Bears vs. Rams: 11-15-2015

Des: Welcome to another edition of the Chicago Bears football pre-game show. The Bears face off against the Saint Louis Rams after a tough win against the San Diego Chargers. Will the Bears recapture last week’s winning formula of an acceptable defense, a competent offense, and an opposing team that smothers itself with yellow flags? Or will they be trampled underfoot by a legendary running back whose last name of “Gurley” caused the Fox broadcasting team to giggle themselves silly last week?

To answer these and similar questions is our panel of experts: Concord Wainwright Peabody, Captain Silas Charles “20,000 Leagues Under the Weight of His Crimes Against Humanity” Red-beard, Modre- the trans-Western guru, the Prissy Minion, Doctor Sally McChesty, Ellie Mae MacGillicutty, and our tailgate party correspondent, Drunky McDumbAss.

Des: We’ll start the festivities with the segment I’d like to call, “Let’s Make Fun of the Captain’s Terrible Playoff Picks”, but since he has his cutlass pointed at one of my more important organs, it’s time now for “The NFL’s Biggest Disappointments That Were Way Better On Paper Than In Reality.”

Redbeard: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHH, mateys! Let’s take a long, pitiful glance at the teams that, like fabled aqua based comic book legends Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner, failed to live up to their potential: First, the NFC, and the Detroit Lions— hoo boy—who would’ve thought that the Lions were one Ndamukong Suh away from being the… Detroit Lions? As it turned out—EVERYONE EXCEPT ME! But that was me worst choice. Me other selections ‘tweren’t nearly as bad—they be merely mediocre, like a Carnival Cruise, but not catastrophically bad… like a Carnival Cruise. Ye have the Eagles, who are neck and neck for first with the Giants with a 4-4 record, while the Saints are in a distant third… with a 4-5 record. I challenge any land lubber to try to cipher that one out without your high tech computers and your complex Common Core math problems. Back in my day, we had naught but sextants and the constellations of the night sky and the entrails of various whales when we would set up our illegal betting pools. And we didn’t “log on” or use “bitcoin” to pay our gambling debt. No, we gave our money in a paper sack, trembling, to guys named “Lefty” and “Knuckles” and “the Shiv.”

Redbeard: But enough of me caterwaulin’ about a beautiful distant past submerged in the impenetrable haze of multi-decade alcoholism to torment meself—my question is, if you’re an AFC team, why even bother? Tom Brady’s terrible vengeance against the NFL, and then all mankind, will first lay waste to the entire AFC. The Texans and Chiefs, my choices to win their divisions that sadly each have 3-5 records, will be naught but collateral damage in the merciless maw of Brady’s hyper-focused rage. As I must needs find some silver lining in the black miasma in which I usually “pilot” me vessel, the Bengals, who I chose to win the AFC North, is still undefeated. Like drunken Odysseus, I also keep being drawn to the siren girth of Rex Ryan, whose managerial style resembles me own with similar results: Five out of nine boarding parties yield untold riches, while the remaining four end in mutiny and a self-destruct sequence.

Des: Drunky McDumbAss. What’s happening in tailgate land?

Drunky: As the first person to be banned from Uber for life in perpetuity throughout the universe, I make the party wherever I am—which sounds like a great slogan for some kind of beer, but it really means that I just barge my loud stench into the first neighborhood party or open house I find as I shamble down the street of whatever neighborhood I was dumped into by the local Chamber of Commerce.

Des: Uh, huh. Do you actually bring anything to a party, other than some previously unknown insect vector, and a stark reminder that not every drunk is Charles Bukowski?

Drunky:  Well, you know how Bud Light has cans with Chicago Bears stuff on it? I bought 53 cans and wrote the names of all 53 Bears players on those cans, and then I would drink a beer whenever that player was on the field. Then at the end of the first quarter, when all the cans are empty, I would re-enact every play with the beer cans. Then when the game’s over, I would make beer can angels on the floor.

Des: That’s an image that’s going to take a while to fade from my mind’s eye. Actually, I think the afterimage is going to be worse. Speaking of Norman Rockwell on black velvet, here’s Ellie Mae McGillicutty.

Ellie Mae: Alannah Myles’s “Black Velvet” is my personal anthem and I would thank you very much for not mocking it.

Des: Sally McChesty. Would’st thou conclude this episode?

Sally: What are you doing, Des, getting ready to introduce some new Renaissance Faire character? To piggyback on the success of “Galavant?” Sit back and watch, sports fans, as the Bears face off in a game that will have five minutes of football and three hours of pointless speculation about when the Rams will move back to Los Angeles.