The Grizzlies Don't have a Chance, and Neither does Anybody Else

I'm a big sports fan. I love the action and drama in any big game, even if it's a sport with relatively little action, like soccer. I love watching the passion of fans, even though they (okay, we) look like idiots when they (fine, we) jump up and down, losing their (ugh, our) minds when people they (whatever) don't even know that are often just kids, do something better than their opponents. It seems silly and irrelevant, but like it or not, it's a huge part of our culture. If you don't believe me, ask Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds.

I love how sports teaches people to finish a task, to give their best efforts, and to be competitive in everything they do. But what just doesn't make sense to me is how fans seem to take credit for what their team does.

I've been guilty of this plenty of times, talking smack to opposing fans while I sit on my couch eating chilli dogs. If you don't know what I'm talking about, find any chat site for any sports team at any level and either feel ashamed or feel pretty good about yourself. You'll know which category you belong in.

I'm an alumnus of Montana State University. Here in Montana, the rivalry between the Montana Grizzlies and the Montana State Bobcats is as big as any rivalry I have ever seen, and I've spent a considerable amount of my life living in both SEC country and Pac-10 country. It doesn't mean a thing to anybody outside of Montana, but for our little state, it means the world. And even though the schools compete in many different sports, the one that really matters is football.

For the last 20 or 25 years, Montana has dominated Montana State in football, and therefore in statewide bragging rights. I'm hoping the tide is turning, but only time will tell. Montana fans have plenty of reasons to boast to us Bobcat fans, but there's one that makes me laugh every time.

Every once in a while, some genius Grizzly fan points out that an actual Bobcat is no match for an actual Grizzly. Yeah, like in a fight in the wilderness. That should sound ridiculous to you. Admit it, Grizzly fans, you've heard this one and either participated or turned a deaf ear. No wonder the smarter kids go to Montana State.

If that was the only criteria for a team's dominance, why would anybody have ever picked a Bobcat as a mascot? Are Montanans that dumb? I doubt it. So why don't teams always just pick the most dominant mascot every time?

You know what's killed more people than Grizzly bears? AIDS, that's what. So why hasn't somebody named their team something like the Atlanta AIDS Virus? Who would win between the Atlanta AIDS Virus and the Pittsburgh Bubonic Plague? Or how about a matchup between the New York Nuclear Weapons and the Colorado Cancer? Good luck in one of those games, Grizzlies.

Would minor league teams have to pick less-deadly monikers? So you'd have the Newark Napalm vs. the Memphis Meth or the Columbus Car Accidents facing off against the Huntsville Hunting Accidents? While still deadly, those can't really compete with many other human-race-threatening incidents.

And how bad would the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox be? The only team a sock could ever beat would be the Baltimore Blisters and the Fort Worth Foot Odor.

Come on, meatheads, let's put that argument to bed. If you have to take credit for something a bunch of sweaty guys you've never met did, make it about what they actually did, not what they're called.

The Streets of Montana: Every Day is a Battle

Maybe it's just me being pessimistic, but one of the reasons I love getting up every day is so that I can be around people. You might be saying, "that doesn't sound very pessimistic, Dave!"

Let me finish.

Sure, I love people. I celebrate differences and I embrace quirks; I love most people I meet, and I mean I really do value them for their friendship, their insights, and their company. I could not be a hermit. But one of the real reasons I love to be around people is so that I can learn a new pet peeve every day.

It probably means I'm bitter or irritable. I don't think that's it; I think it means I think I'm better than most people. Whatever it is, I'm not proud of it, so lay off me.

I've always had pet peeves, and like most pet peeves, they involve people you interact with as you go about your day, and they happen somewhat regularly. I've always known that I get irritated when people interrupt constantly, or when they are consistently negative. From loud cell phone talkers to slow drivers in the fast lane, we all have a few things that just bug us. They're pretty universal, and there's nothing rare about them.

But I just learned a new one tonight. I was driving home from my church group, and a souped-up Mustang about 10-years-old pulled up fast beside me and slowed down to my speed. He periodically revved his engine and sped past me, only to slow back down to my speed. When we stopped at a red light, he was in the left lane and I was in the right. He rolled down his passenger side window and the first thing I saw was his friend showing off his flip phone to me. It was awesome.

Then I realized these two were probably gangsters, as they had hats on somewhat sideways and each gave me a look like they wanted to kill me. I was certain they would if given the opportunity, so I was careful not to make eye contact. Just then, the driver revved the engine again, this time with his foot on the brake. The car lunged slightly like a caged animal. Impressed, I finally rolled down my window.

For a split second, there was tension. Surely they saw my Toyota Camry and thought I was returning to my farm house south of Kalispell, Montana following a violent drug deal with some Colombians. Or perhaps I was a pimp, or maybe even a hit man. The point is, when you see a Toyota Camry on the street, you need to challenge that person if you want to be the top dog on the street. If you want to be the best, you've got to beat the best.

I broke the tension with a large smile and an enthusiastic wave, followed by an aggressive thumbs-up. Big mistake.

The light changed and the Mustang Mafia screeched away, leaving me with a lot of work ahead of me if I was going to prove my manhood on the rough-and-tumble streets of South Kalispell. As I passed the Ranch and Home store and then the boat dealership, I realized I might just not be tough enough for this hard-knock town.

But just then, they slowed down and let me catch up. I gave another thumbs-up, clearly impressed with his ability to beat me in a race. But he showed me again who was boss. That was the point where I realized that, even though I drive a super-tough Toyota Camry, work for a non-profit children's home, go to church, have a blog, and play lots of golf, there is still somebody out there even tougher than me. Or maybe I just don't have that much to prove, who knows?

For once, this post is actually entirely true. I tell the story to show my newest pet peeve: when guys try to prove their manhood by racing strangers in family cars. That's like playing one-on-one against a blind guy with no arms and legs and talking trash when you win. It's just one of those pet-peeves I would have never thought I had unless somebody actually went there.

Maybe We're All Morons

Happy Fall everybody. The combination of worsening weather and the start of the football season has drawn me once again to the television. Other than a very select few shows, I watch sports on TV. When you watch sports regularly, you see a lot of advertisements for beer, cars, investment firms, and erectile dysfunction medication. These commercials give me lots to laugh about, of course. Some because they are funny, and others because they show us all just how dumb we as American consumers really are. But apparently the dumbest are those in the target demographic for alcohol ads.

Everybody knows Bud Light has the best beer commercials. Every year during the Super Bowl, at least two of the best four or five commercials are from Bud Light. And some don't even make it to TV (see swear jar on youtube). So the other two light beers, Coors Light and Miller Lite, are forced to try gimmicks to sell beer.

Surely you've seen the commercials for the cold-activated mountains on bottles and cans of Coors Light. This is for the person who wants to know if their beer is cold enough to drink, but is too lazy or afraid to utilize their sense of touch. Seems reasonable to me; you never know when a beer can has boiling beer inside and could therefore give a consumer third-degree burns.

Or how about Miller Lite? You may know it's "Triple Hops Brewed", because they say so on the commercials. Does anybody know what that means? For all I know they're trying to tell us they re-heated the beer in the microwave three different times, then pass it off as something good. But people probably buy it, then sit around on their patio and say things like "this tastes like it's been triple hops brewed, don't you think Larry?"

But the best thing Miller Lite has ever done is create the "Vortex Bottle". This is an ingenius bottle that has grooves in the neck. How many times have you been drinking from a bottle of beer and said, "dad-gum, this beer pours out too straight. I wish it was all swirly when it got in my mouth."? Problem solved! Miller Lite has eliminated straight-pouring beers. Thanks, Miller Lite!

One Miller Lite commercial compared the bottle to a wine decanter with grooves, which somehow aids in the oxidation of the wine. If you're a total wine snob, you understand this. If your snob-ish-ness extends to beer, you don't drink Miller Lite. But I'm guessing beer, being carbonated, doesn't need this.

Another favorite of mine is a commercial for 1800 Tequila. In this commercial, Michael Imperioli (Tony Soprano's bed-wetting nephew in The Sopranos) shows why 1800 is better than Patron Tequila. 1800 can pour a shot into the top. It's so much easier than other tequilas, because all you have to do is turn the bottle over and wait until the top fills up. Then, apparently, you take the top off and either drink directly from the top or pour it into a shot glass. This saves so many steps! With Patron, you have to take the top off and...well, that's pretty much it. The end of the commercial shows Mikey chastizing the poor top of the Patron bottle, asking what it can do, then he answers his own question with a smug "nothin'".

So the moral of this story is that drunks are morons. That's not my opinion, that's obviously the opinion of the people making these commercials. This stuff is as dumb as a car company putting an arrow on the hood of a car to show what direction that car is facing. But I guess somebody could convince us we need that.

My Newest Invention Will Revolutionize Communication

I'm not blogging much these days.  Let's just say I took the summer off and wrote a couple things on rainy days.  But fall is back and I might be too.  Or I might not be.  I don't make a lot of promises, because those come with commitments, and you can probably guess where I stand on those.  Maybe you can call this the Season Premiere of "Not Exactly Newsworthy".

I need two things to write a blog post:  Material and motivation.  I haven't had those lately, but truth be told, I just haven't had a lot of great material.  When I have great material, I'm pretty motivated to write something. 

In the summer when the weather is nice, I don't like to be in front of the computer.  When the weather turns bad, I get off the golf course and get reacquainted with my couch, my television, and my laptop.  That's a deadly combination, because there's so much to make fun of between TV and the Internet.  I mean really, what's not funny about infomercials, Nancy Grace, and people's ridiculous use of facebook?  I don't even need to say anything half the time.

But even when I have plenty of material, sometimes it's not enough to write a full blog post about.  I thought it might be nice to have a way to publish a sentence or two at a time.  There should be a service where you can post, say, 140 characters at a time that anybody could read.  Maybe you could send it from your phone, and people would get it on their phone.  You could follow lots of people, perhaps.  Some might like following celebrities, while others would follow business journals and politicians.  I was thinking a cute little bird could be the logo, as if there was a bird delivering these mini blogs.  Either way, people just like to be heard, and they like to know every little thing their celebrity idols are doing at every second of the day.

When I see a need, I act.  That's why I invented something I like to call "Twitter".  With this new medium, I will revolutionize communication.  In fact, it appears I already have.  Literally dozens of people are using Twitter already.  Perhaps more, I don't know.  I only invented it yesterday, so maybe it's grown.

So you're welcome, world.  Tweet (that's the word I came up with that means "to tell the world what you're doing or what's on your mind using Dave's invention, Twitter"...goes back to the cute little bird.  I'm a genius.) to your little heart's content.  Let me know what you're doing, even though I really don't care.  The point is, read mine and find somebody who wants to read yours.

If you like the blog, I really do appreciate it, and I'll try to keep the posts coming semi-regularly.  If you feel like being adventurous, try out my invention.  It's called Twitter.  Find me at www.twitter.com/dave_creamer.

*Disclaimer:  Dave Creamer did not invent Twitter.  If you think this is true, you're an idiot and you don't understand that virtually everything in this blog is, at best, only half true.  This is far less true than that. 

"Hey Bro, Do You Think Everybody Would Hate Us if we did Some Sick Ollies on the Sidewalk?"

I saw a kid fall off a skateboard today when I was walking out of a Starbucks, and I have to say it kind of made my day.

A group of four or five middle-school-aged kids (or maybe they were in college...I can't tell anymore) were inside Starbucks when I walked in.  One of the kids--I think he was named Timmy--was actually on his skateboard in the coffee shop, and they were all talking very loudly and calling attention to themselves.  By the time I went outside, Timmy and his gang had moved outside to the sidewalk, where they were pulling off some pretty sick moves where their wheels almost left the ground.

After weaving my way through X-Games 2016, I got to my car and turned around just in time to see Timmy get a little too close to the curb.  The skateboard went left and Timmy went straight down.  He landed squarely on his backside and his skateboard eventually made its way to the street and got run over by a Suburban.  Halfway through a seven-hour drive, I suddenly had a newfound energy, and I hadn't even touched my americano.

There's nothing wrong with skateboarding, but the chip on the shoulder of skateboarders is tough to stomach.  Skateboarders think everybody hates them because skateboarding is such an evil activity.  Actually, people hate them because they insist on skating in front of Starbucks and at the Post Office.  Skateboarding should be performed at designated skateboarding venues only, and those should be in every community.

Skateboarders don't want to hear that there's nothing wrong with their favorite sport.  They love the idea that the whole world is against them and that they're bugging everybody sitting on the patio at Starbucks.  Most people outgrow this attitude, but the ones who don't suddenly wake up one day and they're 42 and hooked on Red Bull, video games and Maxim Magazine.  

See, nobody hates fly-fishermen, but if they were casting in the parking lot at the Sizzler and hooking all the fine patrons of that lovely restaurant, Eddie Bauer would sell T-shirts that said "FLY FISHING IS NOT A CRIME".  Or who hates jockeys?  Nobody, that's who.  You have to love a tiny guy on a fast horse, but if they were riding their horses on the sidewalk and playing that awful horseback-riding music at all hours of the night, they'd be public enemy number one.

But these people respect boundaries and understand where they are supposed to carry out their hobbies.  Come on, skateboarders...lose the attitude and go to your local skate park.  Be great at skateboarding there, and don't invite the rest of society to hate you.  That's not that cool.

I Like Everything

I see I've been writing about once a month lately. That's not real good, so for the four of you who read this regularly, I'm sorry about that. For the rest of you, you're welcome. But that's not what this post is about.

I have written about facebook before. Facebook bugs me in a lot of ways, and it's not generally facebook itself, it's the people who use facebook. I guess that's pretty much everybody these days. But I'm not going to quit using it, even though I'm seldom using it to its full extent. I check facebook fairly regularly on my cell phone, and fairly, uhh, irregularly on an actual computer.

When you check your facebook on a computer, there is so much more information presented to you. The mobile version of facebook fails (I'll consider it a success) to inform you of some requests, like every friend you have trying to get you to join their cause for abused ostriches in Madagascar or become a fan of their favorite coffee shop in a remote corner of their favorite vacation spot in northern Saskachewan. For the record, I don't care. But that's not what this post is about either. Stick with me.

I got on the computer today and checked my facebook, and my attention was drawn to the right-side column where you are reminded to connect with old friends and to help them be less popular than they are. Facebook also recommends people you may know. This can be convenient if you're like me and don't generally go actively looking for people to be friends with. Turns out that's not what this post is about either. I'm a mess.

It's been recommended to me, apparently by some higher power, to "like" certain things, based on other things I "like" on facebook.  I have chosen to "like" on facebook a comedian that I actually like in real life named Brian Regan.  So now I get recommendations for things like "CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS", because "Many who like Brian Regan like this".  By the same rationale I should also like Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney.  I wonder how many people no longer like Brian Regan because they assume they have been put into these demographic categories.

I "like" Chick-fil-A, and not just because my sister Marianne (whom I love) works in their corporate offices, but because I'm a pig.  But facebook seems to think that because I "like" Chick-fil-A, I should like Pop Tarts, Starburst, and Lil' Wayne. 

One of my favorite bands, the Avett Brothers, suckered me into a "like" as well.  As an Avett Brothers fan, I should like Barack Obama and camping.  Maybe facebook is right.  Maybe I should become a Mormon and spend more time enjoying the political right AND left while camping and listening to my favorite tracks by Lil' Wayne and the Avett Brothers.  Nice work facebook, you dummies.  I guess it's not just your users who bother me.

But about those users.  This whole "like" thing got me wondering if people just decided to tell Planet Facebook about every little thing they were appreciative of.  Sarcastically, I typed "breathing" in the Search bar.  Six different pages came up with a total of about a quarter million fans.  Another necessity for human life is eating.  Apparently 1.5 Million people on facebook agree and think they should clarify that to their friends by actually joining a group.

The old saying, "it's better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", doesn't really work anymore.  Now we have facebook to broadcast to vast numbers of people just how dumb we are, and we never have to say a word.

Yep, Soccer's Still Boring

When I got home from work, I turned on the TV to see highlights of the World Cup.  The World Cup is great, because I'm a sucker for international competition.  It's like the Olympics plus the Super Bowl--make that the Olympics times the Super Bowl--all rolled into one month-long tournament.  Americans seem as excited as ever about this year's Cup, but it doesn't even begin to compare to how much the rest of the World is losing its mind over the most popular game on the planet.

But as I watch the highlights of today's games, I'm struck by just how boring this sport really is to me.  Soccer fans, I know you're already mad at me.  You're saying, "Dave, you just don't understand soccer!" and "It's the most popular game in the World, how is that boring?"  Well, buckle up, because I'm going to tell you why I'm not wrong.  Write about why you're not wrong in your own blog.  Or just wait until the World Cup is over, because you know most of you are only soccer fans when the rest of the country starts to care about it.  You're like Michael Jackson fans; nobody had cared about him since 1995 until he died.

In two games today, there were two goals scored.  Total.  Those were the big highlights.  But we also sat on the edge  of our seats when one guy hit a post with his shot, and another one got a red card.  I understand soccer just enough.  I grew up playing soccer, plus I understand hockey and basketball, and the concepts are pretty much the same.  You push up or your press or you forecheck.  You draw the defense in, you go aggressively to the goal or to the basket.  But a soccer field (I don't want to call it a pitch) is bigger than a football field, and so it takes forever for plays to develop.  It's a fun game to play, but then again, so is every other sport I've ever played.

And don't get me wrong, I can appreciate how athletic soccer players are.  They have to be fit, and their balance and coordination have to be incredible.  Add to that that they can't touch the ball with their hands, and it makes for quite a challenging sport, but just because something is hard doesn't mean it's exciting to watch.  The Sunday Crossword puzzle is tough, but nobody wants to watch somebody work on it.

Is there a sport in America that more kids play than soccer?  We all play it, then when we turn eight and discover baseball and football, we quit.  Is that because we don't understand soccer?  We don't understand baseball or football when we start, but most of us would rather play them.  Hockey isn't a popular sport in most of this country like it is in Canada, but I'd argue that's because we don't grow up playing hockey.  Find somebody who has played hockey who doesn't still like it.  Hockey is fun to play and it's fun to watch.  There's a little more scoring usually, because there are a lot more scoring opportunities.  It moves faster.  Plus there are fights.

The biggest argument I always hear from soccer fans is the one about it being the World's favorite sport.  Have you ever considered the fact that the rest of the World likes soccer because they didn't know about baseball and football when they turned eight?  Or maybe they're all smarter than us.  Maybe Americans are too dumb to understand soccer.  

This is one dumb American who will be a big soccer fan as long as the American team is still alive, and significantly less of one for the rest of the Cup after we get eliminated.  I'll still be interested, because of the spectacle of it all.  One thing I can't argue with is the passion of the fans.  We have nothing that compares.  Sure, we have some pretty nutty football and basketball fans, but that's limited to certain places.  Soccer fans are crazy everywhere, and those things that sound like bee hives are pretty cool too.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch a game this weekend.  You'll see.