An obituary for Sprint’s “Trench Coat Guy”. Apparently Trench Coat Guy isn’t suitably professional for the business market Sprint acquired when it bought Nextel last year, so they’re dropping him. The Post goes on and on about this guy in what I suppose is meant to be a cute, funny way, but considering that the only cell service spokesperson anyone remembers is Verizon’s TRULY iconic “Can you hear me now?” guy, I just don’t see the topicality of this story. I mean, I didn’t notice that he wasn’t in Sprint’s ads anymore. Did you? Well, as fascinating as this post about what I’ve determined is a pretty boring subject is, I think I’m going to stop writing now.

Skip Bayless over at ESPN.com writes about why kicking should be eliminated from football. Reading this made me oddly angry (and not just because I kicked in high school, I swear). The best part is his completely ridiculous rationalization to preserve punting and kickoffs but not field goals or extra points. The guy clearly hates soccer for some reason, and just comes off as virulently hostile in the column. Anyway, he’s completely wrong about almost everything except that it does seem pretty rough that one guy can undo all the work of his 45 teammates with one botched kick. But, you know, life is unfair that way, and if kicking makes football a little less predictable and, occasionally, more tragic, well I’m okay with that.

Tom Boswell says it best:

At game’s end, Gibbs’s face was beaming with joy, a sight seldom seen for regular season games in his Hall of Fame heyday. Parcells seemed blanched as he walked toward midfield, while Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wandered around the field as if lost. Why, this was the night the Cowboys had devoted halftime to inducting Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith into their sacred Ring of Honor. How dare the Redskins spoil it?

Heh, heh.

Now all we need to do is get the team to change their name to something less objectionable. May I recommend The Washington Sous-Chefs? Humble but hard-working, that’s a sous-chef.

At any rate, the only downside of this remarkable and gratifying victory is that Mark Brunell will remain the starting quarterback for a while. I’m sure he’s a nice guy and all, and I’m not sure that Patrick Ramsey can even hold the clipboard without getting sacked by three or four opposing players, but Brunell is totally dunzo–he’s extremely old (I think he used to babysit Joe Gibbs) and has floppy noodle arms and legs. If he gets to hold the reins for a 4-7 stretch just because “he” beat Dallas (I’ll thank the defense for that, really, except for giving up a !$#@ flea-flicker, like this was Tecmo Bowl) I will be more than a bit perturbed. I hate 7-9 seasons helmed by washed-up QBs (see also: Jeff George, Danny Wuerffel, Heath Shuler).

But for today I will do my best just to be happy that the Redskins vanquished the hated Cowboys, in Dallas, with Parcells losing after holding a 13+ point fourth quarter lead for the first time in seventy-eight games. As the kids say, pwned.¹

¹Yep, I did just type that.

There have been some complaints about my sudden and completely unexpected move from LiveJournal. To attempt to address this, I have made arrangements for my posts to be simultaneously published in both places. This is a test entry to see if it works.

Edit: It works. So you can keep up with me either here or over at the LJ. Up to you. Sorry for the disturbance!

Television I am excited about without guilt or self-consciousness:
Arrested Development
The Daily Show

Television I am excited about (though ashamed about being excited about):
The OC
West Wing
Reunion (this should probably be its own post, but life isn’t fair)

Television I am not excited about, in fact television I am sad about:
Lost
The Real World

Television I wish would just go away:
That new show on Fox where Mike Rappaport plays a homophobic asshole

Television I miss, but own every episode of which that’s ever been televised:
Sports Night
Futurama

Television I have never seen:
CSI
Survivor
The Amazing Race
The Sopranos
24

Favorite channel: the Food Network, except for Rachel Ray, who is annoying.