When Billy Joel got....Middle Aged

A reliable source tells us that the college football National Championship was last night. Congratulations Georgia Bulldogs. Wow, another national champ from the Southeast Athletic Conference. Seriously, over the last decade the champs have all been SEC + Ohio State. 

Foreign readers, don't trust nobody from the lowdown, dirty, no-good SEC. Think of a Futball team that cheats, gets away with cheating, and then brags about cheating after defeating you 3-nil, all while the authorities let them get away with it.* Those lying bastards in the SEC would sellout their own mothers to win a football game. 

Student athletes...sure.

For those who don't know, college football isn't very big in the Northeast, except for Notre Dameb. But that's because of all the Irish. New Jersey has Rutgers...no mocking now, and it's totally a thing here. Rutgers has been pretending to be a serious college football program for 20 years now. They're in The Big Ten with Mrs. Stroock's own Penn State. She and her sisters think Rutgers should be kicked out of the conference. 

Moving on...

For a decade Billy Joel churned out melodic albums with piano centered songs. This blog believes the man peeked with 1983's An Innocent Man, which is a homage to the Do-Wop and Motown of the 50's and 60's. The videos are so much fun. 

Then we come to 1986's The Bridge. Here's the big track, A Matter of Trust. This a guitar power chord song and the video is channeling The Beatles. Alert viewers will see Ringo and Paul, which is kind of cool. Still, A Matter of Trust is unmemorable. What happened? Watch the video again. Also appearing are Billy Joel's mega-hot fashion model wife and baby daughter. That's what happened. Also, this is the go-go 80's not the manic depressive 70's, which we will discuss tomorrow. 

Hot Air reports future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will kick several Dems off their committees. These include the usual suspects, compromised Eric Swalwell, Mogadishu's own, etc. But Hot Air points out that McCarthy is merely kicking them off some committees, not banning them from committee service en toto. We agree with Hot Air's analysis. Still, McCarthy is making progress, no? Colonel Schlichter, who is always right, likes to tell Dems that they're gonna hate the new rules. Stroock's Books goes even further, and calls on the House to expel Swalwell and Omar. Escalate, GOP. 

*Argentina? Italy? You tell me.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 9/12/21 with Measured Commentary on the NFL and Joe

Baaaaaa, virtually no sleep. Don't get us started on the things.

We've thrown out just about everything we can throw out. Remediation people are coming on Tuesday. 

And like that, autumn is here. As we write it's about 55 degrees. We won't bother translating that into fru-fru Euro numbers. Metric system...what are we? Canadian? What's next, football fields that are 120 yards long? Speaking of which, it's a sports ball day. No. Hell no. Lift this voice, motherfuckers. 

One of the quirks about the Northeast is that aside from Notre Dame (for obvious reasons), college football isn't very big up here. Okay, Rutgers is kinda, sorta a thing in New Jersey. One does see a lot of Scarlet Knights gear. 

Mrs. Stroock comes from a Penn State family (that's where her folks met) and is devoted. She grew up with a cat named Nittany. We watch Penn State together, and over time we find we like the college game better than the league whose name shall not be spoken. Penn State is in the Big Ten Conference, as is Rutgers. Mrs. Stroock thinks Rutgers should be kicked out of the Big Ten. She's right. They're pretenders. Rutgers is not now, nor has it ever been ready to compete with the big boys. New Jersey's big high school football stars usually choose...Penn State. See for example, Newark's own Sequon Barkley. 

Foreign readers, don't trust anybody in the low down, dirty, no good South Eastern Conference. Imagine a futball league comprised of Argentina, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain and England, all cheating their asses off, all stealing the best players from around the world, virtually ignoring FIFA and just doing whatever the hell they want. That's the SEC. Folks down there became militantly pro-integration once they saw what black players could do for the football programs. One has to admire the SEC's brazen ruthlessness. Bastards.    

What Will's Watching, Voyager: We are becoming annoyed with the writers of this show. There's always 'interference' with the transporters, or the sensors or some such. We don't recall USS Enterprise having these constant technical issues. It's weak, contrived. Also, and we're far from the first to say this, the holodeck is dumb. In Voyager they hang out in a turn of the 20th century French dive bar. Why not use the holodeck to recreate something from the 22nd century? That's a hell of a missed opportunity. 

We looked over The Final Storm a bit yesterday and we have the Aussies and Vietnamese in a military and diplomatic stalemate. You know, maybe we should have the Australians drop the SAS and some paratroopers on Hanoi. That'd be a good short story at least. Post war, or post Final Storm.

Joe completely fucked up Afghanistan so he could have a moment on 9/11's 20th anniversary. Instead he didn't even speak yesterday. Good. Joe is...what's the word? [Unworthy?-Ed]. Yeah. [Disgrace?] Uh-huh. [A lying dog-faced pony soldier-Ed] For certain. It is hard to put into words our contempt for the man and his 65 million or so voters. Joe has no business being anywhere near a 9/11 commemoration. 

We didn't watch any of those. We're cynical and bitter about the whole thing. For 20 years the governing class from W through Trump failed us. The War on Terror is over and America's current situation is analogous to that of Britain in 1945, exhausted and broke. Don't believe me? Look who's president. Take heart America, you did not elect this man. 

Wither Rutgers

One of this blog's Confederate readers noted that yesterday began the college football season. He and I will always have a special bond becuase he likes Ole Miss and my man Eli Manning* went to Ole Miss.

One of the quirks of the Northeast is that it's not really good college football country, with one notable exception being the Irish and Notre Dame. But really we have no college football loyalties.

We married a Penn State girl (actually Mrs. Stroock went to UD but her parents went to and met at Penn State. She grew up with a cat named Nittany after the Penn State Nittany Lions.) Her lions crushed Idaho yesterday 79-7. Hope the network TV money was worth the humiliation, Idaho. 

Such is the way of college football were the top 25 or so teams beat and wail on the weaklings.

Here in New Jersey we have Rutgers (New Jersey U) which has pretended to be a top football program for 20 years. They even joined a serious conference, the Big Ten, home to Penn State. Go ahead and laugh, we do. People do go to the games, but its more of a 'thing to do on a Saturday' than actual rabid fandom. We're about 20 minutes from campus. 

When Penn State comes to town every other year Mrs. Stroock and her sisters go to the games. Last year when the Nittany lions annihilated the Scarlet Nights someone was spotted with a sign calling for the expulsion of Rutgers from that proud conference.

*Brother of the less successful Peyton Manning. Eli is 2-0 is the Super Bowl while Peyton is 2-2.

College Football, what College Football?

Yesterday in comments esteemed reader Donald Harris said he didn't think Alabama fans could vote for Auburn's head coach.

Foreign reader(s), he's not kidding.

While college football is big almost everywhere in America and huge down south, here in the northeast it's not that big a deal. Notre Dame (Indiana) does have huge pockets of fans throughout the northeast for an obvious reason. Their nickname, the Fighting Irish.

Nobody is following the University of New Hampshire's football team. We don't even know their nickname.

Here in New Jersey we have Rutgers (New Jersey U) which has pretended to be a big college program for fifteen years now.* But Rutgers Football games are just something to do on a Saturday. People aren't losing sleep over the Scarlet Knights.

*Harris, no jokes.