New Year's Eve: The Final Countdown

Posted by Double M




It's New Year's Eve and what song better commemorates this occasion than Europe's "The Final Countdown." So, today, here's some version of the song to take you into the new year.

First, here's Syracuse's air band rocking out an air guitar version.

Imagining what the people in the background of that video were thinking makes me laugh a lot.

Next, here's a guy that rocks out a KazooKeylele version. It is as ridiculous as it sounds.

Here's one you've all probably seen before: the worst cover all-time.

I'll let you decide whether that video or the KazooKeylele is worse/more awesomer.

No collection of The Final Countdown would be complete without an appearance from Gob Bluth.

Finally, here's the original video. It's not really all that special, but I've included it just for reference.

Have a good New Year's Eve. I'll see you next year.

Bowl Game Bonanza: Wednesday, December 31

Posted by Double M




This post is part of a series of posts entitled Bowl Game Bonanza Did you know that there are a bazillion bowl games? Well there are. And here at IR I am going to give you a quick breakdown of each game so that you know who is playing in the bowl, what channel and time the game is on (all times CST), and why you would or wouldn't want to watch the game.

The real bowl season started last night (did you watch the Holiday Bowl? It was pretty good.) and really picks up the pace today with 5 bowl games. While not all of them are awesome, there will be some pretty good ones to check out over the latter part of this week.

On to the bonanza:

Armed Forces Bowl: Air Force (+3.5) vs. Houston (ESPN, 11am)
Location: Fort Worth, TX, Amon G. Carter Stadium
Announcers: Terry Gannon, David Norrie
You may or may not know, but Houston's mascot is the Cougars. This sets up for a pretty easy joke; however, I'm going to focus on something else: the URL for the Armed Forces Bowl. This is the actual URL for the Armed Forces Bowl: http://armedforcesbowl.com.s13175.gridserver.com. What the hell is that? .s13175.gridserver.com? There's no way that's intentional. That is one of the worst URL's I have seen all-time. Someone should fix that.

Verdict: I know nothing about these teams except that Air Force probably runs some form of the Flexbone or Wishbone offense which tends to psyche teams out. I think Air Force covers the spread and wins this one.
Regretometer: Let's be honest - it probably won't be that great of a game and you don't care about Houston or Air Force. 4 on the regretometer.

Sun Bowl: Pittsburgh (+1) vs. Oregon State (CBS, 1pm)
Location: El Paso, TX, Sun Bowl Stadium
Announcers: Verne Lundquist, Gary Danielson, Tracy Wolfson

I don't really understand why CBS has a random bowl game like this. I assume its because ESPN didn't want it because they already have a bowl game playing in this time slot. In any case, here's an actual picture from the press conference:



I imagine that a conversation similar to this happened:

Mike Reilly: I clearly can't grow facial hair. How do you get your mustache to be so full?
Dave Wannstedt: Its easy. I shave my chest pubes and glue it to my face.
Reilly: Really? But what about your chest hair. I can't imagine you without chest hair.
Wannstedt: Yeah, I just shave my ball fro and double-sided tape it to my chest.
Reilly: Genius.

Something like that.

Verdict: I have no clue whether Oregon State's Jacquizz Rodgers is playing or not. I assume he is and, as such, that Oregon State will win. If he doesn't play, Pitt will win because Oregon State sucks without him.
Regretometer: Get a Wannstache ride for a 3 on the regretometer.

Music City Bowl: Boston College (-3.5) vs. Vanderbilt (ESPN, 2:30pm)
Location: Nashville, TN, LP Field
Announcers: Mark Jones, Bob Davie, Todd Harris

The official name for this bowl is the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl. Has anyone ever stayed in a Gaylord Hotel? Does its name ring true? Is it like the movie Boat Trip? These are the questions they should answer during this game. Unfortunately, they will probably focus on how Boston College has won like 7 straight bowl games and that this is Vandy's first trip to a bowl game in forever.

Verdict: Boston College has been a better inconsistent team. Take them to win and cover.
Regretometer: Vandy alone makes this game worth while to watch (it could be a long time again) and it could be a decent game. 2.5 on the regretometer.

Insight Bowl: Minnesota (+8) vs. Kansas (NFL Network, 4:30pm)
Location: Tempe, AZ, Sun Devil Stadium
Announcers: Paul Burmeister, Mike Mayock, Lindsay Soto

Last year Mangino took his team to the Orange Bowl and it resulted in this awesome picture:



Sadly, there will no repeat of that picture this year as I am pretty sure Mangino ate the orange the Insight Bowl does not have a mascot. Hell, they don't even have their own website, its just a sub-directory of fiestabowl.org. I'll be intrigues to see how another Big 10 team stacks up after Northwestern hung with a shaky Missouri team.

Verdict: Kansas is favored by 8 which seems to be too much. I'd take Kansas to win but not cover.
Regretometer: You won't watch this because its on the NFL Network. Even if you did, you'd end up staring at Mangino's behemoth belly the entire time. 3.5 on the regretometer.

Chick-Fil-A Bowl: LSU (+4) vs. Georgia Tech (ESPN, 7pm)
Location: Atlanta, GA, Georgia Dome
Announcers: Brad Nessler, Bob Griese, Paul Maguire, Jack Arute

This is easily the game of the day - if you watch one game today, make it this one. LSU, coming off a disappointing season following a BCS championship is taking on Georgia Tech and their "see, a modified version of the option can still work with good athletes" offense in what would be considered a home game if LSU didn't travel so well. Here's the thing though, I know about 6 LSU fans and none of them are happy with the play of their QB Jarrett Lee. He's a freshman that has seemed to make bad decision after bad decision and I think GTech will capitalize on it.

Verdict: Georgia Tech wins and covers. The time of possession gained from their running attack combined with the mistakes of Lee will have GT winning by a touchdown.
Regretometer: Its New Years Eve, so you should turn it on the TV and watch it until the holiday celebrations shows start. 0.5 on the regretometer.

Look for Bowl Game Bonanzas everyday there's a bowl game.

All announcer information brought to you courtesy of Awful Announcing.

Bowl Game Bonanza: Tuesday, December 30th

Posted by Double M




This post is part of a series of posts entitled Bowl Game Bonanza Did you know that there are a bazillion bowl games? Well there are. And here at IR I am going to give you a quick breakdown of each game so that you know who is playing in the bowl, what channel and time the game is on (all times CST), and why you would or wouldn't want to watch the game.

Today features a bowl no one wants to attend, a bowl between teams no one cares about, and a really good bowl game featuring your first look at Erin Andrews during the bowl season. What will she be wearing? Is she hooking up with one of the players she is covering? What kind of underwear is she wearing? Maybe its a thong? Maybe its something cool I don't even know about yet... Will she get felt up by one of the coaches during the halftime interview?

What are we here for? Oh yeah...

On to the bonanza:

Humanitarian Bowl: Nevada (-2) vs. Maryland (ESPN, 3:30pm)
Location: Boise, ID, Bronco Stadium
Announcers: Bob Wischusen, Brock Huard
The word on the streets is that ticket sales for this game are abysmal. Like in the dozens (that post says Maryland has sold 16 and Nevada has sold 8). It should be said that the referenced post is a couple weeks old and is probably massively understating sales, but its not all that surprising considering bowl is in Boise, Idaho. Who wants to go to Boise? Not me.

Verdict: Maryland is 1-4 on the road. They were awful away from home. Plus they will be on the crazy blue turf (that most Nevada players have played on before because they play in the same conference as Boise). Nevada wins and covers.
Regretometer: It should tell you something if the teams' fans don't want to watch the teams play. The humor of watching an empty stadium on blue turf prevents this from getting the full 5. Instead, it's a 4.5 on the Regretometer.

Texas Bowl: Western Michigan (+2) vs. Rice (NFL Network, 7pm)
Location: Houston, TX, Reliant Stadium
Announcers: Fran Charles, Tom Waddle, Kara Henderson

I enjoy the fact that Texas gets its own bowl. I'm fairly certain that the city of Houston is the official sponsor for this bowl which makes me laugh. I don't know why. Probably because it seems ridiculous. Anyway, this game is on NFL Network opposite of a great bowl game, so about 0.00000001% of the nation will actually watch it.

Verdict: Really? Well, Nebraska beat Western Michigan earlier in the year, so I'll say they cover (and win outright!) to make Nebraska's win look better.
Regretometer: There's a better bowl game on at the same time. I promise. It's a full 5 on the regretometer.

Holiday Bowl: Oregon (+3) vs. Oklahoma State (ESPN, 7pm)
Location: San Diego, CA, Qualcomm Stadium
Announcers: Chris Fowler, Jesse Palmer, Craig James, Erin Andrews

ESPN is bringing out the all-looker crew with Chris Fowler, former Bachelor contestant Jesse Palmer, and Erin Andrews (see above) and also Craig James. This should be an interesting game to watch: is Oklahoma State a good team playing in a tough division of a tough conference or is this the first of many Big 12 teams getting exposed? Oregon is a tough team that played well in the second half of the season (excluding one game against Cal). Either way, both offenses should score a lot which is always a good time.

Verdict: I think Oklahoma State, while not an elite team, is still pretty good and should take care of business, covering the spread.
Regretometer: 2 decent teams, Erin Andrews, lost of scoring = a 1.5 on the regretometer.

Look for Bowl Game Bonanzas everyday there's a bowl game.

All announcer information brought to you courtesy of Awful Announcing.

Bucket List: Make a Bacon Roll

Posted by Double M




If you subscribe to my shared items feed you probably saw the awesome pics of a bacon roll which could alternatively be known as a heart attack roll. Well, as with several things on the intermist, I didn't necessarily believe that it would turn out as well as it looked but I did believe it looked delicious, so I decided to make one for our office Christmas party.

Turns out they were awesome. I've included pics with some added instructions below.

Step 1) Weave the bacon
This step is pretty self-explanatory. Depending on the size of your bacon, you will use between 12-14 strips in a normal weave.



You'll notice that I made two bacon rolls. The right side is a normal sized bacon roll, the left side is a super-large bacon roll in which I wove two weaves together. My hope was to fold this weave "hot-dog" style so that I would have more pieces. Here is a picture where you can see the bacon pieces overlapping.



Step 2) Get it hot, like 400 degrees
There wasn't really any instructions for this included in the original list. So, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees and cooked the bacon for 15 minutes (this seemed to be all over the mist so I was cool with it). I didn't want to get the bacon crispy because I wanted to keep the weave together when I rolled it. Also, I cooked it in pans with edges so that the bacon grease didn't spill all over the oven (causing chaos and hysteria!).

Step 3) Make it rain (cheese) on that weave
I bought a huge bag of shredded cojack cheese and coated the bacon. I used about 12 ounces on the normal weave and about 20 ounces on the big weave. This was probably too much considering the cheese wasn't melting as much as I wanted, so I stuck them back into the oven (which I had shut off but was still hot) for about one minute. This made the cheese sufficiently melt. Picture of the pre-melted bacon wrap below.





Step 4) Roll it up
Turns out rolling up the bacon wrap is the hardest part because it is freaking hot. My advice: wait one minute then use tongs to grab along as much of the short edge as you can and roll it over. Once the first flip is complete, completing the bacon roll is actually pretty easy. Here's a picture of the completed bacon rolls.



You'll notice that both of the rolls are the same size. This is where I made my only mistake of the process. I rolled the super-bacon roll on the short edge instead of the long edge meaning I created one ultra-fat bacon roll (the one in front) instead of one normal-sized, extra long bacon roll. It turned out alright.

Step 5) Wrap it up
You can skip this step if you're making and eating the roll at home, but if you're going somewhere you may want to wrap the bacon roll in tin foil and throw it back in your warm oven until you leave. Once you cut it, these things lose heat like crazy, so make sure you don't cut it until you want to eat it (that said, it still tastes great a little cool, so its not the end of the world if its cold).

Step 6) Time to do some cutting
In the pictures from the original bacon roll, it looks like there was only 6-8 pieces of the bacon roll. This seemed like it could be expensive if you wanted to take it to a party, so I decided to cut them a lot smaller. Here's a suggestion though, use stick a toothpick in a piece and then cut it out of the roll. This way each piece will stay together (otherwise each piece will start to fall apart). Here is a picture of how the pieces look.



The plate was actually a lot more full (completely full actually) but between the time I set out the plate and took a picture, that's what happened.

Turns out they are pretty freaking good and it only takes about 25 minutes start to finish.

My recommendation: make it. You will not immediately regret the bacon roll.

Bowl Game Bonanza: Monday, December 29th

Posted by Double M




This post is part of a series of posts entitled Bowl Game Bonanza Did you know that there are a bazillion bowl games? Well there are. And here at IR I am going to give you a quick breakdown of each game so that you know who is playing in the bowl, what channel and time the game is on (all times CST), and why you would or wouldn't want to watch the game.

Today is a sad day. There is no more Monday Night Football. Sad times. On the positive side, legit bowl games (for the most part) start today. So for the next 10 days or so, get ready for at least on good football game a day. Honestly, if there's a reason the bowl system is still around (outside of the idiotic, short-sighted, greedy bastards working with the BCS), the next 10 days are it.

On to the bonanza:

Papa John's Bowl: North Carolina State (+7) vs. Rutgers (ESPN, 2pm)
Location: Birmingham, AL, Legion Field
Announcers: Eric Collins, Shaun King
Monday will be the first day back from Christmas for a lot and, as a result, not a lot of people will be watching this game. And that's unfortunate, because in terms of a random college football game, this one's got some good stuff. Rutgers, a team ready make the jump, had a rough start to the year losing 5 of their first 6 games, but they won their last 6 games to make it to the delicious garlic dipping sauce bowl. Meanwhile, NC State rolls in on a 4 game winning streak (after having lost their 4 previous games). It should be a good one.

Verdict: Both teams won some tough games to finish out the season, but I think NC State's late season wins might just be more meaningful than Rutgers. NC State covers the spread.
Regretometer: This will be a decent, not great, game to watch. Too bad most of you (including me) will be at work. It's a 2.5 on the Regretometer.

Alamo Bowl: Northwestern (+12) vs. Missouri (ESPN, 7pm)
Location: San Antonio, TX, Alamo Dome
Announcers: Ron Franklin, Ed Cunningham, Jack Arute

A brief aside: As a Nebraska fan, watching the Heisman Trophy presentation (which is a ridiculous award now by the way) and not seeing Chase Daniels there was awesome. After looking through the Chase Daniels for Heisman Viewfinder and looking at ChaseTheHeisman.com (which now redirects to his fat picture here), there was not someone I was rooting against more than him. Here's a couple clips that I've posted before featuring Chase Daniel that always make me laugh.

The first has been enjoyed by just about everyone I know.

The second is courtesy of LSUFreek.

I've been to a few Alamo Bowls and there's not a cooler place to host a bowl than San Antonio. The weather is great, the Riverwalk has great food and allows open containers and connects to most of the hotels, and San Antonio has plenty to do. Unfortunately, the game itself may not be so good. Missouri was a top 5 team to start the year, and even though they fell off, they are still better than a middle of the road Big 10 team.

Verdict: Missouri wins and covers big.
Regretometer: Alamo Bowls are either great to watch or awful to watch. I have a feeling this will be more towards the latter side as Missouri runs away with this one against an inferior Big 10 opponent. It's a 3.5 on the regretometer.

Look for Bowl Game Bonanzas everyday there's a bowl game.

All announcer information brought to you courtesy of Awful Announcing.

5 Minute Fix: One Last Shot at Charlie Weis

Posted by Double M




I hope you have been learning something from my Bowl Game Bonanza posts. I know I haven't have. Kinda.

In any case, I don't know if you saw, but Notre Dame picked up its first bowl game win since I can remember watching college football on Christmas Eve (something I predicted). Well, apparently in preparation for the game last week LSU Freek made an awesome video covering Paul McCartney's Junk and I couldn't wait until next year to share it with you.

Everyone Loves Emerald Nuts...

Posted by Double M




...commercials that is. I myself have never tried Emerald Nuts, but their commercials always make me laugh.

They are probably best remembered for their Robert Goulet commercial from a couple of years ago.

Early last year (pretty much during the NFL playoffs) they released two new commercials that made me laugh. To be honest, I had forgotten all about them until I saw them on TV last week.

The first features the Swiss Family Robinson.

The second features the girls from the Addicted to Love video.

Emerald Nuts seems to have a pretty good marketing/advertising department. I'll be intrigued to see what they come out with this year.

Side note: Has anyone ever tried Emerald Nuts? I can't ever remember even seeing them in a store to purchase...

Bowl Game Bonanza: Sunday, December 28th

Posted by Double M




This post is part of a series of posts entitled Bowl Game Bonanza Did you know that there are a bazillion bowl games? Well there are. And here at IR I am going to give you a quick breakdown of each game so that you know who is playing in the bowl, what channel and time the game is on (all times CST), and why you would or wouldn't want to watch the game.

Its the last day of the NFL season and there are some big playoff spots up for grabs. This means that you, along with most of America, will be watching NFL. The NCAA's answer? The Independence Bowl in beautiful Shreveport, LA.

Let me pass along a little secret about the Independence Bowl: Unlike several bowl destinations, there is apparently nothing to do in Shreveport, except visit the casinos. Here's a tip though - if you're underage don't try to visit the casinos. I know of 3 different people that have been banned from the casinos there. Apparently the casinos know there is nothing else to do, so they are on the look out for underage gamblers as well. So no gambling if you are underage.

In other news, Louisiana is the home of Popeye's, this means that there are a ton of Popeye's restaurants in the area. Just look how many Popeye's are within range of Shreveport.



Good times! Love that chicken.

On to the bonanza:

Independence Bowl:Northern Illinois (0) vs. Louisiana Tech (ESPN, 7pm)
Location: Shreveport, LA, Independence Stadium
Announcers: Pam Ward, Ray Bentley
I don't think Vegas cares about this game because the line is at 0. That means no one knows enough about either team to actually favor one of the teams but because people will bet on it, they leave it on the board. If that doesn't get you excited for this bowl game, I don't know what will.

Verdict: Louisiana Tech should have a home crowd advantage in this game. I have no clue if that means anything, but I guess I will pick them to win (beat the 0 point spread?).
Regretometer: The only thing worse than watching this game on TV is actually being there. It's a full 5 on the Regretometer.

Look for Bowl Game Bonanzas everyday there's a bowl game.

All announcer information brought to you courtesy of Awful Announcing.