It's Over...

...for this year. In what I'll just call "something of any upset", the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers 4 games to 1 to win the World Series. When asked for a comment Detroit Tiger's manager Jim Leyland said "I suppose it is odd that I smoke and manage a professional sports team, but I don't like chewing tobacco".

What a lot of people in the sports community seem to be latching onto is the fact that the Cardinals were 83-78 in the regular season. Just two games over .500. Fans in Philadelphia were so angered by this they coughed cheesesteak out of their nose. Why? Because the only other Philadelphia joke I can come up with involves the Rocky statue, but I can't make it work. Also because the Philadelphia Phillies had a better regular season record than the St. Louis Cardinals, but did not make the playoffs.

(Note to the Philadelphia Phillies:"The Philadelphia Phillies" is the best you could come up with? Why not just the "Philadelphia Philadelphians"? Nothing else noteworthy happens in Philadelphia? Milwaukee has The Brewers, a reference to the fact that they make quite a bit of beer in Milwaukee (this will end when some genius decides its a bad influence on our children), L.A. has The Dodgers, an obvious reference to avoiding gunfire, and Chicago has the Cubs - which I frankly don't understand, but at least its not the "Chicago ChiGuys". They almost have a theme going with The Bears, but then they also have The Bulls which doesn't make any sense... but at least they could pick an animal. Also [owner of Philadelphia Phillies name goes here], if you picked another team name, you could have a real mascot instead of whatever the hell the Philly Phanatic is. Maybe you could work in that bell with the crack in it)

So the good phans in the great sport city of Philadelphia are probably upset. And I really share the pain of the Detroit Tiger fans. We all thought they had it in the bag, but I like to say "that's why they play the games" (If they didn't "play the games" the Stanley Cup wouldn't have spent so much time in the Southeast lately, they'd leave it in Canada, or maybe occasionally New York. But it turns out you can have a winning hockey team anywhere you can manufacture ice and import Canadians - you can't raise a winning hockey team in the Southeast, but you can have a winning hockey team in the Southeast).

In the end a life long Cubs fan is left with this: "83-78, we could get there from here".

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I'm Nuts about these Nuts

The good folks at Diamond Foods have been making smoked almonds for as long as I can remember. That was pretty much the end of it; they came in regular and smoked. This brings to mind the following questions:

• Why smoked, why not boiled, dry roasted, honey roasted, or one of the other more traditional nut cooking methods?


• Do they smoke these in some sort of giant tee-pee, at the same time they do some fish and a couple of pigs, or just use smoke flavoring?


• Bill just used a semi colon... did he do it properly?

I can answer the last question - there are only eleven people on earth that know how to use a semi colon properly. Even fewer understand the balk rule. The intersection of these sets is rather odd, there is exactly one person on earth who understands exactly when to use a semi-colon and the balk rule. Oddly enough it is Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (Russian: Михаил Николаевич Барышников). I know what you're thinking... "Bill my 8th grade English teacher knew how to use a semi-colon." I'm sure she did, but I was talking about people. Also you're probably wondering why I included the Cyrillic version of Baryshnikov's name... I just think it looks cool.

Anyway, we were talking about nuts, and I think that Diamond Foods has come up with the greatest advance in nuts since the invention of dry roasting. Dry roasting is a process that I know nothing about, but I assume that Mr. Peanut was somehow involved. I suppose it could be reseached easily enought. Get back to me on that ok?

What Diamond came up with is the "Wasabi and Soy Sauce Almond". Why, I don't know. I hate to think 0f the ideas that must have failed - poodles may have been involved. But these have a sudden burst of horseradish that just sorta goes away, followed by almond flavor (which I think may actually be natural). I highly recommend them.

I don't get money from Blue Diamond... or anybody else. Think this was funny? Email me here. Didn't think it was funny? Use the same link.

State Fair, Inc

Here at State Fair, Inc. we are dedicated to bringing fair goers the newest and most innovative fried foods in the world. We were the inspiration for both the cornballer and that "deep fry just like at the carnival in your home" kit on Bob and Tom. A few years ago we amazed the world when we offered the deep fried candy bar. People say that there is no pioneer spirit left in this country, but they must be wrong - because not since Orville and Wilbur Wright have people in North Carolina subjected themselves to such personal risk for the good of society. But thankfully fried food innovation did not stop on that fateful day of December 16, 1903 when Orville and Wilbur became the very first people to deep fry a candy cane. Pioneer spirit lives on(Unfortunately the deep fried candy cane is sometimes over looked because they did something the following day too.)

This year we are proud to offer fair goers Deep-fried Coca-Cola. Some people said it couldn't be done. Cardiologists and dentists world wide said it shouldn't be done. But we did it. You can't defeat the pioneer spirit. The real breakthrough came in the realization that it was impossible to actually deep fry Coca-Cola, you have to deep fry batter and flavor that with with Coca-Cola. Fred "Lefty","Nine-Finger","No-nose" Jenkins gave his life for this valuable information. Now he's talking shop with Rudolph Diesel. You can't kill pioneer spirit.

This year we are also proud to offer fried Oreos, fried Twinkies, fried Moon Pies, and fried cheeseburgers. The lucky residents of South Carolina will also be treated to deep fried Ho-Hos, as the legislation regarding the regulation of deep fried Ho-Hos is still pending in South Carolina.

http://www.wral.com/statefair/10052413/detail.html

If You're a Yankees Fan, Just Don't Read This...

...unless you're going to send the link to all your friends and increase my hits. My ego could use the boost. You were warned.

I try to be positive in life. I'd rather pull for a winner than hope somebody loses. This is how I would like to live my life. But in reality, if the New York Yankees lose, I'm generally pretty happy. And they did just that - again. At least they did it on a budget. That A-Rod guy seems like a bargain at $25 million for ten years.... what's that? Oh, its $25 million per year for ten years. Well, Howard Stern still makes more money, maybe A-Rod will work out. I do think it would be funny if until he comes through in the post season they make him answer to his middle name, Emmanuel.

Yankee fans think that people hate the Yankees because they win so much. Actually not true - we hate Yankee fans... you know who you are... and we do it for the following reasons:

• If you're going to say "we" when you refer to the Yankees, please be ready to tell me when you played for them. If you did, odds are you have the best pickup line in any bar (unless there happens to be an astronaut hanging out (kinda funny to picture them leaning against the bar talking to a girl while wearing the space suit)), but otherwise don't say "we" - because "you" didn't do anything. You didn't even spend Steinbrenner's money (which is another topic altogether).


• The Yankees have won 26 championships. Twenty of them were before I was born, and I don't care about them. You might as well stomp about talking about how many presidencies your political party won since 1789 (or whenever they invented political parties in this country).


• Don't go on about the Red Sox, or the Cubs, or whoever not making the post season. Steinbrenner spent nearly $200 million and won one playoff game. They lost to a team that hasn't seen a league championship series since 1984 managed by a career minor league chain smoker.


• Go ahead and blame Joe Torre - There's a home for you in Chicago, Joe.


• If you live in the Southeast and haven't been to a game in 5 years or more, don't go about acting as though you're super fan. Even with the disparity in coverage, you only have to watch about 12 games a year. But even in the age Fox Sports XXX the Cubs are still on WGN a couple of games a week.

As for me... I'll stay a Cubs fan. Just wait 'til next year - hopefully they aren't "The best team in baseball... on paper" next year. It didn't work out well this year.

Its Over Johnnie

I'm back (picture that Eminem song about "guess whose back" playing in the background while you contemplate the fact that I don't know the name of the song and must not actually like Eminem very much). I've explained before that Bill Daniels is my alter-ego. It turns out my actual ego had a rough couple of weeks and nothing seemed funny. What I'm trying to do here is more of a humor column than a traditional blog, so I tend not to force things when nothing seems funny. If anybody wants to pay me to write for their website/newspaper/[put something ridiculous and funny here] I will be happy to force it. I seem able to in my professional life.

Now on to the title - it will help if I explain a couple of things:

• Dusty Baker's real name is Johnnie
• I like the Opie and Anthony show, and they play the "its over Johnnie" sound clip sometimes
• The sound clip is from the end of First Blood
• In David Morrell's book First Blood Rambo dies, sparing us sequels.
• I think Morrell might have spelled "Johnnie" "Johnny", but I don't care enough to look it up
• I could look it up, I have the paperback I borrowed from my friend Sean just under 20 years ago (Sean - let me know if you want it back)
• I'm too lazy to come up with a name that rhymes with Sean, although sometimes I think it is funny to protect people's identity when it is clearly not necessary
• Even though Rambo died in the first book, David Morrell wrote the first sequel - losing any brownie points he may have gained by killing Rambo in the first book.
• The Chicago Cubs fired Dusty Baker today

I had the thought last week that the only comment I had on baseball season was that I was looking forward to the end - like somebody with a terminal disease. Then I realized that Bill Daniels' sense of humor isn't as dark as mine and decided against it. Boy am I glad I didn't write about that.

But the regular season is over, and the Chicago Cubs, called the "best team in the league - on paper" before the season started, finished a respectable 66-96, getting edged out by Tampa Bay and Kansas city overall, but still clinching the worst record in the National League by one game.

Hockey season starts Wednesday.