Tag Archives: Super Bowl

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It’s Been a While, Random Rantings

Random Rantings is a segment on this blog where I briefly discuss thoughts and topics that do not warrant a longer 500 words or more post. Today, here is a look at some topics from various subjects that I just felt like talking about so feel free to bring in your own thoughts here.

You Have a Memo, I Have a Memo, We All Have MEMOS!

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That’s right. It’s like Oprah in here right now. I read the Republican memo and then I realized that it was just one guy writing his thoughts like it was the law of the land that we should all obey. If it were that simple, maybe I should say that my blog matters and will really be groundbreaking and everyone will just believe that I am right and awesome just because I said so. Is this really what we have come to today? Where a guy creates a memo that may or may not be factual and sends it out to be released as some sort of vindication? This concerns me. Is this a distraction because Mueller found something and they needed to pull something out of their behinds to distract us from it? Or is it just because people are upset that we were talking about the Super Bowl or the fact that the president may have cheated on his wife Melania. (Shocker, I know. What in his history would ever give us the impression that he would cheat on his wife? Except for every other time he has cheated on a wife…)

Now the Democrats want to release a memo, that in the grand scheme of things will be just as (ir)relevant as the Republican one was. If we really take a logical stand point here, ignoring party lines, are these unofficial documents worth more than the paper they are written on?  The answer is “no”. The memo is set to be decided by the president if he wants to release it, but he needs to. Because transparency. Because you can’t just allow one side of the aisle to do it and not the other. Because if you do let one side of the aisle do it and not the other, there’s a level of censorship there that we should be concerned with. Because if the president only wants us to see one side of things, other questions should be raised. Is there truth to it that he doesn’t want released? Is it just that his precious little ego will be hurt with its release? Does he just want to prove a point that American’s should only see things his way and not the whole picture? If the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, then we have bigger issues to worry about.

The New Book

Now, I probably should have put this above the more controversial political commentary above, but I felt that was a bit more important. My latest work, “A Special Place for Noah”, is a piece that I am really excited for. The story is about a family who is trying to help their son overcome his speech delay. It is told in 3 different viewpoints: Callie, the mother; John, the father; and little Noah himself. I hope that people love it as much as I loved writing it. It is expected to be up for sale on Amazon in both eBook and paperback. You can pre-order now as well. Just visit my Author Page on Amazon, which is posted on the sidebar of this blog.

The Pretty Super Super Bowl

In what was one of the most exciting games in a long time in the NFL, my beloved Patriots fell to the Eagles. Why did this happen? How did a backup beat the GOAT? Well, there are a few simple answers to why it happened. You could point to the missed field goal and extra point by Stephen Gostkowski, though this would only account for 4 points. They lost by more than that. You could say it was because Cooks was taken out of the game for a head injury after a nasty hit. Sure, that hurt but Playoff Amendola was clutch and Gronk finally hit a groove where he was on fire. Here’s the hint: it wasn’t the offense that wasn’t doing their job.

Their defense was horrible. Horrendous. Any awful word that you could put there would be an accurate statement for what happened here. They could not stop anything. Nothing. Were those two touchdowns a little bit questionable? Sure, but I’m not well-versed in the rules even though the casters seemed to also think those were bad calls. But that was 2 touchdowns out of how many other times they scored. It didn’t matter. We couldn’t stop them anyways and I bet that the next plays would’ve ended up touchdowns anyways because of how awful they were playing. Did I mention that their defense was awful? Philly is a hard team. They were good. They were communicating and doing well. Why wasn’t Butler playing? His season may not have been his best this year, but he was always known for his clutch plays.

The better team won. There is nothing more to that. There was nothing controversial about it. The refs didn’t hand them the game. The Patriots didn’t give them the game. They won it and congrats to them. No salt here and I’m not even really mad about it. The Patriots got the loss they deserved and that was that. I love great games, even if my team loses.

The Stock Market

Yesterday the stock market eventually dropped a significant amount. Who’s to blame for this? It’s probably just the predicted market correction that we were told to watch out for despite other people saying “everything’s good”. Is it the president’s fault? Probably not. But just like I said when talking about President Obama taking victory laps when the economy was good, you can’t give the person the blame when it is bad and not give them credit when it is good. The same applies here. You can’t give President Trump the credit for the stocks doing well without giving him blame when they go down. That’s the nature of it. You cannot take credit when things are good without taking the blame when they aren’t. That’s not how it works. Should he have taken credit when it was good? I don’t think presidents really have the much to do with stocks going up or down, so no. But you cannot logically think that there isn’t some level of hypocrisy going on. “Of course the Dems are blaming him for the stock market dropping. They just want to see him fail. He’s not to blame. But he’s totally responsible when stocks are up.” It’s not logical. Both the left and right are guilty of this. Maybe we should all start using a bit of common sense, because then 90% of political arguments would never happen.

 

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Inside the Life of Boston Fans

Prior to last night’s disaster of a game (looking at you Pats), a sportscaster said “with the Patriots first Super Bowl win with Brady started a trend of Boston teams being very successful and winning championships.” It’s true, our children are spoiled as the Boston teams we have now have an expectation to win because they have consistently won. Since then, we’ve had the pleasure to see all our sports teams succeed. Not sure about our soccer team or if they even exist, I don’t really care. Our children didn’t grow up with the sort of heartache that generations before us have.

Once in college, I had a bizarre and elderly history professor. He could’ve written much of the history companion book that came with our text book from living the history and not just studying it. He was an absurd man, but I remember a few things he distinctly said. One was a discussion of “don’t feel sorry for the slaves, they sold themselves into that mess. Feel sorry for the prejudice the Irish had to suffer in America, am I right?” ::looks at me, the only non-minority in the class:: That was awkward. But to the point, he also said at the beginning of the semester, while handing out the syllabus “Every year, I promise that if the Red Sox win the World Series, everyone will get an “A” on their final. I’m sad to say I can get away with saying this because they have never and probably will never win while I’m still alive.” The joke was on him, that was the year that the Red Sox came back from a 3-0 series in the playoffs to make it to the championship game and win the World Series for the first time since 1918.

Since that point, Boston has jumped up to be one of the most championship wins behind only New York. (If my research is accurate, I’m by no means a sports stats person.) Now when our teams have terrible seasons like last year’s baseball season with the Sox, our children are starting to truly understand what we went through as Boston fans growing up. To be so close to the Super Bowl only to fail so miserably in the conference championship or even making it to the Super Bowl and choking. They truly understand the morning after, where you want to hang your head lower or make yourself feel better by saying “well we made it further than most.” Or like me, watch Honey Boo Boo afterwards to make myself feel better because how can you not feel better by making fun of them. Well a nicer person than I probably wouldn’t, but seriously have you seen that show?

We’re spoiled sports fans in Boston with all the luck we’ve had this decade with wins across the important sports. But it’s really time for the morning after where we realize that we’re no “pink hatters” and we’ve lasted this long with our teams failing and supporting them through heartbreaking losses, why would we stop now? We don’t want to ruin the biggest thing we have going for us: us Boston fans are the most fiercely loyal fans in sports. If we can make it through Missin’ Sisson and every failed year with the Red Sox, we can survive anything.

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The Big Game (pt.2)

Yesterday was the Super Bowl, and vengeance was not ours. Our team made very costly and stupid mistake, and the Giants were able to win again. Don’t worry, we can’t blame one person they all made stupid mistakes. Good thing I’m a Boston fan and remember when we never even made it to championship games, let alone win any of them. There’s always next year.

There was a bright side to the evening. If nothing else, I got to see Madonna nearly fall during her performance and laugh at some pretty funny commercials. The Naked M&M commercial and the Doritos commercials were my favorites. Tied at a close second, the ETrade speed dating commercials and the Skechers dog racing commercial. I will give a nice honorable mention to Betty White, who seems ageless and is always hilarious. I hope that woman never dies.

To keep this short and sweet, I’ll end it with this. While New England quietly drudges through their day, heads lowered as if our dignity died with our Super Bowl dreams. We need to remember one thing: For fans of the Boston teams that never won in our youth, we’ve been spoiled in recent times with each of our big sports teams coming home with championship titles. Winning seems to have spoiled us, and made us forget the lessons we grew up with: there’s always next year. That’s what we told ourselves constantly before, and that’s what should comfort us now.

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The Big Game (Part One)

As you could easily gather about the title, today’s blog is part of a 2 part special dedicated to the Super Bowl. On Sunday my favorite team, the New England Patriots, get to replay the New York Giants for the very shiny Lombardi Trophy. Oh I can’t wait, though this game brings me sadness realizing the football season is over. That doesn’t make me very happy at all. This part is mainly focused on the game itself, while Part 2 (which will be on Monday) will take care of the silly stuff like hopefully bragging about a Patriots win and most importantly the commercials.

I’m not scared about losing because I think the Patriots are incapable of winning, but I am a little nervous going into this game. Firstly, they’ve been making really stupid mistakes. Such stupid mistakes that it took the Raven’s kicker failing to give us a win, and the same mistakes that let the Giants win last time we faced in a Super Bowl. The Giants defense scares me more than Manning does, by a lot. Our defense scares me too, but not in the “they’re going to crush someone” sense, but the “we’re going to make a few dumb penalties and give away the game” sense.

Maybe this was all part of a bigger plan they had. The optimist in me hopes that just maybe Belichick had this in his plan the whole time. “Okay guys, let’s make them think we’re good, just not that good. Then we eke out wins to make it to the Super Bowl. Then we can really actually play football!” Wishful thinking, I know but you can’t blame a girl for trying.

In the end, anything can happen at game time and the better team always prevails. The Boston fan community has been spoiled with all the wins our teams have given us, let’s be greedy and keep it up. I’d like little George or Lenore to be born into a Patriots Championship season. Do you magic boys, we’re crossing our fingers in between eating pizza cheering for you.

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Football and Other Jaw Dropping Moments

For starters, I would like to thank the Patriots for winning yesterday. Wait, I said this wrong. I would like to thank the kicker for missing the field goal which allowed the Patriots to make up for their mistakes and not lose the game. We couldn’t have done it without you Billy Cundiff! (Also, the looks on everyone’s face when that kick missed was priceless. I laughed for hours.) Can’t wait to see the Patriots redeem themselves after the last time they faced the Giants though, I hope so anyways. First though, we have to suck a little less at the Super Bowl.

Next on my moments of awe this weekend, I saw a 9-year-old turn into a high school-er, but more useful. First I find out there’s a school dance he would love to attend. I walked out as my hormonal self cried a little over this, but agreed to work it out with him. Then as I became overwhelmed by cooking for the game and my husband was at work, this little adult announces that he will be doing the laundry to help and lugs a basket larger than himself down the stairs. I should also mention that the laundry came out flawlessly and I realized that he was now more useful than most men I knew. It was refreshing to know I did something right.

Finally on my list of shocking moments, Newt wins a primary? I’m personally shocked by this. He’s not a likable or charismatic person by any means, and I’ll admit I’m not a Republican but I’m still lost here. He should thank his speech writers, those unsung heroes of any successful politician. Or, give a shout out to the same person that made Cundiff miss that field goal, because those were both miracles we didn’t see coming. I assumed Romney, the more charismatic and likable guy would’ve pulled it off and not walk away with half the votes Newt did. I suppose we’ll see what happens in Florida, and I hope that my son won’t become a janitor at school because they both got rid of child labor laws and minimum wage. Go America!