In Heavy Rotation: January 2016

If it hasn't been abundantly clear by now, I kinda sorta have a teeny weeny bit of a love affair with music.  Unfortunately, I was on somewhat of a personal protest as I have neither wanted to make music of my own nor listen to any music--especially mine.  However, Madden NFL 16 has been my biggest guilty pleasure as of late and it's hard to avoid music when you hear the same songs repeatedly while assembling your Madden Ultimate Team.  (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: username is LateBloomer928 if you want that work on PS3.  I'm top flight aight, son.)  Combine that with the awesomeness of the SoundHound app and I've been looking up many of these artists in between snaps and at least coming around to listening more and sulking less.  Because I love to share what's been catching my ear just as much as I love to listen, I have decided to birth a new monthly posting series to do just that.  Some stuff I've been hip to for days, weeks, months and years, while other things might have you saying, "Bruh...is Jimmy Hoffa under that same rock with you?"  Either way, you'll have an idea of what the soundtrack for my life is--well, at least for that month.

Scribbler's Recap: NFL Conference Championship Weekend

Whelp, despite being perfect during the Divisional Round, I just can't get all of my picks right every single week.  Glass half full moment though: some poor guy out there bet on the Patriots and Cardinals and his old lady set her Jesus to the side to cuss him out for pissing away her emergency stash for her Newports.  Anyway, since we as avid football fanatics are forced to wait two weeks before the last and most important game of the NFL season, I am not making my highly-anticipated Super Bowl prediction until next Tuesday.  In fact, I'm strongly considering not even doing a typical prediction post, but I'll see how I feel by then.  However, do not fret as I am here to 1) provide a more extensive recap of the AFC and NFC Championships than I have with the other playoff games and 2) help all five of you with your growing case of #FOFSE (Fear of Football Season Ending).  Let's not waste any more time, good people...

Five Reasons Why Snow in the D.C. Area Annoys My Life

When my mother, my brother and I moved to Elmira Street in Southwest D.C. in 1994, we were blessed with a decent snowfall in December.  After my brother and I built a snowman named Paco, a few of the neighborhood girls saw him and immediately declared war.  Let's just say Paco couldn't withstand the fury of the snow fight and neither did one of my soon-to-be best friends--one of the war declarers who got hit in the head by one of my schoolmates with a hard snowball that sent her in the house.  (We all laugh about it now, but she wasn't laughing then.  Come to think about it, she doesn't really laugh that much now.  Maybe the rest of us just laugh at her.)  Fast forward three years later to college and that signaled the end of my love affair with snow.  Being in upstate New York where they get snow like Seattle gets rain, they couldn't care less about three feet of snow on the ground; you just better have your butt in class because the professor that lived in nearby Ithaca was going to expand your mind through rain, hail, sleet or snow and make it before the end of that 15-minute grace period.  Heck, there was snow on the ground two weeks before my graduation in mid-May of 2001.  You grow up and you realize that you don't get to be the teenage kid defending the honor of your pitiful looking snowman anymore.  Unfortunately, you have to be the responsible adult who has to lace up his Tims, walk 15-20 minutes to get on the subway and trek to work because you live the second closest out of everyone designated as emergency staff.  You get to watch the neighborhood kids sled down hills and snow embankments and play with shovels while you're actually using every muscle in your body with yours while A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory, Royce Da 5'9" and DJ Premier's PRyhme or Freddie Gibbs' Shadow of a Doubt albums are just about the only things helping you to ignore slowly losing the feeling in your fingers and toes.  Add insult to injury: you live in a region where schools close if it rains hard enough--except in D.C.--so imagine being told that a snowstorm of historic proportions is on the horizon.  Thus, as we deal dig out of the aftermath from Winter Storm Jonas (someone in one of my Facebook said that she didn't realize that they gave names to winter storms), allow me to trudge through five reasons why winter weather in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area bothers every piece and portion of my existence...

Scribbler's 11th Hour Post of the Week: The WMATA Chronicles, My Love/Hate Affair with D.C. Metro

Hello everyone...my name is Dirk Scribbler...and I'm a D.C. Metro geek.  (Cue the other weirdos in the room screaming, "HI, DIRK!!!")  Ever since seeing this commercial on TV that featured a toy bus and train that was never for sale--believe me, I researched it and asked my mom and dad about it to no avail--I have been fascinated by every and all things Metro since 1985.  I know what the Flxible New Looks, the GMC "Fishbowls", the MAN SG310s or the God-forsaken Neoplan AN440s are.  (If you rode a bus out of Southeast between the mid-1980s and the early-1990s that was supposed to be an upgrade from the older New Look models but got stuck on one that broke down, then you already know what a Neoplan AN440 is, too, and can understand my bittersweet disdain.)  You didn't need to go all the way to Metro Center or call 637-7000 because I was the original Metro NextBus for the hood, literally possessing every bus schedule in circulation.  Entire Saturdays and Sundays were blocked out to either build scale-model Metrobuses out of cardboard paper or ride bus routes and subway lines from one end to the other.  Oh yeah, and it also doesn't help that at least four relatives on my dad's side of the family currently work for Metro; heck, I wanted to be a bus driver when I was eight years old and my first job at 22 was nearly with Metro if it weren't for a six-month waiting period to enter their training program.  I guarantee that you probably won't find anybody in your six degrees of separation who is as obsessed with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) as I was and, to a certain degree, still am.  However, amidst rising fares, safety hazards, an aging rolling stock of rail cars and a revolving door of general managers--they went ten months without one last year--the Metro that I grew up loving so much is just not the award-winning transit system that it used to be.  As a youth, all I had to do was make sure that I had enough tokens or enough on my student farecard to get to and from school and just enjoy the ride.  Now I have the thought of possibly not making it home in one piece sitting deep in my subconscious.  So being inspired by frequent conversations that I have with Facebook friends as well as an actual page of the same name started by one of my high school friends, entertain me as I go through my own personal "WMATA Chronicles".

Scribbler's Predictions: 2015 AFC and NFC Championships

So we all know the reason why I went 4-for-4 with my picks this weekend: that God-forsaken team who plays in Landover didn't have a game to blow.  Let's quickly recap what will probably be the best weekend of the playoffs--although I said the same thing last year about the Packers-Seahawks game and the Super Bowl may have been on par, so don't put all your stock in a potential "prisoner of the moment" declaration.  The Chiefs might have been a secure Knile Davis carry and a missed Marcus Peters INT away from upsetting the Patriots, but that's a strong might.  Two things about the Packers: 1) I am 85.1 percent certain that Aaron Rodgers has a particular Tupac Shakur song on repeat before every big game, and 2) the Packers would probably go to the Super Bowl every year if they didn't either have to play the Cardinals in Glendale in overtime games or play the NFC West period--a division that has knocked them out of the playoffs four straight years.  Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson and the Seahawks do not concede quietly or easily and it always makes for an entertaining game and a boost in respect for their competitive spirit, but you can't turn the ball over, not take field goals when you already don't have the momentum, mismanage the clock, miss field goals when you do take them and go into halftime down 31-0 to a team like the Panthers.  Finally, the Steelers wish they had as sure handed of a Fitzgerald as the Cardinals as they were moving the ball en route to a potential TD that could've give them an eight-point lead.  Gotta love a weekend when even the game that looked like you could run a few errands during the second half ended up being a nail biter.  Nevertheless, more losers are weeded out as the conference championships are upon us and we move another step closer to the golden anniversary of the Super Bowl.  More important, you get to read the slightly-above-average-informed opinion that means the most to you.  Contain yourself, you faithful subscriber you...

Scribbler's 11th Hour Post of the Week: Recap of the 2016 CollegeFootball Playoff National Championship

Although I cannot say that I go crazy over NCAA football like I do with the NFL, I still enjoy a thrilling game nonetheless.  I was heartbroken as my favorite team in the land, the Miami Hurricanes, got cheated in 2002 against Ohio State--who I also liked a lot that year.  (I know have friends who are still adamant about not discussing that game.)  Then, despite Matt Leinart's butt-hurt remark about being the "better team", my favorite West Coast team, the USC Trojans, suffered defeat in 2006 at the hands (and feet) of Vince Young and the Texas Longhorns.  Finally, in one of my personal faves in recent memory, Jameis Winston led a thrilling game-winning drive as the Florida State Seminoles triumphed over the Auburn Tigers in 2014 and ended the BCS era in style.  After Ohio State surprisingly dominated Oregon in the inaugural CFP National Championship last year, this year's game between the No. 2 Alabama Crimson Tide and the No. 1 Clemson Tigers more than made up for last year's let-down.  I'll try to keep my takes as short as possible.  (Keyword: TRY.)

Scribbler's Predictions: 2015 NFL Divisional Playoff Games

So I nearly went a perfect four for four with my picks no thanks to the home team.  (No, Captain Kirk...I in fact did not like that.)  Outside of history being made as all four road teams won the Wild Card round for the first time ever and all of the "better" quarterbacks winning their games, allow me to sum up each game in one sentence a piece.  Any quarterback that has ever played for the Browns automatically brings bad ju-ju, so although Brian Hoyer did a decent job this year as the starter, the Texans should've expected that outcome in his first playoff start and need a franchise quarterback ASAPington.  Jeremy Hill, Vontaze Burfict, Adam Jones and the Cincinnati Bungles might just get Marvin Lewis aka  "Blarty Schottenheimer" (a term coined by the big homie James F. Hines, Jr.) fired.  Ray Finkle taught us about the life-and-death significance of laces out, so hopefully there is no Lois Einhorn in Blair Walsh's future--or Jeff Locke's for that matter.  Finally, I am about 99.52 percent sure that DeSean Jackson's jersey number actually represents his football IQ score as he continues his personal crusade against planes and pylons, while slugs, snails and pond water could probably score against the Skins' run defense.  Okay, rant over...time for the teams who still count...

Scribbler's Predictions: 2015 NFL Wild Card Weekend

Kinda quick recap...or as quick as I am known to attempt, but usually unsuccessful at doing...the Indianapolis Colts and their 0.000000001% chance of winning the AFC South and remaining in playoff contention have been settled.  The New York Jets not only blew their shot at the last playoff spot, but their collapse fittingly came courtesy of Rex Ryan--the same man who was relieved of his duties there the year before.  (Apparently, Ryan also made NFL history by doing so because no head coach in professional football had ever eliminated his former team from playoff contention on the final weekend of the regular season after being fired the previous season. One word: salty.)  So much for the pretenders.  As for the contenders, the defending champion New England Patriots had already secured a first-round bye and were playing for home-field advantage, but wet the bed against the Meh-ami Dolphins as their future first-ballot HOF QB injured his ankle and gave up the #1 seed to the Denver Broncos. Finally, the Arizona Cardinals needed to win against the Seattle Seahawks and the Carolina Panthers to lose to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but DangeRuss & The Legion of Boom had a blowout as a late Christmas present in mind while the soon-to-be MVP Cam Newton convincingly got his Sir Dab-a-Lot on in Charlotte.  Now that I've covered what you already knew by now unless you follow my blog more than the NFL--which is flattering if you do--it's time to preview the beginning of the most bittersweet time of the year: NFL Wild Card Weekend, which features three rematches from the regular season this year, and the official road to knocking off the guys above.