Hello and welcome to another Wednesday of deep thoughts. When you read this I will be wandering somewhere in the brush of South Texas. It has been years since I have had the chance to hunt down south and I am excited to be able to take a couple of days and get away from the city. Hopefully, I will have a safe hunt and be back with a few pictures next week. I did not mention it last week, but I was fighting off a case of shingles. I noticed a patch of bumps on my forehead, but did not think anything of it. During the day, the bumps gathered momentum, so I headed to the Dr.  He took a look and said it was shingles? What? Yep, if you had chicken pox as a kid, you can get shingles as an adult. What a crappy deal, the entire left side of my head was so sensitive, it hurt to shampoo my hair. I did find out that you can get a shingles shot...I would highly recommend it!

By now, everyone will have covered Sunday's games. But I feel compelled to say congrats to Patriots and Giants. Both games were hard hitting affairs that tested each winner. It is no stretch that the winners could easily have been sitting on the losing side of the field. A horribly yanked field goal and an inexperienced punt returner will leave the Ravens and 49ers to imagine what might have been. I hate losing, but when you lose a game you could have won, it is difficult to get over. It is probably easier for the 49ers as they were not expected to be there and have a bright future, but they could have won. The Ravens...are a different story. Joe Flacco really did not play poorly, but the fact is he will have to answer questions about not winning; again. Is this fair? Of course not, but until he wins a SB, he will hear the critics say he can't win the big game.

I guess this Super Bowl matchup will make the NFL suits happy. The "experts" will talk about Brady and Belichick winning another championship or they will talk about Eli passing his big brother in SB wins. The truth is that Brady did not play that well against Baltimore and his path does not get any easier with the Giants pass rush. I suppose that the Patriots will be a slight favorite, but I am not so sure. The Giants have a great pass rush to go with a potent offense. The Giants will have to outscore the Pats, and I am not so sure that they won't. I have not been an Eli Manning fan, but he seems to play his best in big games. Many laughed earlier this year when Eli said he considered himself to be one of the best QBs in the league. But with his play this year, he has a valid point. I had Eli as my fantasy QB a few years ago and developed a strong dislike for what he did not do for my team. As much as I hate to say it, the guy can play the position, especially this time of year. 

Tom Brady annihilates mediocre teams, but seems to have problems against good defenses. When the Giants beat New England in their last Super Bowl matchup, the Patriots were the better team. Save for an acrobatic career catch by an average receiver, the Giants would not have beaten the Patriots. Earlier this season, the Giants beat the Patriots without Hakeem Nicks. Welker and Gronkowski were terrific, but the Giants still won. Can the Pats defense stop the trio of Giant receivers? The Patriots defense came to play last Sunday and I suspect that it will take a season best performance for them to beat New York in a couple of weeks. By the way, Vince Wilfork is truly a beast.... 

Like most of you, I wish the Super Bowl was next weekend. Two weeks to hype this event just sucks, but what can you do? 

Hopefully Steven Tyler will not be asked to sing the SSB at the Super Bowl. Was it just me or did Tyler struggle to sing the anthem? This is a judge of American Idol? I know that this song tests the range of many, but damn...

Joe Paterno died on Sunday. So much has happened since last November, that it is difficult to imagine exactly what his passing means. I have never been crazy about Joe Paterno, but I always respected what he stood for. Sadly, this is no longer possible. Many will always remember that Joe did nothing to stop a predator that resided within his program. This is the truth and there is no arguing this reality. There is something that gnaws at my core, however. Joe Paterno gave years of wonderful service to Penn State and college football. Many great young men attended Penn State and learned strong values from Joe Paterno. The values that Joe preached are important for college men to hear. With Joe's passing, I do not find joy or satisfaction; I find only sadness.  I fear the passing of Paterno is a loss of something much larger than this man. What I suspect is that with Paterno's death, we will no longer have a college coach that teaches the right way. College football has become exactly what Paterno dreaded it would. This regular Joe was simple man with a terrific message about life for his players. It is too bad that when faced with a terrible situation, that Joe could not practice what he preached...so to speak. Sadly, history cannot reflect Paterno's contribution to college football; his mistake will be all that we remember. 

I am not much for basketball, but this video deserves a nod:

With the Pacers out of town, they thought it might be a good idea to have their mascot (Boomer) visit an area high school game. Boomer did his half time thing, but the result left officials wondering how to finish the game. Luckily, there was an smaller gym nearby to finish the game.

Monday night was the football banquet for the Westwood Warriors. This is the end of the careers for most of the Westwood seniors. It is strange to realize that my son is now a football senior...one more year and he will be done. Guys, I can't lie...that last game will be tough. I will be doing a bit of speaking at the banquet, I will be telling this joke:

A friend of mine has fanily that live outside of New Orleans. Her uncle is a police captain in this town and she told me a story recently. There had been rumors of illegal rooster fighting going on, so the captain sent his best two detectives to investigate; Boudreaux and Thibodaux. A few days later, his detectives came back to tell their captain what they discovered. Well captain, they is three main groups involved with this illegal rooster fighting: Dey is tree main groups involve in dis rooster Fightin", he began.

You may have heard that everything is bigger in Texas? I could not believe this when I caught it on the news tonight:

That is all I have for this week, but I will leave you with a bit of Jack Handey to chew on:

The next time I have meat and mashed potatoes, I think I'll put a very large blob of potatoes on my plate with just a little piece of meat. And if someone asks me why I didn't get more meat, I'll just say, "Oh, you mean this?" and pull out a big piece of meat from inside the blob of potatoes, where I've hidden it. Good magic trick, huh?          

I wouldn't be surprised if someday some fishermen caught a big shark and cut it open, and there inside was a whole person. Then they cut the person open, and in him is a little baby shark. And in the baby shark there isn't a person, because it would be too small. But there's a little doll or something, like a Johnny Combat little toy guy---something like that.          

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a few deep thoughts of your own...