For whatever reason I was remembering the last time I was in Amsterdam. It was 1996 and I took a canal-boat tour with a Dutch girl I was seeing. On the boat were a lot of Polish businessmen and their wives. As we passed through the city’s famous Red Light District one burly fellow, his shirt open to expose a very hairy chest and a thick gold chain, yelled to the prostitutes above us as he pounded his chest, “GIVE IT TO MEEEE! GIVE IT TO MEEEE!”

On another note, it was very foggy and hazy on the drive to work this morning. With just a little imagination, and if you looked away from the concrete of Route 28, you could imagine yourself somewhere in a misty moor in Scotland or Wales, or perhaps in some medieval Norse woodland. The trees alongside the road were staggered in ranks, each cloaked in a progressively lighter shade of grey as they receded from the eye. At one point the sun backlit a building, illuminating the fog and creating a glowing halo around the structure. It could have been Hamlet’s Elsinore, with mists creeping and swirling outside its walls as intrigues swirled within. But then I saw that it wasn’t a Danish castle at all but instead a Hampton Inn & Suites and the spell was broken.

Then I decapitated a banana and ate breakfast. (In all my years as an eater of bananas I have never cleanly snapped off the entire top end of a banana when peeling it. The whole top just sheared off in my hand, in a neat clean line, with the fruit of the banana inside the skin, which it wore like a yellow hat. It was the weirdest thing.)

I put the top up on the Jeep last week when I had my interview at The Pope’s Hat. I’ve kept it on since - although I was tempted to take it down so I could drive around while the snow fell. The great thing is that driving with the top up is almost as much fun as with it down. Since it’s a canvas top it’s like being inside a tent, but a tent that I can drive around.

***** ***** *****

Shockingly, The Purple, who were 3-6 four weeks ago, is now the team to beat for the final wildcard spot in the NFC. Despite our all-universe rookie running back only gaining three yards on fourteen carries yesterday, we still beat the 49ers 27-7 to win our fourth straight and improved our record to 7-6.

Miami continues its Bataan Death March toward ignominy. They lost to Buffalo 38-17 and are now 13-0. As an added bonus, they’ve moved past the 2001 Lions and the 1977 Buccaneers on the list of All Time Futility.

The worst starts ever:

0-14 1976 Buccaneers (never won)
0-14 1980 Saints
0-13 2007 Dolphins
0-13 1986 Colts
0-12 2001 Lions
0-12 1977 Buccaneers
0-11 2000 Chargers
0-11 1984 Bills
0-11 1975 Chargers

It doesn’t get any better, either. The Dolphins still have to play Baltimore, New England and Cincinnati. Ouch.

And I know Craig M is down there in central Florida, rabid Bucs fan that he is, just drooling  over the possibility of the Dolphins knocking his team off the top of this particular list.

***** ***** *****

I am a regular poster on a football web forum. Today, a fellow member sent me this video, which anyone who has ever hung out in forums will appreciate.

Warning: Contains strong language and Nazis.

My favorite line: “I demand that they yiff in Hell!”

Winter is great. I love the snow and ice and the crisp, cold air. But it turns every driver on the road into a Corolla driver. And you know how I feel about them.

On another front, my second interview at The Pope’s Hat seems to have gone well. I am cautiously optimistic that the end of this extremely crappy stretch I’ve been in for the last four months is coming around. Fingers crossed.

I woke up this morning, shuffled out into the upstairs hallway with my hair sticking up in eight directions, looked out the second floor window over the foyer and saw snow on the Davis’s driveway across the street.

“Snow!” I said to the barely lucid LaRay, who was still in bed.

“Snow?” she mumbled.

“Snow!”

After five years of marriage we don’t have to say much to say a lot. I imagine in twenty years this entire exchange will be telepathic.

It’s supposed to snow all day. We should get an inch or two, according to the Snow Advisory that was published by Those Who Publish Such Things.

I laughed when I read the Snow Advisory. Growing up in Minnesota, we didn’t get Snow Advisories unless Fenris ate the sun and the endless winter arrived. We just went outside, snapped a three-foot-long icicle off the eaves and played Zorro swordfights in the yard.

Anyway, here is our Snow Advisory for today:

…SNOW ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT FROM 8 AM THIS MORNING TO 8 PM EST THIS EVENING…

LOW PRESSURE OVER THE MIDWEST EARLY THIS MORNING WILL MOVE SOUTH OF THE MID ATLANTIC THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING. LIGHT SNOW IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP ACROSS THE AREA BETWEEN 8 AM AND 10 AM. THE SNOW MAY INTENSIFY FOR A PERIOD DURING THE AFTERNOON…BEFORE ENDING THIS EVENING. 1 TO 2 INCHES OF SNOW IS EXPECTED…EXCEPT PERHAPS LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS ACROSS CENTRAL VIRGINIA NEAR THE CHARLOTTESVILLE AREA.

A SNOW ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE PRIMARILY TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES…AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.

I spend a fair amount of time posting to an online NFL forum, usually in the Minnesota Vikings area. Recently, we engaged in a discussion about Kenechi Udeze, one of the team’s defensive ends, and the news that he recently became a father for the first time.

Moi: However, it doesn’t do anyone a damn bit of good to come into a thread written to congratulate a man about the birth of his newborn son…

Vike Daddy: girl.

Moi: Well, they say it’s a game of inches.

Purple-Pride07: Common mistake

Moi: You are so right. Once, I was in this bar in Juarez, and this girl that I thought was…oh, hang on, game’s about to start…

Then the discussion turned to who was the best punter in the team’s history.

mnfreak12786: I’d give an edge to Berger because of his kickoff abilities

Enrage: Berger mostly didn’t have the kicking distraction of K-balls. [K-Balls are footballs reserved only for kicking.]

Moi: I’m going to write a letter to both Kevin and Pat Williams and ask them to change their last names to Balls. Then we can call them K-Balls and Phat Balls. Maybe one of them has a cousin named Orlando that we can sign as a defensive end. Then we’ll have O-Balls to go along with our two Balls. If they all hit the QB at the same time it would be a rare three-Balls sack. Find just one more Balls and we could have an All Balls defensive line. Imagine the goal line stand: “The Vikings defense is backed up to their own goal line. They have their Balls to the wall now.”

Damn I’m brilliant, lucid and articulate…and astonishingly good looking…when I’m drinking.

I have to be careful here, because the last time I gloated over gut-stomping the Detroit Lions it was 1998 and the Vikings turned around and lost the very next game to the Bucs, 27-24. That 1998 team went 15-1 in the regular season and then went Wide Left in the NFC Championship game against Atlanta.

I have always maintained Sherman wasn’t thorough enough in 1865 and look, the Falcons proved me right.

Anyway, the Vikings are the Red Sox of the NFL. They have Buckner, we have Wide Left. They have Bucky Dent, we have Drew Pearson. And I’m sure there are other parallels but I’m hungry and cranky and not feeling like researching it further. Besides, their pain, as The Voice says in Field of Dreams, has been eased.

But I digress.

The good news: my humble, bumbling, good-for-nothing Vikes put an epic whipping on the Lions yesterday which was so thorough, and so dominant, that I…well…I dunno what. But it was really, really great. (How’s that for inspired writing? “It was really, really great.”)

How bad was it? It was 42-10 bad. It was scoring six touchdowns on our first six possessions bad. It was colossal. Stupendous! It was…must I say it? (”You must, you must!” said the sheriff of Rock Ridge.) It was glorious.

I don’t want to get all weird and junior high about a football team, but somehow, miraculously, this team that started 3-6 is now 6-6 and is in the thick of the playoff hunt. Not only in the thick of it but actually favored to win one of the spots.

Can I have an amen? Hallelujah! TESTIFY!

On the flip side, the Miami Dolphins keep losing. I’ve never really cared for Miami and their whole champagne-popping shtick. I always hated that U-shaped thing on Larry Csonka’s helmet and that 1974 Super Bowl VIII thing still bugs me. (Yeah, yeah, I should let it go. So I hold sports grudges. Sue me.)

Anyway, no team in NFL history has ever gone 0-16. The league moved to a 16 game schedule in 1978 and two years prior to that the Bucs went 0-14. (And 0-12 into the next season, going a mind-numbing 0-26 before finally winning the franchise’s first game. It’s knowledge like that which convinces me that one day, in my lifetime, the football gods will deliver a Super Bowl to my beloved Purple…I mean, Tampa Bay won one. That’s akin to Gollum falling into Mt Doom with the Ring. It was the beginning of the end of all things.)

Anyway (redux), here is the current roll call of teams among which the 2007 Dolphins find themselves as they desperately try to avoid their head-on collision with infamy.

1975 Chargers 0-11 before winning a game
1984 Bills 0-11 before winning a game
2000 Chargers 0-11 before winning a game
1977 Buccaneers 0-12 before winning a game
2001 Lions 0-12 before winning a game
2007 Dolphins 0-12
1986 Colts 0-13 before winning a game
1980 Saints 0-14 before winning a game
1976 Buccaneers 0-14 these schmucks never won that year

Anyone remember that scene in Silver Streak where the bad guy on the runaway train gets hung out the locomotive and can’t pull his body up and into the train in time to avoid his head being smushed like a melon against an oncoming rail yard switch? That’s gotta be what the players in Miami are feeling like right about now. I mean, they just got whacked by the Jets…the Jets!!!…to the tune of 40-13. And the Jets suck. And now here comes that switch.

P.S. While double-checking my facts I found quite possible the most horrible designed website ever. Look here…it scrolls!!!

Had a good night out in the District with La Raymunda last night. I picked up a new bottle of Scotch, the Caol Ila 12 y.o. that Jim recommended. I think it’s the first bottle of anything (other than the occasional Newcastle) I’ve bought in the last six months. Maybe longer. Afterwards we walked to Zola, she with her face scrunched down into her windblock fleece (it was cold and windy and she was under-warmed), and had a real nice dinner that we really couldn’t afford, but we did it anyway and, as Hemingway would have said, it was good.

My dinner
(I don’t remember what Debra had…if you want to know, write to her and tell her to start her own blog, this one is all about me me me)

• Truffled Sheep Ricotta Tortelloni appetizer with fresh anise crema, truffles, shaved manchego this was like eating a cream and butter bomb encased in perfectly cooked pasta…yummy
• Sautéed Arctic Char with oysters, bacon, spinach, tomatoes, oyster root puree also very tasty…the sauce was, as the tiger would say, grrrrrreat!
• Zola Lobster Mac & Cheese (we split this) “This has nutmeg. I hate nutmeg,” she said. I said, “I know I’m going to hell for saying this, but I’ll say it anyway, I prefer the Kraft mac and cheese with the cheese dust.”
  
• a mojito excellent, but La Raymunda’s are better
• a glass of the Navarro Correas 2005 Malbec from Argentina, where women display their breasts and the men love them for it (described on the wine list - the wine, that is, not the breasts of Argentine women - as “a sumptuously-styled wine, fresh and fruity with a velvety texture and a spicy mature finish. Yummy!” I would agree, it was a tasty wine…but how does one “style” a wine? Hair gel? Curlers? Is mousse involved?
• a glass of the Cerbois XO Armagnac I’ve been looking for a good, reasonably-priced Armagnac and saw this for sale at Central Liquors, where we bought the Caol Ila. I didn’t buy the bottle because I was already buying the Scotch, and I’m glad I didn’t…I thought the Cerbois XO was thin and watery…so did LaRay

For dessert we split a chocolate bundt cake with housemade cherry ice cream and a chocolate crisp.

The whole bill set us back about three Outbacks and we’ll probably be eating rolled flour tortillas stuffed with shredded cheddar cheese for the rest of the week, but we needed the night out and I’m glad we did it.

Is there any way possible to get a Mulligan on 2007?