Best Royal Rumble Ever.

That's all I got for now.

Happy Trails, Sgt. Slaughter

Not normally one to resist the flow of innovation, but the new blogger demands that I either forfeit my anonymity here or my identity on gmail. Some improvement.

Firstly, I would like to report that the songs on www.myspace.com/blackmarketdynamite are now downloadable! There are two studio demos there that, as far as I know, are largely uncirculated. Go forth and propogate our music. I tried to upload them to last.fm but they told me the songs needed to be encrypted differently or something. No idea how to re-encrypt them. *aggots.

Farewell, William Cowher.

The man did a fine job overall. Since I started paying attention, the man's only lean years came when he tried to engineer some kind of departure from what is known throughout the NFL world as Steelers football...staunch defense, of course, but most importantly a physical offense with a pounding rushing attack. Every team has talent, every player is a badass, even this guy. But in this age of salary caps and steroids, it's become increasingly clear to me what makes the Steelers more consistently competitive than any other team in the league: an identity that is bigger than any player on a current roster, bigger than a coach, bigger than the owners. It is the identity of Pittsburgh itself. There is such a legacy of tradition, not in terms of success but in methodology, that every player who comes through the locker room is pushed to live up to, and they stick to that whether they win or lose. In a Peloponnesian War analogy, Pittsburgh would be Sparta. (New England would be Athens and Chicago would be Boeotia. Probably.) Let us hope that now that Lysander (Cowher) has left, we will find a new general capable enough and dedicated to the Pittsburgh identity to sail the victory fleet into the Piraeus once again...

So that's the Terrordrome NFL tidbit. Watch Iron_Grenadiers to see my forthcoming playoff picks, as well as those of the other guardsmen. Also there's an ode to Chad Pennington I wrote yesterday that's especially funny if you watch this first.