but like that stops me anyway) are going on about it.

Frankly, every year one game gets the "game of the century" or some such treatment, and it's a bunch of bullshit, fraudulent hype. I happen to remember a little game in Pasadena last January that caused me a bunch of traffic problems, and, oh yeah, also managed to be a damn fine football contest, with two apparently undefeated teams going down to the wire for the championship. I don't expect Michigan-OSU to be that good, although it is a "must watch" game, always.

I'm actually more interested in jumping on the Rutgers bandwagon; however, knowing that the Michigan-OSU game will be called by Brent Musberger will keep me (and most of the other sickos that also participate in Deadspin's Hugh Johnson Project every Saturday) amused to no end.

Update, Friday, 11/17 -- Bo Schembechler died this morning; it's not really quite so funny any more.

Broncos vs. Raiders.

The benefit of being a Bronco fan in California is that despite being outside of the TV market and forced to watch every game of the Chargers, 49ers, and Raiders, is that you are guaranteed at least a few Bronco games on TV because of the divisions doing home and away with each other every year. At least you're not completely out of the possibility of viewing your team without signing up for DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket (although, given the stupidity of Charter in allowing both Fox and CBS to be spotty here at any given time, that satellite still looks very attractive.

There are good odds that Jake the Fake and the Broncos' D will put this game out of reach enough in the first half to make it worth my time to take my Sunday nap early and watch the Sunday night game on NBC (the nap is necessary for the day job), but I look forward to these games nonetheless, despite the commitment to excrement Oakland has displayed all too recently, rendering the rivalry as something less than an actual contest.

How does an L.A. native become a Bronco fan, though? You could probably blame the Raiders for that too. I'm old enough to remember L.A. having two teams, and watching them on TV with my dad every weekend. He was a Rams guy; I attached myself to the Raiders because silver and black looked more vicious and appealing than blue and yellow. If you've never been to Southern California, you'll still see plenty of Raider fans in the Los Angeles County area -- the Rams played in Anaheim; they were the O.C. team. It's the same divide that splits Dodger and Angel fans to this day.

Al Davis moved the team to L.A. the year I was born, and moved them back two years after I left for Denver. I rooted for the Raiders in Bronco territory for two years when they stayed in L.A., but I couldn't do it when he left. Your first franchise cheating on you as a fan is the hardest, and as I spent more time in Denver, I drifted towards their franchises, because Denver is a four-sport supporting city now -- those teams will NEVER move.

And I hate Al Davis for it. He's a smarmy, old fuck who thinks he knows best -- forcing his team to draft shitty quarterbacks and underachieving wide receivers in the hope of a pass-happy offense, when the AFC is all about the running game, especially the West Division -- please see LaDanian Tomlinson, Larry Johnson, and the Denver Tailback Factory. Meanwhile, while it kind of hurts to see my native city without an NFL team, L.A. denizens have gotten along fine without it -- Charger games are still on TV and having a team in the Rose Bowl or Coliseum would only increase the traffic headache. Plus, there is USC, run by a former Rams coach.

But still: fuck Al Davis for deserting L.A. He's getting what he deserves.

(Note: please don't take this to excuse Georgia Frontandrear either -- she's just as much on the ownership shit list for taking the Rams to St. L., too -- possibly more so, because she decided then to put money into the team and get a Super Bowl.)

the seats in the theatre will be sticky.

Rumor has it that Eva Longoria and Beyonce Knowles will be the stars in an American adaptation of the novel Tipping the Velvet, which is about an 1890s lesbian love affair between a male impersonating dance hall star and a fishmonger's daughter (it was also a very good BBC mini-series last year.)

Observe the pictures again, then consider the inevitable: if this movie is made, it will be a must-see in theatres, no matter how crappy it is (and it could be; I don't like Sofia Coppola much as a director, but I'd go watch this). Those exact same aspects could entice you to wait for the DVD, and avoid any uncomfortable messes within the nooks and crannies of theater seats, which are nasty enough anyway without the likely mess of tissues, lotion, and Vaseline that this will attract from various sick fucks.

Hat tip to the News Blog for this one.

(You have no idea how hard it was to write this without cracking an obvious joke about female anatomy.)

The San Francisco 49ers of Santa Clara

Earlier in the week, 49ers owner John York cut off negotiations with San Fran over a new stadium and said he was moving to Santa Clara -- now, he's leaving the door open. This is a tactic that only the NFL is really able to get away with these days; bilking the city and its taxpayers into footing the bill for new stadiums that get saddled with awful names in order to raise more cash via naming rights, although baseball owners are able to do it too (see the Athletics announcing they're leaving Oakland for Fremont.)

Neither of these pending moves are as obnoxious or as insulting to a fan base like, say the Browns transforming into the Ravens upon their move to Baltimore or the Colts ditching the Charm City for Indy, famously, in the middle of the night. As the title indicates, it may be part of a new micro-moving trend where owners who can't get anything out of their metro base head to the sub- and exurbs. The Cowboys play in Irving, Texas, and two of the four Detroit teams play outside the city limits -- and have for years.

York plans to keep the name, which will continue a trend of teams that play outside of a large metro market trying to take advantage of said market, and this is what Angels owner Arte Moreno hath wrought after his little Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim gambit was deemed permissible under his agreement with the city of Anaheim. No one was happy with that outside of Moreno -- Orange County and Anaheim folks weren't thrilled, L.A. people are Dodger people, the fans shrugged it off.

The one nice thing is that York has either decided to stay out of L.A. or he knows the city won't deal with his chicanery, because the Trojans would be a better show than most any pro team trying to come in and use the Coliseum.

money for nothing.

Apparently sitting on your ass, partying, and releasing shitty rap records is enough to warrant $30 million of your sugar mama's fortune, if the Sun is to be believed regarding FedEx's divorce demands from Britney (hat tip to WWTDD for that one).

Normally, I would say just take the money you can get and be happy with it, but his demands for legal fee payment and such along with his custody requests (anyone know if he sees the kids he had before marrying the Redneck Trainwreck?) are comedy gold, and I want six months of celeb coverage of this stuff.

Nice going, FedEx. Keep making Clovis proud.

all hail the BCS.

Without it, we wouldn't have half as much to talk about it when it came to college football.

After two highly entertaining Big East Thursday-nighters (especially that Louisville-Rutgers game), the college football "experts" on ESPN and everywhere else have settled into the CW that even if Rutgers stays undefeated, they have no business in the championship game.

Fine, I get that. Rutgers has a weak schedule, compared to Louisville, and they still have West Virginia on their schedule in two weeks.. But they should be talked about as a contender and allowed to make a case. Like most casual college football fans (didn't go to a D-I school, I root for teams in places I've lived, mostly -- CU being my open secret, this Buffs' season just hurts me) , I'd be the perfect advocate for a playoff system, because this system makes no sense.

However, outside of the obvious money reason, there are two actual reasons to not go to a playoff system in Div. I-A college ball:
1) There's something oddly inspiring and comforting about watching a sport where, as a team, you'd better not lose more than one game if you want a shot at being called the champion. You'd better play strong teams and beat them.
2) Half the fun of college football now is the vehement arguments over seeding positions in the BCS. Even haters like yours truly enjoy the vagueness of the standards required to make a dent when it becomes clear that only one power team is going to make it to the Fiesta Bowl undefeated this year.

Also -- Boise State may make a BCS bowl this year, which seems to give some folks the urge to retch, but it's not like Texas has played anyone better in their conference (at least they schedule Ohio State). The Big 12, collectively, has licked balls since Nebraska's Tom Osbourne decided to take his play-calling skills to Congress (although they are getting better, goddamnit, with a former Raider coach at the helm, of all things). There's always been one power team since, and Texas has filled the void.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Well, everyone's favorite redneck trainwreck finally dumped her wigger hubby.

I can't wait for the divorce proceedings. Is it any coincidence she's started looking semi-hot again?

Paterno goes down.

Joe Pa took a helmet to the knee in the third quarter of the game at Wisconsin from one of his own players covering a kickoff. Sadly, this was the best hit Penn State put on Wisconsin all day in the loss.

The actual incident was followed by at least twenty minutes of reflexive fellating of the old man by the announcers, which at this point in Paterno's career, can be accurately described as necrophilia.

which sport has the best athletes?

The NBA season is underway, and although many of my L.A.-based friends are dedicated NBA junkies (when you have no pro football, this is what happens), I am on record as not giving a shit about super-tall people dribbling and passing until the NFL season is over. However, basketball players have always come in second on my list of "most athletic" when it comes to pro sports. This wholly uneducated opinion knocks football down to three just slightly because of the non-skill positions (while playing the O-line takes strength and some athleticism in blocking, it doesn't quite add.) So, to rank the four major sports, it goes:

1. Hockey
2. Basketball
3. Football
4. Baseball

Laugh all you want, but guys who have to handle a small object with a stick while getting bashed into the boards and skating win the prize to me. Baseball has its own super athletes -- trying to hit a baseball coming at you at 90+ mph is probably the toughest task in sports.