Oh, Jerry. You were the co-creator of what may be the best :30 minute comedy of all-time. Your mysterious absence from anything but stand-up only heightened our expectations of what was coming next. Bee Movie? Ok, everyone deserves a mulligan. Marriage Ref? Hmmm. Larry David’s legacy thanks you, sir…

Brilliant signing this weekend to get Felipe Lopez for 1.2M plus another 1M of easily achieved incentives. I was under the impression he was like 35 (which he might be), but he’s listed @ 29. He’s boys with Albert. He can play every position on the field. And he’s the perfect utility guy that TLR can get into the starting line-up 120 times a year. Barring injury, I think this one might give Johnny Mo his first MLB Executive of the Year award…

The Yanks probably shouldn’t have been in that Gold Medal game yesterday to close out the Vancouver Olympics. But that doesn’t make Sidney Crosby’s face any less punchable. Not related to the game in anyway, but did you know that there is an actual debate in Pittsburgh centering on the thesis that Crosby would be a better captain for the Penguins if he moved out of Mario Lemieux’s house. No, seriously…

Blake Hawksworth, the Cardinals reliever, had a grandpa that was pretty much responsible (his words) for bringing the Olympics to Vancouver. He details the process in his blog over at the Globe-Democrat…

Movie Snot: The Informant!  A movie about price fixing on ag commodities in international markets. There are 0 titty shots. And that shouldn’t surprise you. Though about 40 minutes of this, I was thoroughly convinced that any critics that thought this was a good movie were on crack. The back half when things start to get untangled, though, is much better. I am confused as to why the Matt Damon character can come out of jail and immediately get a job as another CEO. He must have been shrewder than he was portrayed. Also, the early 90’s were a rough time for clothes…

I used a $25 gift card at Kohl’s Online for a high-powered nose hair trimmer. I feel like I’m getting too much air now. Very odd sensation…

First Spring Training game is Thursday for the Cardinals. Via Jason Stark (ESPN), yesterday was the last Sunday a baseball game will not be played until November 7…

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but I thought South Korea was a warm weather locale? How in the hell do they have enough athletes to win 14 medals at an Olympics? That’s 3 more than China. Or 13 more than England! I’m pretty sure whatever training camp they have there is not something you or I could survive for more than 3 hours…

If you have 7 minutes to burn, check out the worst sportscast you’ve ever seen. How dude manages to keep his composure the entire time is beyond me. You’d think he’d have to laugh at some point…

Women are not very good at hockey*. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true.

After catching a bit of the USA vs Canada gold medal game yesterday, I came away unimpressed with the quality of the sport I was watching. Generally, in Olympic sports, the female competition is a decent approximation of the men’s. Sometimes it’s even superior. But ice hockey is not one of them.

In fact, if puberty sponsored a sport, this might be it. Awkward for everyone!

InsideSTL: STL CARDINALS- MOST BORING TEAM EVER?

My opinion crystallized later in the evening when I saw a late-night replay of the Missouri High School State Championship on FSN. Either of these two schools from Middle America would beat Canada roughly 200-0 on their worst night. And these are high school kids. In Missouri.

Equality is good. We can all agree on that, right? Good. But it doesn’t need to go tit for tat. Us men can have some things and you women can have other things and it’s all good. So let’s end this ice hockey charade.

* When I hit Google image search for "Women's Ice Hockey Funny", the above was the best result on page 1.

In other Olympic news- Kim Yu-Na is a star. Boner Stabone is dead. And Shani Davis hates you with the passion of a thousand Sean Penn’s.

Now, some links…

• Everything that's wrong with pop culture in two photos. LINK HERE
• Payback for a cheating girlfriend. What would you have done? LINK HERE (HT:FWC)
• Figure this out. You're smarter than the computer. LINK HERE
• Is it raining? Find out. LINK HERE
• Drunk Canadian begs for taser? Yes, please. LINK HERE (HT:JH)
• The offical John Wall Dance music video. Seriously. LINK HERE (HT:AT)
• This arrived via IM the other day with little explination. None needed. LINK HERE (HT:FWC)
• Awesome piece on the best mayor of all time. LINK HERE

That's it for the week. Please do us a favor- download the iPhone/Android app if you haven't already. It's an easy way to stay connected to the site and if you pull it out at bars, you're 78% more likely to get laid. Boys or girls.

Gather 'round kids. This will be that moment when you realize your buddies athooks and HMW (middle and right, respectively) aren't the geniuses you think we are (fucking Hooks always gives me the bunny ears; I was gonna score that night).

It's really reminiscent of the day - maybe you were about 11 or 12 years old - and you realized that your dad wasn't the best at everything, or the strongest guy in the world (unless your dad is Magnus ver Magnusson; for both). And when it came to picking where this off-season's free agents would land - we looked like a couple of idiot assclowns who write for Fungoes or something.

(Oh. Just went to Fungoes to see what they're all about. Okay, we're still the idiot assclowns, not them)

With a small handful of meaningless FA's still to go, Hooks has me kidnapped in the trunk, and on the way to Beatdown City:

athooks: 3 (M. Scutaro, D. Davis, A. Pettitte)

HMW: 1 (D. Davis)

Yup, you read that right. After predicting the top 25 free agents plus 5 wild card/take whoever you want picks - I nailed fucking Doug Davis. If I hadn't looked it up, I wouldn't have known who Doug Davis signed with (Brewers...watch out for them?).

We both have a few to go still:

Jermaine Dye (Hooks: Cardinals; HMW: Rangers)

John Smoltz (Hooks/HMW: Cardinals)

Carlos Delgado (Hooks wild card: Orioles)

Hank Blalock (HMW wild card: Cardinals)

Thus we need the team who won the huge one-man bidding war over Matt Holliday, and went on a spending spree with Brad Penny and Rich Hill, to get busy on three of the four guys listed above. And Carlos Delgado is out for four months due to oldness; so yeah, I'm calling it.

I know all of you hold us in the highest regard, and despite the fact that a monkey throwing darts (or better yet, poop) at index cards with team names could probably do better than us - hopefully we'll get a free pass for sucking so bad

And technically, I don't see anyone else recapping their Free Agent predictions, so maybe we are the best.

Oh, just heard Hooks say there's some skank in trouble at The Pepper Lounge. To the Batmobile!

I know everything.

I know nothing.

A week has passed since the first pitcher reported to Cardinals Spring Training in Jupiter Florida. In 7 days time, every player has reported to camp, every player has spoken thousands of words into hundreds of mics without saying a single thing.

And as we wait patiently for another week to pass and an actual game to dissect, I wonder- is there perhaps too much coverage of the St. Louis Cardinals?

It wasn't long ago when only a few reporters and/or media types took the month long sojurn to south Florida to send back intermittent reports on players that we may or may not have heard of. The local news might have a couple nights of reports on the team closer to the end of camp and Joe Strauss might have had a daily update blurb in the Post-Dispatch...

But now?

It's a fucking media orgy.

I thought I'd be thrilled at the notion of exhaustive coverage of the Cardinals in February. But I'm starting to think I'm not. Only so much I can hear about an 18 year olds bullpen session before I realize that I'm not getting paid to pay attention- it's just meaningless fodder. Wake me up when the games start and I can draw my own conclusions.

I don't mean to sound rude. Because sometimes interviews can be insightful. But 9.9 times out of 10, they're just talking points re-configured for whoever's call letters are on the mic flag. Guys like Ozzie Guillen aren't any more bombastic than players in the 70's or 80's- it's just more scrutinized now. He didn't grow up learning how to deflect any tough question.

In fact- most of the Internets popularity in the 2000's was created to fill the void that interviews used to serve. Nobody can get a ounce of usable to quote to hold a discussion- so blogs were kind of spawned to fill this void. To provide opinion where the athletes and teams they cover won't.

But still, the vestiges of time abound. Tomorrow, we'll get all the big names in front of all the usual suspects again.

And again the answers will be trite, meaningless and certainly forgettable. Because nothing has happened. No games have been played. No decisions have been made.

In fact, we've got a week before we can even lay eyes on a real, live game.

Great.

I don’t know how this one has been hiding out on the YouTubes for this long and no one has picked up on it- but it has.

Considering the boys over at Global Sports Fraternity took the time to animate a worn out joke BUT... actually make it kind of amusing again; well we had to post it. Stick with it until the end.

Enjoy.

Marquis Daniels is a very average basketball player for the Boston Celtics.

He's also commisioned a gold & diamond encrusted mini-Marquis head so he can wear it around his neck.

It just may be the best thing man has ever made

Via Deadspin

Take your standardized health care and shove it Canada. Those blessed with eyesight good enough to see a hockey puck in low-def TV witnessed one hell of a game between Team USA and Team Canada in the Olympics on Sunday. The whole game was brilliant. Brilliant goals, brilliant saves- just a good damn time if you're a sports fan. Perhaps watching the Blues for 5 months had erased my memory of what a good hockey game should be, though. So you might be well off trying to find more opinions on this. It might have been the worst Olympic game ever played, come to think of it...

Interviews on sports talk radio are stupid. All they do is grind shows to a halt. 1 out of every 1000 interviews may give you some usable piece of information or be such a great get that'd you'd be stupid to pass. But sending every sports talk personality to Jupiter or the Super Bowl creates this awful vortex of radio where it's interview after boring fucking interview. Bleh. Let's stick to bashing players behind their back so they can claim to never hear it, but rally their team around a mantra of disrespect...

Tiger Woods. Mark McGwire. Two guys. Two guys that need some advice. So here it is: Whatever you say, however you say it- somebody's going to have a problem with it. It's 2010 and every dickweed with a blog has a potential national voice (see CardsDiaspora.com). And somebody's going to make outrageous comments to get page views. You don't owe anyone an apology. You don't owe anyone anything. Say your piece and quit kowtowing to everyone and anyone. You banged many, many women. You inject horse steroids into your ass. Whatever. Sack it up and tell us you think we're all idiots and assholes for even caring in the first place. Cause you'd be right...

Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday make team 'better' according to Tony LaRussa. I will agree with that assessment...

Google Buzz: Here's the deal- I honestly believe that people love adding friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc al. It's the best part of many people's day when we can get a new friend or follower. So Google Buzz is doing damn well right now because the average internet user can add 5 friends easy everyday. Meanwhile, you've been on Facebook since college and friend requests trickle in like a before shot on a Flomax ad. Everybody's having a friend adding orgy on Buzz these first few weeks. Soon enough you'll run out of people to add. Realize that like 20% of your friends and family are actually smart enough to use GMail. And you'll stick to Facebook or Twitter...

Ryan Franklin, if you need to have a shotgun or cross bow in your locker, then perhaps your dedication to your craft is not as important as your unpaid hobbies. I'd suggest leaving the weaponry at home and work on being a closer for a World Series contender and save the bitching for things other than an ass covering by MLB...

Weekly Port-O-Potty update: Below is the one in our front yard from Mardi Gras. Let's check in every Monday and see if it's still there:

Yes. It's still there...

Just a heads up that this weekend, my friends over at Baseball Digest are hosting a 24 hour radiothon to raise money for Operation Homefront. Click this link for all the details. 100% of the money goes directly to charity and they are going to have players and former players help out this year. If you get a chance, tune in- or even better, give a little if you can...

In "One step closer 'til April 5th" news, the MVP strolled into Cardinal camp this morning, ready to crush some Dave McKay BP - and wearing these bad boys on his feet. Some other rich guy arrived too, but failed to wear Bo Jackson shoes, so he gets no love.

A quick note about this first paragraph: everything below it is way too important to bother looking up facts (or this paragraph isn't that important, same thing).

About a week or so ago, I think it was Alvin Reid of maybe the Globe-Democrat, or the Belleville Whatever Thing (oh, and Donnybrook!) wrote an article about the newish* $19.95 Cardinals Nation club (*I think it's been offered for a while). A day or two later, some guy from some website expanded a bit on that topic over at insidestl.com.

The fine readers of InsideSTL had a polite rebuttal to said article, explaining their disagreement on how much of a deterrent Cardinals Nation would be to their every day lifestyle, if they happened to participate.

But now, going forward - no matter what they say - there will be no dispute as to which club kicks ass, and which "Nation" needs to go to Suck Rehab and fight their suck demons of sucktitude.

As a quick reminder, here are the perks you get for your $19.95 to join Cardinals Nation:

• Membership Card from the Cardinals
• 2 tickets to a regular season 2010 Cardinals game (via e-mail voucher to be redeemed online; terms and conditions may apply)
• Complimentary Next-generation Gameday and audio experience
• 10% Off Entire Purchase coupon for the St. Louis Cardinals Team Store (terms and conditions may apply)
• 10% Off Entire Purchase coupon for the stlcardinals.com Online Shop (terms and conditions may apply)
• Buy-One-Get-One-Free Busch Stadium Tour coupon (terms and conditions may apply)
• Exclusive ticket discount offers and pre-sales throughout the 2010 season
• Monthly Drawing for game tickets, autographed items and more
• Special Access to Cardinals Nation members-only pages
• Exclusive Club Message Board
• Exclusive Cardinals desktop wallpapers

Snooze button...

But what about our club?

The Cardinal Badass Torture Chamber Machete Carnage Destruction Squad

• A black Under Armour shirt with the club logo and name on it
  
• Brass Knucks
• One month of being accompanied by a Ninja or Bob Gibson (your choice)
• 10% off Homestyle Buffet visit, provided you drive Jack Clark to and fro
• Access to the new "profanity section" at Busch - where player heckling, colorful language, racial slurs, and wife-boning threats are highly encouraged.
• Group outings to go drop a deuce on Cubs fans' Welcome Mats, featuring guest hosts (and participants) athooks and HMW.
• Chris Duncan humping bobblepelvis
• The Chris Duncan porn, "Dunc in Your Trunk"
• The "Rick Ankiel Nailed These Girls in '09" yearbook
• Cards Diaspora INsider Access (okay, that's pretty much a link to our Twitter accounts)
• Exclusive access to weekly chats with Ricky Horton, accompanied by Jesus
• Monthly drawings for Blogger Training, Penthouse Lap Dances, free tasers and more

For just $19.92 (how you like that undercut, Cardinals Nation?), join the Cardinal Badass Torture Chamber Machete Carnage Destruction Squad and this can all be yours!