What’s trending up and down in the sports world and the regular world?

Trending Down: Michael Vick

ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio filed this interesting article last week about Michael Vick’s lack of production so far this season. From the article:

“Once advertised by Reid as an explosive addition to the offense, Vick has all but disappeared from the Eagles’ game plan. Consider: In Sunday’s embarrassing upset loss at Oakland, in which the Eagles could not solve the Raiders’ blitz, Reid had no plan to use Vick even as an antidote.”

So if the Eagles really aren’t utilizing Vick as a change-of-pace guy and have no plans to do so, why bring him on board to begin with? Did they get him as insurance against a McNabb injury? Clearly not. When McNabb went down in the week 1 drubbing of Carolina, the Birds picked up Jeff Garcia, and subsequently started Kevin Kolb. Why take a chance on an out and out pariah that’s done hard time for running a puppy Guantanamo Bay in his back yard?

The logical conclusion: I believe that Michael Vick has something on Eagles owner Jeff Laurie. What’s your angle, Vick? What do ya got on the guy? A 2 year deal with $1.6 million guaranteed and a second year option worth 5.2 million? You must really have the goods on him.

My guess is that Jeff Laurie is a cross-dresser. So, when the photos eventually come out of Laurie wearing pumps and a garter belt, remember who called it. You heard it here first.

Trending Up: Kickers with Balls

Three seconds left in regulation. Your team is down by 1 on the road against a tough division rival. Your team’s coach calls for a 47 yard field goal attempt to win the game. The kicker lines up. The ball is snapped, caught, and held in place. The kicker, well, kicks and nails it; splits the uprights for the game winner!

Or, in other words, the kicker did his job.

Kickers have always been viewed as outsiders, by both fans and even their own teammates. Do they deserve to be marginalized like this?

Short answer: Yes.

A given NFL team’s roster is predominantly made up of lightning quick, super-strong man monsters who beat the Christ out of each other the duration of a season. These freaks of nature put their well-being on the line with every snap of the ball. Kickers, on the other hand, are only responsible for, as the job title would imply, kicking. That’s it. While the real players do the real job of grinding it out in the trenches, the kicker needs only to keep his hammies loose in case he needs to do his thing.

To me, this odd juxtaposition of extreme effort and relative laziness makes kickers not only outsiders, but some of the worst kind of people imaginable.

They’re vultures. They’re human garbage.

Kickers are the scum of the earth; motherless turds who weren’t even born, but likely congened in a sewer or gutter somewhere. These sleazy, spineless walking abortions in their odd single bar helmets are nothing more than shifty mouth breathers that would take you for everything you’re worth if given the opportunity, or if they had the mental capacity and wherewithal to pull off anything requiring more brain power than it does to kick a ball. These beady eyed pencil necks are asked by their clubs to do only two things: kick the football when called upon, and, secondarily, to stay the hell away from the rest of the real players and their families. They make me sick.

That’s why I was so surprised to hear about Pittsburgh Steelers kicker Jeff Reed this past week. Reed was cited for simple assault, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and public drunkenness after allegedly scuffling with police officers outside a bar near Heinz Field.

Getting drunk, standing up for yourself, and mixing it up with the 5-0?

Jeff Reed, you are my kind of guy. So, for those of you keeping score at home, this brings the amount of kickers with a set of cojones to a grand total of 1.

Trending Down: Breast Cancer Unawareness

The NFL has done a great job of supporting the fight against the big BC with their Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I’ve never been so aware! The NFL, as well as individual teams, have donated a ton of money, time, and effort to this great cause. Even the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are doing their part by playing a charity game against a group of breast cancer survivors with all proceeds going to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization. Vegas is spotting the Bucs 7 ½ points in the exhibition match up as of press time. Should be a good one.

Trending Up: Breast Awareness

Not that they need any additional promotion per se, but do yourself a favor and check out Susan Sarandon’s daughter, Eva Amurri, playing an exotic dancer on Showtime’s Emmy award-winning original series, Californication. Watch episodes 2 and 3 of the current season and try and tell me that Amurri doesn’t do more for breasts, than the entire NFL in pink cleats does for breast cancer awareness. And you can leave your ‘thank yous’ in the ‘comment’ section below.

Trending Up: Dick Jokes and Muscular Children

Every year in early September, bands of drifters and gypsies blow into towns across America. Each respectively signs a temporary lease with a building that used to be occupied by a Circuit City or Linens ‘N Things, and, almost overnight, sets up one of those seasonal Halloween Mega-Stores. You know the kind I mean; the stores with entire aisles exclusively dedicated to spirit gum and faux sideburns.

With Halloween right around the corner, I stopped at my local gypsy Mega-Store recently and was surprised by a lot of its inventory. In particular, I was taken aback by the sheer volume of novelty costumes geared towards male genitalia. There was an entire corner of the store dedicated to any and every half baked pun relating to the penis or testes that one could imagine. There was a genie costume with a magic lamp strapped to the crotch with the instructions “RUB ME!” printed on the side, a prisoner’s jumpsuit with a Vicente Shiancoe-sized pants tent labeled “Department of Erections”, and of course the ubiquitous alcohol Breathalyzer costume with the “cleverly” placed words “BLOW HERE!”…and literally dozens more just like this.

Now, I am not above blue humor (see: entire article), but I think, if you are going to a Halloween party, you can do a little better than that. Have some creativity for crying out loud. Anything is more creative than buying a mass produced cookie cutter dick joke pun outfit. So, if you have already bought one of these costumes, FYI: you are not the master comedian you think you are. You are a douche bag (Hey! There’s an idea for a costume!).

But the even more terrifying trend at the Halloween store, was the alarming number of children’s costumes with padding sewn in to resemble the musculature of your child’s favorite ninja or superhero.

You’ve seen these things, right? They take a Spider-Man costume sized for a 5 year old and add huge muscles to it, to make the kid look like he’s jacked-up beyond belief on all the steroids the Dominican Republic has to offer. Mark my words: this Halloween will be remembered as the year of the muscular child. I am genuinely terrified of these things. I keep having this nightmare where I’m walking down the street on Halloween night and I’m suddenly jumped by a gang of extremely shredded midgets dressed as the Fantastic Four. Just as I’m about to receive a death blow from the 3 year old Human Torch, he stops. The kids back away to reveal every kicker in the NFL…

…and they’re all waiting their turn to punt me right in the genie lamp.