The Chatter: 01/08/16

January 8, 2016

This week: New Year's Sux, XM Hits of the Month, Storytime, and more...

Like my fellow big wig media brethren (Mike & Mike, Dan Patrick, PTI, etc.) I elected to spend the holiday break with family and friends, while anxiously pondering all the topics for new content in the new year. Happy New Year to all and to all a good winter...brrrr!

The New Year's Six disappoints - When the College Football Playoff people laid claim to the idea of redefining America's New Year's experience I bought in completely, mainly because NYE is my 2nd-least favorite holiday behind Halloween. College football is the best product to capture my viewership on a day full of countdowns and B-list celebrities. Sadly, this season's New Year's Six were terrible. Every game was out-of-hand and decided by halftime with a 24.2 pt average margin of victory. The matchups were intriguing but the performances were lackluster. The most mind-boggling component of that colossal letdown was the sheer probability that 6 games would all end up with the same outcome, blowout. By the time the Sugar Bowl kicked off, Ole Miss and Oklahoma State needed to play the most amazing, historic, epic college football game in the history of the sport to stand a chance at redeeming an experience that found me watching alot more of the Mythbusters marathon than competitive football. Ole Miss was up 34-6 at halftime and I was enjoying the episode where Adam & Jamie make a duct tape bridge. Better luck next year New Year's Six. Don't let me down again.

Fun note about the wife and why I love her so - She wandered in while the Peach Bowl was on and asked "Houston and Florida State?? Houston's not in the SEC. I thought this was a SEC vs ACC bowl??" I was simultaneously slack-jawed and unsurprised. After 10+ years she continues to impress me with her understanding of the nuances and minutiae of the sports I love to watch. I need to return the favor and figure out how to do a thoracentesis without turning ghastly gray and falling to the floor like a sack of turnips.

Questions I had to answer this past week
- "Do you let him drink out of empty soap bottles?"
- "(Is it) so bad we need to buy a new carseat?"

XM Hits of the Month - These earworms wiggled their way into my head and hung out for a few days or even a few weeks in some cases. And now, I pass them on to you.

Hall of Fame notes - I intend to dedicate several sections over the next few weeks to Hall of Fame discussion in MLB, NBA, and NFL, but a quick little nugget to chew on this week with your buddies: Should a HOF ballot be judged against history or judged against their generation?

NFL Wild Card Weekend - The NFL season blew right by and here comes the playoffs. Before you know it pitchers & catchers will be reporting and the Super Bowl will yesterday's news. But we still have four weeks of playoff action and I'm gonna shake up my crystal ball and make some picks. Kansas City wins with ease, Cincinnati starts their run to the AFC title game and the QB controversy that comes with it, Minnesota pulls off the biggest upset of the weekend, and Green Bay gets it right for one week before falling in the Divisional Round. NOTE: Check out the latest poll question about QBs on the right.

UFC rematches revisited - A few weeks ago I addressed the (un)likelihood of any of the three newly crowned champs facing immediate rematches and this week we got news from the UFC that Conor McGregor and Holly Holm would indeed be facing new opponents in their next fights.

DraftKings winning lineup - I won $2 with the following lineup (and lost $0.75 on some other.....

PG Chris Paul
SG J.J. Redick
SF Maurice Harkless
PF Zach Randolph
C Deandre Jordan
G Mario Chalmers
F Al-Farouq Aminu
Util Damian Lillard

I also missed out on another buck or two because of this bizarre lineup nonsense in Portland the other night. I'm living proof that DraftKings can have you ballin' like a boss on the McDonald's McPick 2 menu.

Random thoughts

Do you think David Carr bought his offensive linemen gifts the season he was sacked a record 76 times?
Did you know that the re-released DVD version of Return of the Jedi features a blasphemous edit job? In the final scene where the ghostly holograms of Obi-Won, Yoda, and Anakin are waving at Luke they removed the original British actor that played Vader (David Prowse) and inserted a hologram of Hayden Christensen.

Parenting Storytime I - I picked H1 up from school on Tuesday and immediately recognized that distinctive smell. Having left the diaper bag in the van and electing not to subject my son's undercarriage to sub-freezing temps I chose to let him ride dirty to the house and I'd change him there. Upon latching him into his carseat my fate was sealed. The 20-min car ride home concluded and I proceeded to unlock him. His shirt had hiked up from the squirming and squishing he did from school to home and before his butt had even scooted completely out of his chair I saw a golf ball-sized deposit of poop being squeezed out of the top of his diaper like a baker's icing bag. I quickly entered damage control mode and tried to keep him from the dreaded "transfer phase" of this experience. I acknowledged that it was all over his carseat, but tabled that dilemma for a later time. I had to get him inside pronto. He followed me to H2's side and while I was unlocking her straps, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker of something move. I turned to rush inside and had to high-step the poop that was now in my driveway that I'd unknowingly seen fall from my son's backside. I scooped him up, double carried the kids up the stairs, put H2 in her crib and began the 10-min cleanup process. I lost count of wipes and seriously considered throwing H1 in the shower (I declined). A few hours later, rocking fresh new gear and re-energized from naps we stepped outside just in time to see the neighbor's dog rush from his backyard, greet us, and proceed to eat the poop from our driveway. Which reminded me "oh crap, I never cleaned the carseat". Three Lysol wipes & a kitchen towel later and we weren't in need of a new carseat, phew.

Parenting Storytime II - E and I have faced the challenges of a toddler with speech delay for over a year now and its been rewarding every time H1 puts another notch in his belt with "milk", "cow", "train" and more. He's incredibly conversational and expresses himself in his own unique voice and language that is occasionally peppered with legitimate words. We've had success in the last month with the emphasis his therapist put on polysyllabic commands and phrases like "more crackers" and "applesauce" and "upstairs". While we've been hyperfocused on his progress we've ignored the usual (I presume) experience of watching your child just naturally pick up tons of phrases and structuring sentences on their own simply by mimicking or parroting. I've grown conditioned to the process of working on syllables and constructing sounds into words. So, we all sat down for storytime as a family the other night when H1 migrated off Mommy's lap into mine while she took H2 to her room to lie down. E: "Nite, nite" H1: "Nigh, nigh. uv you". E and I instantly locked eyes in that "did he....??" look. She quickly knelt down and kissed him on his head and said "I love you, too". She got off easy :) I had to warble through the reading of three more stories after that powerfully emotional moment of my child saying "I love you" for the first time. By the third story ("Snowmen at Night"), H1 was looking at me like "why are you crying?". He proceeded to console me with a pat on my shoulder and a big smile. Thanks buddy, I love you too :)

Thanks for reading and supporting my efforts. I've gotten some great feedback and encouraging acknowledgments in the last month and I truly appreciate the interest. Have a great week!

Friday, January 8, 2016