No Soup For You

All of those fans that booed Donovan McNabb during the 1999 NFL Draft look like soothsayers on Tuesday morning. They must have known that McNabb would be the biggest underachieving quarterback to hit Pennsylvania since Neil O'Donnell was giving away balls in the Super Bowl.

The time has finally come to recognize McNabb for what he really is�a product of media hype. A guy that became a legend more for his endorsement contracts than his ability to win football games. History should remember his three jokes in the NFC Championship Game or his vomiting in the Super Bowl.

Or better yet, those awful Campbell's Soup commercials.

You can take your Sports Illustrated or Madden cover jinxes, but give credit for Campbell�s too. Kurt Warner, Reggie White, and Terrell Davis went from Super Bowl heroes to zeroes after signing up to pitch the product. Davis injured his knees, Warner went back to looking like a former AFL quarterback, and White turned into a black Rush Limbaugh.

Serves them right for using actresses instead of their real moms. (Or in Warner's case, his wife who looked older than his mother.)

Jerome Bettis, Brian Urlacher, and Michael Strahan, who all hawked the soup, are kindred spirits with McNabb�media monsters who are famous for playing football instead of winning at it. Quick, try to think of the time McNabb put his team on his shoulders and carried it to victory. You cannot do it. The only thing you can think of is all of those camera shots of his mother (not an actress) cheering him on in the stands.

McNabb's career was summed up in the moments after he threw the Eagles season away to the Cowboys Roy Williams. McNabb seemed to have no ill effects of the sports hernia when he ran for a touchdown and showed the worst dances moves for a quarterback since Daunte Culpepper. But McNabb was limping around the field after he was blocked following Williams� touchdown return. Professional wrestlers wished they could sell an injury so convincingly. Al Michaels and John Madden were quick to say that the injury was hurting his passing. How could you tell? It is not like McNabb is an accurate passer.

The Eagles season appears finished and McNabb might not be returning to the lineup anytime soon. But then again, look at the bright side Eagles fans, you can always catch a glimpse of your hero on those Campbell�s commercials.

"Watch her like a movie"

Real estate is an obsession in the New York/New Jersey area. At every party I attended during my single days, if there were four conversations going on at once, two or three of them would be about square footage, rent hikes, crazy landlords and, as we got older, mortgage rates. A lot of people want to live around here, and there's not enough elbow room for all, so everyone's constantly hustling for a bigger space, a better rent, a parking space, whatever.

Shortly after Marian and I resumed dating after a short and stupid break, she got a tip from a friend about a ginormous two-bedroom in a prime location in Hoboken. She brought me with her to check it out, and it was as great as advertised. Her only problem was that she would need to find a roommate to cover the rent. I offered to move in with her, only half-joking, and it was as much about my love of the place as my interest in taking things to the next level with Marian. She rolled her eyes and said, "Umm... no," and found herself a roommate who we'll call Georgia for legal reasons. When she was interviewing possible roommates, she told all of them that it would be a one-year deal, and at the end of that year, if Marian wanted the place to herself, she'd get it.

By the time that year was coming to a close, we were engaged and we wanted that place. One problem: Georgia claimed to have never had the one-year conversation with Marian, and told us in no uncertain terms that she wasn't leaving. Marian had put both their names on the lease so she'd have legal recourse in case Georgia turned out to be a flake who wouldn't pay rent, but that backfired.

So the plan became for me to move in -- along with all my furniture, books, comic books, electronic equipment, etc. -- and make my presence as big and loud as possible (as any of my friends will tell you, that wasn't much of a challenge) until Georgia decided she'd rather live in a smaller place than deal with me and my stuff. Georgia responded to Operation: Sasquatch with a strategic retreat into her bedroom, gradually removing all of her stuff -- including the TV, the lamp and one of the couches -- from the living room. My friend Jennifer advised us to get a bucket of popcorn and "watch her like a movie" to make sure she didn't start messing with our stuff.

After a few weeks, Georgia surrendered and found another place. But as one final salvo in our little war, she locked her bedroom door (a keyless lock that can only be opened easily from the inside) as she left, so that we were only a few minutes into our celebration of having the place to ourselves before we had to call a locksmith.

Why am I telling you all this? It's a (very) roundabout way of saying that I've lived something close to what happened on "How I Met Your Mother" last night -- minus the dueling part -- and I could relate to the anguish over shared real estate. (This, of course, is TV New York, where a kindergarten teacher can afford to carry the rent on an apartment big enough to be converted into a Chinese restaurant, even though she doesn't live there.) Not as good as the club episode, but pretty funny nonetheless. Barney's Lemon Law subplot was also nice, and featured yet another "Freaks and Geeks" guest appearance, by Martin "Bill Haverchuck" Starr as Robin's nerdy date. (Samm Levine was one of the losers stuck outside the nightclub, and, of course, disco-dancing Jason Segel is in the regular cast.)

I'm still catching up on other things from Sunday and Monday nights (I wasted most of last night watching the ugliest NBA game I have ever seen), but I did see the latest "Simpsons," which opened with what I think is the longest couch gag in the show's history. (My friend Dan suggested the parody of "Contact" as the only other one that came close.) That couch gag was also funnier than the rest of the episode combined. After all my complaining over the years about the writers moving away from the emotional dynamics of the family, I can't get too worked up over a half-hour about Marge and Bart bonding, but it felt like a rough outline of an episode; there was sort of a story, and sort of a few jokes, but they weren't close to finished. And the Homer's dumbbell subplot? I know the show's been around for 8,000 years, but this is at least the third different episode where Homer or Marge gets randomly bulked up (the last time, Homer accomplished it by unleashing the power of apples); if you're going to repeat that joke again, at least make it funny.

I also suffered through another episode of what's shaping up to be the worst "Saturday Night Live" season since Anthony Michael Hall and Randy Quaid roamed the halls. Watching it this year is like that Tom Hanks sketch where everyone in the family has to take a whiff of the rotten milk carton so they know for themselves just how disgusting it is. I love Jason Lee, but even he can't do much when the writing's not there. The closest thing to a good sketch was the HGTV parody, and even that was a rip-off of two older sketches: Schweddy Balls and a Prince Charles/butler sketch that featured the same caulk-in-the-crack joke.

I'd write more, but someone sitting on my lap needs a new diaper. More later after I've watched "Prison Break." In the meantime, links to the two most recent All TV columns: Monday's, featuring Matt on PBS' Las Vegas documentary and me bemoaning the fate of "Arrested Development," and Tuesday's, a mailbag dealing even more with "Arrested Development." (It's my goal to mention the show every day this week if I can get away with it.)

I Feel Your Bain

Greetings, Hater Nation!

I am Conrad Bain and once again I've been invited to blog for you today. As some of you may know, over the weekend the host of this site reportedly suffered an injury at an amusement park while riding a giant waterslide. The details I've received are sketchy, but I've been told he underwent emergency surgery in which doctors had to remove over seventy-five feet of his colon.

This weekend I lounged on the French Mediterranean in the company of the lovely Elaine Joyce and Suzanne Pleshette. I'd planned on remaining at my villa through Thursday, but upon receiving news of Hater's accident I chartered a Leer back to the States without hesitation. Speaking of which, if anyone in the front office is reading this, I need to be brought up to speed regarding the reimbursement of my expenses, as well as the tedious subject of per diem. I've sent an email to the curious little wooden fellow who occasionally writes here, but have received no answer. Likewise, when I sent my assistant to inquire with Steve Bisheff, he returned disheveled and shaken, the victim of a violent beating from a dog-eared notebook. Please respond when you can, but there's no rush regarding money matters. The Bain Man has made major moves and receives huge rezie daps all dizay ya heard me.

Now Wattle You Do?
It's become grimly fashionable around this site to poke fun at Norv Turner's skin condition, but I refuse to follow suit. No, not because I'm nice. I just don't wish to be factually inaccurate. A little bit of research shows that it's not a skin condition at all, but a wattle... a caruncle-covered throat flap that turns bright red during courtship rituals or when Norv is upset.

And after Sunday, Norv has plenty to wattle over. With his team now at 3 - 6, the Raiders need to put together some momentum if they're serious about having home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

He Would've Sunk The Putt, Anyway
Nice of the NFL to give Alstott and Tampa Bay a gimme on their 2-point conversion at the end of the Redskins game. I am closer to being mistaken for a Carolina lesbian than that ball was to crossing the goal line. Seriously, that call was so flaky that if you shaved its head and put a cowboy hat on it, Renee Zellweger would marry it.

Silver Cotton Candy
It's a pretty common knowledge around the water coolers of this blog that, if you take your fingernail and scratch through the top coat of The Hater Nation's black and gray logo, a big blue star will appear underneath. Just saying, is all...

F.I.B.s
Those who watched the Bears and 49ers battle at Soldier Field were amazed at the havoc wreaked upon the game by the Chicago''s trademark November winds. Many people believe the city's storied gusts originate on Lake Michigan, but that's a myth. The real reason Chicago is battered by constant winds is because not a single one of the city's 2.8 million residents has ever shut their mouths.

Oh, And His Coach Is Retarded
Brett Favre takes a lot of crap around here. To read this blog, you'd think Favre's dad had a heart attack and drove his truck into a tree to improve Brett's press.

Give Favre some credit. He's kept the Packers in most of the games until the inevitable train wreck, and he's done so with a ragtag cast of clodhoppers, some of whom haven't carried a pigskin since junior high school. It's rumored that if you're in the checkout line at a Green Bay area Piggly Wiggly, and the bagger asks you if you need help carrying your bags, and you say "no thanks", Mike Sherman will be waiting at your car with a contract and a pen.

Kill Flipper
There are a couple things that probably will never happen, but if they did they'd make me really happy. One of them would be to see Jessica Simpson and her husband thrown from a ten-story building. The other would be to see an NFL team, any team, go unbeaten, thus killing the annual non-story of how the old Miami Dolphins all toast each other every year after the last unbeaten team loses. The Colts are seven games away. Is it wrong for me to root for Indy to pull the trigger and send those Dolphins geezers to their graves, bitter, despondent and forgotten?

No more wrong than promising Kimberly the car keys after I'd already given them to Willis.