A Heaping Plate of Nacho-Rama

Ok, before I start my first “Nacho-rama” article, a brief note of explanation about that name. Nacho-rama is one of the real Village Tavern’s finest entrees, which is basically prepared by taking a plate of Nachos and putting everything in the kitchen on top of them. The result is a fantastic smorgasbord of, well, nacho-rama, a rare appetizer in which all five food groups are well represented. With that in mind, I’m going to include a few brief thoughts about just about everything.

First off, I’d like to apologize to those of you who were expecting a doom-and-gloom column about the White Sox and Chicago baseball in general, I had a few ideas ready, but in the few days I was working on it the Sox won three games, Cleveland’s 45 game winning streak came to an end in horrific fashion, and I found out about the (somewhat poorly named) RIOT standings (an improved version of the magic number in that accounts for remaining schedule), which basically show that Sox are in the playoffs with 2 more wins at this point. That’s assuming the Yankees, Red Sox, and Indians all win out, other than when the Yankees and Red Sox play each other. By the way, the White Sox have four games left against the Tigers – a .500 team at best that has clearly been sending their games DHL for the last three weeks. I’m not too worried. So expect that column after their spectacular playoff loss (and it will happen, this is Chicago).

A few quick thoughts about the White Sox and the rest of the AL, though:

- The heart of their order is not nearly good enough to carry them to a title. That doesn’t mean that they can’t win it, but it does mean that if they do, casual baseball fans are probably going to know who Tadahito Iguchi, Joe Crede, and Juan Uribe are.
- One strange thing about the AL this year is that, while there are a lot of good starters on the five teams left in the race, none of them have a bonafide scary playoff starter. Buehrle, Garland, Chacon, Sabathia, and Cliff Lee have almost no big game experience, Unit, Schilling, Wells and El Duque are clearly past their primes, Clement hasn’t been the same since that really scary injury a few months ago, Garcia, Millwood, and Mussina are established as ‘solid but not automatic’ post-season options, and nobody really knows what to expect from Contreras once the pressure gets dialed up, including Sox fans. It makes things tough, because you can usually figure out who's taking the pennant by asking yourself which team among those that have an ace closer (sorry Boston) has the most scary starting pitchers.
- I’ve intentionally left out the entire Angels rotation and written off Oakland in protest of the general ignorance of good Midwestern pro teams shown by the East coast Sports Promotional Network. In that spirit, I’ve decided to ignore the entire West Coast for rest of this month. (Although if you’re wondering about Colon, I’ve seen him pitch for the White Sox - I'm not sure if he's still in the league now - and he’s very beatable). I’m also going to refer to the White Sox as “the Sox,” indefinitely from here on out. Also, if I feel like a player is about to sign with the White Sox or the Cubs, this will be referred to as “ending up in pinstripes.” Seriously, stop using pinstripes nicknames for the Yankees immediately. Half of the teams in baseball have pinstripes on at least one model of their unis, and the Yanks don’t wear pinstripes all of the time. We might as well refer to them as “the team that has bats” or “the team that wears gloves in the field” (although the first would be more appropriate).

You know how athletes and entertainers like to criticize the President? I don’t have a problem with it, in fact, it’s one of the things that help to make our society unique, but I think it would be fun if the President occasionally shot back by letting us know what he thought of their recent projects. Couldn’t you just imagine W. looking straight into the camera from the Oval Office desk and saying, “To the enemies of freedom in Iraq, I say this: The American will is strong. Freedom is on the march, and its enemies will not prevail. And to the members of Coldplay, I say this: The falsetto piano ballad has been pretty much played out at this point. Please feel free to try something else on your next album. Good night, and God bless America.”

With most umpires granting the hit by pitch when a uniform gets nicked, why is it that we haven’t seen a couple of major leaguers try wearing giant, baggy, MC Hammer style pants and sleeves? If Hammer Time could move around wearing that stuff, I’m sure those guys could too.

It’s an indication of how far Andy Richter has fallen from his “cult comedy icon” status that Mark wrote nearly two and a half pages about a staring contest and didn’t reference him once. I’m willing to bet it didn’t even seem weird to anyone until I pointed it out just now.

As some of you may be aware, Keira Knightley is going to be in the next Jane Austen movie. This is clearly presents a huge dilemma – does this alone make the movie worth seeing? Or even renting down the line? If there’s a select group of actresses who can make anything watchable, she’s in it, but Austen's books and previous movies looked really boring, not to mention painfully long. In fact, when people who loved the films describe them to me, almost all of what they say makes me want to see them even less. I’d appreciate any help that our readers can offer here, I’ve seriously got no idea how to handle this.

By the way, before you say that I’m prejudging a whole subgenre of film, I’d like to mention that I did watch about twenty minutes of Sense and Sensibility. It was horrid, and this is coming from a guy who occasionally enjoys chick flicks and has even watched them in non-dating/mixed company situations. I don’t have anything against Ms. Austen, but people had different standards for entertainment in 1795, which was before the internet, video games, big-time professional sports, television, radio, most board games, widespread literacy in many places, restaurants that had awesome nachos and chicken tenders, and quite possibly anything resembling the modern conceptions of dating or even friendship. So it’s understandable that people thought that things like Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations were classics. Fortunately we can now look back on things like Quantum Leap.

Anyone else think that TO is sandbagging with the end zone dances because of the contract dispute? It wouldn’t be entirely out of character for him to think that his production is worth his current contract, but if the Eagles want some real entertainment, it’s going to cost them. Although Drew Bledsoe scored a rushing touchdown earlier today, so I supposed just about anything is possible.

Yes, I’m aware that I mentioned Keira Knightley in my post but instead included pictures of Juan Uribe, President Bush, and the cast members of Quantum Leap. This was done intentionally just to piss you off. If you don’t like it, start your own site.

One of the signs at the Chargers-Giants game read “Eli’s So like Peyton…Not.” I loved it. I haven’t seen someone break out that use of “not” since the nineties ended (in case you forgot, it’s from the Wayne's World saga, which is one of the true treasures of our generation. Unlike any of the Jane Austen movies).