Random Gripes

Hello! Jim here. The Beard is off doing mysterious, Beard-related activities, leaving me to write the column today. Problem is, I'm cranky, and when I'm cranky, I gripe. Why cranky, you ask? I drove down to Denver last night, not for the Rox/Sens game, but to go to Lakeside Amusement Park. Everybody in Denver should visit Lakeside... it is what amusement parks should be. Lakeside is the anti-Disneyland. 100 years old, classic roller coaster, very cool neon everywhere, no costumed characters or silly parades, and it's affordable: you can pay to ride the rides if you want, or just wander around for the $2.50 admission fee if you don't. But it was closed because of the rainstorm that also washed out the Rockies game. Five weeks of the sunniest, driest weather you could ask for, and the day we drive an hour and back down to Denver, it rains. So it's time for some griping. Ready, set...

Gripe!
Brett Favre, SHUT THE HELL UP!!! I've always liked Favre. He plays football the way I like to see it played. I think he's overrated (throws a lot of picks, wins games but how many really big ones?) but he's still great, a Hall of Famer. But about five years ago, he started watching too much ESPN, and started believing their spiel that he truly was one of the Five Pillars of America, along with Free Speech, Baseball, Big Trucks, and Apple Pie. Chris Berman once actually said, "Rooting for Brett Favre is like rooting for America!" Jesus, now I have to gripe about Chris Berman and ESPN, too.

At any rate, at this point Favre started this "should I retire, should I return" thing every summer, basically holding the Packers hostage until right before training camp because hey, I'm Brett Freakin' Favre. And you know what? They got tired of it, and I don't blame them. Last season, when he once again said he was thinking about retiring, the Packers said, "Well Brett, if you're gonna do it, do it now so we can get the ball rolling to get Rodgers in place." And to his credit, he did. That's not pressuring a guy to retire, that's asking a guy to give the NFL equivalent of two weeks' notice. Considering that the Packers are an organization that have given him tens of millions of dollars, proudly made him the face of their franchise, and given him the opportunity to become an all-time NFL legend, I don't think that's too much to ask of him.

Now, he's decided he wants to play again. Fine, we all make mistakes, and I'd like to see him back. The Packers took him at his word, though, and moved on. Also fine. The problem is that he signed a contract with the Pack which, after he un-retires, he must still honor. Contracts are pesky things, ain't they? But since Chris Berman says that Brett Favre's birthday should be a national holiday, Favre thinks that contracts are for chumps, and if the Packers don't want him as the starter he should be able to evoke his Legend Clause and play wherever he wants. So he starts bad-mouthing the Packers for doing nothing more than asking him to make a decision and then assuming he'd actually be a man about it and stick to it.

If there was a diaper big enough for Brett Favre, he'd have filled it, kicking and screaming, with stinky sticky baby poo a week ago. It's squidging up his back and down his legs at this point, but ESPN keeps plopping him in our laps. His attempts to spin this against the Packers are weak and transparent; everybody knows he's being a spoiled brat. Brett, the Jets are the perfect place for you... the NFL equivalent of Gilligan's Island: it looks nice on the brochure and it's an easy life, but you're surrounded by idiots, nobody's going anywhere, there's no hope, and few will remember. Perfect.

Gripe!
Rockies rotation: WHAT THE HELL? The Rockies were on a nice streak there, and are still playing well, but the patchwork rotation has shown its ugly side, robbing the Rox of some much-needed wins. Kip Wells? Ugh. De La Rosa? When he's good he's good, but when he's bad, he's awful. De Los Santos? We know why you haven't started in like five years. Even Cookie had a pretty bad game the other night, it must be contagious. Glendon Rusch? ...actually, you've been OK. But help is on the way! In the form of Jeff Francis and Livan Hernandez. A rotation of Cook, Jimenez, Francis, Hernandez, and Pitcher X is not too bad... assuming of course that Francis is last year's Francis and not this year's, and Livan does not succumb to the meltdown that has seemed to consume every Rockies scrapheap pitching acquisition this season.


That's it. Two gripes and I'm done. Even I'm surprised. I was going to gripe about Disneyworld a bit, but what's the use? No matter how boring it is or how much they charge or how long you have to wait just to ride Winnie The Pooh's Very Scary Adventure, people will still flock there every year ready to pay and pay and pay. The drinking water there tastes like they got it straight from the Jungle Cruise river, by the way, and that's no accident... they sell bottled water everywhere. But I won't let this turn into a full-fledged gripe; I'd probably get sued for it, anyway. Go Rockies!