Sunday Night Check-In

Time: 8:17 pm

Do you ever see the Super Bowl ratings and wonder, "Who are the idiots that don't watch the fucking Super Bowl?" For one year - and hopefully one year only - that idiot is me.

Not because I am in jail or anything, just because of a lack of interest late in the day. No two-second scoreboard checks, no peeking at espn, no food, no commercials - nothing.

Going back through the memory bank, the last Super Bowl I didn't watch was XXIII (23 for the non-Roman speaking Flexers). SB24 was the first one I watched, and I've seen 'em all since. I'm assuming twenty years ago there was an A-Team marathon on, which preoccupied my little seven year old eyes.

Hopefully this wasn't the greatest game of all time. I'll leave it up to Sir to let me know how it went. All wasn't lost tonight though; the BFHQ dishes are done and the trash is in the dumpster. Yup. Feel free to shoot me at any time...

update: 11:05 pm - I finally broke down and watched the highlights. Whoops.

It's Not You, It's Me

One of the things you learn in life is that anything can change in an instant. A year ago today was our first "real" post of B-Flex version 2. Lots of hope, lots of dreams, lots of bacon.

Today we're crying for attention one last time, and announcing that we're shutting down the shop.

I'd like to think that a whole year is all we needed to make our point. To get everything off our chest.

Not quite, but it's time to wrap up this lil' party.

Lucky for you, this isn't the last post. I don't want to throw too much at you at one time, so let's drag this out another month or so.

In the past year, I've learned I'm bad at handling relationships (Or am I good at mis-handling relationships?? Hmm...), so in a fitting tribute we're going to wait and dump you all on Valentine's day, February 14th.

Until then, it's business as usual. Any last requests can be sent over the next 36 days to haymang@yahoo.com.

Today's "Did You Know?"

Hey guys and girls - did you know Tony La Russa made his Major League Debut at the age of 18?

Or hey - did you know he played with Atlanta for nine fucking games, in between playing for the A's and Cubs? How 'bout that?

Someday you might need to know this shit...and now you know.

(BBRef Link)

BertFlex Chronicles of Failure: MsChif Edition

Last Friday night, somewhere around 8:02 PM, a classic moment in BertFlex history occurred. It had quite the build-up and is a pretty funny story, probably more so to us than anyone not involved. Either way, here's how it all went down:

In mid-November the ML expressed her desire to see a live wrasslin' show. After some interest in road-trippin' to a WWE house show in Springfield, MO, I threw out the idea of seeing a relatively new organization called Ring of Honor in December (last Friday). It was their first trip to the area, and I already had tickets with former B-Flex contributor Hollywood.

The ML bought some ROH tickets; The Good Face and Sir planned on tagging along. A couple weeks ago TGF put in a request with ROH to get an interview with one of their wrestlers. After failing miserably, I laughed at TGF's lack of importance and decided to step in. I saw MsChif and Daizee Haze (two women) were on the card, and since the ladies love me, I sent a request to both. It was an email request to MsChif and a MySpace message (that's how all the greats line up interviews) to Haze.

We actually scored the interview with MsChif, as seen here last week. We still haven't heard back from Daizee Haze, so you know how high we rank in her life. Though to her credit, I did send that MySpace message posing as The Good Face, so maybe she was creeped out by his reputation and deleted the request.

Next step was sending questions to MsChif, and she replied with some uninspiring answers. Looking back, in the email I sent to her, I said we'd like a short and sweet email interview with her, so maybe she took that literally. I liked the IHOP answer for #1; just wished she would have opened up a little more. Oh well, not a big deal.

So in that interview post and Linx/Stuff/Junk, we plugged the shit out of the ROH show and that we'd be seeing MsChif vs. Daizee Haze Friday night.

Back to that infamous moment, right before the first match got underway, the ROH ring announcer came on to welcome us to the show. He went over a few things, one of which was the cancellation of one particular match. You probably know the rest of the story...

This site reports that she was out with a leg infection and was in the hospital all weekend. We do hope MsChif has a speedy recovery, but the fact that she wasn't able to wrestle in the show is very fitting for us. Just another chapter in the Bible of Failures that we'll eventually write one day.

As for the rest of the show, we saw some guys who looked like Joey Fatone and Screech. Also the ML and Sir learned some new moves to use on each other, and Ken Rosenthal reports they are forming a tag team soon. Oh, and we heard a new chant to use for the next Illini weekend: "You're gonna get your fuck-in head kicked in" (followed by rhythmic clapping). You gotta hear it, it's awesome.

Overall, it was a really fun show, and we have preliminary plans to head back out to C-Ville and see them in March. You should come too.

What? You don't make plans four months ahead of time to see wrasslin? What's wrong with you?

Rise To Mediocrity: The Movie

I originally wrote this article as a second point-counterpoint with Josh for the Hardcore League blog, but 7 months later, he has yet to respond. Maybe my point was so indisputable, Josh couldn’t come up with a rebuttal. Or maybe this was case #4718224 of “Josh being Josh.” Either way, here is my new vision, a movie about Justin’s heroic 2007 Fantasy Baseball season – Rise To Mediocrity.

I’ve seen Big Sandwich (Justin) play fantasy baseball since 2002. The results haven’t been pretty to say the least. After some horrible showings in York’s league from ‘02-‘04, he finally cashed in during the 2005 season in a different league. That year, we expanded to 3 fantasy leagues, and unfortunately the league he won doesn’t look too impressive on paper (6 team, deep AL only league). I can vouch that his team was loaded and he did very well in the draft and through free agent pickups. That is, until the last week of the season when he blew the lead, only to win it back on the final day.

I’m not sure what happened last winter, but Justin came out swinging in 2007. He finished 1st in a side league that he created. The level of competition was questionable, but he beat me out, so that is saying something. He finished second in the inaugural Hardcore League, holding on to first for a majority of the year. And in a third league, he finished second. This was a huge improvement over previous seasons, and it was hard to make fun of him too much while he was ahead of everyone in the standings.

Justin drafted quality teams, but like most successful fantasy owners, luck played a key role. Unless he really thought Ken Griffey and Kenny Lofton were going to be impact players all year.

Because of his past failures listed above, and one really memorable one, I think Disney should make a movie recapping Justin’s 2007 rise to fantasy excellence. It is the epitome of the underdog story. It would be like our own version of Rocky except without a homoerotic race vs. Apollo Creed on the beach. I have already booked Survivor to make the soundtrack, so we’ve got the ball rolling.

Disney hasn’t called me back about this project, but I’ve got some actors lined up in case the movie is a go:

Starring
	Eminem as Justin
	Bob Wickman as Tony
	Jonah Hill as Thomas
	Kelly Clarkson as Beth
	WWE Wrassler Trevor Murdoch as Josh
	Yi Jianlan as Shaun
	Daniel Craig as Jamie

I cannot guarantee that this will gross over $100 million, but I know there won’t be a dry eye in the theater once the closing credits are rolling. I think it will inspire a lot of people…to do a lot of heavy drinking and rioting.