Dear NBC, You Suck

Exhibits A and B

For many years, I have maintained that Starbucks makes coffee for people who don't actually like, you know, coffee. I suspect that the baristas breathe a secret sigh of relief when confronted with this order:  "large coffee, please," because I see all manner of complicated drinks --- things with whipped cream and syrups and all sorts of other crazy stuff essentially designed to mask the coffee flavor in coffee. I submit Exhibits A and B, pictured to left:  the Starbucks' Toffee Nut Frappuccino and Mocha Praline Frappuccino, respectively. And I rest my case. (Mocha Praline? Really? Who thought up that combo? Paula Deen?)

A week into watching the 2012 Summer Olympics from London, I can say with authority that NBC is to sports what Starbucks is to coffee -- all frothy and foamy and treacly sweet with very little coffee (or in this case, actual competition.) I don't need caramel syrup in my coffee and I don't need personal backstories to create interest in a sporting event.

Why Al Michaels Is a Tool, a Brief Meditation

If anybody ever wonders why NBC play by play man Al Michaels drives me completely batsh*t crazy, I have a simple example from last night's season opening Saints - Vikings game.

At the start of the 4th quarter, with New Orleans leading 14-9, old what's his name threw a pass out in the flat to Jimmy Kleinsasser. It was ruled an incomplete pass on the field. This drove Al nuts because the official behind Kleinsasser first ruled it a catch, but the other official, who had a better angle on the ball, ruled that the ball hit the ground and it was incomplete. To me, it walked like an incompletion, quacked like an incompletion, so it was clearly an incomplete duck, to borrow a phrase from our friend T.O.