It’s probably time to update everyone on our annual Suicide Pool. You know, the one where we can’t seem to get down to a final winner because you guys are just too damn good at this. Anyway, we’re down to 51 players after starting with over 1400, so we may whittle this mofo down yet.

In the meantime, I would like to recognize S. Gaddam, whose Monkey Tricks entry epitomizes what it means to be an American. Good ol’ Gaddam PICKED DETROIT IN WEEK 5. Gaddam, I don’t know if you’re a man or a woman, but you have balls that clank. Email me your mailing address and I’ll send you some P&G products, provided by the Take It To The House program and my Blogger Fantasy League. Hey, DayQuil Fighter Of The NyQuil controls its own destiny. If I win this week, I’m in the playoffs!

As for the rest of you pickers, we’ll recognize more sick picks in the coming weeks, so don’t be afraid to dangle your junk out there for the world to see. Good luck to everyone still in it.

The hottest topic in the world of quarterbacks is the argument between the screw top and corks. While the traditional demands and can only conceive of a cork closure, there is in undeniable groundswell in favor of the screw top. With a screw cap, a defensive lineman can avoid the problem of cork taint. Screw tops are less expensive than natural or plastic corks. Plus they can be removed without any special equipment. In the future, the avid Delhomme consumer should expect a further proliferation of screw tops.

[H/T - SB Nation]

The Lions seem to be making incremental gains in talent with each passing year since the exorcism of Dark Lord Millenstopheles, though it’s still a little premature to call them a decent team. They are, however, displaying marked gains in the capacity to amuse and delight, what with coach Schwartz publicly beating off to Jahvid Best highlights, while a helmeted, tube socked, ’97 era South Park shirted Zack Follett wanders into a CVS Target in search of tampons and Barbie Band-Aids to administer to the punished opponents of this year’s team.

With all these high jinx, I dare say my image of the Lions could very well change from

to

Chew chew!

/shoots water out of boutonniere

Last night, for reasons I can’t quite explain, I felt compelled to visit the Detroit Free Press online to see what the local reaction was to the Lions first victory since 2007. As you might expect, it was mostly effusive stuff. Bundled with the reaction to that joyous moment, however, was the usual morally upright scolding from pompous schlock merchant Mitch Albom, who had Something To Say about the horrible, no-good video that circulated the Intarwebs (but not here – WTF?) last week of the female Lions fan getting arrested for making a scene at the game against the Vikes. I could not help myself. I was compelled to give it the PK treatment.

The video featured two attractive women.

Were they fucking?

It was shot by an onlooker.

Did he get a good view of the fucking?

It hit YouTube by storm.

Because they were fucking?

You’re no doubt thinking “sex,”

[Shocked by how easily Albom "gets" him]

but let me assure you the women kept their clothes on. Unfortunately, that was the only ladylike thing about them.

This was not a women’s penitentiary. It was a Lions game.

Difficult to confuse the two. American prisons are full, after all.

You can argue that watching the Lions might make anyone go ballistic. But I’m guessing these women, like many football fans, had another reason for their belligerence:

They were hammered before the game began.

They pose a threat to everyone! What if they had been piloting this plane?

And you could shoot this video every Sunday.

Woohoo! Copious blog fodder!

Look, it’s bad enough that most NFL games begin at 1 p.m. and that people are buying beers before kickoff.

Tell me about it. How I wish they’d move kickoff up to 6 a.m. so I could make it out in time to go the 11 a.m. church service.

But thanks to tailgating, many fans are blotto before they hand over their tickets.

And sometimes, like this Cardinals fan, even before they’re finished getting dressed at home!

One day, we’ll explain to Martians our tradition of arriving hours before a football game, sitting in cold parking lots in fold-up beach chairs, swigging beers and grilling fatty foods between bumpers of pickups

Ah yes, the hoary moralist cliche of how our backwards cultural practices will seem to the visiting Martians of the Future. Well played, Albom. After all, we really do want to give our best impression to Glaxar The Magnificent. It’s the only way our planet will be spared. I know that’s how my dad got me to quit smoking.

(at which point the Martians will bolt to their spaceships).

Uh oh, I found the tragic flaw in your argument, Mitch. Here we have a surefire way to rid ourselves of invading marauding aliens, and your suggestion is that we do away with it?! Preposterous.

GASP!

Unless there’s a sinister ulterior motive lurking within your column. Which one are you, Kang or Kodos? REVEAL THYSELF!

But, meanwhile, make no mistake. The fists may fly in the stands. But they get lubricated in the parking lots.

HOO BOY GLAXAR THE MAGNIFICENT ISN’T GOING TO LIKE ALL THE RECTAL FISTING IN THE FORD FIELD PARKING LOT!

This will not make me popular with Budweiser, Miller or millions of parking lot drinkers,

TAKE THAT, PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE ME ANYWAY!

but what is the point of going to a football game for the expressed purpose of getting wasted?

It’s fun?

It’s one thing to be out at night and one beer leads to another.

And later: Ford Field fisting.

But when you get up at 8, are parked by 9, and are three beers deep by 10, you have issues.

And hopefully a decent selection of food.

I blame the tailgaters, but I also blame the teams — pro and college.

“Did I forget to blame my readers? Okay, I blame them too.”

By encouraging a seven-hour drinking experience, football now sees its stadiums marred with behavior like this past week’s wildly popular YouTube moment (billed as “Two Drunk Girls Kicked out of Vikings vs Lions Game”).

When you watch this sad debacle, you see how two guards have to struggle to get one enraged woman under control. It’s not easy. People crowd around, getting bumped, getting angry, making threats. And that’s just one woman! You can imagine when five or six burly guys are blitzed to the point of confrontation.

Easy. You just let the Raider fans kill each other.

In stadiums with upper levels, railings and long steps, we flirt with disaster every week.

Carson Palmer says we’re gonna have a fatality in the Upper Deck any week now.

But it never stops. If you dare suggest curbing tailgating, the populace rises up in arms. Last year, I read angry letters to the editor when a San Diego stadium cut tailgating from five hours to four before the game.

Five hours to four?

And I bet they don’t even have a TV tuned to the Sports Reporters while they’re there! Wastrels!

Now I know that many people — maybe most people — handle tailgating responsibly. They eat, laugh, they drink, but keep it under control.

The fisting stays gentle.

But if you’ve recently been in NFL stands — especially with kids — and heard the drunken swearing, the macho threats, or worse, been doused with beer or flecked with vomit, then you know how the minority ruin it for the majority.

If, like me, you worked in journalism for a number of years, you know how to decipher the many euphemisms columnists employ to conceal their actual message. Allow me to elucidate:

“But if you’ve recently been in NFL stands (FILLED WITH BLACKS!)– especially with kids (RUN AWAY FROM THE BLACKS, SUZY Q.!)– and heard the drunken swearing (JIVE TALKING!), the macho threats (ANGRY JIVE!), or worse (SPANISH JIVE!), been doused with beer or flecked with vomit (THE BLACKS ARE FILTHY!), then you know how the minority ruin it for the majority (THAT’S ME!).

And that is not justified.

WE ENDED SLAVERY, DIDN’T WE? WHAT MORE DO YOU HELLIONS WANT?

Which is why the NFL teams — and their cities — should ban the tailgate booze. You want to sit in a parking lot, eat, laugh, go ahead.

Albom has permitted you to laugh, America. Just don’t get too boisterous about it! WHAT ALBOM GIVETH, HE CAN SCOLDETH AWAY!

But no drinking. That’s right. I said it. No drinking. It’s not a God-given right.

Only a Constitution-given right! Not the same!

It’s their parking lots. Sure, enforcing it might be a pain. So is pulling apart a drunken melee in the bleachers. As for those who say, “Aw, the people will just drink at home,” well, they could do that now. My guess is it’s not as much fun getting hammered alone.

Because no one is capable of inviting friends over for drinks? Or does God mandate no drinking in groups in thine dwelling?

Not so long ago, there were blue laws that outlawed alcohol sales on Sundays.

Yes, they still exist in some states. People circumvent them by buying alcohol on other dates.

Now on Sundays, booze rules and women are handcuffed.

[Dashes off quick love letter to Sundays]

I’m not saying everyone needs to be in church.

“I’m just saying that if you happen to be found outside of church, say, drinking with others in your own home, you should be forcibly castrated and burned in a pyre with your fellow sinners. No big whoop.”

But when loaded, wasted, hammered or blitzed are the words people associate with pregame, it’s a problem.

Not when it should be associated with tortuously boring studio shows overpacked with bloviating priggish assholes!

And when it winds up in the stands, it’s everybody’s problem.

EVEN GLAXAR’S!

Not only did the Lions NOT learn from Jon Kitna’s 10-win guarantee two seasons ago, their front office is still hilariously cutting corners.  Yahoo’s Michael Silver pulls two Millenesque examples of Detroit being Detroit  in his most recent column.  The man making the Kitna-like promise?  Second-year tailback Kevin Smith, who wrote on his blog:

“We will definitely make the playoffs this season. Believe it or not we weren’t far off last year. Almost every game we could have won, we were one play or one player short. Except for Tennessee on Thanksgiving, they just came out and beat us to sleep. They manhandled us, but nobody else did.”

That’s a totally fair and accurate assess– **COUGH**Week 2 vs. Green Bay: L, 48-25 / Week 3 at San Fancisco: L, 31-13 / Week 5 vs. Chicago: L, 34-7 / Week 10 vs. Jacksonville: 38-14 / Week 12 vs. Tampa Bay: 38-20 / Week 16 vs. New Orleans: L, 42-7**COUGH** Sorry, I just can’t seem to shake this swine flu.

Oh but wait: there’s more.  The other slice of trivia pie (it’s orange for sports & leisure!) from Silver is this story from Terry Foster of the Detroit News:

Lions season-ticket holder Todd Taylor , who commutes from Chicago to attend Lions home games, and his buddy Jim Allen from Royal Oak were stoked when Taylor won a replica Kevin Smith jersey during the Lions’ draft party at Ford Field.

But something was strange about the No. 34 jersey. The Smith name on the back looked bulky. So they cut it off and were shocked to see the name Jones underneath.

It appears the Lions repurposed some old Kevin Jones jerseys, turning them into Smith jerseys and gave them away to season-ticket holders.

Oh man, I hope Matt Stafford doesn’t wear #8 next season.  Just think of all those priceless Kitna jerseys that might get ruined!

Sunday’s Simpsons episode was another eminently unfunny installment in the years long death rattle the show has been publicly undergoing, one that will endure for at least another two years. But it did have one good football related visual gag, when Channel 4 ran a doctored picture of Flanders in a hatchet story about him booting the Simpsons out of their home after he bought in on the cheap in an auction.

Don’t take the ribbing too hard Lions fans. Remember when the show ripped on the Broncos in the Hank Scorpio episode and the team proceeded to win the next two Super Bowls? Well, that won’t happen to you, but it’s a nice thought, huh?

[Fanhouse via Mouthpiece]

Most of you will be pissed when you realize this post has nothing to do with the Pittsburgh Steelers. There’s a bigger towel to trample right now, and it sits on a patch of dirt in the shitheap of incompetence listed on your maps as Detroit, Michigan. We’re on the cusp of history; The Detroit Lions are 0-15, a scenario that can break exactly one of two ways. Option A: Detroit upsets the Packers in Week 17, in Green Bay, where they haven’t won in 17 years. Or, Option B: The Lions continue their mastery of scoring fewer points than the other team and ride that shit-stained chariot of ineptitude into immortality.

Either way, we hold this truth to be self-evident: one week from today, Rod Marinelli’s ass is gone. Marinelli is the most visible remnant of the Old Millen Regime, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say that he couldn’t coach 50 ccs of semen into Brady Quinn’s mouth. But let’s not hang this all on Rod. He’s had help from this amazing cadre of fuckups:

JOE BARRY: DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR

How great a coach is Joe? Who cares? Barry married Rod’s daughter, which means the Lions’ defensive coordinator is also the head coach’s son-in-law! And is that his daddy Mike that’s an assistant for the offensive line? It’s like a family reunion in there. But now who brings the buffalo wings to film study? 

Perhaps the worst indictment of Joe Barry is that he doesn’t even run his own defensive meetings; Marinelli does. Okay, fine, but who holds Joe’s dick when he takes a piss?

KIPPY BROWN: PASSING GAME COORDINATOR

Passing game? That passing game that ranks in the bottom five in every conceivable category? Luckily, your office is probably smaller than Marinelli’s, which should make it even faster to clean out! But chin up, Kippy. You’ll have plenty of time to prepare for an offseason of fruitless, token head coaching interviews!

STAN KWAN: SPECIAL TEAMS

Colch speciar teems fol Deetloit Rions?  No smirre!

So this team didn’t shit the bed 15 times by accident. And Rob Parker, a Detriot-area columnist who might describe his entire career as oh and fifteen, had as much nerve to ask Marinelli as much in the postgame press conference when Parker asked, “Do you wish your daughter had married a better defensive coordinator?”

And Parker’s an authority on incompetence. In fact, Parker was once called been called The Worst Columnist In America! By The Big Lead! That’s like Keanu Reeves calling Heath Ledger lifeless! But Florio joined the FOX panel in pooh-poohing the move, saying that “Parker’s question had no redeeming value or purpose.”

Oh, I beg to differ.

I beg to differ because I am so goddamned sick of every shitty coach in America sitting behind a microphone after his team gets its ass whipped and tell everyone how they’re gonna work hard and fix everything next week. YOU ARE OH AND MOTHERFUCKING FIFTEEN! YOU HAVE FAILED MORE THAN ANY FOOTBALL TEAM IN THE HISTORY OF THE SPORT. YOU DO NOT HAVE A FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU’RE DOING! STAN KWAN HAS ALREADY COMMITTED SEPPUKU, FOR FUCK’S SAKE. AT LEAST HE HAS A SENSE OF SHAME!

Get pissed. Punch a baby. Drag your wife around the block by her hair. Do SOMETHING that would indicate any degree of displeasure with your record. Because you couldn’t suck a bigger dick if that dick got horrible gas mileage and had a terrible resale value. And you ought know, shitbag! You work in Detroit! 

I can’t wait until you get fired and you make that shiteating grimace at the press conference to say, “What, me? Are you serious? I thought we were doing okay.” No, you are not doing okay, and you’re down to six days to master not doing okay, because your ass will go the way of the Edsel. Dickbag.

Rob Parker can see this. Why can’t you? Because you suck. Now start acting like it.

Former Lions receiver Roy Williams decided to have a little fun at the Lions’ Mike Furrey Annual Charity Halloween Party to Benefit White Receivers by going as the luggage-thieving former Detroit running back Tatum Bell, complete with Rudi Johnson stolen drawers and a bell hop uniform. Though I hear Dan Orlovsky had trouble getting in ’cause his costume was over the line. ZING! How does he do it, folks?

Or maybe we could be mistaken in that it could be a riff on Buzz the Bellman from the Hudsucker Proxy.

“Say, buddy, who’s the most liquid businessman on the street? Jerry Jones!”