Got back from ‘Zona at a cool two-a this morning after a 27-hour whirlwind trip to see the Patriots play the Cardinals at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, AZ. For twenty-four of those hours, the only liquids I ingested were Bud Light, Jose Cuervo and Dunkin Donuts coffee. Needless to say, I’m a bit wiped this morning (and afternoon…and evening…) and though I have quite a story to tell, it’s gonna take a little bit to extract all of the gory details from my quickly decomposing gray matter. So tune in tomorrow for full in depth coverage of the pilgrimage to the desert. In the meantime, a few things that’ve been bothering me:

1. CBS has admitted that its sources for the GWB/Nat’l Guard debacle may not be valid. Dan Rather has testified to that point and apologized. Is this STILL a story? GWB still avoided serving in Vietnam, still covered it up, and still was a colossal fuck-up until he turned forty and married a Stepford Wife and found Jesus. Move on, people. The “liberal media” dropped the ball on showing this story for what it is. It’s over. Just move on.

2. This weekend in the Bronx never happened. You hear me? Never happened. We lost a game in the standing because it rained a lot or Manny left it in his other pants or D-Lowe accidentally dropped it in the toilet at Centerfolds while he was doing a line of a stripper’s ass. That’s it. Repeat it with me. This weekend in the Bronx NEVER HAPPENED

3. A search on Google (please see our lovely new ads located to the left of your screen. Nope, above that. No, under the…yeah, there. I know it doesn’t look like an ad, it just looks like a Google search bar you’d see anywhere else on the internet. Sure the ones further down the page are a lot more obtrusive. Why thank you, I think they look very professional too. You are too kind.) of the phrase “Dunkin Donuts” brings up something in the neighborhood of seventy-seven THOUSAND hits. And yet the closest DD to me in LA is six hours away in fucking Phoenix! God, if you’re really there, I know you’re just doing this to torture the assholes and freaks that live here, but please please PLEASE, couldn’t you help us out a little? Mebbe a store in the airport or a kiosk at the Grove or something, just throw me a bone, huh? Just this once? Criminy.

4. Going into Monday night’s game, I am 9-6 in this week’s football picks. Not bad, but not so good either. This week’s pool winner got 11, not including tonite’s game. Need a big win from Minnesota to get me into dubble digits and win me some respectability going into the Pats’ bye week (I’m gonna miss my weekly gimme). A few other thoughts on this week in the NFL:

- Worst. Week. Ever. Within a 7-day span, the Lion’s Charles Rogers broke his collarbone and went down for the season; Carolina’s Stephen Davis underwent arthroscopic surgery on his knee, sidelining him for 4-6 weeks (by the way, this deserves a separate column of its own. Four to six weeks after knee surgery, this guy is gonna be playing again? And this is not an isolated incident. That’s like the standard recovery time from a scope now. A month. That shit simply boggles the mind); San Fran’s Cedrick Wilson (who I picked up to replace Rogers) became a late Friday/early Saturday scratch due to an injured hamstring; The Pats’ Dieon Branch went down with an undisclosed leg injury at the end of the first half against the Cards after recording only one catch; and the coup de grace, though avoiding serious injury (to his body at least), QB Jeff Garcia of the Browns pitched a goose-egg , going something like 8-for-27 with 3 INTs and a passer rating of 0.0 (the fact that Ed “Tuck Rule” Houculi, a long-time favorite in this space, was the head referee was not lost on me0. Oh, and that’s just in the league that I paid $20 for the privilege of getting my ass kicked. Go Pats!
- And those are just the guys on my team that went down. This past week was a brutal one for injuries, with guys like Kellen Winslow, Mike Brown, Larry Chester, Deuce McAllister and Todd Heap likely to miss major time. The time has come for drastic measures to be taken.
- Time for the “Curtis Can’t Hurt Us” crowd to start rethinking their chant. Two 100-yard games? 3 TDs in two games? 5.2 yards a carry? Glad we don’t see these guys until week six.
- Green QBs come to the rescue for Tampa, Pittsburgh and San Diego: After injuries to the starters, we finally get to see some action from newbies Chris Simms, Ben Roethlesberger and Phillip Ri—wait, that’s not Rivers…is that? It can’t be! Th-Th-That’s Doug Flutie music! He’s got the mullet flailing! He’s hitting Schottenheimer with the folding chair! Oh the humanity!
- Giants over ‘Skins. What can I say? That Tom Coughlin sure knows how to embarrass and degrade multimillionaires into actually doing the job they get paid millions of dollars to do.

Enjoy the game tonite, folks. For my sake, let’s all take a minute and try really hard to picture Marcus Robinson’s picture on the side of the horse trailer, shall we? Begin.