I do not want to hear anymore about coaches or coordinators "dialing up" any more shit. The unimaginative, copy-cat, unprofessional nature of the hacks calling football games makes mute watching more appealing as each week of the season brings continued disappointment. The adverb failure in football talking-heads circles is almost at 100% saturation. Don't worry that speaking English is your profession, just slap a fucking adjective in there, it will do just fine.

Does anybody else feel sorry for James Brown? Showtime really cocked-up Inside the NFL. What fucking genius thought that putting the Three Scourges of Sports Talk on an otherwise historically beloved show was a good idea? I used to run a personal contest to determine which pastey, Gaffiganesque, middling-ex-QB was the complete bottom of the shit dumpster of sports talk. Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that Boomer really is the worst, but Simms really gives him a run for his money. As much as I might actually like his work, I had a reflexive revulsion to Chris Simms for years just because of his old man. The first few times I saw Ray doing commentary, I thought it was either a cruel prank being played on him or the viewing public. There is no way I could have foreseen him surviving in the business year after year. That is a prop bet that would have broke me if I'd been taking action. But I guess, once you kill a man, your colleagues might be reluctant to replace you.

It does make me happy that I have access to Le Batard on my local radio. His radio show was one of the aspects of living in Miami that I actually enjoyed.

Without going to the detailed analysis of each hand, I lost with pocket:

KK to QQQ

KK to a flush

AK (three hands in a row) to 999, a flush, and what would have been a straight, but thankfully I bet that player off.

QQ to a AK4 flop that paired my caller's A.

And an additional AK fell to a set later.

Quote of the night, "Dirk, you need to stop raising before the flop. It just isn't working out for you."

Seriously, I was waiting until I saw the second season of The Expanse before posting again. I just finished that up on Prime a week ago. I finished re-watching the first season again this evening. Those bastards on Prime want me to pay to see season three, and those bastards on the shared cable app I use will only show me episodes 7-10 of season three via the SyFy on-demand. SO frustrating. Having somehow missed my access window to season two of Preacher, I skipped straight to season three. That show is a trip.

Get it up and going again? It never went anywhere.

Silly Cyrus...

I watched the first batch of The Expanse. I am probably one of only a dozen people who wish there were more Hard Science Fiction stories. This fact might have colored my vision favorably toward a show I am not 100% sure is good. Is the central political mystery going to be enough to keep the show interesting?

Something I am sure that I am not alone in believing: Better Call Saul is the best TV on right now. It might turn out to be the best television show ever. It is already consistently better than Breaking Bad ever was, even if it owes that show for the start.

I am watching that ridiculous Lucifer show for one reason only: Lauren German.

Some people check the weather to plan their travel times or recreational activities. I am checking the weather to see if I need to shovel the driveway or if it will melt on its own. Above freezing all this next weekend. 50s next week. I am going to pick the environmentally sound choice and leave that snowblower in the garage.

During my recent gig selling guns to Midwesterners, I am surprised by how many people are buying the first guns of their lives. 60-year-old ladies have told me they are buying a gun because governmental interference might prohibit them from owning a gun in the future. 98% of the people I sell guns to have a concealed carry permit or are seriously pursuing one. The number of people carrying handguns now is remarkable. I am seriously more concerned with the future potential for getting hit by poorly-trained-citizen-cross-fire than I am of some wayward terrorist stunt. At least in this part of the country.

If guns were elected to office based on the sales I've witnessed, Smith & Wesson's M&P Shield in 9mm would be our next president. If you are buying me a present, I could use a Benelli Ethos in 12 ga. Nickel receiver on that is optional, but an option I would appreciate.

If you were wondering about the limit, I hit it at two. Two.

Michelob Ultra commercials that show yuppie work-out clubs with matching T-shirts. Nothing like these groups can possibly exist in the real world, can they? If they do, we need to convince the school shooters that they could rack up unimpeded kill-counts if they solely targeted these people. We might even throw in a medal or two.

Mia Maestro portraying Nora Martinez on The Strain. If not for Max Charles, Maestro would be the worst thing on this generally bad (but improving) show. If not for Walking Dead dead shows (bad and not improving), there would not be any characters I would wish a faster and more horrible death (reality TV stars excluded). I am definitely rooting for all the characters on the new Walking Dead show to be dead. Except, maybe, for the rich guy and the daughter. And, maybe, the Central American torture specialist. But definitely, all the rest.

Publicly-held American business model.

Nebraska losing to Illinois in Big Ten conference play.

Joseph Ladarious Keyshawn Johnson commenting on NFL football. However, he is preferable to Michael Irvin. Both are better choices over Deon Sanders.

The thought process that leads anyone to mention Elway or Favre in the "greatest QB" discussion.

Liberty Mutual's TV marketing campaign. If I had unlimited wealth, I would have paid roving gangs a bounty to provide severe beatings to the cast and crews filming these commercials on the riverbanks around Liberty Island. I might have been given a medal.

The NFL's Pink Month. What will it take to be rid of this? A cure for cancer would be great for humanity. Mostly because there would be no more cancer, but partially because no more shitty pink accents in our professional football. Is this something else we can directly blame on Goodell?

People who insist that .380 is an adequate personal defense round.

Bare-feet-in-urban-area people. You people are irrational, dirty, and deserve to step on a tendon-slicing piece of beer bottle. If I were a combat boots kind of person, I would seek you out and stomp hard.

Lineman who pull for a screen and completely fail to engage any of the defending players.

95% of all questions asked by sports reporters. 98% of the answers to those questions.

Leather or vinyl seats in the summer.

Men who have never been in any type of structured martial arts competition, street fight, or sparing situation but who have an opinion on a hypothetical fight between any male and Ronda Rousey. Exceptions for those who train people to fight professionally. I would never fault a woman for having an opinion on Ronda. I would buy that woman a beer and see if she has any other interesting takes on the world around us.

Jennifer Garner's jaw line and chin. And her beady eyes. After further review, I think Swank is a better catch.

Standard-sized bathtubs.

Cool-Whip. Whip some whipping cream. At the very least, buy some real whipped cream in a can. Vegetable oil has no place in desserts.

The general direction of Oliphant's and Vaughn's careers. Overall, potential wasted.

I was going to write "people over 14 years who ride single-gear bicycles", but because of Berger, I will have to give those people a pass.

Bait-pile hunting.

That I have to work in the morning.

While icing my knee and flipping between Herd and Le Batard, I got caught in the simultaneous commercial break. ESPN tried to package a plug for Mike & Mike as a best of the week mini-clip show. The problem with that approach is the lack of any "best" content on that show. Some people may argue that, by definition, there is a "best" model amoung the Shady Acres Bikini Contest 80-and-over age bracket. The "best" piece of rancid sushi left on the sunny porch all day might be the piece that only makes you sick instead of killing you. And, in turn, the "best" of Mike & Mike was a collection of uninteresting blandness that could have been mistaken for a collection of pre-show mic checks. That is a show that is just begging for its lunch to be eaten. I cannot believe how it has survived for a decade.

I saw a commercial for the Fast & Furious 7 DVD release. The voice-over indicated the movie is packaged as an "extended" cut. Having been drawn into seeing the theatrical release by the Evil Wizard Leedy, I write this with certainty: No one needs a DVD copy of Fast & Furious 7, let alone an extended cut.

Dez Bryant is a professional football player. His freshman year of high school football was in 2003. How does he not understand the concept of drinking water? How is it that he needs to leave the first quarter of the first game of the season to get an IV because he is dehydrated? Gatorade was developed in 1965. Drink some.

My apologies to Dan Fouts. While watching the Lions preseason game against Jacksonville, I initially thought I was listening to Bumbling Boomer E in the booth. Fouts does not deserve to be disrespected like that. I'd share my onion rings with Fouts. When I want to deeply depress myself, I think about the horrible, unstoppable momentum of Boomer E's broadcasting career. Did he invest poorly? Does he not love his wife and kid(s)? Is he trying to get back at us for loving Montana and Elway more than him?

A woman played banjo for us when I was in elementary school. I remember thinking she seemed a little sad or pathetic. She was a nice lady, but even as a kid, I had an instinctive pity for her. I realize now that it was because she was playing that banjo. The banjo is a terrible instrument. And I hope anyone who plays that Best Day of My Life song experiences a catastrophic failure of their electronic equipment. And maybe a spontaneous fire. If presented a choice, I am not sure if I would rather slap Barnett for those stupid lyrics or bash Shelley with his banjo and mandolin.

Crew creep is an on-going problem in NFL pregame. Every person over three is unnecessary. Every person over four is diminishing returns. But if you are wasting your time watching NFL pregame or postgame, you probably deserve those bloated retreads jammed down your gullet every week. I want three things reported to me ten minutes before kickoff: 1) who is inactive; 2) who limped through warm-ups; and 3) is precipitation hitting, or scheduled to hit, the field.

Kurt Sutter has likely out-lived his usefulness. This executioner show does not bode well. Sons was a farce from the beginning, jumping sharks every-other-week. Now there are talks to to spin the Mayans off into their own show. Please, no.

After seeing the first episode of Fear the Walking Dead, I am convinced that Kirkman & Co. have settled on an elimination-bracket approach to writing and show-running. Looking back at old seasons of The Walking Dead, I amazed at how many irritating characters have met their demise. We were afflicted with many of them for too long. At least at this point in the game, very few of the insufferable characters are left. And now, when they make new ones, those annoying characters are mercifully allowed to die on an accelerated schedule. Except the preacher. I don't understand why he has alligator blood.

With this new spin-off-ish LA version, I think they decided to push us to cheer for an early death of the entire cast. They squandered the entire ninety-minute run time on hack character development for a family of people I am already rooting to be dead. I already was hoping the drug-dealing friend would actually kill off the junkie son at the end. How great would that have been! Then, when the step-dad and mom showed up looking for the junkie son, they could have been popped and thrown in the LA river, too. Maybe the sister and the drug dealer could have teamed up to fight zombies with the miserable fat kid and his little steak knife. I am now hoping that the junkie's car-accident limp gets him mistaken for a zombie and, shortly thereafter, mistakenly shot. Or stabbed by the miserable fat kid.

You know who didn't waste the 90 minutes they were given? The makers of High Noon, Stand by Me, and Airplane.

The final 2% of my Chunky New England Clam Chowder routinely refuses to vacate the manufacturer's can. I usually coax the remaining portion out by tapping the can against the lip of the bowl. Bowl, not pot, because I microwave, not stove top, my Chunky. Today I tapped the can with the same cadence as Van Hek's Terminator theme.

There are times, as I begin cardio machine work, when the starting sequence from Donkey Kong plays in my head. And to be clear, I never played Donkey Kong more than a half-dozen times in my life. This is a completely different situation from the days when I (used to run) and AC/DC's Who Made Who album would cycle in my brain. Even thinking about it, I get flashbacks to my steps synchronizing with the beats. Sink the Pink always got me through the early wall. I hate running. I think if I ran today, I might crush my bones to dust.

These examples are different than earworms. I sometimes battle those for decades at a time. Joan Jett's I Love Rock n' Roll was a considerably lengthy contest. Queen's Another One Bites the Dust resided in the shallow undercurrent of my young mind for quite a spell as well. Michael Jackson's Bad was not as long-lived, but it still taxed the limits of my exorcism skills. I would be lying if I didn't have a small fear that writing about these earworms would not empower them to make a comeback. If they try to gain a foothold, I plan on using Taylor Swift's Shake It Off in retaliation. 'Cause the haters gonna hate, hate, hate...