When I was nine-years old, my father surprised me with a trip to Louisville Gardens — I lived in Fort Knox, Kentucky at the time — to watch the Washington Wizards Bullets and Chicago Bulls play in an exhibition; my first-ever professional basketball game. As luck would have it, just weeks before, Michael Jordan had called it quits and just days before, Scottie Pippen had gotten hurt. But, I’ll always remember that game as the day I forcibly fell in love with Toni Kukoc.

I think that game pretty accurately sums up how I feel about Sunday. As I embark on my first trip to Soldier Field outside of the summer, when I’m longingly trying to catch glimpses of the field through closed gates, I can’t help but see the similarity between it and my first Bulls game. Except, where the Bulls game was a  double-overtime thriller, this kind of looks like it might be the worst game of all time.

I blame myself. It goes back to July 25th, the date individual game tickets went on sale. I had the date written on a posted note, stuck to my cubicle wall at work, for months leading up until then. I was ready, I was pumped (Cue siren and Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls”).

So naturally, the day comes and I forget entirely about getting online to buy the fucking tickets. And when you do that, you are apparently fucked. Bears-Steelers? Nope.  Bears-Packers? Forget about it. It would have been a crapshoot at 12:04 p.m, let alone, a half-hour past two. I rummage through all the games, requesting two tickets each time, only to find out that they’re inevitably all sold out. So then, I change my method. I give up looking for “good game” tickets and focus on trying to get good seats for decent games. Still nothing.

If you have never bought tickets online before, let me tell you: It’s fucking crazy. You feel like, at any second, some other fan, third-party vendor, or douchebag scalper will buy up the last tickets, and you will be left to have to pay even more for yours later on. At least, that’s how I felt. But, I’m also a novice at this and likely to be proven an idiot by some season ticket holder in the comments section.

In the end, I had a choice between two games: Bears-Lions or Bears-Rams. I could have pulled in two really good seats for the Lions game, but would have had to give up, at the very least, my unborn child; whereas, for the Rams game, there were two semi-okay seats available for a slightly less, but still very much obscene, amount of money. I went with that.

And so here I am. Staring a shitastic “battle” of one and four-win teams in the face. Urlacher is out. Briggs is out. I don’t recognize anyone in the secondary. No, I know who they are, I just choose not to recognize them. And, all this, for my first game, no less. Ah, fuck it: Maybe, I’m ready to fall in love all over again …

Matt, Sean, and Gavin will most likely be with you through the weekend. I might reappear Sunday night if I didn’t rip my eyes from their sockets. Oh, and a big welcome to all our new visitors who have spread their unparalleled wit with us in this last week; may you continue to do so and invite your friends! And, to David Taylor a.k.a. smudgers, who is responsible for our new header — you, sir, are the fucking man.

Have a great, Jordanesque weekend, all.

Why They Suck: With the “Greatest Show on Turf” long dead–all key contributors gone; Warner, Bruce, Faulk, Holt, Martz, and now Pace–the Rams are in the midst of trying to find their identity. One place they should start looking: the basement of the NFC West.

Los Angeles’ St. Louis’ version of a pro football team hasn’t put together a winning season since 2003, but one football outsider has them pegged at “almost even odds of becoming this year’s ‘miracle’ team.” Now, I realize, in terms of jinxes, that this isn’t in the same league as appearing on the cover of Madden or Sports Illustrated, but you can’t help but get the feeling that Steven Jackson’s breaking his femur around Week 3.

Great Moments In History… Of Sucking Being Pretty Awesome: In 1994, former Rams quarterback Jim Everett, then a member of the New Orleans Saints, went on ESPN’s Talk2 with Jim Rome to do whatever it was athletes did on Talk2. After Rome called Jim “Chris” for the umpteenth time–a slight to lacking mental toughness in his years with St. Louis–Chris Jim proceeded to move effortlessly through the pesky set equipment and quickly make work of Rome’s trembling skeleton.

More Reasons They Suck: I don’t care if she has long hair now, or had cancer then?, the in-the-stands frolicking of Brenda Warner during the late ’90’s glory days was enough to make me and my balls cringe.