Starters? Who Needs Starters?

*football / poker / prop bets*

Here's the weekend wrap-up Tarantino style.

Yesterday was a *good* football day for me.

It helped that the Eagles were on a bye week. And I just *love* (dripping sarcasm) the Fox promo for next Sunday's game - "Donovan McNabb leads the desperate Philadelphia Eagles against the New York Jets".

We're desperate already? Yeah, I guess so. At least we get to play the Jets next week.

Despite missing McNabb, Wesbrook, Brown, Akers and Phila D/ST on my fantasy football roster for the week (yes, I *do* have that many Eagles on my FFL roster), I may actually pull out the W.

When the season started, I had totally written off Week 5. I knew that the Eagles bye week was going to create some roster issues, but on top of that, I was playing the guy with the #1 draft pick. Yup, taking my depleted squad against LDT and whomever else the commish got on his roster (the commish somehow *finagled* the first pick of the draft - sadly, the commish requested that all tapes and files relating to the draft order lottery be returned, and he promptly destroyed them).

Turns out, I have a 75-60 lead going into tonight's contest. My points are locked. Commish only has the Dallas kicker left to go.

How did this all come about? The Pats. And as much as I do not like the Pats (living in Boston for three years forced me to despise all teams from that area), Benjamin Watson and the Pats D/ST came up huge for me this week.

I also pulled David Garrard off waivers (my back-up to McNabb was Delhomme, so I dropped him earlier in the week and went with Garrard) and got a couple of points out of him.

Stupid moves of the week: not checking the injury reports, and having Isaac Bruce and Marvin Harrison in my starting line-up, with Brandon Jacobs on the bench.

How I managed to take a 15-point lead into MNF with all of this mismanagement? We are looking at a collapse of Enron-like proportions at some point during my FFL season.

Here's the commish's line-up: Brady, LDT, Sammy Morris, Wes Welker, Reggie Wayne, Deion Branch, Marcus Pollard, Lions D/ST, Dallas K. The commish left a lot of points on the bench this week too (Michael Turner and Greg Jennings had big days), so maybe he's just stupider than me? Or maybe having a baby (he and his wife just had a little girl) is making him a softie.

In lawyers' football league news, we bageled the other team. I think we scored 4 or 5 touchdowns, including an exciting interception / hook and ladder for our first TD of the day. I don't remember the exact score. The game was at 8am. I only had 3 hours of sleep because of the Crackhouse Tourney Saturday night.

I gambled with 8s-9s against RaisyDaisy's A-Q. I flopped a frush draw and turned an OESD, but nothing hit. Then I pushed as the shortie with the Asian Jew, only to get called by RaisyDaisy and her 10-10, plus the table maniac with A-Q. I didn't hit an Asian or a Jew. I seriously need to fold this hand for the rest of my life.

I didn't fare much better at the cash game either. I was all over the place, dumping huge amounts of chips off to Dawn Summers, and then building up my chip stack from a truly donktastic performance by the Hitler Youth Poster Child formerly known as F-Train. (And he thinks I'm a maniac.) After a guy cracked my A-A with A-8 (which was the second time in the night A-A was cracked by A-8 - at least I wasn't the victim the previous time - who knew a UTG raise from Dawn meant A-A?), I was too tilty to stay at the table. Normally, I love it when people push with TPTK to my overpair, but he rivered an 8, and that was that.

Total losses on the night: $30 Crackhouse Tourney buy-in, plus $19 cash game tomfoolery.

Before the Crackhouse Tourney, I went to see "Haymaker & Sally" with RaisyDaisy. "Haymaker & Sally" is what happens when a law school grad moves to the West Coast, works for a non-profit and has visions of cinematic greatness. Well, IMHO, the film isn't destined for Cannes any time soon, but it had some great one-liners and hysterical performances (I think some of the actors were the director's law school classmates). Who says law students are boring??

Well, it turns out the HYPC (that's Hitler Youth Poster Child for those of you with short-term memory loss) is keeping things interesting in the Great Weight Gain Prop Bet of 2007. I met up with HYPC on Friday night to catch up over a light dinner. I also wanted to do a little espionage on the HYPC weight gain plan. Turns out, our little Train That Could has employed the resources of a personal trainer, and is on a very strict eating regimen (which involves 5 meals a day). So basically, all you action junkies, HYPC is freerolling trainer sessions / extra food with the amount that he stands to gain on the bet. If I'm stuck $100 before I hit the tables during the Winter Classic, it's going to be ugly.

Tonight is game 4 of the Yankees / Indians series. Look for me on TV, next to RaisyDaisy and HYPC!