"Upset how the band was treated." Nobody was there to be treated at all, badly or not. Some of you are taking this way too seriously...it's the Grammys, after all. This is the same organization that gave Best New Artist to Starland Vocal Band over Elvis Costello in 1977. I doubt Robert, Jimmy or Jones gave a moments thought about the Grammys.

Sorry to hear that, Chuck. Puts a damper on your Super Bowl weekend, I guess.

Okay...pick time. Defense wins championships. I have heard it all my life. It is ingrained in just about every athlete, coach, and fan who has participated and/or watched sports. DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS. The times I have ignored that mantra, seduced by the flashy quarterback and the point-a-minute offense that lights up scoreboards, have been the times I have met my doom in Las Vegas. In 1985, I fell in love with Dan Marino and the Dolphins and put money on them to win the Super Bowl against the 49ers. Access denied. In 1991, after burying my Raiders, I thought Jim Kelly and the Bills would have no trouble beating the Giants and their no-name quarterback, WHO?-stetler. We all know the call...WIDE RIGHT! Then in 2008, after Tom Brady broke Marino's TD record and had a season for the ages, I thought the Patriots would cap a perfect season against Peyton's li'l brother Eli and the Giants. David Tyree had the '72 Dolphins breaking out the champagne. This is the fifth Super Bowl where the #1 Offense will play the #1 Defense. In three of the four previous Super Bowls where this happened, the defense prevailed. 1979: Pittsburgh's #1 defense beats the #1 Dallas offense. 1985: San Francisco's D beats Miami's Air Marino. 1991: The NY G-Men stop Kelly and the Bills. Defense wins championships. Only in the 1990 Super Bowl did the #1 Offense prevail...Montana and the 49ers whipping the Denver Broncos. Frankly, I thought SF's defense was better than Denver's that year, so how Denver's defense was rated #1 is a little suspect to me. This game reminds me a little of when the Patriots played the Rams in 2002. A brash defensive-minded coach and young unknown quarterback going against a high-scoring MVP Super Bowl winning quarterback. Or when the Giants took on the Bills...or the Patriots. As such, I am going with Seattle. Denver has not faced a defense like Seattle's all season...the best defense they played all year was Kansas City's, and they were nowhere near as great a defensive team as Seattle. Not one team Denver played in the playoffs had what you would call a "playoff-caliber" defense. Of course, every Super Bowl has X-factors and one X-factor is the weather. Whether it snows or rains, it is going to be cold, that's for certain. Cold weather affects the offense more than the defense, and so the play-calling may be conservative for a quarter or two, as the teams get a feel for the weather, and each other. Another x-factor could be how Seattle QB Russell Wilson responds to playing in his first Super Bowl. But, honestly, Super Bowl history is rife with first-timers beating their supposedly more experienced rivals, so inexperience isn't the big deal it used to be. My Super Bowl pick with score: Seattle 27 Denver 20 GO SEAHAWKS!!!!

Laughing at the headline I saw today: Atlanta Paralyzed By Less Than 3 Inches of Snow http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-atlanta-snow-20140130,0,7911325.story#axzz2s0bblNlg There was a Super Bowl at the Georgia Dome a couple years ago. Can you imagine the clusterfuck if this year's Super Bowl was in Atlanta?

Super Bowl XLVIII = 48. X = 10. L = 50. Whenever a number is to the left of a greater number, you subtract that value...hence, 50 - 10 = 40. V = 5 and I = 1. There are seven letters used for the Roman Numeral system. I = 1 V = 5 X = 10 L = 50 C = 100 D= 500 M = 1000 Don't you dare bow out, pottedplant! You have every right to be here. The regular season and playoffs are two separate games. Since you've been here for the entire playofff run, there's no call for you to drop out. You're in all the way.

^^^ Bon appetit!

INGREDIENTS 2 ripe avocados 1/2 red onion, minced (about 1/2 cup) 1-2 serrano chiles, stems and seeds removed, minced 2 tablespoons cilantro (leaves and tender stems), finely chopped 1 tablespoon of fresh lime or lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt A dash of freshly grated black pepper 1/2 ripe tomato, seeds and pulp removed, chopped METHOD 1 Cut avocados in half. Remove seed. Scoop out avocado from the peel, put in a stone mortar. 2 Mash the avocados using the pestle. If you don't have a stone mortar and pestle, using a fork, roughly mash the avocado in a mixing bowl. (Don't overdo it! The guacamole should be a little chunky.) Add the chopped onion, cilantro, lime or lemon, salt and pepper and mash some more. Chili peppers vary individually in their hotness. So, start with a half of one chili pepper and add to the guacamole to your desired degree of hotness. Be careful handling the peppers; wash your hands thoroughly after handling and do not touch your eyes or the area near your eyes with your hands for several hours. Chilling tomatoes hurts their flavor, so don't chop the tomatoes or add to the guacamole until ready to serve. Remember that much of this is done to taste because of the variability in the fresh ingredients. Start with this recipe and adjust to your taste. 3 Cover with plastic wrap directly on the surface of the guacamole to prevent oxidation from the air reaching it. Refrigerate until ready. 4 Just before serving, chop the tomato, add to the guacamole and mix.

And, given your location, maybe add some jambalaya, catfish and beignets?

Barbeque ribs and chicken. Chili. Burgers. Hot Dogs. Enchiladas. Guacamole and chips. Nachos. Vegetable crudites and dip. Beer. Wine.

^^^ And it helped Bryan Cranston's career by breaking him out of the sit-com shackles.

The Anaheim Ducks have the best record in the NHL and beat the Kings 3-0 at Dodger Stadium last weekend. But that may not be enough for Ducks GM Bob Murray, who is apparently in the mood to upgrade the roster before the trade deadline March 5. http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-ducks-fyi-20140128,0,7332904.story#axzz2rv4PUwBq Here's a heartwarming tale on Ryan and Bob Suter just in time for the Olympics.... http://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/la-sp-olympics-suter-elliott-20140128,0,2721658.column#axzz2rv4PUwBq

In good time, my dear...in good time. Still going over a few details, statistically-speaking. Leaning Seattle's way...but my pick isn't set in stone yet. I'll probably post my official pick tonight or in the morning.

Any accredited reporter/writer/media person that actually thought and wrote that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were going to play "Dazed and Confused" should be summarily fired on the spot and have their credentials taken away.

Maybe Walter White could have put his "genius" to better use by coming up with a cure for cancer?

Hahaha, I just answered that question in the NFL Playoff Predictions thread. Mostly taking time off to show my friend around Los Angeles for a week.

So four of us are tied at 8-2...Bong-Man, jb126, pottedplant, and yours truly. Everyone else is two or more games behind, so it is only us four, and chances are it'll end up a tie, unless only one of us chooses either Seattle or Denver. I'll make my pick later. But I have to laugh at all the hullaballoo over the weather and other silliness that people stir up during the interminable two-week wait for the Super Bowl. That's why I was away from this thread for so long...not just because my friend was in town, but because I purposely ignore the talking heads if I can for that first week or so of what many people call "the silly season". The first casualty of the silly season was Richard Sherman. You know, football is played at a highly charged and emotional level...especially a championship playoff game. If you stick a microphone in a player's face mere seconds after an emotional finish to a tightly-contested battle, don't be surprised and shocked...shocked!...if the player doesn't exactly comport himself like Mr. Rogers. It's a whole different neighborhood, children. How typical, also, that after many talking heads took it upon themselves to put words into Richard Sherman's mouth as to what he said to Michael Crabtree after the game, the NFL's own tapes revealed he was merely saying "good game, good game". Move along people...nothing to see here. Both players were talking trash to each other throughout the game, as many receivers and cornerbacks do throughout the league. On this particular day, Sherman had the last word. Richard Sherman graduated from Stanford with a 3.8 GPA, which is probably a bigger accomplishment than any of the tv talking heads and bloviating blogosphere bigots calling him "thug" have achieved in their sorry lives. Seriously though, the NFL might want to consider abolishing the inane farce of Erin Andrews or Michelle Tafoya sticking a mic to a player seconds after a game and asking "What was he thinking when he made a particular play?" "Ummm, Erin, I was thinking I better remember to pick up milk and diapers on the way home or my wife will kill me." The other subject that has everyone in a tizzy is the apparently disastrous chance that the Super Bowl will be played outdoors...in the COLD! Heavens to Betsy! Oh my! Has everyone forgotten that NFL Championship games used to be played in the cold outdoors all the time? Some of the great iconic games of NFL history...the Ice Bowl, the 1958 Colts-Giants title game at Yankee Stadium that put the NFL on the sporting map for good...were played outdoors in tough conditions. Football belongs on grass in the outdoors, whatever the elements. Unless the Saints are playing, most games in domes are antiseptic bores...there's no passion in the crowd, no atmosphere. Just a big ugly dome. Contrast that with the great blimp shots you get at outdoor stadiums of the crowd and the colours of the field and the surrounding city and countryside. Hold every Super Bowl at the Superdome? No thanks. We have had Super Bowls played in perfect weather and conditions for some time now. It'll be refreshing to have a little weather challenge thrown into the mix for once. Fans and players endured it before. They can do so again. Especially those corporate pricks that get most of the seats anyway. Let 'em freeze. For those too young to remember, here's a little history lesson on the lineage of cold-weather NFL games and when and why the NFL decided to move the Super Bowl to warm weather neutral-sites...and the change of attitude that has allowed cold-weather sites to come into play again for the Super Bowl. Cold-weather game has come full circle for the NFL Richard Rothschild SI.com January 30, 2014 As the National Football League prepares for its first cold-weather Super Bowl, keep this in mind as Sunday's kickoff approaches. Between 1933 and 1965, when the league's title matchup was known simply as the NFL Championship Game and a majority of teams were based in the Northeast and Midwest, nearly all the contests were played in cold and sometimes brutal weather. The 1945 game in Cleveland took place in the aftermath of a snowstorm, with the temperature below zero. The 1948 game in Philadelphia was played in a snowstorm. Even Los Angeles wasn't immune from the elements. The '49 title game was played during a driving rain that turned the L.A. Coliseum floor to a muddy mess. But it wasn't until a pair of frosty championship games in the early 1960s that NFL officials started to ask if perhaps it wouldn't be wise to hold the league's showcase game at a neutral, warm-weather site, a place where the condition and skill of the players, and not the condition and chill of the field, would determine the best team. The irony is that those two games involved the New York Giants, whose MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., serves as the venue for Sunday's Super Bowl XLVIII. Professional football in the early 1960s is best remembered for the rise of the Green Bay Packers, the Vince Lombardi-led powerhouse that won five world championships in seven years, culminating with victories in the first two Super Bowls. But the most imaginative NFL offense of that time was piling up yards and points along the East River in Yankee Stadium. The New York Giants, led by Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle, were one of the first NFL teams that threw the ball nearly as often as it ran it. The '62 title game at Yankee Stadium took place in conditions that one local broadcaster called "barbaric." Temperatures barely made it out of the teens and the winds gusted to nearly 40 mph. TV crews built fires in the dugouts to thaw out their cameras. Team benches were blown over. It was not a day for throwing the football. "The ball was like a diving duck," said Tittle, who completed 18 of 41 passes for 197 yards. "I threw one pass and it almost came back to me." The run-oriented Packers proved superior as Hall of Famer Jim Taylor rushed for 85 yards and a touchdown and Jerry Kramer kicked three field goals. The Giants' lone score came on a blocked punt as Green Bay won its second straight championship, 16-7. Surely 1963 would be different for the Giants though. New York had defeated the Bears 26-24 at Wrigley Field during the '62 regular season and both lineups were basically the same. But the '62 game was played with temperatures in the 40s. The '63 title game temperature at kickoff was in single digits with an 11 mph wind blowing off Lake Michigan. The Giants seemed up to the task, taking a 7-0 lead on a Tittle to Frank Gifford TD pass. The margin nearly grew to 14-0 when Tittle threw to a wide-open Del Shofner at the Chicago goal line, but the ball bounced off the wide receiver's frozen fingers. One play later Bears linebacker Larry Morris intercepted a Tittle screen pass, returning the ball to the Giants 5-yard line. The Bears scored and what could have been a 14-0 Giants lead had turned into a 7-7 game. Even worse, on the TD pass to Gifford, Morris had rolled into Tittle's legs, injuring the quarterback's left knee. The combination of the cold and pain limited Tittle's effectiveness the rest of the game. The Giants managed to take a 10-7 halftime lead but another Tittle interception (he threw five in the game) set up Chicago's go-ahead score and the Bears defense did the rest for a 14-10 victory. Would the Giants have prevailed in milder conditions? Considering the quality of a Bears defense that had limited the Packers to a combined 10 points during two regular-season games and created nearly 60 turnovers that is not a given. But the Giants and their fans could only look longingly at a game that was played one week later in the warmth of southern California. Guided by coach Sid Gillman, the pass-oriented San Diego Chargers threw for more than 300 yards and routed the Boston Patriots 51-10 for the 1963 American Football League championship. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, a native Californian, certainly took notice. Once the NFL-AFL merger of 1966 created the championship game that would become the Super Bowl, Rozelle and the owners from both leagues agreed that the sport's showcase attraction should be played in the best environment possible. The first Super Bowl culminated the '66 season in the sun and warmth of the L.A. Coliseum, where the Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. Not only was the weather superior but football looked better. The '65 NFL Championship Game at Green Bay's Lambeau Field had been played on a sub-freezing day that featured intermittent snow and a ghastly muddy field. A TV audience could barely make out the numbers on the white jerseys of the visiting Cleveland Browns. Super Bowl I was played on an immaculate grass field in the sunshine with temperatures in the 50s. The game eventually would rotate among warm-weather sites and domed stadiums. When the Giants finally registered their first NFL championship in 30 years at the end of the 1986 season, quarterback Phil Simms completed 22 of 25 passes in the Super Bowl XXI victory over the Denver Broncos. The game was played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. It's difficult to imagine Simms completing 88 percent of his passes in the wind at Yankee Stadium in December 1962 or in the cold of Wrigley Field in December '63. And it's equally hard imagining Giants wide receiver David Tyree making a one-handed catch of an Eli Manning pass in wintry weather as he did in Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, Ariz., to set up the winning TD against the Patriots at the end of the 2007 season. He might have suffered the same fate as Shofner. Rozelle, who stepped down as commissioner in 1989, always favored the best possible conditions for players and fans, but his successors took a different view. Paul Tagliabue and Roger Goodell believed good television ratings trumped good weather. Where December and January night games in outdoor Northern stadiums were off-limits for Rozelle, Tagliabue and Goodell endorsed putting the best matchups before a prime-time audience, regardless of location. Yes, frigid conditions have severely tested players and fans on winter nights in Green Bay, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Foxboro, Mass. But these games are terrific theater for TV audiences watching from the warmth of their living rooms or sports bars. The lower the thermometer drops, the more ratings seem to climb. Professional football had gone back into the cold. If the Seattle Seahawks are to play the role of the '63 Bears in defensing the record-setting passing attack of the Denver Broncos, with Peyton Manning playing the part of Y.A. Tittle, it will be interesting to see whether weather returns to a supporting role in the NFL's premier game. Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/-nfl-super-bowl/news/20140130/cold-weather-super-bowl-nfl-championship-games/#ixzz2rutYWBNk

Out of curiosity's sake, I am interested to know the type of reactions your shirt engendered, Cecil: Positive...negative...confusion?

That's hilarious. I also heard from a friend in Houston that they cancelled school for two days because of snow. My friend flew home through Atlanta, so she's lucky she beat the snow or else she'd be stuck.

^^^ Walter's mostly right...RHCP's days of relavancy to the music scene are slipping away. Maybe they have one more burst of creativity in them, but I think most of the people who go to see them now just want to hear the "Mother's Milk"-"Blood Sugar Sex Magic"-"Californiacation" stuff. "Just play the hits, maaaaan!" It's just not the same without John F. Just don't mention that to Chad...he hates that.

Hiking in the morning... Ice skating at night...

Yeah, who let those one-hit hacks Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson on the stage? Not to mention Carole King, Queens of the Stone Age, Dave Grohl, Nile Rogers, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney...for shame!

Ryan Miller's Olympic mask is 7 shades of awesome! http://deadspin.com/ryan-millers-olympic-mask-unveiled-1510600678 The article suggests that Quick not Miller will be the starter for Team USA. Rick must be fuming!

You wasted all day watching the Grammys? Your wife must be a very patient woman.

Sweet! Looks like your fab week began as mine ended. About time you and the missus enjoy some strokin' in the sun. FORE!

A few rounds at Tiki Ti and then Jumbo's Clown Room will do for starters... Ahhhhh, high school. Good luck to him. Glad the first day went well.