Half Baked

Greetings To All Alert Readers, Aliens From Far Distant Galaxies, Dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery, (and it goes without saying) the motley assortment of KGB Agents Monitoring My Email, Whose Name is Legion, Heaven Knows: Here I am, climbing into my Way Back Machine to resurrect this V.I.P. (Very Important Prose) from the tail-end of January, when it was supposed to have been sent out on its merry way through the wilds of cyber-space via the information super-highway, but instead, somehow got waylaid and entangled in the fathomless labyrinths of my computer's inner workings, where it languished until just now. I hope that I can count on an indulgent public to welcome it now with open arms, and enjoy this blast from the past, as if it was as timely and relevant as ever, and thanks ever so. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Happy (very belated) Super Bowl weekend! Sunday's tilt features two teams that are no strangers to The Big Game, the New England Patriots, with 8 appearances (including this one), and the Seattle Seahawks with 3 - although at this point, the Seahawks are the defending champions, so they're certainly not second best to anybody right now. The vaunted Pats are 3-4 in their previous 7 appearances, while Seattle is 1-1, which actually gives them a higher winning percentage than their northeastern counterparts. Of course, anything can happen in a single game, but personally, my money's on Katy Perry at halftime, and I like it. In other sports news, if we find ourselves already on the brink of the Super Bowl, alert readers could be forgiven for wondering, as well they should wonder, what the heck ever happened with the Pro Bowl - that annual tribute to fun and frolic in the sunshine, where the best players from every team get to relax and enjoy all the pleasures that Hawaii has to offer, maybe toss around a little bit of pigskin, all on the NFL's dime, as it were. Not so fast! Perhaps in a (possibly misguided) effort to take the game more seriously, the NFL management eschewed the Hawaiian islands for the extremely un-exotic University of Phoenix stadium in prosaic Arizona, of all places, which coincidentally, is the same venue that will be hosting the Super Bowl the following week. (The Pro Bowl is usually scheduled in between the last Sunday of the playoffs, and before the Super Bowl, so football-starved fans have something to console themselves with on that off week, and glad of it, I dare say.) This time around, Hall of Famers Chris Carter and Michael Irvin were in charge of assembling their teams of players, using a sort of fantasy draft type of mechanism, so that players who are normally on the same team during the season, could easily find themselves in the unexpected position of playing against each other suddenly at this late date. Meanwhile on the gridiron, these contests are quickly losing their powderpuff stigma as a romp in the park, and true to form, last week's game was a taut, seesaw affair, including some outstanding plays, with Team Irvin finally squeaking out a 32-28 win over Team Carter. My personal favorite part of the whole thing is that apparently they also invite the best cheerleaders from all of the teams, to perform at the Pro Bowl on behalf of the opposing squads, and while I have no idea how they pick the ladies in question, here I'm thinking the selection process has to be about the most popular thing the NFL has ever come up with, by golly. In other seasonal news, I am not in the least surprised to report that our juvenile delinquent squirrels chewed apart the Christmas lights we put up outside on the porch, for the first time this year, thanks not. For their part, the poor mistreated lights gamely stayed lit as much as they could, for as long as they could - with first one section going dark, and then another after another - until it was just about all over but the shouting. (And I did plenty of that, I can assure you, not that it has any hope of success against this onslaught of furry varmints, and I ought to know.) On the other hand, since the brazen interlopers left the electric cords with nothing but bare wires waving their exposed ends all about the place, it did tend to present more of a safety hazard to the neighborhood than we usually care for, and it didn't take long before we had to give up the whole idea as a lost cause, and I don't mind saying, plenty of ho-ho-bah-humbug to boot. I realize that it's early days yet, but you can believe me when I say that I have already crossed the squirrels off my gift-giving list for this year, and the way they're going, maybe next year as well. No sense doing things by half-measures, I always say, and that's not just the sugar plums talking, believe me. Back on the sports scene, I couldn't help but notice in the TV listings that the NHL-leading New York Islanders were supposedly playing something called the Arizona Coyotes, of all things, which seemed mysteriously unknown to me somehow. Apparently not! They turned out to be the old Winnipeg Jets of the WHA, and relocated as the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996. Now under new ownership, they're calling themselves the Arizona Coyotes instead, and they only seem to have sprung out of nowhere, for those of us who haven't been paying close attention. Interestingly, the original Winnipeg Jets played in Canada from 1972-1996 before moving to the American southwest, while a completely different franchise, the Atlanta Thrashers, were a staple of the southeast from 1999-2011. When the Thrashers finally folded up their tents, oddly enough, they were whisked away to central Canada, and re-christened as the Winnipeg Jets all over again, beginning with the 2012 season. There's a joke in here somewhere about not being able to tell the players without a scorecard, but I'm too confused to come up with one just at the moment. And while we're on the subject of moving all around helter-skelter, it came as a surprise to almost everybody when the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles basically swapped quarterbacks, more or less out of the blue during the off-season. Michael Vick of the Eagles was already a free agent when he signed with the Jets, and since Gang Green didn't need any more quarterbacks, they took the opportunity to cut ties with the under-performing Mark Sanchez, who in turn, was quickly snapped up by Philadelphia. Sanchez, who suffered under the burden of unreasonable expectations in New York, and sat out the entire 2013 season with injuries, bounced back in Philadelphia with a career year, looking like the first-round draft pick that he might have been all along. (Or as the New York Post's pundit Bart Hubbuch put it: "Sanchez’s defenders when he was in New York — admittedly a group small enough to meet in a broom closet — always contended he was a victim of the terrible supporting cast the Jets gave him his final two seasons.") For their part, if the Jets hoped that throwing Sanchez overboard would right the ship after a hapless 8-8 season, then finishing last year at 4-12 could not have been the result they were looking for, and the owners wasted no time in cleaning house, with the coaching staff and general manager tossed out on their collective ears. Heck, the way things were going, it's a wonder they didn't just boot all of the cheerleaders too while they were at it, and start all over again with a clean pom-pom - I mean, slate. Anyway, I'm sure we're all happy that Mark Sanchez had a chance to return to his successful ways, and find redemption with a team that seemed to appreciate him as he deserved. Somewhere, Chad Pennington is having a great big laugh. Speaking of laughs, it reminds me that in the "Hope Springs Eternal" department, I heard a radio commercial, on December 15th mind you, for Mets season tickets, as if people wanted to hurry out and snap those up before it was too late. I think not! Their already long-suffering fans endured yet another dreadful season, where The Amazin's stumbled to yet another below .500 year at 79-83 (which was actually their best finish since 2008, so that tells you something right there) and wound up the season 17 games out of first place, being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs early on. The team didn't follow the lead of their cross-town compatriots by firing all of the coaches, and I think even the cheerleaders made the cut, so I don't know exactly what they expect is going to turn things around for them from last year to the upcoming one, in terms of exciting the anticipation of the locals to chase after season tickets. Of course, once the Super Bowl is out of the way, we can't rule out the possibility that the Mets front office has made some sort of deal with Katy Perry, and once again, I would have to say I liked it. You heard it here first, folks. Elle