Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Curses!!!

Like any crazed sports fan of a city who's teams have fallen upon disappointment, I believe in the curse. Why? Partly because it's fun, partly because it's an excuse, but mostly because I believe in karma. The Hindu's and Buddhists believe that what you've done in the past will reward or punish you in your future life/lives. Now, I'm not big on the whole reincarnation thing but I do believe in karma within a given lifespan and, concerning sports, if we consider each season to be another incarnation of a team, the idea has relevance. But I digress.

The Cubs are cursed, until recently, the Red Sox and White Sox were cursed and, of course, the entire city of Philadelphia is cursed.

For those of you who don't know, Philadelphia phans are convinced of something called "The Curse of William Penn". This curse involves the statue of William Penn (The city's founder) set atop City Hall. Tradition dictated that no building in the city should ever rise above Billy Penn's statue so that he may look over his city. In 1987, a skyscraper called One Liberty Place was built three blocks away, dwarfing City Hall and blocking William Penn's view of Philadelphia. Since then, no major sports team in Philly has won their respective championships, though all four teams (football, baseball, hockey and basketball) have made it to the finals at least once in that time. The Eagles lost to New England, The Phillies had their big Joe Carter homerun off of Mitch Williams in the ninth inning of game six, the flyers lost the Stanley Cup in seven games in 1987 and then got destroyed in the championship round by the redwings ten years later, and the Sixers got the crap beat out of them by the Lakers in 2001 and never recovered. (if you want more information, check out this article on Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Billy_Penn

There's some merit to the curse, if you belive in karma, which I do. But I also believe in one other, lesser known curse in Philadelphia. This is the curse of the demon Westbrook jersey. The legend goes as such:

In 2005, less than a week before Superbowl XXXIX (That's 34 for you non-Romans) I decided that as an Eagles fan, I should have an Eagles jersey to cheer them on.

--- The only other jersey I had ever owned was of the Chicago Bears' Neil Anderson (partly for the name, partly because I loved the team back when he played). During the time I owned the jersey, the bears were one of the worst teams in the NFL. Their previous days with Walter Payton brought them a championship in 1985, which is when I jumped the bandwagon (can you blame a 5-year old?). Since that time, I never owned another sports jersey--not for any particular reason--and I certainly didn't think anything of what I may have been responsible for in Chicago. But back to the story. ---

After shoping around at many of the local sporting goods stores finding only McNabb and T.O. jersey's, I happened upon one large Brian Westbrook jersey, my favorite player on the team. Elated, I purchased the jersey, brought it home and kept it safe until the day of the big game.

I wore my Westbrook jersey and the Eagles lost the superbowl but I had still not realized what I had done. And so, for the first game of the next season, a rematch of the previous year's NFC Championship game against the Atlanta Falcons, I met my friend, and fellow Eagle fan, Marc at a bar to watch the game. Before the game even started, Jeremiah Trotter (the Eagles run-stopper was ejected from the game against a team who lives and dies by their ground game). The Eagles lost, went on to an awful 6-10 record, T.O. who had previously behaved himself, went nuts and was released from the team, and we lost Javon Kearse, Donovan McNabb and many other key players to injuries. Right then, I realized that my jersey was cursed. Twice I wore it, and twice, the season was destroyed. I folded the jersey and placed it at the bottom of my drawers. Damage done.

The following season--this season--the Eagles started off with a bang, winning their first game in deciding fashion and began beating on their division rival NY Giants. I was at my girlfriend's house the morning of that game and went to meet my parents out to watch football have a few beers. When I arrived on the scene I noticed, to my own horror, that my mother was wearing the jersey. (She had Westbrook on her Fantasy team). I could only watch in sadness as my beloved Green Machine capsized. Place Kicker David Akers got involved in an altercation on the opening kickoff that got him beat up on the sidelines, Javon Kearse went down for the season...again and the Eagles blew a huge lead and lost on the final play of the game. They then proceeded to lose two other games on long field goals with no time on the clock and it seemed all was lost.

Weeks later, after chastizing my mother for something she didn't know about, I found the jersey had somehow gotten out of the drawer again and made its way downstairs. That week, Donovan McNabb went down for the season with a torn ACL.

Now the jersey is hidden. Hidden from my Mother, hidden from the mystery culprit who dropped McNabb and, most importantly, hidden from Jeff Garcia who has breathed new life into the team.

I now realize that I am the keeper of The Cursed Brian Westbrook Jersey. At the end of the season, I have vowed to purchase a lock box and hide the jersey and the key to the box from everyone until the Eagles win the championship. I have been asked why I don't just burn the thing but I will not. For one, I feel that desecrating Eagles gear, no matter how cursed is bad karma...and I'm deep into karma right now. The second reason, the more fantastic one, is that I worry that if I destroy the jersey, the curse will then be airborn and make its way into the jersey of an unsuspecting fan who may not understand the intricacies of the curse as well as I do. I have also vowed never to own another jersey of any professional athlete ever again. Perhaps I can undo what this jersey, along with my karma, has done.

So here I sit, watching my team improve to one game out of first place in the division, one win away from a playoff berth and a big divisional game against division leader, Dallas, this christmas weekend. I'm caring for the jersey as I would any bastard demon child and I promise all Eagles fans, that as long as the season is on, the cursed jersey will not see the light of day.

Now if only we can get the mayor to knock down One Liberty Place.




Anderson

Monday, December 18, 2006

Google Mobile

To get subgenus back up and running with a bang, I just thought that I'd alert everyone to Google Mobile that hasn't used it yet. Very cool service, and clued me in to the fact that San Francisco does, in fact, have a Papa Johns. Now if it could only magically make a Dunkin Donuts show up in SF.

That's all for now.
-Kopp