Siesta Bowl

It occurred to me as I lay on the couch trying to muster up the requisite ambition to get up to use the bathroom, that New Years Day is really kind of a bum way to start off a year. Yes, I'll admit that I'd partaken a moderate and (highly wife-supervised) amount of champagne the previous night - so I'm not talking about a heavy hang with the nausea and pounding headache. Still I was nothing but a worthless load of protoplasm on the couch, too fogged-in and fuddled to even care that I was watching Disney Channel's "Phil of the Future" Marathon, or that my girls were bouncing around on top of me like I was just another one of their stuffed animals (who also seemed perfectly content to watch children's programming instead of football.) I think it was just that we'd stayed up until 5 in the morning and had way too much fun. Perhaps it's "fun" that is the true cause of hangovers and not reckless alcohol consumption, after all.

Anyhow so I just piddled 2005's debut day away, occasionally playing Barbies when my girls adorable eye-batting entreaties became too cute to ignore. I was just grateful that I was able to talk my wife out of buying the new "Pregnant Barbie." Why the folks at Mattel decided that it was time for Barbie to get herself knocked-up is quite beyond me. I guess it should be no surprise, the way she just lays around the house all day half naked, but it does make you wonder what's next? I suppose "Welfare-Barbie" can't be far behind, in a set that would include "Deadbeat-Dad" Ken. I can just hear my little girls now: "Can you believe that scummy, worthless loser Ken? Please? I hear he's shacked-up over there in Dixie Downs with that no-good slut Skipper." Then they'd make Barbie pat her stomach and sigh wistfully, "you just don't worry your pretty little unborn head, Hunter - we're going to be just fine, you and me - besides those two low-life crackheads deserve each other."

Once I'd fumbled out of bed at 1:30 in the afternoon and mumbly-dicked around the kitchen on legs of clay, it was clear that the couch was where I belonged. All those resolutions and home improvement plans are going to have to wait. I can't be expected to drive in this condition and "Phil of the Future" is about as much mental stimulation as I was up for. Besides, the only Bowl game that I gave any kind of crap about didn't start until around 6:30. Who knows, by then I might be able to sit upright and gain control of the remote. "Go Ute's," I thought to myself as I collapsed on the sofa completely winded. If the house should somehow catch fire in the next hour or so - we're all goners.

Other than a pretty ambitious bowel movement that I successfully managed at some point that afternoon, I didn't accomplish a great deal on Day One. As you may know, the Fiesta Bowl proved to be anything but inspiring. It was like the boys from Pitt were at the same party as myself and didn't seem terribly concerned that the Running Utes, were running around scoring all the points and so forth. It was a snoozer to be sure and it didn't help that the soon-to-be-put-out-to-pasture Keith Jackson was handling the play by play. "So the Utes will start this possession with excellent fieeeeeeeld position . . . and you're beginning to feel very sleeeepy. Your eyelids are so heavy it's all you can do to keep them ooooopen." Half-time took about two hours and by then, he and just about everyone else, had lost interest in gridiron goings-on. I'm not even sure he mentioned the game during the third quarter. He seemed much more interested in his phone conversation with Dave Wannstedt, while the rest of us flipped around the dial or napped.

I actually left to come and write this equally uninspiring Boneman after the third quarter, but I checked on the internet and not surprisingly neither team scored a point during the final quarter. Maybe Alex Smith just got bored and decided to call his agent, or perhaps the game was called for lack of interest.