Every Day Is Like Sunday

The dreary catchiness of the edited NFL ad version of that song rings in my head every week, the relevance of Johnny's explanation to this Raider season reinforcing its power in my head.

It's depressing.

Desperate for a reason to keep watching this year - beyond the obligation I have to our four loyal readers - I may have found it co-anchoring sports news tonight with Raj Mathai: Nnamdi Asomugha. The fact that he has not yet been voted as a starter at the Pro Bowl is beginning to look a lot like the fact that Lester Hayes is still inexplicably absent from Canton.

Warren Sapp, continuing his hate-him-and-love-him relationship with me, had some incredible things to say about Nnamdi on NFL Network. And suffering through Raider "highlights" tonight it seems that Nnamdi's stop for a 7-yard loss was one of the only high points of the game. So I'll watch for Nnamdi.

And there will probably be quite a few more depressing Sundays.

I Know It's Over. It Never Really Began.

All over the internets, people seem to be piling on after Monday night's debacle.

Warren Sapp: "...they have unrealistic ideas about what their people can do.." "They're going to suck."

Adam Treu: "There are a few things I miss about playing professional football, but getting beat 41-14 is not one of them."

Kurt Snibbe: Replace Randolph Scott with Buccaneer Bruce.

And then in his conference call with the Chefs' beat writers yesterday, Kiffin:

"You have to look at the history," Kiffin said. "History is what it is, that he doesn’t keep people very long. We don’t have a general manager. Everything goes through the owner. That sets up a difficult situation at times.

"Knowing who the owner is, you know from day one there’s no job security."

Just fire him. Promote Lofton or Knapp, or whomever. Either way, lock Knapp and Cable up so they can't just leave for Seattle next. Or, shit, I don't care, bring back Art Shell. One of the funnest parts of the game the other night was seeing Dan's Art impersonation, where he made his hat 4 sizes too small and rested it down on his forehead, and scowled.

I wish to revisit my post about NFL.com using Morrissey's "Every Day is Like Sunday" in their commercial. They should make a Raiders-specific ad using a different Morrissey song, something even more depressing, like "I Know it's Over" by the Smiths.

That one even has Spanish subtitles, perfect for Fiesta Latina 2008.

NFL.com is Emo

About six weeks ago, I DVR'd a Morrissey Concert on HDNet. It was "Morrissey: Who Put the 'M' in Manchester?" and it was recorded on his birthday in 2004. I recorded because I know the Professor is a big Morrissey fan. Okay, after spending my high school career sneering at the kids in the Theatre Department who wore leather jackets and pompadours, I've grown up and become a fan myself.

What I didn't expect is that my daughter Lily would become obsessed with him. She watched the concert one day, and it's her favorite. Morrissey is her favorite. Her favorite song is "The Headmaster Ritual," which she calls "I don't want to go home, I just want to stay," as in, "Daddy, I want to hear my favorite, 'I don't want to go home, I just want to stay." It's a pretty morbid favorite song for a girl who just turned 3 last week. It's also kind of cool, because everyone else I know with a 3 year-old is still listening to Raffi.

Anyway, so we're watching Sunday Countdown on ESPN, and they show that new NFL.com commercial that has somebody else (Seal?) singing "Every Day is Like Sunday." And Lily heard it and was like "WHO'S THAT!?" because she knows that song and it wasn't Morrissey singing it. It's easily the 2nd stupidest song ever used in a commercial after Wrangler used "Fortunate Son" in a jeans commercial.

Just like the Wrangler ad cut off the lyrics from "Fortunate Son" just after "...born to wave the red white and blue," leaving out "But when the band plays 'Hail to the Chief,'/ they point the cannon at you," the NFL.com spot leaves out all the stuff where Morrissey is begging for Armageddon and nuclear bombs to destroy the seaside town, leaving just "Every day is like Sunday."

Although, not to go all Dave Zirin here, but the "armageddon" and "nuclear bomb" references are not that out of place in the context of the NFL, with all the football-as-war metaphors, and the Air Force and Navy Jets buzzing the stadiums after the National Anthem. But "every day is silent and gray?" Not so much, unless, as the Professor helpfully points out, you live in Los Angeles, as Morrissey does, where there is no NFL team. In terms of NFL Football, every day is indeed silent and gray.

I always wonder who proposes these songs to the guys in charge of marketing at these companies. And looking at the choices, you'd think that corporate executives have never listened to the goddam radio in their lives.