"Go Kurt! Part Deux" or "Huh??"

Cardinals 33, Panthers 13? What? At Carolina?? These are the Football Cardinals, right??

I had a gig last night at a private party in a country club. In the distance I could see a T.V., which had the Cardinals/Panthers playoff game playing. I could see pretty much who had the ball, where they might be on the field at the time, and a very vague sense of what was going on. But I was way too far to see any screen rolls or running scores.

And I saw my man Kurt. A lot. And I mean a lot. I don't know what the time of possession margin was, but it must've been huge. I saw Jake Delhomme cringing after an interception (I didn't realize until well after the game was over Jake pretty much single-handedly lost the game by his lonesome by throwing five picks altogether).

But I was worried. I saw one Cardinal drive stall out with a field goal, and then another. I saw a Panther touchdown. And I had visions of a 7-6 Panther lead, and the Cardinals doing their best to one-up the Titans (who earlier that day had squandered opportunity after opportunity), and letting Carolina hang around, only to pull the game out. Then I saw a Cardinal receiver on a reception, getting tackled at about the four or five, but s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g to get the ball over the end zone line. I never saw the call on the play, for I was called on to play (a solo over a blues in E, or some such).

Then I saw the score in the 3rd quarter (27-7, apparently the halftime margin). Who knew? Who knew?

Watch out for the Cardinals next week in the game to get to the Super Bowl. My feeling after last night is that this team has come to the belief, somehow, some way, that they can actually win the game they are playing. That happens to a team sometimes...Hey, why can't we win it? Don't see any reason why not--let's go and get it done. No one expects them to win. I think teams in this mode don't necessarily expect themselves to win (e.g., Patriots of last year--they expected to win every game). It's different--I think they just don't see necessarily why they have to go out and meet expectations and lose--why not just win this next one? And the next one? And so on. This is what happened to the baseball Cardinals when they won the World Series in 2006. They limped into the playoffs, but suddenly were sort of healthy, and figured, why not win this game, this series, the next series, the whole enchilada?

So watch out. I don't think these football Cardinals expect to win. But I think they haven't also gotten the message they're supposed to lose: "What the heck, we're here, we've got football uniforms on, we've practiced and watched the films...what's say we just go out and score more points than the other guys?" And who better to lead them than Kurt Warner--I think we tend to forget that the Super Bowl winning Rams weren't supposed to go all the way either, even deep into the playoffs. But somebody forgot to tell that to weepy Dick Vermeil, "Mad Mike" Martz, "Marshall, Marshall, Marshall" Faulk, the Reverend Ike Bruce and that HyVee stock boy they had at QB for the fallen Trent Green.

Keep them away from anyone associated with the Chicago Cubs.

Go Kurt!

The Arizona Cardinals have just started playing the Atlanta Falcons in the NFL playoffs, and Kurt Warner just connected on a beautiful fleaflicker for a touchdown pass. I didn't realize it until just now (although the feeling's been creeping up on me), but I've been pulling for Kurt all season. I'm sorry he didn't get the MVP (and I don't think he deserved it, although he was the leader at some point deep in the season). But with the Rams so pitiful this season, it is just fun, like a blast from the past, to see Kurt zipping amazing passes all around the field. It's early and the Cardiac Cards may be wiped out by the Falcons, but I'm feeling good now.

Go, Kurt, go!

Post-script: I walked into a restaurant with a bar & sports on t.v. around the beginning of the 4th quarter, and every person in there was just like me, pulling for the old Cards, hoping Kurt could get it done. And they did--yippee!!

Happy New Year!

Well, my long, local nightmare is over, to channel Gerry Ford. I had two big transactions that had to close by year end. They did, but with not too much time to spare. 4:28 p.m. central, according to the person who had the last "button to push" to consider the second deal done--two minutes before the 4:30 deadline. Whew!

Working hard is like working out--and my muscles felt a little flabby. Not complaining, but I had found a rather nice work/life balance for the first time in my (legal) professional life over the last 18 months or a year. So putting the nose to the proverbial grindstone was not fun. Not one bit!

But in this economy, to have deals going on that need to be closed is a blessing, for a corporate business lawyer. Let's hope I've got work to do in 2009.

Are you making New Year's resolutions this year? I am feeling like this year I want to reflect and set some goals this year, but have not had enough space and time to think about the right ones. Maybe the long weekend will give me the chance.

Become a member of the 201+ crowd!

Tooling around on Google Analytics last night and saw that over 55% of my visitors are extremely loyal, having visited the site 201+ times! Ok, so 55% of not very many is still not very many, but man, over 200 visits? What the heck are you people doing, anyway??

I appreciate it. But remember, the best gift you can give is a post now and then!! And if you're not a member of the 201+ crowd, join in the fun!!

All Politics is Local - Unfortunately, Sometimes

Barack Obama's remark to Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press yesterday, in response to a question about Caroline Kennedy's expression of interest in HRC's vacant Senate seat, takes on new meaning today, huh? Something like he likes Caroline, but he doesn't need to weigh in on New York politics because he's got enough on his plate with Illinois politics. Rod Blagojevich indeed has hit a new low in Illinois state politics, and that is saying something.

I remember encountering the comment some years ago, in law school I think, in the context of federal vs. state power, and the notion that a part of the beauty of the federal system is that we've got 50 states to experiment with different levels of regulation, different regulatory approaches and the like, and that, where we can, we should leave matters to the states to regulate because they are "closer to the people." That is, viewing the state legislatures as so-called "laboratories of democracy" as the Reagan "New Federalism" was still relatively fresh--moving power from the federal governments to state/local governments. And an effective counter to that argument (or at least it seemed so to me at the time) was that if you wanted to see how powerful lobbyists could get, unleash them on the state regulators. They could be rolled with ease, and that, even though there were 50 state governments, if you really wanted to see an industry (e.g., take the tobacco industry) control their own governmental regulatory regime, turn it over from the feds to the states.

I think events in Illinois today prove that that surely would be a probable result.

Gregory Ascendeth, Part Deux

Well, it's now official. David Gregory will take over the helm of Meet the Press. I think he is a pretty good choice (although I've also grown fond of Chuck Todd ("Chucky T" to us MSNBCer's)). But Gregory is tough, and won't let people roll him. I think he'll have to learn to balance the toughness with the respect factor that Russert had mastered. That's the way to do it. (I read somewhere in the summer that one of the hardest things to do was to knock these tried and true politicians off their talking points. I tend to believe that is true.) For example, Tim was pretty tough on old Tricky Dick Cheney, but fair enough that Cheney still did his show. It reaped benefits as Cheney was haunted by his "greeted as liberators" quip on MTP in the Iraq war build-up.

But, most importantly, it is a significant prediction break-through for me personally. See my June 23 post predicting Mr. Gregory's pending appointment (click on the "Predictions" label and you'll get there). Now I am going to advocate a review of the tape of the Hagler/Leonard fight to get that overturned. I don't know what to do, though, about my "Ghost" fiasco. Thoughts, dear readers?

Earl the Pearl

On Sunday we will say goodbye to our good friend, Earl Gibson. Earl was a fixture at Hammerstone's for many years. I used to joke that I had never been in a Soulard bar when Earl wasn't there - and was only a slight exaggeration. Click on the image at left and I believe you can read his obit as it appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Earl was a very frail African American man in his late '80s, but he entered like royalty. Everyone knew Earl. And to know Earl was to love him. He would eat some kind of a crazy meal (like hot dogs and cherry coke), say hello to everyone (and I mean everyone), get up and sing "It's a Wonderful World" and bring down the house. He had a virtual set he would do with Eric Brooks (a/k/a, the Human Jukebox) after the Voodoo set.

Earl had been a member of the Inkspots as a young man, and he must have been something then. I can only imagine.

Earl passed away in October, and Hammerstone's is having a fund-raiser to buy him a headstone tomorrow (Sunday)--Pearl Harbor Day. For Earl the Pearl.

To paraphrase Al Pacino--"Say goodbye to my little friend." We miss you, Earl.