It’s Hockey not Baseball and we’re in D.C. NOT Baltimore

Dear Retarded Assholes sitting behind me in Sections 412 and 413 at the Verizon Center during last night’s Washington Capitals game against the Carolina Hurricanes,

First off, let me thank you for the effort you put in hauling yourself to your feet when the nice lady who’d won the ESPN Zone Star Spangled Sing-Off started in on her not-too-bad rendition of our country’s National Anthem. This shows you have at least some of the basic motor skills necessary to maintain rudimentary control over the lower functions of your barely evolved primate-like bodies.

Personally, I generally don’t sing along with whoever is chosen to perform the Star Spangled Banner, but will sometimes do so in the absolute privacy of my own home when I’m sure there’s no one around. This is mainly because it is a tough song to sing, and my singing has been known to cause birds to drop dead and fall from the sky and young children to run screaming for their mothers.

I don’t like to subject the general public to this kind of abuse, so I refrain.

You retarded assholes, on the other hand, did join in, which is fine since you obviously don’t care about what others think of your singing voices. But, if you’re going to sing it, sing the whole song not just the single syllable you think makes you cool and allows you to giggle like a tweener touching herself for the first time.

I’ll start this off simply so your cretinous, pre-anthropoid walnut-sized brains can absorb it without bursting into flame and turning into a teaspoon of ash.

No matter what you’ve been told by the people you believe are your natural, biological parents as you’ve grown up, it is never, ever OK or cute or supportive of the team or whatever to shout out the “O!” in the line “O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave” of the national anthem.

I can even spell that out for you if you’re having trouble with the concept: N-E-V-E-R. NEVER.

And here’s why you warthog-faced buffoons:

1. First and foremost it’s disrespectful. We’ll leave aside for a moment the person singing it for real won the ESPN Zone Star Spangled Sing-Off, but she sang it well, so that’s a push. Most people can barely deal with the actual singers mangling the song; do not aid and abet these singers in their crimes.

2. We were at a friggin’ hockey game, not a mid-summer contest at Camden Yards fercrissakes. Yes, yes, I know you were deprived of local baseball growing up and were forced to root for the Orioles and I’m truly very, very sorry for that (and for your having to live with a jackass of an owner like Peter Angelos). Trust me, I know about sorry, I grew up a Pirate fan.

But guess what? Good news. In case you haven’t heard, we (my hands are circling around in an inclusive motion) have a local team now, the Nationals, who are getting ready to start their second season in their lovely, if somewhat horrendously overpriced park in Southeast. Even better news: You can trade in all of that ugly black and orange Orioles’ gear at least, for Godsakes, on hockey nights. (I’d never ask someone to switch team allegiances just because a pro team moved to your city.)

3. Take a look at this map from the good folks at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (they’re pretty smart). Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to catch up.

See that yellow rectangle with a little something dangling off it in the bottom left corner of the map? That’s Washington, D.C. Extra bonus information: The D.C. stands for District of Columbia. Now you can impress all your friends and win bets at your local watering hole.

Now, up there in the top right corner of the map? That yellow Nevada-looking polygon? (I won’t even try to define that, just trust me) that’s Baltimore, Maryland. I’ll say that again sloooowly: Bal-ti-more, Mary-land.

Quick quiz: Where were you when you shouted out the “O!” in the Star Spangled Banner? Correct! Slow, but correct nonetheless. You were at a HOCKEY GAME in WASHINGTON, D.C.!! Not a baseball game in Baltimore, Maryland.

Shouting out the “O!” at a sporting event in Baltimore, let alone Washington, isn’t cute. It isn’t funny. All it does is make you look and sound even more like the retarded assholes you actually are.

Thanks so much for your time, you can now return to your daily drooling. (Of course, the drooling thing only applies to the actual retarded assholes who do this, everyone else, thanks for reading.)

The Foggy Dew

(And don’t think I don’t have my eye on you Atlanta fans who, for years, have been singing the last word of the first verse as “Braves” rather than “brave.” That’s even worse than the jackasses this post is directed toward.)

More commercials that annoy me

I was casting about this snowy, icy morn here in the environs of our nation’s capital for something, anything to write about. A couple of things came to mind: how my natural, contrarian instincts as a reporter have me leaning a smidge to the right now that the left is in charge of the government, how drawn-in eyebrows kinda-sorta skeeve me out, a review of Grand Torino or the upcoming beat-down the Arizona Cardinals are going to suffer Sunday.

All were rejected for various reasons although, I will say, Grand Torino is one of the best films I’ve seen in a very, very long while.

And then, as if by magic, I noticed a piece of paper on my desk with a few brief notes scribbled on its surface. It was a note I’d written myself a few weeks ago about two commercials that were then, and still are, annoying me for various reasons.

Neither rises to Billy Mays levels of outrage (don’t even get me started on the Sham-Wow guy and his stupid headset microphone) but, because of their somewhat skewed points-of-view, I can remain silent no longer.

First up, the less annoying series of commercials from the railroads’ mouthpiece, Freight Rail Works. Basically, in all of this organization’s ads, it touts the fact a freight train can move “one ton of freight 436 miles on one gallon of fuel.” According to FactCheck.org, this claim is not only true, but many railroads exceed this stat.

Fine, I’m now all warm and fuzzy for our nation’s railroad industry. The problem is a train is never, ever, going to haul just one ton of freight. A normal train (again, according to their commercials) can take 280 trucks off the road. If each of these trucks’ cargo weighs in around 35 tons, well, you’ve got yourself a 10,000-ton train that’ll burn 10,000 gallons of diesel on that same 436-mile journey.

Probably still better than a fleet of 18-wheelers, but not quite so warm and fuzzy as what the folks at Freight Rail Works would like us to think.

The commercial by a group advertising as “Federal Loan Modification” or, as its Web site calls it, “Federal Loan Modification Law Center,” really annoys me because of one statement:

“The government is not going to help you out. Don’t let them take your home.”

If you can’t pay your bills and your home is foreclosed on, there probably will be a sheriff’s deputy there to help you on your way to the cardboard box of your choice. But, it’s not like the government is actually taking your house. That rather unsavory task is left to your bank or mortgage company.

But don’t worry FLM is there to make sure this won't happen to you. According to its Web site, “We believe in honesty and integrity first and foremost and we urge homeowners to be aware of unscrupulous companies claiming to magically save your home when in reality they are only interested in purchasing it at a reduced price.”

The problem is, except for the FAQ and the Contact Us links, most of the links on the site don’t work, and most of the information in the FAQ deals with pre-foreclosure sales and short sales of your house.

I think the best advice they give is the second part of the statement above: “Don’t let them take your home.”

Running Update
After proudly showing off my beautiful new Sauconys in this space Monday, did you really think I wouldn't take them out for a spin that evening.

After bundling up, but strangely (read stupidly) still wearing shorts despite the freezing temps, I braved the darkened sidewalks of Arlington for a 2-mile run. OK, a 2-mile run with some walking thrown in for good measure (but still more running than walking). Except for a small mishap at the very beginning - the dogtag chain with my building key attached decided right that very moment was a good time to break - and some wicked bad cramps in my left calf, I came through OK.

The shoes protected my knees and I was only a little sore yesterday. All things considered it was a good if humble start. I say humble because I still remember being able to run thre miles in a sub 20-minute time.

Seeing as how the weather is for shit today, I may hit the treadmill in my building’s fitness center. To show how serious I am about this, as much as I hate running I really hate running on a treadmill.