Someone at my gym was telling me about a guy who went into the hospital with back pain; he told the doctors he was afraid he had spine flu. And that’s not a joke. That apparently really happened, according to the second-hand story that I’m now making a third-hand story.

Naturally, I spent the next ten minutes thinking about various influenza FAILs. Like, there’s a pine flu epidemic in the Northwest… I’m not sure if this is a hangover or wine flu… Sarah Jessica Parker has a nasty case of equine flu. Et cetera.

I bring this up because I was sick for the last three days. I had this weird stomach pain that wasn’t quite gas and wasn’t quite indigestion, and mixed with my light sleeping habits it wrecked my REM sleep. I ended up taking something like six naps over the span of two work days while consuming a helluva lot of healthy crap like miso soup and peppermint tea. And the kicker was this: no booze or caffeine for MORE THAN TWO DAYS.

That’s no way to live, people. Don’t trust Mormons, those people are powered by the dark arts.

Week 10 Meast and Least below:

Your Meast this week is LaDainian Tomlinson, who returned to relevance with 96 yards, two touchdowns, and a brand new embryo in his wife’s uterus. Those numbers aren’t as impressive as Chris Johnson’s, but Johnson was up against the shitty Buffalo run D, and besides, he won the Meast last week. Also in the running was Peyton Manning, but Pey-Pey had two ugly picks and benefited from Belichick’s Leastiness. Besides, it’s too much fun to torture the Colts fans who care about arbitrary awards handed out by half-assed blogs.

Speaking of the Least…

That right there is one sulk photo for every interception Jay Cutler threw on Thursday night, arranged in order of increasing sulk. What an absolute delight.

Chris Johnson is your lion-maned Meast after shredding the 49ers defense for 135 yards and two scores. Add to that the fact that he had another 80-yard TD nullified by penalty after it was ruled he stepped out of bounds, and that’s a textbook Meastian performance. We almost gave it to him the other week after his “getting-away-from-the-cops speed” game, but opted to shock the world with Ted Ginn instead. Gus Johnson was later forced to apologize for that remark (he defended the call by saying people of all races run from the police, which is true, BUT ONLY BLACK PEOPLE GET AWAY!), which is about as stupid as Muslim groups having to apologize for the Fort Hood shooting. But people are stupid and expect these things, I guess. Anyway, if Johnson were on any less putrid of a team, he’d probably be in the thick of the MVP race. He’s on pace to run for close to 2,000 yards and is averaging an insane 6.7 yards per carry. That’s more than the Redskins gain most weeks.

Your Least this week is Champ Bailey, who’s often wrongly still referred to as the best cover corner in the NFL, even though it’s been a few years since that’s actually been the case. Sorry, Champ, Darrelle Revis and Nnamdi Asomugha done took yo shit. After the Broncos secondary was fluffed for the entire first half of last night’s game, Bailey was routinely torched by Santonio Holmes in the second. He then capped the night by letting a small dirty playing Asian guy jump over him into the endzone for some piling-on points. We also considered Andy Reid and DeAngelo Hall this week, but then we know they’ll be back for more suckling at the teat of suck in no time at all.

This weekend, the Patriots are playing the only team in the NFL that could possibly make me root for them, the Purplish Carrion Crows of Deepest Rottencrotch (Officially: Lord Baltimore’s seaside queef depot).

P-Drizzle, so jovial

So it would be the ideal time for me to admit that for the past few months I’ve been seeing a girl who’s (GASP!) a Boston fan. Me! The guy who hates Boston sports teams so much! It’s like I’m actually able to compartmentalize preferences in trivial things and focus on a person’s other, more important, qualities (like tits)! Me! The guy who usually isn’t able to compartmentalize preferences in trivial things and focus on a person’s other, more important, qualities (like tits)!

Luckily, she doesn’t understand football nor does she care at all about the game. This might otherwise be an issue, but is fantastic in this circumstance because her not caring is the only thing keeping her from being a Patriots fan.

(She does actually own a Tedy Bruschi jersey and threatened to wear it to my D.C. book reading. Or just wear it at all. In response, I vowed to visit swift death upon her, which was a surprisingly effective deterrent. Try that one in the future, you guys)

Granted, I still have to put up with (if she’s reading, that means ADORE) the SAWX stuff, but I don’t particularly care about baseball and it’s fun to go to Nationals games and laugh at how she fumes when the Nats play “Sweet Caroline” during pitching changes (”THAT’S OW-UH FACKIN SONG! NO ONE DENIES THIS! EVERYONE HE-UH IS A FACKIN COWPYCAT! THEY AH-RUNT BAHSTONISH ENOUGH!”).

Plus she frequently and openly admits that no one cared about the Pats until they started winning titles, and she gets irritated whenever she talks with someone from back home in Boston who brings up the Patriots while the Red Sox are still playing (”They never used to do that before!”).

So keep reinforcing all the negative stereotypes I have of Bawston football fans, honey, and we’ll get along just fine.

Anyway, your Meast this week is the Detroit Lions. Yes, all of them. Because they won a game, you see. So good job, Larry Foote, er, I mean, everybody! Also, Matt Stafford has fine taste in skanks.

And thank goodness the Lions won, because otherwise we’d be forced to give the Meast to goddamn Peyton Manning. Not that I hate the guy (I don’t) but of all the homer commenters who vent on this site, Colts fans are by far the most annoying dribblecunts when in comes to lobbying for their cherished Fetus Head to win our pointless and arbitrary weekly award.

“Hey, why didn’t you make Peyton the Meast? He only threw for 300-plus yards on four pass attempts, while the offense only had 17 seconds overall in time of possession. He totally makes up for the fact that our run defense couldn’t stop any random running back from averaging six yards per carry.”

“Did you see how funny those ads Pey-Pey has with Justin Timberlake? He makes the people around him funnier! I wonder if Justin does a Dallas Clark impression! Make Peyton the Meast this week and every week! Even during the off-season!”

The last thing I want to do is encourage – or even placate – these raving dipshits, so thanks Lions. You’re the bestest. (But seriously though, don’t be the bestest in Week 5)

Our Least this week could not reasonably be awarded to one hapless individual, so we have riven the dishonor in twain to bestow it upon Jim Zorn, whose random acts of fuckwittery cost his team a game to the fucking Lions, and Jake Delhomme, who will lose to everybody until he is mercifully benched or shot. They also make a fine pair because they’re cornball assholes who aw-shucks their way through sucking.

Hey, look, another Downfall parody! No one in the sports blogosphere ever does that! I guess this one’s different because Redskins fans have Hitler represent their team’s Jewish owner. Oopity!

Someday in near future, when Will Leitch cashes in on his lucrative raisin futures, I hope he will purchase the foundering Jaguars, relocate them to Mattoon, rename them the Fiddlesticks, and fill the roster with nothing but players incapable of or unwilling to swear properly.

Jim Zorn will be their coach. Jake Delhomme will be their quarterback. A bunch of other dithering white players will handle the rest.

[Sideline reporter talks with hollow-eyed Leitch, who watches his team trail 132-0 with 8:31 remaining in the 1st quarter]

Leitch: “Aw cramblebit stew! We almost forced ‘em into a second down on that series! Heavens to Willie McGee, I believe this stratagem was ill-conceived!”

There weren’t any spectacularly awful performances in the Super Bowl, so the Least is a little difficult to determine in this, its final installment of the year. Mike Gandy did get called for three holding calls, but then he was blocking DPOY James Harrison. Clancy Pendergast gets a big fail for the Cards lack of pressure and coverage schemes on the Steelers’ final drive. It could go to the three Cardinals blanketing Santonio Holmes in the end zone, but then Roethlisberger did make an amazing throw.

Then Maj suggested it go to Aaron Francisco for getting roughed up by James Harrison in the 4th quarter, which puts me in a fun position to write about it while pretending not to boast about an obvious foul by one of my favorite players. Lots of people think Harrison should have been ejected and point to him only receiving a personal foul as proof that the refs favored the newly renamed (guh) Sixburgh Steelers.

Then again, on the first play of the second quarter Cardinals defensive end Bryan Robinson punches Chris Kemoeatu after he goes to the ground, then gets up and throws a right hook at Hines Ward, for which he receives no flag. But NBC didn’t grant it a replay and Madden didn’t get all huffy about it so no one seized on the incident as part of some kooky officiating conspiracy (Quoth Punter: “The Steelers will never lose a Super Bowl as long as Goodell and Rooney are both in power”). So, in the end, these things kind of even out.

In conclusion: The Dansby roughing the passer call was the only truly horrible one in the game. Everything else was at worst borderline and bad calls swung both ways. Don’t be gay like Jason Whitlock, Bill Simmons or Punter and blame the refs. The game is over. Let’s get back to the dick jokes.

/dick joke

Huh, this post certainly took a strange turn. Maybe that’s because I had another post ready to go based off of Black Sports Online’s excellent highlight reel of Delhomme’s suck set to Beck’s Loser (hence the headline) only to see it removed from YouTube by some fucktasting lawyer. Fuck Beck with Delhomme’s dick.

UPDATE: The video lives on in BuzzCuts form! It’s also back up at Black Sports Online.

YOUR JEFF GEORGE MEMORIAL LEAST OF THE WEEK is deadlocked. It could easily go to Chad Pennington or Tarvaris Jackson. Flip a coin. We defy you to choose between the two. Each had horrendous performances in home playoff losses on Sunday. Chad was picked four times while Tarvaris completed only 42 percent of his throws. On one hand, it’s amazing that any of Tarvaris’ passes are even intercepted given how wildly inaccurate he is. On the other, it’s truly remarkable that Ed Reed has the patience to wait for Chad Pennington’s wounded ducks to make it into his lateraling grasp. Sure, you could argue Chad should get a break because he was facing a slightly better defense. Or that Tarvaris was struggling in his first playoff start. These are moot points that ignore the fact that Pennington and Tarvaris are but components of a larger, suckier host being that, once fused, will wipe clean life from the planet and bring upon the reign of Thanatos.

As you may have surmised, I’m the sort of person who delights in negativity. I’d far rather read a Worst Movies of 2008 list than a Best Movies of 2008 list. Oh, you liked “The Dark Knight”? Well, no shit, asshole. So did everyone else. Tell me more about what made “Witless Protection” a festering cinematic abortion. I’m not interested in hearing you lavish praise on a bunch of already overpraised actors and directors. I demand BILE. AND BITTERNESS. AND HATEFUL INVECTIVE. I cannot get enough of people talking about how much something or someone blows. It’s a weakness.

So it is in that spirit (and in the spirit of this entire site, really) that I present you with our new weekly award, the Least of the Week. We already have the Meast of the Week for players and/or concealed weapons that have demonstrated excellence in the field of FUCKING SHIT UP on any given week.

But we’ve long needed a flipside to that coin, an award for the week’s biggest piece of pussified tampon lint. There are many great players in this league. But there are also many who deserve nothing less than our most bitter scorn. Players who are little more than douchetastic, short-arming little twatgoblins. They deserve our recognition as well, so that we might cruelly mock them until their reputation and sense of self-worth have all but evaporated. Nice.

But who to name it after? Well, the Meast was first named after Steve Irwin, who never hesitated to jump into an open crocodile mouth for no reason other than for my fleeting entertainment. Then I think we named it after Bill Walsh for a week. Then Kevin Everett. And then, of course, the original meast Sean Taylor, who will hold the name of the award forever more.

So I think whoever we name this award after needs to embody the very opposite elements of meastiness. He must be whiny, and afraid of contact, and underperforming, and easy for us to baselessly accuse of homosexuality. I’d like to name this award after Brett Favre, but since I loathe the very idea of typing his name every week, let’s go with Jeff George! Look at that throwing motion. He may as well be a waiter in Key West.

Your Jeff George Least of the Week for Week 15 is Reggie Bush, who injured himself by avoiding contact last week and is now out for the year. Pussy.

Congratulations, Reggie. You’re a flaming gash. I hope you suffocate while trying to give your girlfriend analingus.

NOTE: Tomorrow is mailbag day, fuckos. Send in all your fantasy football/sex advice questions quick as you can.