over/under january

Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner so I might as well make my pick for this year's edition before we get to the Over/Under. If you're not a sports fan you can skip to the bottom however if you do so a dozen kittens will meet their demise. I'm not kidding. I know a guy. Maybe you should just keep reading.

Here's the thing that bothers me. Well, there are a few. Peyton Manning is involved. Everyone is going bananas over this whole "first Super Bowl with two black coaches" thing, everyone is sucking off the Colts.

Peyton Manning has not won a big game yet. He didn't win a National Championship at Tennessee and he hadn't won a meaningful NFL Playoff game until two weeks ago against the Patriots. Of course, the Pats were a couple of penalties away from having that one sewn up as well (again). I don't have a problem with Peyton Manning personally at all. In fact, from what I've seen I think he's very likable guy and his endorsements are always amusing. How many times have you turned on the television and watched one of his MasterCard commercials and not chuckled? He's so friggin' goofy that he makes those ads work. In fact, at this point I'd rather see a Peyton Manning commercial than him play football.

Now don't get me wrong, he's a helluva quarterback...for fantasy reasons. He puts up the stats like nobody's business. But thing is, he's a robot, if you will. He seeks out the highest percentage receiver and throws him the ball. He rarely forces the ball into tight spots if he has to. Championship quarterbacks do this. They play with their gut as much as their mind. This is why that sweet piece of manmeat known as Tom Brady has won three of the last five Super Bowls.

Not only all of this, but he's facing one of the top two defenses in the league this season. The Bears are good. Really good. I know Peyton beat the best defense (the Ravens) on the road before the AFC Championship against New England. But that's because Baltimore has no offense and couldn't put up any points on the board. The Ravens held Manning and the Colts to five field goals! Peyton's stats were as follows: 15-30 (his second worst pass % all season), 170 yds (his second worst yds/game all season), 0 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions. His quarterback rating was a dismal 39.6, easily the worst he had all season. Now he's facing a Bears defense that has had to hear critics pick against them for three straight weeks (against New Orleans and the past two leading up to the Super Bowl). You don't think those boys are pumped up? Whoa, docta. I refuse to pick Manning unless he plays well in this game and wins it. Then I'll buy into him.

Then we have the Tony Dungy (Colts coach) vs. Lovie Smith (Bears coach) thing. Yes, I completely agree this is great that two black coaches are in the Super Bowl for the first time but do we really have to harp on this so much? There have been black coaches in the league for a while now and many of them have been very good. Why are we acting like this first is like Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball? Yes, it's great that we've finally had two black coaches in the big game. Now let's move on, to ya know, the game. I'm sure these coaches feel very similarly. They are proud that they are involved in this first but really, let's get to what matters here. I'm sure they'd rather be focusing on their game plans than having to talk about color barriers to every damn reporter that get two minutes with them. It's enough guys. Great story but the real story is the game.

Now my next point draws upon my first a little bit. Everyone is picking the Colts. Everyone. I just can't bring myself to do it. Logically speaking, of course. On top of this, though, I'm so sick of people gushing over Peyton Manning that I actually want the Bears to win so that Peyton Manning fails and continues to prove my (and many others') point. Plus, how can you not root for a team that had the greatest team choreography in NFL history (the Super Bowl Shuffle) and has the most electrifying player in the league (Devin Hester) that happens to be from your alma mater? Yea, this one's a no brainer.

Bears 34, Colts 26

Underrated

Netflix - My roommate received a subscription to Netflix for Christmas and I've been reaping the benefits since we both got back to Los Angeles. Not only have we blown through season 1 of the critically acclaimed "The Wire" (which by the way, I can't believe I didn't start watching until now), but we've checked out under-the-radar flicks like Who Killed the Electric Car? and This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Two outstanding documentaries that got hardly any marketing muscle behind them which we will touch on later. Season two of "The Wire" is on deck as well as The Departed (Oscars article preview!) and Idlewild. Netflix is great because you are able to catch up on films you forgot to see in theaters in basically a week. Watch the movie and mail it out in the same day and you've got a new movie in two days. Just tremendous. Kudos to you, Netflix.

Cuban Doctors - But only for unintentional comedy's sake. We all know how Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is basically on his deathbed. He's had a number of operations to help stabilize him but the most recent had a hilarious twist to it. It seems Mr. Castro had an infected rectal area. How? I'm not quite sure; I didn't really feel like figuring that out. What I do know is that during the operation doctors fabricated and inserted an artificial anus into el presidente. Yea, you read that right. What that is or what it looks like I don't know. What I do know is that it's friggin' hilarious.

F**k the Movies - This isn't what you think. Well, it kind of is. The site iFilm.com is hosting an online series of called "F**k the Movies" in which these two jerkoffs critique movies that almost invariably end up with "f**k this movie". Many times they don't even see the entire movie but find ways to adequately judge the film. It's crass. It's crude. And it makes me think about as little as I have to while ripping crappy movies. I love it.

Overrated

Boston - Why does an entire city get on my shitlist? Well, they overreacted. Many of you have heard of the cartoon block called Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. It's from 11pm to 2am approximately on Sunday nights and has many different cartoons including the very popular "Aqua Teen Hunger Force". Well, to promote the show (and the upcoming movie), Cartoon Network decided to launch a marketing campaign where two of the show's intergalactic stars get a lot of face time. The Hunger Force's primary annoyances/foes are aliens from the moon called Ignignokt and Err. They are two dimensional Atari liked creations that pester our heroes throughout the show. They also have a propensity to flick everyone off. So, the ATHF team decided it'd be funny to make big glowing silhouettes of each of these characters flipping the bird on billboards and other advertisements around the country. I saw these billboards in Los Angeles and assumed other cities had been privy to this strange yet hilarious marketing campaign. Boston didn't get the memo apparently. To be fair, the ads in Boston were in delicate places like subway stations and bridges. That wasn't the smartest idea. But still - you need to understand that it's a neon cartoon. There wasn't a need to freak out especially since no other city in the country ever reported anything like this.

MPAA - This one stems from the film This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Without getting into too much detail or giving anything away (you should really just rent the flick), I'll tell you this. The people who rate every movie that comes out are anonymous. There are about 10 people that are supposed to be ordinary parents judging the films according to what they think the average parent would think when considering to let their children see a screening. There are so many things wrong with this. One of them being that almost all of them have children over the age of 20 and more often than not a film is deemed NC-17 vs. R because of sex - not violence. You may have already figured that last part out but the film will expand on the idea and make you realize the depth at how ridiculous this secret club of critics is. There's only one thing that's more overrated than the MPAA.

Those Who Oppose Hybrids - Again, drawing from a film I watched this month called Who Killed the Electric Car?, I realized that there was a great technology available to us that was squashed. At the risk of sounding too much like a hippie, I need to mention that the next car I want is the brand new Dodge Challenger that will appear next year. It's a muscle car. I'm not hypocritical, though, because I'll likely not get it and understand the importance of electric cars and hybrids. This documentary shows who's responsible for killing the electric car which actually started when the internal combustion engine was born but was killed off a few times before it ever became as mainstream as it did in the mid to late 90's. General Motors' EV1 was the electric car; the thing was quick and sleek. But it was phased out along with other electric cars for no reason and ultimately destroyed in junkyards in Arizona. The automakers, the government (thanks to our friend Dubya and the gang), and the oil companies couldn't make a profit if internal combustion engines weren't selling. Yup, profit vs. protecting the environment. And now the earth has a terrible fever, demonstrated by Al Gore's documentary from last year, and the recent report from France that even Gore's estimation of global warming's effect was worse than we thought! Watch this film and you'll realize how badly we need hybrids and how little we need Hydrogen fuel-cell cars. This isn't just some conventional argument against the government; we have plenty of beef with them. This one actually concerns the entire planet and it's very serious. Once again our d-bag administration succumbs to the almighty dollar rather than what's good for humanity. Way to go, assholes.