A Good Monday Morning

If You Ever Begin To Doubt Yourself........

Always remember Leonardo DiCaprio has gained fame and fortune reaching the peak of his profession despite never learning to wear a watch.

And Lo, For The Gus Bus Shall Enter The Valley of Death

Auburn vs. LSU 

2:30 PM CT - CBS

The last time Auburn Univ. defeated LSU in Tiger Stadium Nick Saban was still two coaching gigs away from Alabama, I was a sixteen year old music student at the Conservatoire de Lyon and Bill Clinton was President of the United States.  It was 1999.

Some say the most exciting and memorable games ever played in the rich history of Tiger Stadium were played between Auburn and the LSU.  Saturday Auburn and the "Gus Bus" once again enter Death Valley, this time ranked as the #10 team in the nation. But as any college football fan knows, when the game clock starts those numbers are mostly meaningless. 

The Gus Bus has been shifting gears, and the Tigers played last week......more like the LSU Tigers for a change. The Expert Sports Monkeys are saying this is a mismatch, and it may very well be true.

But if all the Tiger defense starters are all healthy and able to play this week and can do as well as their stand-ins did last week slowing the run and make the Auburn Whiz Kid throw the ball, the Tigers could make a real game of it. The only secondary Auburn has faced as good as LSU, they loss to.  And like all first time QB's visit to Tiger stadium, if you rattle easy they will see it, and they'll be coming for ya. Ask Jalen Hurts.  It also depends how well the mostly freshman offensive line can handle a very good Auburn defense that is playing at the top of their game. So if the Tigers have recovered from their (fill in the blank) that plagued them before the Florida game and can keep it close, I think it makes Auburn ripe for a possible upset. 

Yea, The Football Gods have not looked kindly upon the Auburn Tigers when they travel to The Valley of Death.  Auburn has come into Tiger Stadium ranked in the Top 10 three times. They are 0-3 in those trips. 

I Say UPSET: LSU by 3  ✔

SEC Games of the Week:

South Carolina vs Tennessee - 11AM CT - ESPN
Butch Jones is on the hot seat bigtime. This week he plans to start his freshman QB to try and get things going. I think it's exactly what the Vols need to do. They get off to a slow start but Butch and the Boys in Orange(GRRR!) put it on the Gamecocks. 

I Say Vols by 7  ✖


Arkansas vs. Alabama - 6:15 PM CT - ESPN
Okay, for this game to have any semblance of a fair fight, I call on the SEC to require both teams wear their Red Helmets and Red Jerseys at the same time in this game. Do I hear second??

I say The Tide by 20+ ✔


Texas Aggies vs. The Florida Suspects - 6PM CT ESPN2
It took the full 4 quarters for Alabama to shake off A&M last week. As much as I hate to say it, I think the Aggies are a better team then their record.

This week the Aggies travel to the Swamp to play The Squirrel and his Gators, who will be wearing some butt-ugly swamp green camouflage type uniform, either as punishment for last weeks loss, or to attempt to actually sneak up on the goal line and try to score some points.........

I Say Aggies by 10+ ✔

Went 3-0 last week making Diogenes 12-5 YTD. going into Week 7.

Dear Hollywood: Don’t Ever Lecture America Again

“Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion.” - Harvey Weinstein 

People of my age probably know “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns and Roses pretty well. The song is about Hollywood and the ugly side most people don’t think about.

"And you’re a very sexy girl very hard to please You can taste the bright lights but you won’t get there for free In the jungle welcome to the jungle"

And this isn’t in any way a new thing. Hollywood has always been a dark place, pretty much from the beginning. But it does seem that the high school popularity contest taken to the adult level has gotten worse with its preaching to the “deplorables” on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountains. It honestly thinks it has a duty to guide American culture and the country’s collective morality. That Hollywood thinks this is just indicative of how completely nuts the place has gone.

Don’t preach to us anymore Hollywood. There is a reason fewer people are watching your movies and it’s not JUST because you aren’t putting out anything good. You wish. America, in very large part is just moving on. People used to care about the Oscars. Now they don’t – or at least many more don’t these days. Many people are coming to realize that the product Hollywood sells, a Kardashian world, is bankrupt increasingly in every sense. It’s a waste of time. Hollywood has had it good for so long that it has forgotten that its not an industry like energy, or farming. It’s a luxury item. Hollywood is paid to entertain. If yet another CGIed up Marvel comic book movie doesn’t come out the world will go on. In fact if Hollywood just went away completely the world would go on.  

Hollywood seems to hold its customers in contempt. This is not a good strategy for an industry of actors and jugglers. All Americans have to do is just turn off the TV, or stop going to the movies. (Something more and more of us are doing anyway.) Just ask the NFL how it feels.

Thank You MJA for the Linkage!

Just Sayin'

When "Shut-Up" Turns to Twitter Screams

The left has waged a cultural war against American values for generations,  a cultural war with very little if any serious pushback. In the past year their culture war has surged into the streets and onto the game fields. Even though the intellectual leftist totalitarians have controlled the cultural conversation and disparaged the values of Americans, sports generally resisted the cultural left’s hatred of America. Since the election of President Donald Trump though, the totalitarian left have made their move on football. It was supposed to be a win/win for the left.

The totalitarian left has always hated football (and NASCAR) because the sport appeared to be particularly patriotic and appealed to white working class men. The left never like all that flag waving even if it was paid for with tax dollars. Still, the left tried to disparage football but always failed to bring the sport down. The totalitarian left have had one foothold in the sport - sports writers. Sports writers, such as the fabled Hunter Thompson who later went on to write about the political world, had one “talent”. They wielded a vast vocabulary and fevered (often due to drugs or drink) imaginations. This ability to describe the same action in fresh ways made these “creative” writers a natural for the sports world. After all, how many ways can you describe the same action in fresh new ways? A ball is thrown, the ball is caught, the player moves in this or that direction in failure or triumph.  These refugees from “creative” writing courses at colleges, most from the left wing of the political spectrum, couldn’t play the games, but they could describe them and shape the public perception. We went from Hunter Thompson to Keith Olbermann. 

In the cultural landscape the dream merchants of Hollywood had a singular role. Hollywood used to cheerlead America through tough times such as World War II. Hollywood used to make great biopics about figures such as Christopher Columbus. Hollywood used to manipulate public opinion to extol American values particularly when those old Jews from New York ran the studios. Those old Jews understood the debt they owed to the country and genuinely loved America. That was the old world. Donald Trump for years saw what was happening as the cheerleading for America became a ceaseless attack against America.

In 2017, citizen Donald Trump became President Donald J. Trump, and the world changed again. The silence from those who like America was broken. The old “shut-up” turned to Twitter screams. Now the fight was on.

NFL: "No one could damage an industry better then us." Hollywood: "Hold my beer"

Hollywood will not easily recover from Harvey Weinstein -- not for a long time. The hypocrisy level has hit Defcon 1, 9.9 on the Richter scale. Hollywood’s politics have always been a self-serving charade, a liberal masquerade for a rapacious and lubricious lifestyle. But now, thanks to the Weinstein scandal, we see it more clearly than ever. And it couldn't be more repellent. Can you imagine how it’s going to be watching this year’s Oscars as they scoop up awards while making political pronouncements on whatever cause strikes their superficially conventional (but personally sick) fancies, especially if those causes express veiled contempt for the morals of those clods in flyover country who are supposed to be their audience? - Roger Simon