Bears vs. Eagles: 9-19-2016

Des: Welcome to another edition of the Chicago Bears football pre-game show. The Bears face off against the Philadelphia Eagles, another underperforming team with many, many problems. Will the Bears take this opportunity to slowly build their way to a 6-10 season? Or will Jay Cutler force the Bears to trade every draft pick until 2084 for the slim chance of getting Jimmy Garoppolo?

To answer these and similar questions is our panel of experts: Concord Wainwright Peabody, Captain Silas Charles “Robotron” Redbeard, Modre, the trans-Western Guru, the Prissy Minion, Doctor Sally McChesty, Ellie Mae McGillicutty, Drunky McDumbAss, and the extremely convenient scapegoat for everything bad that has happened to the Bears, past, present, and future, Marc Trestman.

Redbeard: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRH, mateys! If this be the second week of the Bears season, then it be time for Captain Redbeard’s Treasure Map to the Super Bowl! After slaying famed Sumerian aqua deity Tiamat, and making her ribs the vault of heaven and earth, I stole the Tablet of Destinies, of which it is said that he who holds the tablet, rules the universe. Sure, I could use the tablet to wield the power of the gods, but I choose to merely use it to predict the winners of divisional titles in the NFL.

Sally: Captain, that’s no Tablet of Destinies. That’s not even some terrible Android tablet that they sold at a K-Mart that went out of business six months ago. (But some misguided hipsters keep showing up there, thinking it’s some sort of kitschy retro dance club.) That’s just some random wood block that has a sketch of what appears to be Winnie the Pooh.

Redbeard: It brings me comfort. But, uh… ARRRRHHHHHHHH! Here be the Treasure Map to the Super Bowl: In the AFC, I foresee the Patriots, Steelers, Colts, and Chiefs grinding their opponents to dust beneath their cleated foot, with the Jets and Bengals emerging as the wild cards. As for the NFC, it could only be the Eagles, Packers, Falcons, and Seahawks who will lay waste to their divisional rivals, while the Panthers and Cardinals will do their best to catch up with wild card placements. How will this all end, you ask? With Donald Trump helming the Super Bowl halftime show featuring the Green Bay Packers as they defeat the New England in a game watched by no one.

Sally: A dystopian vision of things to come, as always, Captain. I think this is the 90th year you have chosen the New England Patriots to go to the Super Bowl. Do you have some sort of man-crush on the Patriots?

Redbeard: How dare ye?!? Nay, I just have a special affinity for the pitiless managerial style of Bill Belichick. Ye know he has some terrible hatred against all mankind that will never be quenched no matter how many Super Bowl rings he may collect.

Sally: Last year’s predictions weren’t too bad, Captain. Six of your twelve picks did make it to the playoffs. You did best with the AFC: Four out of six saw post-season action, but I would be deeply worried if I were one of your NFC picks. Last year, three of your four choices to win divisional championships ended their seasons with a 7-9 record.

Redbeard: Ye should be worried if you’re any NFC team that’s not named “Packers” or “Panthers.”

Sally: Coach Trestman, what lessons can be drawn from your disastrous tenure as the coach of the Chicago Bears?

Trestman: None that any coaching staff wishes to learn, mes petits chous! If we have learned anything from les quantum physiques, it is that you repeat your failures until they become successes. My keys to defeat could be John Fox’s soufflé of victory: hollow out the defense, play an excessively conservative offense, and randomly rearrange your players’ lockers for team-building purposes. The locker room reshuffling was my greatest achievement. And, non, do not succumb to the urge to make a “deck chairs on the Titanic” reference.

Sally: What accent is that? Pepe LePew? Concord Peabody. Put things in a statistical context.

Concord: The only “statistical context” I’m thinking about is how much gambling debt I’ll be in if Donald Trump wins the election. How could Clinton go from having a 90% chance of winning to 57%? Curse you, Nate Silver!

Ellie: Howdy, there, pig-nut lovers! I’m just letting the old pickup truck cool down, doing some heat transfer from the hood to the still that’s boiling up some good old fashioned mash potato-corn-Monsanto whiskey blindness fuel we’re gonna test out on the water supply of a Hillary Clinton political rally.

Sally: So… what are your thoughts about today’s Bears/Eagles game?

Ellie: When Trump is president, there will be no SAP button on the squawk box during the football game.

Modre: One must not forget that Tiamat gave birth to the eleven monsters of Babylonian legend: Venomous Snake, Great Dragon, Exalted Serpent, Furious Snake, the Hairy One, Big Weather Beast, Mad Lion, Scorpion Man, Violent Storms, Fish-Man, and Bull Man… or as I will someday refer to them: the greatest Japanese anime ever!

Sally: Let’s turn now to our own Scorpion-Bowl Man: Drunky McDumbass.

Drunky: Whoa.

Sally: Sit back and watch, sports fans, as the Bears face off in a Monday Night Football game that will determine whether the Eagles win the NFC East division with a 7-9 record or a 6-10 record.

Bears vs. Packers: 9-13-2015

Des: Welcome to another edition of the Chicago Bears football pre-game show. The new coaching staff of the Bears face a true baptism of fire against their legendary arch-nemesis the Green Bay Packers. Will Chicago’s return to its defensive roots bear fruit? Or will “Coach Career Killer” Cutler rack up record-breaking passing statistics that somehow translate into an 0-16 season and a new position as third string quarterback of the Los Angeles Whatever?

To answer these and similar questions is our panel of experts: Concord Wainwright Peabody, Captain Silas Charles “Murder Minnow” Red-beard, Modre, the trans-Western guru, the Prissy Minion, Doctor Sally McChesty, Ellie Mae McGillicutty, and the vertiginous insights of Drunky McDumbAss.

Redbeard: ARRRH, mateys! Much as the land-lubbing Babylonian deity Marduk slew aqua-lord Tiamat in a battle that symbolized Babylonian mastery over irrigation, so shall the Bears eventually dominate the NFC North in an imperceptibly slow building process that one day results in the Packers waking up to find themselves under the cleated foot of a Chicago defender… which will result in a 10 yard penalty for the Bears and an automatic first down for the Packers. But I digress.

The Bears will go 7-9 this year, defeating the Raiders, Buccaneers, Rams, 49ers, plus the Vikings twice, and also whatever the Washington team is shamed into calling themselves. Unfortunately, the Bears will struggle mightily against the Cardinals, Seahawks, Chiefs, Lions, Chargers, Broncos, and 49ers. The Bears will defeat the Packers today, but Green Bay will unleash a terrible vengeance on Thanksgiving!

Des: Captain, I noticed that the Bears badly fell short of your expectations last year. You foresaw an 11-5 season, but the Bears walked away with a 5-11 record.

Redbeard: Aye. I hope to pull off a similar mirror effect with me predictions this year, but I couldn’t go all in like USA Today and predict a 3-13 season. No one should lose to the Vikings this year!

Des: Concord Peabody. What are your thoughts?

Concord: Des, I’ve constructed a scatter gram of Bears scores when they play their first Packers game under a new coach. It was a straightforward regular bar graph until Drunky McDumbass spilled a pitcher of Dos Equis beer on my laptop.

Drunky: I’m the world’s most interesting… whoa, I just knocked over my carefully constructed beer-a-mid that I built during my one semester of college in 1986…I’ll get back to you later, troops. End transmission.

Des: Modre. It’s your turn to… render the English language irrelevant.

Modre: While your next President Donald Cornelius Trump fancies himself a true original American, he is walking a path already trod by “he who wanders with random naked posturings like the legendary silver mandrake”

Des: Which means what, exactly?

Modre: Bears win 20-17 in a nail biter.

Des: The bottle is pointing at you, Prissy.

Prissy: Don’t toy with my emotions, Des. Your Bears blog posts possess a certain “Beauty Behind the Madness”, but unlike the deliberately misspelled “The Weeknd” album of the same title, your work is not a direct rip-off of Michael Jackson.

Des: Only if you don’t read them too closely, Prissy. Ellie Mae McGillicutty?

Ellie Mae: I just finished reading a fascinating alt history book about what would happen if the Civil War were fought with zombies. And I know what you’re thinking, Des, you horribly racist, Confedero-phobic jerk, “The South won because we’ve got no brains!” Actually, we lost because our high cholesterol made us irresistible. From the chitlins. And the corn bread. And the cornpone. And the craw-daddy crawfish taco MacNuggets. And also the slave revolts.

Des: “Confedero-phobe.” Nice one.

Des: Sally McChesty: Conclude this with a five sentence paragraph summarizing the three major points with a dramatic, memorable statement at the end.

Sally: What is this, Des, a sixth grade language arts class? Sure, why not, I’ll give you that which you should never request: In conclusion, Captain Redbeard’s Musical Bears Blog of Cut and Pastery delivers the following: First, Captain Redbeard references a dead religion to make a football prediction that’s doomed to failure. Second, Concord Peabody makes an obscure math reference that is not salvaged by the alcoholic stumblings of Drunky McDumbAss. Additionally, Modre tries to shock us with something all of us have pretty much resigned ourselves to. Thirdly, Prissy Minion tries too hard to praise Des by bashing pop culture. Finally, Ellie Mae dips into the greasy, familiar well of smug, northern, pseudo-cosmopolitan superiority. Overall, this is the worst application of what some, without any trace of self-irony, call “The Common Core of Comedy.” Did you like my excessive overuse of transition words? Because I died inside with each utterance!

Des: Mmm, pastries!

Sally: No! You will not save yourself with a Simpsons reference. Everyone who watches that show now is older than all the major characters, including Grandpa Simpson and especially Monty Burns!

Des: And like Saturday Night Live before me, this blog will abruptly stop with cued tepid applause in the background.

Bears vs. Lions: 9-29-2013

BEARS VS. LIONS: 9-29-13


Des: Welcome to another edition of the Chicago Bears football pre-game show. The Bears face off against the team that may surprisingly prove to be their greatest challenge so far: the resurgent Detroit Lions. Will the Bears repeat last week’s winning formula of an unexpectedly strong offensive line, competent passing, and a turnover-factory defense? Or will the Lions’ winning streak continue to justify closing every public school in Detroit to finance their sports teams?

To answer these and similar questions is our panel of experts: Concord Wainwright Peabody, Captain Silas Charles “Kid Charlemagne” Red-beard, Modre- the trans-Western guru, the Prissy Minion, and Doctor Sally “Muffin” McChesty.

SR: ARRRH, mateys! By using what today’s kids call “Molly”, which I presume can only be shorthand for injections of “molluscum contagiosum” or “water warts”, to shatter the confines of space-time and linear thought to pierce the astral plane, I successfully stole the Tablets of Destiny from ancient Babylonian deity Marduk to avenge the death of my favored sea goddess Tiamat. But of far greater importance is that they revealed to me the Chum Bucket of the NFL: i.e. the team that will fail to win a single game this season: At this moment, there be 5 teams that share the dishonor of being winless so far: the Steelers, Jaguars, Giants, Redskins, Vikings, and Buccaneers. Which one be the most doomed to ignominious failure? ‘Tis the Washington Redskins, yet another victim of the Curse of Redbeard—and, no, this does not refer to the disfiguring skin condition of the same name—nay, this be the black mark that I lay upon the team that offends me in some deep seeded and deep seated way. The Curse of Redbeard is so profoundly afflicting that it can ne’er be reversed, not e’en by yours truly. Ask the Chicago Cubs! They will, of course, deny it with all the strength their broken souls will allow, for to even speak of the Curse of Redbeard is to prolong it for uncounted millennia. Returning to the Redskins, ye might think that I cursed them because they are the most racist thing associated with the NFL besides Modre...

Modre: Gaijin!

SR: ...but ye’d be sadly mistaken! Nay, my unyielding anger towards the Redskins derives solely from the actions of the team’s owner Dan Snyder, who beat me to the punch of attaining eternal youth by purchasing the Dick Clark Television Production Company. Not only does he gain the secret of eternal youth, but he also gains control of time itself, for through his purchase of the DCTPC, he also owns Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years’ Eve. By possessing this gem, he controls the Baby New Year, a prize that has eluded many other super-villians, including the legendary vulture Eon. Also, somewhat ironically, he made his billions by being the first to telemarket immigrants to the U.S.

Des: I shudder at the thought of those poor souls who are playing the “Captain Redbeard’s Unrelated References Drinking Game.” Concord Peabody. What are your thoughts?

CWP: Well, I was shocked that I actually underestimated the Bears’ score last week when I predicted the Bears would beat the Steelers: 38-10. (They won 40-23). I won’t repeat that mistake this week: Bears win 460 to 273.

Des: Wait... Concord, did you come up with those scores by using the absolute values of the absolute zeroes from the Rankine and Kelvin scales, as converted to the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales, respectively?

CWP: Uh... yeah, Des. Well done.

Des: Thank you, Concord. So, Doctor McChesty: Do you have yet another bring down preach-fest about the evils of the NFL and of sports media in general?

SMC: No, Des. To be fair, the NFL hasn’t built a new soccer stadium in the Amazon rain forest that will later be converted into a giant prison after the World Cup has been played or built another World Cup stadium in Qatar using Nepalese migrant slave labor. Yet.

Des: Now that we have once again abandoned the pretense of talking about the Bears at all, why don’t you finish things off, Prissy Minion?

PM: Des, your Bears posts have a captivating retro-future aesthetic that makes this website the most dazzling blog endeavor of 2013!

Des: Prissy, I don’t know how to respond to that, except to completely ignore it. Sit back and watch as the Bears face off in a game that will be much less painful than watching another five teams get into the playoffs by beating the Cubs!