Tricking The Devil

After I posted my last piece to the Studly Pastures, my girlfriend promptly came downstairs and pointed out all the mistakes that I made, including the most glaring that I repeatedly (and by repeatedly I mean each and every time) misspelled Caitlyn Jenner's name.  I spelled it with a K because I went ahead and assumed that like EVERYBODY else in the family whose name starts with K that she would follow suit.

Well, kids, just like the old saying goes "When you assume you make an ass out of yourself for misspelling a transgender's name over and over again throughout a blog post."

An hour later she asked me if I had any intentions of changing it and I sat there and thought about it for about three seconds and then promptly said, "Nahhhhhh."  Let it be.  Maybe the good people will think it's some sort of weird intentional joke.  It could be funny...right?  Besides...what's the worst that could happen?

WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?!

I must be losing it in my old age because I forgot for just a split second that I lived in the Twilight Zone and there would be consequences and repercussions to my actions.  I had upset the balance of the force and tilted it ever so slightly in favor of the Dark Side.  I never thought that an old foe, long cast into obscurity, would take the small window of opportunity to rise to power yet again.

I've become as power blind as Yoda.

If you've read this blog, on at least the two occasions I've mentioned it prior, then you are already privy to this information:  I despise Cole Hamels.  Back in 2008 he sold his soul to the Devil to rise up and smite my Tampa Bay Rays in their one and only World Series visit.  I slunk back into the darkness and began my elaborate plans to make sure Hamels lost his arms in a tragic wheat-thresher 'accident' but then I remembered...you don't sell your soul to the Devil without him collecting payment at some point.

Sure enough, enter 2015, and Cole Hamels is still toiling away with the Philadelphia Phillies only now they're phucking terrible and the worst team in baseball.  Before yesterday, Hamels was 0-4 in his last 9...9! starts and had an ERA over five!  The writing powers that be said that Hamels looked "disinterested" on the mound.  Hah!  It was done.  Back in 2008 I really really wanted Hamels' career in baseball to end with an Arby's franchise that he would have to eventually work at to keep it from going bankrupt.  I guess I really wanted to one day be in the position to say to Cole Hamels, "I said Horsey sauce, you moron!  How hard is your job really?"  I feel like that would crush him.

But I guess the next best thing would be for him to have to be stuck with his beloved Phillies only no matter what he did--no matter how he pitched--he would always lose.  You lose!  You get nothing!  GOOD DAY SIR!

Then the whispers started and wouldn't fate have it...Cole Hamels popped up as a trade deadline name.

What?  Cole Hamels?  Don't these people know you can only sell your soul once to the Devil?  How in the Hell is his name popping up as a hot commodity at the trade deadline SEVEN years after he was last relevant?  There are baseball players that disappear into obscurity every single day and it's only years later that we ask ourselves in passing "Hey, whatever happened to so and so?" and why can't that happen to Cole Hamels?  The ONE guy (other than Alex Rodriguez) who I want to disappear and he's the chosen one to be resurrected? 

Then I thought about it and realized it wasn't that big of a deal.  So what if he gets traded?  He's still Cole Hamels.  If the Phillies want to release him from perdition and get a ham sandwich in return, who I am to deny them?  That's roughly what I equate his worth to anyways...a ham sandwich.  And not even a good ham sandwich.  So there.

Then yesterday happened and Cole Hamels threw a no-hitter against the Cubs.  You know what probably raises your stock a helluva lot right before the trade deadline?  A goddamned no-hitter.

The best part, the quintessential moment that really makes you remember where you are, came in the ninth with two outs.  Hamels was one out away from his no-hitter when rookie phenom Kris Bryant blasted a pitch to dead center.  The Phillies center fielder, whose name will not sully my unicorn stables, misplayed the ball horribly.  It was as if he was expecting the ball to just clear the fence and he was going to go for a heroic jump-up-the-wall and save the day maneuver.  The only problem was that the ball was not going to clear the fence and would fall feet short on the warning track.  He realized this about a fraction of a second before the inevitable, went to make the adjustment, and slipped on the dirt that makes up the warning track.  When he slipped, he fell forward, and just managed to get his glove out in time to snag the ball before it hit the ground and Cole Hamels secured his legacy as the only man to sell his soul to the Devil twice.

Damn you, Twilight Zone...damn you to Hell.

Don't think it's lost on me that he did it against the Cubs.  My favorite player to hate no-hit my favorite team to hate and that's such a weird flux of emotions that I'm not sure what to do.  Cry and pee?

All those years when Tampa was the worst team in baseball and the best thing we got to celebrate was losing to Cole Hamels in the World Series.

Sigggghhhhhhhhh.

The only solace I can take is that maybe this is a blessing in disguise.  Maybe his once again fame will lead him to a lady of the night and they will spend the night together only the lady is really three raccoons in disguise and they'll chew his face off in the morning.  At least Hamels can never take my dreams!

Float on, graceful swans...except you Hamels...stop floating.

27.

Coach Carousel

This marks another new landmark for the Studly Pastures as we've managed to go a full calendar month without anybody overseas reading a post.

While I'd like to think that maybe the East has finally taken what they've needed from me and are now better for it the more likely reason is that those spam bots have left me alone due to inactivity.  Eh.  The herald of the times can only do so much and he's probably not going about it by writing in an obscure blog every here and there.

I believe in self-employment.  You're the boss and what you say goes.  It's also got great job security because the only way you lose your job is when the whole company goes under and--come on--how often does that happen?

That's probably why I'm not an NFL head coach.  While it might seem like you hold some semblance of power you're really just the guy whose got the puppeteer's hand up his ass the furthest.  And when he tires of you he throws you out and gets another puppet.  Your life is basically Toy Story, except like I said, his hand is up your ass.  The life of a NFL head coach is cruel, wearing, and you better know it before you get into it or else it will swallow you up.  Unless you employ tactics, oh let's say such as spying on the other teams, your shelf-life as a NFL head coach is a little longer than that lactose-free milk which just confuses me to no end.  What's in the container?  Sand?

There's been a number of coaching changes as of late and most of them have left me wondering what the person making the hire is doing to convince themselves of such a move.  Why did this person out of ALLLLLLL others stand out to you as the one that would lead you to the promised land?  Why?!



BUFFALO: I start with you because, let's face it, we know each other the best.  You're the barren wasteland of my birth--the place that God constantly tries to warn humanity not to form a habitat in by burying it for months at a time under pounds and pounds of ice!  Yet, there you stand, as some weird testament to human resiliency or just pure ignorance.  Nevertheless, your old coach abandoned you (and granted he has a history of doing that) but you couldn't really blame him because maybe he wanted to remember what the sun looked like.  It appears now that Doug Marrone would rather not be a head coach in the NFL so that he didn't have to live in Buffalo any longer.  That's a tough pill to swallow and you washed it down with a big, heaping glass of Rex Ryan.

I know you're not the Grand Vizier of Great Decision Making but...come on...Rex Ryan?!  I wouldn't even want that guy to show up to the same bar I'm at--let alone coach my football team.  Has it come down to this, Buffalo?  You're now just willingly raising your hand for Jersey's seconds?

Rex Ryan is a defensive minded coach, something they have the footholds established for in Buffalo but their offense is a huge train-wreck.  Enter Rex Ryan, one-track mind, one-track coach, one lap-band surgery.  Buffalo has basically signed up to become Jersey 2.0.  I expected better from Canadians.



OAKLAND: I must say I like the moves that the Oakland Raiders make because as a sibling I can basically smoke crack and still be a more favored offspring.  They just don't get it, do they?  It's either they all collectively don't get it or Al Davis died so he could become more powerful than we could ever imagine.  To go through their timeline of events in just the last six months would require about five Studly's so we're just going to skip ahead and tell you that they've tapped Jack Del Rio as the 479th head coach of the Oakland Raiders.

I don't like Jack Del Rio because he thinks he looks good in leather jackets and that kind of pompous attitude makes me hate you.  He previously coached the Jaguars for far too long because they're trying to sabotage themselves but for the last couple of years he was Defensive Coordinator for the Denver Peyton Mannings.  There was much ballyhoo last offseason for the attention the Broncos were paying to the defensive side of the ball with acquisitions like Demarcus Ware and Aqib Talib.  And then Andrew Luck came along, marched right into Mile High, and now Peyton has plenty of time to peddle pizzas. (Boom).  Oakland, being in the same division as Denver, has kept close tabs on the Broncos for the last couple of years and has decided to hire the man in charge of the weakest link on the team.  The chain of failure isn't a straight line, dumbasses, it's a circle.

I like Jack Del Rio for a character name on Law and Order but as far as a head coach I'm going to have to question why the Davis family has so much money to burn for such trivial reasons such as hiring and firing a guy two years later.



NEW JERSEY: You know why I saved you for last.  The Twilight Zone is very cruel and unforgiving.  Back in the Suck for Luck year in 2011 when the Dolphins fired Tony Sparano in December, Todd Bowles became our interim head coach.  The Dolphins subsequently went 2-1 under his stead and far missed out on a lottery we were in prime position to get from the start of the season--Andrew Luck.  The Colts sucked a little bit more that year and now they're in the AFC Championship.  I knew that we weren't getting Andrew Luck that year but at least there was potential in Todd Bowles.  He had coached with us for several years prior, the team loved him and responded to him, and he seemed like a bright young mind.  Then Stephen Ross went and hired Joe Philbin as head coach and there was no place for Todd Bowles anymore and I slunk even further into the Twilight Zone.

Now Rex Ryan is in Buffalo, Todd Bowles is in New Jersey, Andrew Luck is in Indianapolis and I'm stuck with Joe "I need to do a better job coaching" Philbin and Ryan "Fuzzby" Tannehill.

The gang's all here.

As much as I bashed Buffalo for hiring a guy that was defensive-minded on an already defensive heavy team I simply can't do the same for the New Jersey Jets.  Yes, Todd Bowles is a defensive-minded coach--but if anybody can juggle with one hand while learning the other I gotta go with him.  Buffalo hired a sideshow, Jersey hired a prodigy.

I'm just glad he went to Jersey because not even they can take advantage of his raw power.

You better be floatin' on, graceful swans.

Something Rotten This Way Comes

It's kinda nice being the owner of the Studly Pastures because that generally means that I don't have to ever touch unicorn shit and can just make my employees pick it up.  But even from my pedestal I know that shit is shit--even if it's rainbow colored--and if you have to pick it up for too long you tend to get a little jaded about your job.  I've had plenty of good-natured ranch hands file their papers over the years because these little horned devils just won't stop fertilizing the yard.

Something stinks.  Literally.

If I was Joe Philbin, the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and I wanted to keep my job I would have utilized my knowledge of the years I spent training Aaron Rodgers and used that to my advantage to defeat him last Sunday.  However, if I was the exact same guy and I wanted to get fired, I would have done exactly what he did last Sunday.

I've seen enough people try to get fired that I recognize it now almost instantly.

The man's had enough, and while I don't blame him, he's simultaneously tanking the one thing in the sports world that brings even the slightest of glimmers to my eye and it's driving me mad.

Why don't I blame Joe Philbin for trying to get fired from his job as head coach as the Miami Dolphins?  Because Joe Philbin is a nice guy, with a great football mindset, aaaaannnndddd he makes a great offensive coordinator because he can stand behind the scenes and call the shots and not have to be the face or voice of a franchise.  He's not a head coach and he got hired as a head coach and I blame him as much as I blame myself for not being a ladies' shoe salesman and I got hired once as a ladies' shoe salesman.  Live and learn.

Plus, I don't blame him because Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, is an idiot and wouldn't know couth if it was his own mother telling him how much he sucked as a person.  See what I did there?  I was very uncouth on purpose because I have couth, dammit!  I'm couthful.  Stephen Ross is uncouthful.  He tried to hire a coach while he still had one on payroll and after that failed he settled for his silver medal, Joe Philbin, and now that that's not panning out he's trying to poach the same guy...AGAIN!

I'm being pretty discreet and I'm not sure why...it's not like I'm the goddamned Associated Press (cough, cough).  I'm talking about Jim Harbaugh and how Stephen Ross has had a hard-on for his khaki-loving ass for a few years now.  This is, apparently, one of those 'first love' kinda loves and it just sort of lingers on even after several girlfriends...I mean head coaches.

If I was Joe Philbin and I wanted to keep my job and every time I suffered a loss and had to give a press conference I would be succinct, bold, and very adamant about what went wrong, how it happened, and how I planned to prepare to make sure that it never happened again.  However, if I was the exact same guy and I wanted to get fired, I would treat EVERY press conference as the same and always say the same thing: "I have to do a better job."

"I have to do a better job."  That's not exactly the life mantra of a leader.  "I have to do a better job" leads me down two paths: One is that he's said it enough times now and it means that he simply cannot do a better job and it's time to go OR he really knows that he has to do a better job and chooses not to...SO HE CAN BE FIRED.  How much patience would you have that if somebody kept screwing up and his only explanation each and every time was "I have to do a better job"?  

At the end of the day it boils down to people with millions upon millions of dollars at their disposal and have absolutely no idea what to do with it.  Is there a book that exists titled How To Be Successful And Then To Stop Being Successful?  Joe Philbin should be hosting a fishing show on public access, Stephen Ross should be blasted into space, and the Miami Dolphins should have pulled a George Costanza and gone out on a high note back in 1974.  One undefeated season and back to back Super Bowl titles?  Yeah, take a bow, you're done.

The problem with not having anybody to pick up the shit is that it just keeps piling up higher and higher, eventually to the point where it suffocates you but you don't get the privilege of either Heaven or Hell, no you get purgatory.  The only problem with purgatory is that the whole goddamn thing recycles itself every three to four years and if you're skeptical you can go back to the beginning of this blog because I've been here longer than four years.

It's the Twilight Zone and the only thing worse than living in the Twilight Zone is knowing that you live in the Twilight Zone.