football first, stories later? yes.

our first game is the saturday afternoon rematch of week 14's 17-6 snoozefest. of course, i speak of the jets +8.5 at pittsburgh. the jets secondary still stinks, but i'm going to learn from my mistake and realize that the steelers are not capable of throwing over the top of defenses - well maybe they are capable but they don't do it often (eagles game is the only time i remember them doing this). anyways, the stillers won a somewhat important week 14 game 17-6 against the jets, but the jets had a gimpy pennington who threw 3 picks. they no longer have a gimpy pennington. i think. eh, this game bores me. it bores me to just write about it. i'm getting bored thinking about listening to cbs guys cover it. god i hate non-espn/abc commentators. and abc commentators aren't that good either. but i digress. i don't see the steelers losing this game, but i feel like they won't cover. so give me the jets +8.5 but the steelers to win.

stl +7.0 at atlanta has to be the most annoying line ever. seven point spreads suck ass. its just a fact of life. atlanta hasn't played for a week and they haven't played a meaningful game in even longer. still, martz and the rams got lucky in that they faced an equally inept holmgren last week. an aside - martz and holmgren blew threw 3 timeouts (2 martz 1 holmgren) in the first 4 minutes of that game. these guys do not deserve to be head coaches in the nfl. god. they coach like how chad plays madden. anyways, despite all this martz bashing, i don't see the rams losing by over a touchdown. two field goals, yes. but not a three field goals. this line pains me. anyways, rams +9.0 and falcons to win.

vikings +9.0 at eagles. i hate joe buck. last week is a perfect example. moss fake-moons the packers crowd. FAKE MOONS. this is a fucking middle school stunt. no, its like 4th grade. seriously. it's harmless. and on top of it, tony dungy came out (tony dungy of "let's kneel the ball instead of getting peyton another td for his colection") and pointed out that the packers fans have a unique tradition of mooning the visiting team when they are leaving lambeau as losers. now, joe buck comes out and calls it a disgusting act immediately. and his great brain counterpart in the booth, collinsworth, jumps right in and calls it disgusting too. aikman, being a cowboy and all, had too much class to get into it. but yeah. following suit from joe buck's loud reaction was the entire fox team, then espn. they found it offensive, disgusting etc. these are all men, by the way. i just want to ask these guys, most of them former football players, why they called moss's fake-moon-reference-to-packers-fan-tradition offensive, or what they found offensive about this. like... it boggles my mind. almost all these guys have been in a fucking locker room. what is their goddamn problem? joe buck decided to make a big deal out of something so he could make a big deal out of something (he's melodramatic and he is a shill and he just fucking sucks) and randy moss gets trashed by fox and espn. well, i think moss was funny and i like moss and i'll take moss ten times out of ten over fucking terrell owens, and thus any wr in the league. so theres my two cents. too bad i'm not on tv so no one will listen and automatically think i'm right. vikings +9.0 and to win straight up over the TO-less eagles.

colts +2.0 at new england. game of the year. hype-central. and with good cause. peyton finally has a chance (4 years in college, 7 years in the pros) to win his biggest game of the year. he's never done it, and i'm a huge volunteers fan and a huge peyton fan. he just hasn't done it. but he has the talent around him, the defense is just coming together, and the pats secondary is just decimated. i've always underestimated the pats. they always surprise me. i look at the team and i think "there's no way this team can win anything" but somehow, they do.

this game comes down to the front seven for the pats. can they get enough pressure on manning to force him to make mistakes? big enough mistakes that troy brown and earth, wind and fire can capitalize on them? that's the crux of the matter.

i think the bottom line is that the pats blew their chance to win this game last year. they blew it when they mugged pollard two plays in a row at the end, killed harrison almost every time 8-10 yards downfield, and showed a blatant disregard for defensive interference/holding rules that led directly to the aforementioned rules to be not just enforced, but enforced to the extreme. unless walt coleman is reffing the game (and he might be, i dunno), i just have to take the colts +2.0 to win outright. i have infinite faith in peyton and i infinitely underestimate the patriots. so take that pick with a grain of salt.

i had an encounter a while back at the valvoline near my house. i desperately needed an oil change so i drove over there and pulled in, no wait. the guy, pretty big black guy, deep voice, not much older than me, goes ahead and drains my oil and replaces with the $50 maxlife stuff that i asked for (my car is a '93 and i'm a sucker with car-related shit so...). they go ahead and do the other tests too, you know, radiator, transmission fluid, etc. the guy tells me the radiator fluid should be flushed, that'll be $90. then he tells me the transmission fluid ($100) should be flushed this time or next time i come in, but definitely soon. we're up to $240+tax as a bill, and the guy can tell that i'm hesitant. i go ahead and tell him to do the radiator and that i'll do the transmission later, no worries. he hooks up the machine and gets it going.

at this point i'm feeling sorta poor. but i figure i gotta take care of my car, right? its how i get to work! gotta take care of it. then the guy goes, "you lookin to save some money?"

i say, "why, what's up?"

i don't think he understood this response (retrospectively, i don't fucking understand this response). he repeated his question, and i say "what do you have for me?" or something sketchy-sounding like that. i'm so cool. this is his offer - "how about you give me $50 cash and i take care of the radiator and the transmission. you have a credit card right? you just put the oil change on your credit card"

brilliant.

i say yes. then i open up my wallet.

a jackson, a hamilton, and a lincoln. $35.

i tell the guy "man i can't do it, i only have $35. if you got me earlier i'd have $50 for you but..."

he thinks for half a second, if that. looks at me and goes "for you, $35 is fine"

so thats how i paid $85 for a $250 oil change and service.