The Layoff Beard

Weekend The One You’re With

Okay, I totally appreciate every soldier that protects our freedoms daily, hourly, and every other measurement of time, but Memorial Day really kind of punched this week in the face beyond recognition. When I got back home Tuesday night, the next day felt like it was July 17. That’s how discombobulated I was. I never realized how annoying short weeks could be when you don’t actually work. God, I can’t wait for Monday.

So here’s where the gettin’ was goin’ on elsewhere in the Suss-o-sphere:

Blogcritics — I fixed the problem in Yankee Stadium regarding all those home runs. And it doesn’t even involve demoting A.J. Burnett.

Actually, that’s pretty much all else that happened today. Not even getting a job happened. Somebody should do something about that.

Oh, Yippee! Sports’ Puck Daddy will start live blogging of the Stanley Cup finals tomorrow, and I shall be a part of it. So go witness that.

A Preview Of The Upcoming Battleship Movie

Yes, there will be a movie based on Battleship, that game where naval combat is made simple for civilians because the entire ocean is a Cartesian plane.

I’ve obtained a written preview of the movie, and let me tell you, it looks RIVETING.

(Actually, before I share that, I need you to please carefully examine the original Battleship board game cover. Little Johnny and father are having a ripping good time. Meanwhile, Mother and little Mary are sneaking a peek of the game. I STILL SEE TOMATO SPECKS ON THE PLATES, DEAR! Maybe if the game was called Blendership, you could play after us.)

* * *

PRIVATE: All right, we have them on radar.

COMMANDER: Excellent. Set a course for H-7.

PRIVATE: But, um, sir?

COMMANDER: What is it, Private?

PRIVATE: We … can’t move.

COMMANDER: We can’t move? Why the hell not?

PRIVATE: Wouldn’t be fair.

COMMANDER: Sigh. All right, then let’s aim for D-2.

PRIVATE: Sir?

COMMANDER: WHAT?!

PRIVATE: It’s not our turn.

COMMANDER: Not … our turn?

PRIVATE: Well, no, we fired last. It’s their turn now.

COMMANDER: Ah, right. I keep forgetting that. It’s only fair.

[a loud crash is heard. The bridge shakes violently. Alarms go off endlessly]

PRIVATE: Commander, we’ve sustained a direct hit!

COMMANDER: Damage report?

PRIVATE: Oh, God, there’s a … a …

COMMANDER: DAMMIT, PRIVATE, GET A GRIP ON YOUR FEELINGS, WHAT’S THE DAMAGE REPORT?

PRIVATE: Well, there’s a giant red plastic peg in our stern.

COMMANDER: Huh. Well, how hard is it to remove it?

PRIVATE: Not hard at all. Matter of fact, it dug right into the existing hole in our stern.

COMMANDER: Well, that’s not too bad then. Have our crew remove the plastic peg.

PRIVATE: Um, we can’t do that.

COMMANDER: WHY NOT?

PRIVATE: Wouldn’t be fair.

COMMANDER: [stares pensively, dramatic music cues]

Ooh! Ooh! New Segment!

Did you know? No, you didn’t. In fact, you thought something else. Fortunately, ESPN’s little “Did You Know” fact in its mobile site helps clear up any confusion, and make you look like the smartest dick at the bar.

It’s time for “See, I Thought…” wherein we chronicle the misconceptions of certain sports facts and then compare them to the truth to measure just how wrong people were. I think you’ll see how this game is played right away.

DID YOU KNOW: “Tim Wakefield went more than 16 years in between victories over the Mets.”

See, I thought a victory over the Mets was not being signed by them.

DID YOU KNOW: “Johan Franzen is the first player in Red Wings history to score at least 10 goals in two different postseasons.”

See, I thought Franzen was the first Red Wing to have to wear SPF-10 indoors in two different postseaseons. (BECAUSE HE’S A REDHEAD.)

DID YOU KNOW: “Kobe Bryant trails only Jerry West for most points in Lakers’ playoff history.”

See, I thought Wilt Chamberlain scored the most during the playoffs, with Kobe Bryant scoring most during the offseason.

DID YOU KNOW: “The Twins are the first team since the 2003 Expos to record multiple cycles in a season.”

See, I thought Manny Ramirez held the record for most menstrual cycles in a season.

DID YOU KNOW: “The Dodgers have won three games this season on a walk with the bases loaded; the rest of major league baseball has two combined.”

See, I thought, the People For The Ethical Treatment of Shrimp (PETS) are issuing a cease and desist letter to Joe Torre.

Meat Loaf’s Guide To Romantic Caveats

You know that song, “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”? What the heck is “that?” I mean, sure, you could look it up on Wikipedia and be done with it, but how can we trust the supposed true citation of Meat Loaf explaining what “that” is? He’s a rock star! Half the time he doesn’t know where he is.

So we took a straw poll of music fans who do not look up interpretations of music lyrics on the Internet. If you would do anything for love except “that,” what is “that”?

• 36% won’t put on pants
• 23% won’t take a paternity test
• 14% won’t honor the restraining order
• 11% won’t loosen the ankle chain
• 8% won’t divorce their World of Warcraft spouse
• 6% won’t hire a guy to stop him from blogging
• 2% won’t stop listening to country music, apparently

Stop Badgering The Witness

Wouldn’t it be much more humane to just have the audience bludgeoned over the head with a rolling pin before the start of the game, instead of having them suffer through every one of these games in which the Cavaliers are given chances to win games and don’t follow through?

This entire series against the Orlando Magic has been absolute torture for Cavaliers fans and Cleveland natives alike. The Magic, to me, were an overrated, vulnerable team who survived series against the hapless Heat and the decimated Celtics. I thought Dwight Howard was a great basketball player who was probably a couple years away from being able to lead this team. And I’m not sure exactly why I’m telling you any of this. I could be better served jamming my hands into my pockets, smirking, and nonchalantly saying “yyyyep, I totally saw this one comin’.”

Out of nowhere, I was a believer that LeBron James, for once, had teammates. He did. He had Mo Williams, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Wally Szczerbiak, Sasha Pavlovic, and many other easier-to-spell teammates. For some reason, this series his teammates are blindingly absent from the basketball court. Maybe Eric Wedge recruited them to pitch in the bullpen.

I’m not even that much of a Cleveland fan (the well-wisher category seems more apt) and yet I’ve seen them have championship dreams dashed many times.

The most painless way to have broken title dreams is to simply have a terrible team. Cleveland does this all the time, but they pepper in their horrible years with halfway decent clubs and sometimes improbable playoff teams. (See: 2002 Cleveland Browns.)

The post-Elway Drive examples are bountiful. Jose Mesa and the ‘97 World Series Game 7. Paul Byrd and the 2007 ALCS. Getting swept by the Spurs two years ago. There was, um, the entire existence of the Cleveland Browns. They have no NHL team, but just imagine if they did, and how many more disappointing playoff collapses we’d be seeing.

It seems Cleveland may not get a championship this year — although, hey, all they have to do is win two home games and one roadie, which is not out of the question — but they did get their moments. They get to keep the final shot of Game 2, which is perhaps the best basketball shot I’ve seen in quite some time. They have Memorial Day, when they came down from 10-0 and six runs in the ninth. They have a similar comeback eight years ago, which is also coincidentally the last time anyone ever saw Marty Cordova and John Rocker.

All those are pretty sweet moments. Titles, when you think about it, are nothing more than the most coveted moments of all. But they’re fleeting. They disappear after a year. For the team, they disappear at the start of the next season. Sometimes they just disappear altogether.

It really gets tiresome, at times, when fans talk about being “long-suffering.” Well, guess what. With about 30 teams in each league, let’s pretend each team won every 30th year. You’re still going to have everyone say “Oh, man, it’s been 29 years since we last saw the glory days.” Cleveland may be the most hard-luck of all, but just imagine if the city simply put their priorities in a different place and just always desire a memorable team. Wasn’t the ‘08-’09 Cavs such an example?

Well, maybe not the Eastern Conference Finals.

Notes From Last Night’s Deadliest Catch

Don’t you just love Deadliest Catch? Aw, man, I can’t get enough of it. Who knew that such a grueling job would make for such riveting television? I can’t wait until they have celebrities start doing this!

In case you missed out on last night’s show and failed to set your DVR, lack a DVR, or successfully recorded it but are that lazy that you don’t want to watch the whole thing, relax. I have recapped the important notes from it. (Warning! Spoilers! Because you didn’t guess that already! You already kinda peeked anyways!)

• Some boats caught a lot of crab

• Some boats did not catch a lot of crab

• The new guy isn’t cuttin’ it

• The deckhands wagered a little bet

• The crew tried to get a little bit of sleep

• A huge wave crashed over the side of the boat

• The captain pined about all his years of being on the ocean

• The new guy REALLY isn’t cuttin’ it

• The audience feels slight empathy for the crabs

• The audience feels slight remorse for not working in a heated office, then changes over to Jon and Kate Plus Eight

Strange Michigan Customs Unknown To Ohioans

In Ohio — and other areas — one christens a boat by breaking a bottle over the bow and then boarding the boat and sailing away on it. In Michigan, tradition is slightly different, so as a public service let’s explain the differences.

Port Clinton, Ohio! You’re on the air:

A Michigan man was taken to the Ottawa County Detention Facility after police say threw a flower pot at the Jet Express boat and urinated on himself.

The Battle Creek native may be confused. See, this particular Jet Express has been in service for quite some time. There is no need to wish it well, for long has it known the way to Put-In-Bay.

The flower pot was a generous touch, one must admit. Flowers brighten up rooms, and in some cases, moving boats. The urination on oneself, though, is a longstanding Michigan tradition that signifies to the local authorities that you are piss drunk.

(Via Pepperguy)

Why I Am Off Pizza For A While

As a precursor to the third annual Deadspin Midwest Pants Party in Chicago, something had to be done. The baseball game was probably not going to have the quality of pizza that Chicago typically trumpets with that genealogical machismo: “Ey, you haven’t had pizza until you’ve had DEEP DISH CHICAGO PIZZA.” Then they insult your mother and/or homeland and do that thing with their hands.

So no, I hadn’t ever had deep dish pizza by a proud Chicagoan’s standards. Built into our hotel was an Aurelio’s, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Local dietary habits disagreed.

The first error was that we ordered a pie quite too large for two people. Medium is not Chicago Medium. No, Chicago Medium is Wading Pool. Chicago Medium is “you won’t move until tomorrow, if you’re lucky, and someone pushes you.”

If I didn’t own a television but somehow inherited a pizzeria, I’d sell deep dish exclusively to out-of-towners, so I could watch them try to cut pizza slices and transfer them from the tray to their plates. It’s quite the spectacle. Like trying to watch dyslexics finish a word search.

So it’s probably going to be a while before there is ordering of Michigan-style pizza (cheap, thin, visible cheese), not only because the deep dish was delicious, but also because I put away so much food in Chicacgo, I actually won’t have to eat anything until, by all good faith estimates, mid-July.

The Prettiest Vacant Lot In The World

Detroit politicians are, to say the least, not all that popular. The benefit of the doubt they might deserve just isn’t there, for whatever reason.

Which is why Detroit councilwoman JoAnn Wilson has been playing all-time defense this weekend when it learned her nice, nice house was raking in only $68 a year in property taxes since the year 2000, while her comparable neighbors were paying about $2,000.

It’s not like they’re going to get all that money back. They can only correct a couple of those years, reassess the lot, accept another bribe, and then put the property tax back to $68.

Wilson has fired back, calling this entire issue a smear campaign and trying to reach out to hypocrites by pointing out that they wouldn’t voluntarily take a bill and ask for it to be higher.

She raises a solid point, but did she basically admit that she knew she was paying low taxes? As a public figure in Detroit, she ought’n't be naive to the fact that politicians will probably answer to everything in their lives that seems suspect or give off the illusion that they’re getting special treatment.

I mean, just last week I had to hold a press conference explaining myself when the local paper of record found out that I was only paying $8 a month for my weekly ankle massages, which I wrote off as a business expense for writing this blog. Normally such a frivolous service would cost upward of $400 a month, and I had to basically tell them that I didn’t set the price, and that no one else would have questioned the fare. I did, however, accuse the reporters of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. Because they looked like those kind of people.

Weekends Off

We’re off for the weekend, which is very similar to our Monday-thru-Friday schedule. Here’s what happened outside this site Sussmanwise:

Toledo Free Press — Fitting in with the motus operandi of this blog, here’s how to trim the fat on team rosters. This is not an article about Oliver Miller.

Blogcritics — Dontrelle Willis pitched a mighty fine game, and I sure did drink his wine.

Babes Love Baseball — Their latest VooDoo Sabermetrics was published today, examining Elijah Dukes. I reticulated the splines.

See ev’ry’ne Wednesday, unless someone employs me.