A Wealth of Riches for Ghetto Nerds: David Brooks and Star Wars; The New England Patriots, the KC Rout, and Pro Wrestling

Just a little ghetto nerd vanity and sharing.

Esquire magazine has two fun pieces up today, they are are so cool in fact, that after reading them you utter to yourself "damn, I wish I had written that."

1. My New England Patriots opened a can of whoop ass and took the Kansas City Chiefs to Jabroni Drive on Monday Night Football (bonus points for you folks who watched the Rock do his thing, sans any ring rust, during Survivor Series on Sunday). Now, I will admit that I was nervous for a second, as the Chief's backup QB showed some heart and spark during the first quarter of play--unknown variables are always confounding to the game plan--but Brady and the Gronk-monster asserted their will to earn the never really in doubt win.

Esquire's Eric Gillin summed up the game in the following way:

If you're me, if you're from Boston, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant running wild on too many multi-vitamins. The belt is theirs for the taking. But at this point everyone else thinks they're "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, and everyone else is kinda right. The Patriots pull hair. They videotape practices. They give up 400 yards a game, and they don't even really care.

But Tyler Palko cares. 

The jobber completed five of his first six passes. Brady went one for five, including an intentional grounding. Palko drove for three, and Brady fumbled for a fourth straight game. At this point — and this was not very far in — even Ron Jaworski was enjoying it: "This Palko has been unbelievable so far!" Here was the backup, down just 10-3 in primetime, outplaying the MVP and ready to steal an injured veteran's job. Sounded enough like a former professional clipboard-holder out of Michigan to scare the wrestling out of me. 

Is Tyler Palko the second coming of Tom Brady? Of course not. But it was fun for a half hour.

In keeping with the pro-wrestling analogy, I guess Tyler Palko is the golden age of ECW's Mikey Whipwreck.

2. David Brooks is always good sport. On one hand, folks hate on him because he gets to write for the New York Times, go on TV, and they don't. Many also shake their head at Brooks' analyses because he has figured out the first rule of punditry: make big predictions, even outrageous ones, because the public never remembers when you are wrong.

Esquire's Charlies Pierce uses the mighty Star Wars saga, including some well-put allusions to the problematic Prequels, to goof on Brooks' latest essay on the Republican Party and the idea of a "political solar system":

The other day, I jokingly mentioned that David Brooks, soi-disant regent prince of the Island of Misfit Sociologists, gave every indication that he writes his columns from the moons of Neptune. Turns out, I was wrong. As is plain today, Brooks is a native of Tatooine. Not a sand person, surely, nor a vapor farmer, like the unfortunate Owen Lars. Probably not an habitue of the Mos Eisley cantina, either. ("I have the death sentence for boredom on five systems!") Just a guy writing columns for the local daily newspaper in which he explains to sand people, and the vapor farmers, and the derelicts at the bar that there simply is not enough moral consistency in them to make the place more livable, always neglecting to mention that the place is a desert largely because there is no fking water there.

Pierce goes Mandalorian on Brooks here, where he offers comments in bold on the latter's trite observations:

...used to contain serious internal debates — between moderate and conservative Republicans, between New Democrats and liberals. Neither party does now. 

(Yes, here on the planet we call... Earth, I have noticed that Barack Obama has received no criticism at all from within his own party, while the Republicans bristle with internal strife over whether Barack Obama is a socialist born in Kenya or a socialist born in Hawaii. Worse than the Clone Wars, that is.)

The Democrats talk and look like a conventional liberal party (some liberals, who represent, at most, 30 percent of the country, are disappointed because President Obama hasn't ushered in a Huffington Post paradise). 

(The Huffington Post Paradise is on Naboo, where Natalie Portman once tried to bury her career and where everything looks like an old Breck commercial. Arianna Binks provides the comic relief.)

It is worth your time to read Pierce's full piece just for the smile that comes from seeing the photoshopped graphic with David Brooks' head as one of the moons of Tatooine.

Do any of you have any fun finds worthy of ghetto nerd glee to share? Add to the pile if you so desire.