On my way back from Phoenix, I got dropped off at Busch Stadium in the middle of a snow storm and thought I'd share this pic I took with the iPhone4:


That's all for now... the snow doesn't really suck until you have to drive in it in the morning.

Vince Coleman can't believe it took him this long to watch The Expendables!
As you probably know, Vince Coleman is a BIG fan of explosions. Explosions have worked out much better for Sylvester Stallone's career then they did Vince Coleman's.

The Expendables is a unique film, both a first-rate action film and a homage to the genre itself. Stallone, the writer, director, and star of the film assembles an all-star cast of action-hero veterans including Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Gary Daniels, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as a few of his contemporary peers such as Jason Statham, Terry Crews, and Steve Austin.

The story follows Stallone's crew of good-guy-mercenaries as they take down a brutal Latin-American dictator and his ruthless ex-CIA backer. The fight scenes are the meat and potatoes of the film and include some of the better knife skirmishes Hollywood has ever produced. The dialogue is simple and direct - just as an action film should be. Statham gets a nod as heir-apparent to the action hero throne. By Vince Coleman's count, he had the most individual kills.

The Expendables has a little bit to offer all action-adventure fans. As mentioned before, the knife play is sublime. We're treated to disciplined tactical engagement, brilliant customized weapons, martial arts, wrestling, combat improvisation, and good old-fashioned street fighting. Heck, you even get to hear Jet-Li talk funny!

If you like excitement and have seen all the big-ticket action flicks, do yourself a solid and rent this movie.  I haven't had this much fun since Ricky Henderson and me spent that weekend in Atlantic City with Charlie Sheen.  

I gave it 4 out of 4 Stolen Bases!

The Winter Warm-Up. 

It's like the Fucking Catalina Wine Mixer to some Cardinal fans. And luckily I haven't been since the year they introduced Tino Martinez and So Taguchi. I assumed it'd be all downhill from there, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. I enjoy saving my money, what can I say?

So by following from my computer screen, I've been able to notice that the million dollar athletes dress just as douchey as the $27K/year guys who hit on Trumbsy and the ML every Saturday night. The main difference is that Cardinal players can pay off a new Escalade (not to mention the Ameren bill) within their first paycheck of the year.

Don't get me wrong. A good percentage of the Cardinals dress nice, or at least keep it simple - so not to look like assclowns ten years from now when people go back and look at the pics. But we do have a good amount of "Brah" sightings over the past four years. You'll notice that 2008 (possibly the height of the Ed Hardy/striped shirt craze?) was a banner year for Cardinal douchiness.

Take a gander at what we collected and be sure to vote for the douchiest shirt below!

Joel Pineiro 2008

Troy Glaus 2008

Anthony Reyes 2008 (Qualifies via Hairdo)

Scott Spiezio 2008

Albert Pujols 2008

Rick Ankiel 2008

Jason LaRue 2008 (Okay, not really douchey, but I felt the need to include this)

Mark Mulder 2008

Brendan Ryan 2008

Rick Ankiel 2009 **Repeat Offender

Ryan Ludwick 2009

Brendan Ryan 2010 **Repeat Offender

Trever Miller 2010 (Sorry for the tiny pic)

Kyle Lohse 2011

John Mozeliak 2011

Matt Holliday 2011

It's January 17th.

Position players for the Cardinals report to Jupiter no later than February 18th.

That's 31 days. 1 month. To get the most important contract any St. Louis athlete has ever signed negotiated and agreed upon. Otherwise, as predicted by the CD nearly a year ago, Albert Pujols will test free agency. After this bit of news stirred the Cardinals 'Winter Warm-Up' to a full-on heat wave of media attention, El Hombre spent the better part of Sunday afternoon no commenting the crap out of every single question.

Hell, we even got a premature exit video already.

And as we've spent the entire off-season wondering if or when something would get done, the resounding answer this weekend seemed to be no and maybe.

No. The Cardinals have not been deep into extensive negotiations with Pujols. They've had talks, but nothing too urgent according to Pujols' camp. Maybe. As is they might get something done and if they don't, then Pujols is fine with becoming a free agent. Your move Cardinals, Pujols is going to go about his business as usual this next month getting ready for the season. If the team steps up, then they step up. If not, then whatever. He's not going to starve in 2011.

So basically we've got ourselves a deadline, friends. A real, live, dirty deadline where both sides know what's at stake: EVERYTHING.

Now's not the time to get into what the guys worth and what the Cardinals are willing to pay. We'll save that for another day. But needless to say that if the Cardinals aren't on the warpath trying to figure out creative ways to get Pujols the compensation that he deserves then we can pretty much anoint 2011 as the farewell tour.

Yes. The FAREWELL tour.

Albert Pujols is going to say all the right things. How he wants to be a Cardinal for life. How it's not about the money. How's he's thankful for everything the Cardinals have done for him. But it's posturing and fluff... Pujols hits free agency- he's GONE. The Cardinals will not be able to offer him the opportunities that an LA, Chicago or NY team can. Pujols may be the best character guy the Cardinals have ever had for all we know. But no one that loves the guy will let him walk away from an extra 50-100 million dollars.

So the Cardinals have 31 days.

31 days to get that dude to sign that line that keeps him a Cardinal for life.

Or not, and let him go.

The clock ticks...

I swear, I tried to think of something baseball related to write about today but the hot stove has chilled considerably. In fact, I can't really remember a baseball off-season that's had just massive lulls in ANYTHING happening.

I was hopeful that the new year would bring some urgency to the Pujols talks. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Brad Penny signed a one year deal and got pissed when somebody on Twitter called him out for his season ending grand slam. But if he isn't on the beach with his girlfriend, Brad Penny just isn't all that interesting.

Hell, there has been nary a mention on Man-Ram and we're 5 weeks out from pitchers and catchers reporting. So in lieu of anything baseball, a periodic update from the Bachelor... Week 2.

Womack takes a girl to the woods... and has a mini carnival set up. He takes another girl to Rodeo Drive followed by dinner at the Hollywood Bowl capped off with a private concert from Matt Sebek- errr- Train. Then 15 girls go on the other date where Jillian Michaels Jr makes it known that Mr. Womack is hers until further notice. The thin blond with the even thinner eyebrows (note to women- enough is enough, leave some brow) ends up finding her human catnip in the bosoms of some dark haired beer chugger. They both leave the house sans rose along with Keltie, who decides that she's given up on dating, thus assuring she's the next Bachelorette.

Next week? Fun with revealing children!!!

Now, on to the Friday Links...

• And that's how you get fired from Domino's. LINK HERE
• Uh oh. Watson did way better on Jeopardy than we thought. LINK HERE
• Every breath Palin takes? This video is something. LINK HERE
• Philosophy Bro. Takes the hard out of Ayn Rand. LINK HERE
• A tribute to hidden passage ways and secret rooms. LINK HERE
• The 20 best drunk animals of all time. LINK HERE

Finally, a link that Fresh (WC) found on Biggie Smalls, 2Pac, the LAPD and Suge Knight. It's going to take you :45 minutes to get through the whole thing, but we really wouldn't recommend this link unless it paid off. AMAZING journalism here kids. LINK HERE

That's it for the week. Have a weekend. See you back here and maybe we'll talk baseball next week.

Probably not.

The BCS. 

They had their “championship” on Monday night and depending on who you listen to, the ratings were either off 11% from 2010’s game or the biggest program to ever be seen on cable.

Both statements are true, though. 16M households in the US have TV’s, but no ability to access ESPN. Thus, those stalwarts that only have local affiliates through over-the-air stations couldn’t access the football game if they wanted to.

Problem is, and please forgive the political incorrectness, those 16M people? They don’t matter. Not really in the least. Because if you’re not going to spend money to get something other than a TV set then you’re not going to buy an iPhone or a ’11 Camry or a money market account from Fidelity.

And yes, electronics, automotive and financial are three of the biggest verticals in marketing.

So the spinsters that are calling it a boon for ESPN are probably more right. More people WITH the money watched the BCS Championship game than any other show that cable has ever produced. The total number may have been off, but the people that watched the game who actually buy the things shilled? They were probably up.

Meaning that the BCS isn’t feeling any pain this week. Meaning that we’re stuck with this shit system of crowning a ‘champion’ for more of the foreseeable future.

Ugh.

I love football. Unlike, say hockey, where I don’t really care to watch unless the Blues are playing. And I’ve mentioned on this before that I think that CFB could be bigger than the NFL with a playoff structure. Really, think about it. A tournament of schools with massive and loyal fanbases getting after it for the national championship? In 2010-11 we could have had a top 10 Alabama team on the road in Auburn… in a PLAYOFF? Or a TCU getting a home game against a red-hot Big 10 team? I mean these are the things that are ripe with hype-ability.

Sadly, we don’t get this opportunity every year. We get up to 5 weeks off between games and unsatisfying conclusions (could TCU really knock of Auburn?).  But the problem is that because there are a ton of guys like me who hate the BCS, but will watch the Sugar Bowl or Fiesta Bowl because it’s January and really what the hell else is on a Tuesday night AND I have disposable income?

No playoff.

God bless Mark Cuban for trying to make something happen this year with the whole deal. (Conversely, why did Obama have to break his one campaign promise I cared about.) But the reality of the situation is that the BCS Championship game delivered to the marketers that pay the freight the stats that those guys wanted.

Meaning that any momentum to kill this unseemly beast called the BCS is tabled for another year.

The Auburn Tigers won on Monday night. But Oregon wasn’t the only loser.

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You probably saw the earth-shattering trade last week where the Cubs acquired Matt Garza for a good majority of their farm system. And we could discuss how the deal takes them from a 75 win team to a 78 win team, but that's too much "analysis" and "thinking" for us. We'll just stick to shit-talking.

We did notice a couple stories about how the Chicago papers failed to even post the correct picture of Matt Garza in their papers:

Oops, that's actually former Tampa RP Joaquin Benoit. He kind of looks relatively similar to Garza, but it's not like they're Ozzie and Jose Canseco, so I have no clue how they got confused.

We decided to dig into the archives and see if any local news outlets have made this same mistake over the years. It turns out they have. You'd expect shitty Google Image Searching from a Jay Mariotti-slurping, dog-just-died depressed baseball town like Chicago - but not St. Louis! We know the difference between Felipe Lopez and Abraham Nunez (guys, pretend like we do).

This first one was from just about a month ago. I can't believe this totally slipped by us bloggers, let alone the Post-Dispatch:


Now that's obviously Derek Bell, come on people!  Seriously, how terrible is that? When was the last time Houston wore those jerseys? And isn't that Luis Gonzalez, minus the 57 HR-power muscle mass?

Next we have the cover from early 2002, right after So Taguchi signed with the Cards:


Kobayashi?!  Why would they think that was So Taguchi?  Was he known for eating hot dogs in the field during ballgames?  Who was manning the paper that day?  That's 0% effort to get anything right.  ZERO.

And finally, we go back 30 years to one of the key trades that made Whiteyball a success.  The infamous Willie McGee for Bob Sykes deal. Here's how it was reported the next day:


Okay, were people furious about dealing away Bob Sykes back then?  Also, it looks like they used a Getty Images photo and didn't actually purchase it. 

Wait...that's Grandmaster Flash on the turntables, isn't it?  Are you shitting me Post-Dispatch?  How would that happen?  Why would that happen? 

Even if you're scrambling to find a photo of Willie McGee (and I'd imagine it was hard as fuck back then), why not put in a pic of Bob Sykes?  I have no clue what Sykes looked like, but seeing how this is 1981 - let me guess: probably chubby, scary face, beard, wild hair, 50/50 shot of wearing big prescription glasses, tight pants.

Oh what do you know - other than the glasses, I'm pretty much dead on.

So even though the PD makes their share of mistakes, the lesson here is to forget what you saw today, and continue to laugh at the fact that anyone in Chicago with a goatee and a baseball glove could legitimately pass for Matt Garza right now.

The Bachelor: POINT by athooks

The most refreshing shower?

Love.

And nothing pours love all over your body (and soul) like the hit ABC show The Bachelor (Monday’s 8c). It’s also probably the last, true bastion for romance left in primetime TV.

As a culture, we’re moving more MMA than PDA. More NFL than XOXO- which is what it is. We’re violent animals pre-disposed to become mini Mike Vicks by 2025. But for the few of us out there that tell cynicism and bodily harm to take a hike 120 minutes a week… we enjoy watching young, beautiful people find that ‘special someone’.

Obviously it’s a competitive environment where sometimes people act in a manner that is a tad unbecoming for he or she. But really, when you think about it, that’s the way you’d be too if you were competing for the most important thing- LOVE.

Now maybe you didn’t know this, but beautiful people need affection too. It might seem like they don’t, but I promise you it’s true. And since we’re not privy to the machinations of these rare creatures all the time, perhaps their mating rituals seem awry to us plebs. But it’s the nature of the beast. People are smelling the goaline (ring!) and are plowing ahead to crack plane.

Reward? Love.

So maybe you haven’t tuned in yet to see the fabled redemption of one Bradly Womack. And maybe you’re fine with that. Have fun chewing the raw meat off the bone tonight you beast. Because the rest of us that know that love is the killer app are going to be dreaming…

Dreaming on the wings of hope.

The Bachelor: COUNTERPOINT by Fresh (WC)

The Bachelor (and The Bachelorette for that matter,) can be easily summed up in 2 words: relationship porn. More accurately, relationship porn for the simple minded; this show is pure, unadulterated dreck. Combining two of America’s most embarrassing past times, voyeurism and celebrity-worship, The Bachelor pits a good looking schmuck with a harem of attractive women with a flair for the dramatic and a penchant for chasing celebrity at the expense of their family’s dignity.  The audience is asked to spend the next few months deciding which of these awful people should be engaged in a relationship that is sure to end within 12 months.

Are your real-life relationships really that empty? Is your life so devoid of meaningful interaction that you’re resorted to poorly scripted reality-television?  There are millions of things one could be doing instead of watching this moronathon.  I’ve taken the liberty of compiling a list of suggestions.

1. Get a life of your own.You’re not meeting anyone on your couch!
2. Volunteer. Pretend there are people in this world other than you.
3. Read a book.
4. Read a newspaper.
5. Blog about the St. Louis Cardinals.
6. Correspond with the REAL people in your life. Your mom misses you, probably.
7. Exercise. You’re abs aren’t getting any more washboardy on their own.
8. Trim your nails. Grooming is important!
9. Learn to cook. Cook something if you know how.
10. Repeatedly stab yourself in the eye with a rusty Phillips-head screwdriver.

In conclusion, please don’t waste your time watching stupid people who happen to be marginally good looking put on a poorly orchestrated charade of courtship.  If you must watch TV, there are sooooo many other options with much more to offer you intellectually, emotionally, and aesthetically. Don’t watch that terrible Fox News either.

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Just when you think things couldn't get any more dork for yours truly, work yesterday decided to give me a work phone. It's an iPhone 4, which is pretty awesome. Only now, instead of just having one iPhone 4 on me at all times and looking hipster chic, I now have 2.

I don't care what you say- it's not cool to have two phones.

So i've decided that I'm just going to throw caution to the wind and get 2 belt clips. One on each hip. And be done with it.

Perhaps people see me from the profile and think I'm just a normal guy with a normal belted phone. Maybe they see my dueling iPhone 4's and get intimidated by me even looking in their general direction. Just could be the next ice/fall on my face in the morning costs me 1000 bucks in replacement phones.

Who knows. Who cares. It's two clips and call it a day. Daddy's got to earn and if he starts a trend while he does it... then sobeit.

In other news, since when were we all OK with Miami of OH and Middle Tennessee State playing a game on January 6th? 5 days after the Rose Bowl? We're going to follow up a pretty good Sugar Bowl with the GoDaddy.com bowl? I mean if these guys want to go to their GoDaddy.com bowl on December 12th when my bowl confidence picks are still respectable, then go for it men. But January 6th? Just how far is the BCS going to push back the championship game?

Speaking of gambling... the NFL Pick 'Em league has finished for 2010 and we have a winner. 50 dollars of COLD. HARD. CASH.


And after all that macho talk from @DBear he let a girl beat him.

Ouch.

I kid, I kid. In fact, most of the women that I know that follow the NFL actually are much more sophisticated about their fandom than the men. Until they start talking about how in love they are with Mike Vick. That gets old. I mean, I get it. Dude's attractive. Dude's got money... but it's like you forget about what he did to those poor dogs.

Now, on to the links...

The end of S7even- done with puppets. LINK HERE
Cool photos from the early 1900's. LINK HERE
You need motivation for that New Year's resolution? LINK HERE
The 100 greatest movie insults of all time. LINK HERE (NSFW- Language)
Celebrity screen tests for roles people became famous for. LINK HERE
Want to hear a secret? LINK HERE
Double. Hoverhand. LINK HERE

CD friend of the site has daily fortune site. Check it out... LINK HERE

Ok. That's it for a long, long week. Have a big weekend. And if you go out remember that these are the true warriors of the weekend. Not the ones that just hopped on a bandwagon for Jan 1. They get rotten every weekend. And don't need a calendar to tell them different. Let's salute them.

Talking about a websites back end is the dork equivalent to talking about your kids. Or your fantasy team.

No one cares.

But for lack of anything redeeming at all to mention today, we are able to confirm that the Cards Diaspora migration to the new form is now pretty much complete. It's not a huge deal in terms of look- some of the sidebars are punched up and it's a little bit more modern. But hopefully you'll see improvement in page load times and commenting.

If not?

Well you're not footing the bill for this crap, so quit yer bitching and come over here. Free candy!


On to other things that aren't as awesome as that van:

1) Virginia Tech is like The Human Centipede- not something you should be paying attention to, and when you do, your face is going to be full of shit.

2) Easy on Brad Womack ladies. Is it really all that bad to dump two girls on TV then pick one and break up less than a year later... LIKE EVERY OTHER BACHELOR HAS?! Literally. They've never had a bachelor find a wife that lasted. (And only one Bachelorette, not counting the most recent.) So for Womack to know these girls weren't the one, go to therapy to work on his issues and then come back and eat crow from 30 women? He's not Mike Vick. He simply didn't force a marriage. What am I missing here?

3) Dude. It's January 5th and we've heard NOTHING on the Pujols front. Pitchers and catchers report in 40 days. Pujols has been pretty clear it's this off-season or he's a free agent. Either these negotiations are the best kept sporting secret in decades (10% chance) or the Cardinals are playing with a gas fire getting kerosene squirted all over it (90% chance).

4) Here's a piece on the Rams I wrote Sunday night. LINK HERE

No. I'm still not over it. The play-calling was just a complete abortion. The offense was so, so poor. And let's not sugarcoat it- Bradford will be ROY, Jackson is a pro-bowler, Smith and Saffold are premium draft picks, Brown was a premiere free agent signing.... these guys aren't the scrappy can do bunch that overachieved. They should have been better and they weren't. In fact, they were down right pathetic. Worse yet, I don't really see much rage.

The playoffs aren't to be taken lightly. Say Jim Harbaugh comes into San Francisco next year and gets them in shape? What if a free agent like McNabb goes to AZ and rejuvenates the Cardinals? Could a solid draft really set up Seattle for a nice run? The NFC West was bad in 2010. But it might be good in 2011. So to just piss away a legitimate chance at the playoffs isn't a nice story- it's tragic.