matt weighs in

It’s appropriate that I write this as we watch the semifinals of the Minnesota State High School Hockey tournament. It has been a pretty good week. Happenings in no particular order: state hockey tournament (it’s so big that it’s played on the biggest sports station in the midwest, the Fan Radio Network), Brett Favre finally retired, had riveting elections in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday night and it will all culminate on Saturday morning with a first attempt to brew our own batch of beer at home (actually at a friend’s house, as he has done it before, is much more responsible than me and has a turkey fryer in which to make the process go faster).

First, Favre. There was some pretty ill-intentioned ribbing of my brother-in-law, a Packer fan, this week. The ribbing from me and other Vikings fans revolved around “Favre sucks,” “Go cry some more,” “Now he can swallow pain-killers in peace,” and “Damn, the Packers and Favre suck.” That kind of stuff.

I tried making the point that it wasn’t that we really hated Favre so much, but we hated the way he ended up making Vikings fans feel – he won another Super Bowl for their franchise, broke a ridiculous number of QB records as the Vikings went through an average of one QB every two years, held press conferences to tell us he would hold other press conferences to tell us whether or not he might retire, and to top it off, had every national broadcast team love him up every frickin’ time he was on national television. Absolutely sickening.

Filthy Packer fans had reason to be optimistic every dang year, because they knew he was going to be under center each game (275 straight). I loved it when the Packers had a horrible year two years ago. I thought for sure he was done then (then all the non-press conferences only to announce he was coming back), and he comes back and leads them to the brink of the Super Bowl. I’m just glad he laid an egg in his final game and threw an interception on his final pass to lose the game for the Packers. That’s what I’ll hold on to, even though I guess I’ll solute a pretty damn good career for a pretty damn good quarterback for a pretty damn insufferable fan base. Oh, and he had one of the worst acted athlete cameo roles of all time in There’s Something About Mary. I’ll solute Fav-ruh for that, too.

I like that there’s at least one race for President still going on in one of the parties. Why not let it take a little longer to decide which Democratic candidate will have the chance to make history in November. Good for the Republicans for choosing their candidate already. From the list they had, it shouldn’t have taken long to come up with the best of the worst. Anything can happen, of course, but they cannot be confident with their nominee. Experience, sure, and a great American, but not much of an independent thinker anymore. The race will do that to a candidate.

Clinton and Obama is riveting to watch. Emotional crowds and speeches (unlike the stinker McCain laid on Tuesday night), aides resigning, an ex-President getting called out for hurting the campaign and the whole woman and minority angles. Fascinating stuff, with at least another six weeks of seeing who might fall apart first (Obama needs a big boost soon).

We’re brewing an amber ale for our first batch, and we’re leaving the house at 7:30am on Saturday morning to do it (we being me, Siena and Elliot, so they can play with kids their own age). But blueberry pancakes await at our destination. I’ll let you know how the beer turns out, as we’re hoping to have it at Elliot’s 1st birthday party in two weeks.