Shut The Front Door! finished a depressing 3rd for the second straight time, while Get The Fork Out! took home $80 for its second consecutive 1st place finish.
When they needed a Ray Bourque, STFD! sent a Bobby Orr. When they needed a Wilt Chamberlain, they sent a Bill Russell. When they needed a Brad Pitt movie, they sent the wrong Brad Pitt movie. When they needed an Eminem, they sent a Dr. Dre. And perhaps most troubling, when they needed a topless soccer player, they sent a fully-clothed Mia Hamm.
The one bright spot for STFD! this week was the final round where Addison single-handedly dominated the Disney animated film category and enabled STFD! to eek by The Grandmothers Gone Wild.
And yes… there IS a team called The Grandmothers Gone Wild now. They may sip Metamucil instead of tequila, but that only results in them regularly dropping knowledge down on other teams like a Geritol-fortified hammer!
Many theories circulate as to why STFD! finds itself underperforming of late. Is playing constantly shorthanded taking a toll? Are they getting dumber? Are they trying to get invited to the White House by acting “stupidly?” Is their success positively correlated with that of the New England Patriots or negatively correlated with that of the NY Jets?
Asked for his insight, Mike from Get The Fork Out! offered, “I don’t know if it’s early onset of Alzheimers or late-stage siphilis, but whatever disease STFD! has, those guys are taking a whole cocktail of suck pills these days.”
My mother and father currently have barely 50% of their football picks correct so far this NFL season. That’s not impressive. My grandmother is under .500 for her picks. That’s even worse!
What these amateurs need is a viable, proven system for handicapping teams, but instead they rely on senseless data like “which team has the better punter,” or “which team plays in a dome,” or “which team’s mascot is more powerful.”
I wouldn’t care, but since they’re foolishly gambling with MY future college funds, I need to get these people back on track pronto. Towards that end, I offer my full-proof method for determining NFL winners.
All you need is a list of match-ups and a supply of cereal. Raise several pieces of cereal above your head, close your eyes, and drop the cereal on the list of teams. Where the cereal ends up accurately determines the victorious team, since cereal naturally gravitates toward winners, milk, and dog mouths. As you can see from the example pictured, the Patriots are looking like a lock to beat the Jets and to cover the spread.
Note: don’t conduct your experiment near milk or dog mouths or you may end up with spurious data!
I happen to favor stale Cheerios for my picks, but you can also use Capn Crunch. I do not suggest using oatmeal, simply because it tends to splatter, to obscure the results and to anger the owners of the carpet.
Give my system a try. I think you’ll like the results.
As you can see from the official smackdown standings, week #1 failed to separate brains from luck in the gridiron picking arena. Both Emily and Andy finished the week at (8w – 8l), while Nancy finished at (7w – 9l), so no clear trend has emerged.
Interesting notes from week #1:
There were 15 possible underdog/favorite picks (underdogs GET points while favorites GIVE points). The Carolina Panthers versus Philadelphia Eagles game was straight up (no points either way) in our pool.
For these possible 15 favorite/underdog matchups:
Emily took ALL 15 possible favorites!
Nancy took 7 favorites and 8 dogs.
Andy took 9 favorites and 6 dogs.
For the week, favorites went (7w – 9l) with Philly winning the straight up matchup, so the underdogs won week #1.
Nancy took the most dogs and should have had an advantage from doing so, but alas, she chose the wrong puppies at times which left her one game off the pace.
STFD! was incomplete and outplayed this week at Tin Whistle Trivia. We offer no excuses; we do offer an explanation.
Since the Silbergleit Summer Carnival pulled up its tent pegs and hoofed it out of town, we expected fewer/weaker competitors and we handicapped our varsity team accordingly. Our magnanimous, parity-seeking actions (we left both Abigail and Emily off the roster!) were horribly misplaced, as five fully-staffed rival teams ponied up and came to play harder than megashark and giant octopus combined.
We did not know who won the first ever Monday Night Football game, we did not know all of the monthly birthstones, we were not familiar with Jay-Z’s catalog of crap, we did not know Vince Vaughn’s sundry Hollywood aliases, and there were absolutely no questions concerning the wingspan of fowl.
Feel lucky, punk?
Andy also proved to be, in the words of one observer, “pretty damn useless” during crunch time, since the final round was a puzzle variety akin to the brain-wrenching rebus riddles to be found beneath the evil caps of Lucky Lager. This is an area where Andy has never performed above the .08 percentile, and he once again folded before the challenge like a house of cards assembled by a kindergarten class.
A few Tin Whistle Trivia final round puzzle examples:
18 H I A R O G
200 D F P G I M
8 S O A S S
Would-be utensil usurpers?
But perhaps more troubling than our third-place finish was the emergence of a new trivia team named Get The Fork Out!, a team clearly parodying the legendary success of Shut The Front Door! with admirably postmodern, mock homage.
This new team (which finished in forkly fourth… heh heh!) will undoubtedly polarize trivia fans, since it makes sense to eitherShut The Front Door!or to Get The Fork Out!, but to do both is unnecessarily redundant.
Next week we will field a complete, well-conditioned, motivated team. We will listen to additional crappy music, we will drink and solve several cases of the Lucky Lager, and we will arrive early to Shut The Front Door! before the fork folks even arrive. We’re curious to see if Get The Fork Out! turn into Lettuce The Fork In! when faced with a blocked entrance.
Philip Greenspun of MIT and Web development fame is working on a draft of an essay on how to reform health care. Sound like a dry topic? It isn’t. Here’s a sample from the rough draft:
… Suppose that you could give up two years of life expectancy in exchange for the following: paid-for housing, paid-for cars, paid-for college, paid-for vacations, paid-for children. Instead of living 78 years, you’d expect to live 76, but you’d never have to work full-time and could probably pack a lot of enjoyment into those 76 years because you wouldn’t be a slave to day-to-day expenses.
Let’s compare the U.S. to Mexico. Mexicans share our continent, our love for soda and corn syrup, and our tendency towards chubbiness (source). We spend approximately $8500 per year per American on health care and live to the age of 78. A Mexican can expect to live to age 76. How much do Mexicans spend on health care? Their per-person GDP is only about $13,000 per year, and they supposedly spend about 6 percent of GDP on health care (source) so $800 per person is a good estimate.
An American will spend $600,000 in order to add two years to the end of his life. Those two years may very well be spent in an intensive care unit or a nursing home and certainly are not likely to be spent on the tennis court or visiting the Venice Biennale.
For that $600,000, an American could have the following:
a house, free and clear of all mortgages (median price for a single family house sold nationwide in May 2009 was $170,000)
a lifetime supply of automobiles, assuming $20,000 per car, a 10-year life per car, and 50 years of driving ($100,000)
50 vacations for a family of four (average cost $1600; total of $80,000)
a college education ($25,000 of tuition for four years at a public university)
two children, reared to the age of 17 ($125,000 per kid, average cost for a basic family (source); note that a pair of Americans could have four children, all of whose costs would be completely paid for out of this $600,000)
Greenspun’s longer draft covers a great deal more and offers many other specific recommendations for improving the current U.S. health care system. Read and comment on the full essay.
They said it when Warren Remedy won her third best-in-show, they said it about the Carringtons when Alexis showed up in a Denver courthouse, they said it when the Patriots lifted their third Lombardi trophy, and now they’re saying it about a formidable group of triviateurs dominating Thursdays at The Tin Whistle. Is Shut The Front Door! now officially a dynasty?
Craig, The Tin Whistle owner, said, “they’re equal parts evil genius, comedic hubris, and New England moxie. It’s not just that they keep taunting and winning, but it’s the myriad of ways they backup their unsportsmanlike conduct with stellar performances. They’ve built early leads and coasted at times, sure, but they’ve also demonstrated an uncanny knack for pulling out late round victories when necessary. I don’t know if they’re a dynasty yet, but my receipts tell me that they eat and drink an average of 137% of their winnings, so I sure as hell hope they keep winning.”
Kenny, team captain for the rival Headers, expressed profound frustration at his team’s inability to overcome STFD!. “I’m profoundly frustrated! We just haven’t found the right mix of team members yet. I really thought that adding two Michigan alumni and a semi-pro golfer would put us over-the-top, but we came up short again. It’s profoundly frustrating! Worse yet, we won’t be able to compete again until Joanie’s (Joanie is Kenny’s wife and The Headers ‘chief wrong answer giver’ according to Kenny) school hits a significant holiday break in the calendar, so these smug bastards will no-doubt be feeling mighty proud of themselves for an extended period of time. I’d like to say something nice about STFD!. I know that’s the right thing to do, but honestly, I really just hope they all get the swine flu, food poisoning, and pink-eye at the same time.”
Big-mouthed dominance STFD! style...
Michael, from Billie Jean, sounded decidedly less bitter and expressed no desire for STFD! to fall prey to a porcine pandemic. “People forget, but Billie Jean won two or three times early on. They lost to us a few times, congratulated us, and then they started routinely and matter-of-factly kicking our ass week-in and week-out. Ha! Who knew!? Now they have this aura of invincibility that gives them a real competitive edge over some of the teams. Even when you have them down a few points, it’s as if you’re just waiting for them to make a move. Are they a dynasty? Yeah… they are, but we’re still going to compete and try to take them down.”
STFD!'s date with Dynasty!
John, STFD! alumnus, offers little hope to would-be usurpers. “It’s funny. When I left the team to open up my novelty shop, Provincetown Enfuego, in California, people started saying that STFD! would come back to the pack. Lol… not likely. I know they stumbled for one week, but those bastards bounced back and I wouldn’t be surprised if they run the table for the rest of the season. They’re focused like wound-up Santa Monica crack fiends at this point.” Pushed for insight into the team’s success, John added, “basically they’re glory whores and would rather place bets on trivial matters than better mankind in any way. They’ll ride this donkey downhill until its hooves crack and then jump on something else that amuses them.”
No one from the present STFD! team would comment on this story unless I bought them drinks (they didn’t look like they needed any more), but they did tell me to remind you to bring your prettiest 20 dollar bill down to see them. Think you have what it takes to shut up Shut The Front Door!? Trivia takes place Thursday nights at The Tin Whistle.
Reuters and the AP contributed to this story. Some quotes may have been paraphrased, corrected for spelling, or invented entirely.
Since a Harvard-educated team member has proven insufficient to topple the juggernaut that was STFD! and is “The Trivia Team to be Named Later,” The Headers are now reaching out to Michigan alumni (just as the Sith reached out to young Anakin Skywalker) to aid their trivial cause.
Oh no! I hope there’s not a question about Michigan football’s record in 2008 (3W+9L = ouch by my math!), or whom they ripped off for their football helmet art work (thanks Coach Fritz!), or how much a cured wolverine pelt is worth in Saskatchewan (half a case of Molson and a carton of Benson & Hedges!).
No matter… at least one dead desert dictator’s spokesman has predicted a Header win this Thursday. Too bad he broke into song; we deduct A LOT of points for that.
Baghdad Bob’s Song of Silbergleit Victory
What hit me?
Who’s the family on the team
That loses to Andy!?
S-I-L B-E-R G-L-E-I-T!
Hey there! Hi there! Header there!
Your losing streak is a bad dream!
But this week brings a win by…
Silbergleit! Silbergleit! Silbergleit!
For once they’ll hold a stranger’s twenty
High! High! High! High!
Come along and sing Bob’s song
And belly to the bar!
S-I-L B-E-R G-L-E-I-T!
