Before the hustle and bustle of the holidays gets you down too much, take solace in the fact that today is Festivus, a holiday created for the rest of us. The holiday was created in the 1960’s by author Daniel O’Keefe as a reaction to the commercialism and stress of the holidays, and subsequently popularized in a Seinfeld episode written by his son. If you’d like to celebrate Festivus today, here’s how.
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First you’ll need a Festivus pole, generally aluminum. The pole is completely unadorned. This tradition began with the Seinfeld episode. Originally, the centerpiece was a clock put into a bag and nailed to the wall. When the younger O’Keefe asked what that meant, his father’s response was “That’s not for you to know.”
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The Festivus dinner begins the celebration, which immediately gives way to the “Airing of Grievances.” This is when everyone lets everyone else know all the ways that they’ve let him or her down in the past year.
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Next comes the “Feats of Strength,” where the head of the household challenges a guest to a wrestling match. They continue the wrestle until the head of household is pinned, otherwise, Festivus cannot be over.
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Finally, there is the most magical part of the holiday; the Festivus miracles. These are declared when something completely ordinary and mundane happens. Just stick to the traditions and you’ll have yourself a wonderful and completely stress-free Festivus season.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
NMU PACKER WEEKEND XXVI(-I):
1. The Mayor coming off IR
2. Dave Babe aka The Commissioner
3. Bubba aka Ogre aka All-Time MVD
"Nerds!"
3. Denny aka Electric aka Gronk
4. Chip aka Mystic aka The Dude
6.Stew
aka The Freshman
7. Mojo aka Drew Carey aka Defending MVD
8. Brys aka Breezy aka Depeche Mode aka Thad Castle
9.America's Guest aka Congo the Mailman aka The Most Interesting Man in the World
"Stay thirsty & bros before pizza."
10. Neenah Cherry
President of the Wisconsin Fabric Care Association
11. Old Man Parker
12. Peppy LaJackass aka Pepsi Mandarich
13.Ellison aka Patrick Bateman
14. Laags aka Wooderson
15. Skull Fracture aka Skully aka The Keg on Legs
16. Wham Brady D! aka Shady Brady aka Principal Brady
17.TNT
18. Whelps aka Red Ass aka Whip
19. Steigeljackass aka The Chef aka the Pride of Crivitz
STRUBE THROWBACK
(TO 2013) THURSDAY
IT ALL STARTS WITH THE CENTER!
Michigan State's Jack Allen 'plays with a nasty edge'
Matt Charboneau, The Detroit News 4:58 a.m. EST December 18, 2014
East Lansing — To Michigan State opponents, center Jack Allen is one of the most intense players they face.
The junior doesn't exactly make a lot of friends on game day, and as offensive line coach Mark Staten said, Allen "plays with a nasty edge every play, every series and every game."
To his teammates, Allen is all of that — and more.
"Jack is awesome off the field," senior guard Travis Jackson said. "Once he's on the field he is intense."
And while that might get under the skin of some opponents, Allen's play has been one of the biggest reasons Michigan State is one of the top offenses in the nation heading into its Cotton Bowl matchup against Baylor. Through 12 games, Michigan State is averaging 43.1 points, seventh in the nation.
The Spartans also have scored more points (517) than any other team in school history.
"It starts and ends with him," senior running back Jeremy Langford said. That's lofty praise for a team that features some of the best skill players in the Big Ten — Langford has run for more than 100 yards in 16 straight Big Ten games, and has 19 touchdowns; quarterback Connor Cook leads the conference at 241.7 passing yards; and receiver Tony Lippett scored 11 touchdowns and leads the conference at 93.7 yards.
And despite missing two games with an injury, Allen has drawn plenty of attention himself. He was named first-team all-Big Ten by the coaches and media, the first time a Michigan State center has been on the first team since Jason Strayhorn in 1998.
Allen was also a first-team All-American (USA Today) and a finalist for the Rimington Trophy, given to the nation's top center.
"It means a lot, but same time it's just on paper," Allen said of the recognition. "It doesn't matter when we get out on the field."
And that's a place Allen has been impressive since he started 12 of 13 games as a redshirt freshman in 2012 and was named a freshman All-American by the Sporting News and Football Writers Association of America.
He started the last 12 games last season, and steadily has become one of the most dominant interior players in the Big Ten. It's the sort of attention he notices when officials remind him early in games they'll be watching him.
But to Allen, that's life as an offensive lineman — pushing the envelope every play in an effort to get his team in the end zone.
"Not a lot of people notice it about linemen," Allen said. "But I'll look and watch other games and a play will go and you see a lineman looking around for the flag like, 'Did I get away with it?' Then you see someone go for a 40-yard touchdown and you're like, 'Yeah.' "
Allen was pumping his fist as he said it, a stark difference to the reaction he had late in the first half against Ohio State. It was then Langford scored a touchdown that would have given the Spartans a two-touchdown lead just before halftime.
Instead, Allen was called for holding, and three plays later the Buckeyes tied the game en route to a 49-37 victory.
"I saw that when I was on the ground," Allen said. "I was like, 'Aw (dang).' "
But he doesn't beat himself up about it. There's no guarantee the game would have ended differently if he wouldn't have been flagged, and even though it was a big swing, he still has the confidence of his coaches and teammates.
"Playing next to a guy like that is a lot of fun," Jackson said. "He is intense and he has anyone's back and that is important. He's going to be a big-time leader on this team next year and definitely deserves every award he gets. He's the kind of guy that leads the offensive line."
But one more game remains before next year, and there's little doubt Allen will enter the Baylor showdown with as much intensity as he does any other game.
"It's definitely a big challenge and we're excited to be in the Cotton Bowl," he said. "It's a challenge for the whole offense and the defense."
And it could be just as big a challenge for the Bears to contain Allen.
"He sets the whole offense," sophomore tackle Jack Conklin said. "The offense starts with him."
SWAN SONG FOR THE ROADSTAR?
Billboard property among Packers' latest acquisitions
Richard Ryman, Press-Gazette Media 6:54 a.m. CST December 17, 2014
ASHWAUBENON – The Road Star Inn on True Lane is the final property the Green Bay Packers need for complete ownership of the block from South Ridge Road to Marlee Lane.
The team recorded the purchase of the billboard that towers above The Blind Ref restaurant on Friday. It bought the billboard property for $50,000 on Dec. 5. The tiny parcel was assessed at $3,800 and 2014 taxes are $75.40.
Also this year, the team acquired four other parcels outside the Ridge-to-Marlee area specifically designated for commercial development. The parcels are:
•2031 S. Ridge Road. The Packers paid $441,000 on May 28, according to the Brown County Register of Deeds office. The assessment was $144,200 and 2014 taxes are $2,794.80. •1076 Blue Ridge Drive. The Packers paid $201,000 on July 1. The assessment was $139,900 and 2014 taxes are $2,599. •2054 Barberry Lane. The Packers paid $193,500 on July 31 for the land. It was assessed at $151,900 and 2014 taxes are $2,837.30. •211 S. Ridge Road. The Packers paid $530,000 on Oct. 15. The assessment was $219,600 and 2014 taxes are $4,290.50.
It is possible the Packers reached an agreement on the Road Star Inn and not yet recorded the transaction. Wisconsin law does not set a deadline for recording transactions. The Packers do not comment on acquisitions before they are filed.
The billboard and 1076 Blue Ridge Drive were acquired by Green Bay Development, one of the entities the Packers established for land purchases. Green Bay Packers Inc. acquired 211 and 2031 S. Ridge Road and 2054 Barberry Lane.
The Packers now own 61 parcels near Lambeau Field, all in the village of Ashwaubenon, totaling more than 64 acres. Property taxes on the land for 2014 are $936,000, a 35 percent increase over 2013 taxes. The biggest increase was for 1994 Lombardi Ave., where Cabela's is located. The tax bill went from $120,718 to $334.305.
The team plans to develop land west of Lambeau Field to provide it with non-football sources of income, similar in concept to New England's Patriot Place adjacent to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. Patriot Place includes restaurants, retail shops, a movie theater, a hotel and a Bass Pro Shop.
The Packers' one development so far is the Cabela's outdoor sporting goods store at Lombardi Avenue and Argonne Street near U.S. 41, which is not adjacent to the South Ridge Road-to-Marlee Lane block, but is the gateway property to the Lambeau Field district.
The team has been removing unoccupied buildings on the acquired properties. At present, they are razing the former Kmart building.
Property south of Lambeau Field is used for parking, and team president and CEO Mark Murphy has said it will not be used for commercial development.
Also, the team owns land east of the stadium along Mike McCarthy Way, formerly Potts Avenue. — rryman@greenbaypress gazette.com and follow him on Twitter @RichRymanPG or on Facebook at Richard Ryman-Press-Gazette. Contact him at (920) 431-8342
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
ODDS & ENDS
Watch Tom Izzo play 'Jingle Bells' on the accordion
Michigan State head coach & NMU Grad Tom Izzo is an accomplished accordion player, and he gathered his players and friends on Monday night to join him on The Tom Izzo Radio Show to play them some accordion. He knocked “Jingle Bells” out of the park.
This is one man’s opinion, but I am a big fan of Izzo’s accordion style. Understated. Methodical. Not a lot of attention-grabbing gesticulations, like you see with too many other accordion players out there.
Izzo is there to do a job, and that job is to play “Jingle Bells” on the accordion while his players sing along mostly out-of-tune.
Sy Berger, Who Turned Baseball Heroes Into Brilliant Rectangles, Dies at 91
Sy Berger, who transformed a boys’ hobby into a high-stakes pop culture niche as the father of the modern-day baseball trading card, died on Sunday at his home in Rockville Centre, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 91.
Baseball cards date to the 19th century, but for Mr. Berger, the decade after World War II was the perfect time to revitalize them. The Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants dominated baseball, providing a fertile marketing climate aimed at youngsters in the New York metropolitan area who had been born in the immediate postwar years. And throughout the United States, the arrival of television made it possible for youngsters to watch their baseball heroes in action.
In the 1950s, Mr. Berger turned the Brooklyn-based Topps company into a name synonymous with those pieces of cardboard that children could flip (calling out “front” or “back”), pitch (nearest to a wall wins), trade, or simply admire and store in a shoe box.
Mr. Berger introduced Topps cards in 1951. They came with taffy, rather than chewing gum, because a competitor seemed to have exclusive rights to market baseball cards with gum. But the taffy wound up picking up the flavor of the varnish on the cards.
“You wouldn’t dare put that taffy near your mouth,” Mr. Berger said, adding, “that ’51 series was really a disaster.”
“We came out in 1952 with a card in color, beautiful color, and a card that was large,” Mr. Berger told the Society for American Baseball Research in 2004. “For the first time, we had a team logo. We had the 1951 line statistics and their lifetime statistics. No one else did it.”
The cards also had facsimiles of the players’ autographs below their images, another innovation.
“The design elements of the 1952 Topps set would kindle not only the imaginations of baseball-loving children, but also their collector’s instincts,” Dave Jamieson wrote in “Mint Condition” (2010), a history of baseball trading cards. “Topps was on its way to dominating the field of baseball cards for the next 40 years.”
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Topps baseball cards throughout the decades. By adding color, statistics and facsimiles of stars’ signatures in the early 1950s, Mr. Berger became the father of a modern, and beloved, collectible.
Becoming a familiar face in major league clubhouses, out-hustling the sales forces of his competitors, Mr. Berger offered ballplayers annual payments of $125 to sign exclusive deals with Topps, and he appealed to their vanity by giving them dozens of cards printed with their likenesses. In 1956, Topps absorbed its chief competitor, the Bowman company, to seal its dominance of the baseball-card market.
Seymour Perry Berger was born on July 12, 1923, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one of three children. His father, Louis, a furrier, and his mother, Rebecca, moved the family to the Bronx when he was young.
Mr. Berger joined Topps in 1947 and was soon marketing cards featuring figures like Hopalong Cassidy before taking Topps into the baseball-card market in 1951.
Designing cards with the help of Woody Gelman, the creative director for Topps, Mr. Berger used photos the players had posed for during spring training — except for the 1953 set, with its images derived from oil paintings.
“We had a guy doing those paintings a mile a minute,” Mr. Berger once told Sports Collectors Digest. “A little off-the-wall guy named Moishe.”
When the boys of the 1950s reached adulthood, nostalgia merged with speculation to make baseball cards a commodity, bought and sold for prices inconceivable in their youth. Mickey Mantle’s 1952 Topps card was selling for about $3,000 in the early 1980s.
Most of the early Topps cards were presumably thrown out by mothers cleaning their sons’ closets, and Mr. Berger dumped dozens of cases of unsold 1952 cards into the Atlantic Ocean. But Topps and latter-day competitors were selling millions of baseball cards annually by the time of the pricing boom of the late 1980s and early ’90s. And ballplayers were sharing in Topps’s success. In 1968, the players’ union reached an agreement with Topps to receive a percentage of its revenue, to be distributed among its members.
Mr. Berger retired as a Topps vice president in 1997, becoming a consultant to the company.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
FAUX PELINI & CAT HEAD TO YOUNSGTOWN!
Ohio native heading back to hometown & mentor Jim Tressel who is now the President at YSU.
FAREWELL FUZZY
The gang with Fuzzy & Jerry in 2012.
Fuzzy Thurston, an Ex-Packer, Dies at 80; Was a Big Broom in the Great Sweep Play
Left guard Fuzzy Thurston, far left, paving the way for the Hall of Fame halfback Paul Hornung. The Packers won N.F.L. championships in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967, as well as Super Bowls I and II.Credit Vernon Biever/Green Bay Packers
Fred Thurston, better known as Fuzzy, who rumbled to football fame as one of Vince Lombardi’s pulling guards on the Green Bay Packers’ sweep, perhaps the most famous running play in the history of the N.F.L., died on Sunday in Green Bay, Wis. He was 80.
His daughter, Tori Thurston Burton, said he had Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.
Lombardi, the Hall of Fame coach, led the Packers for nine seasons, and Thurston was there for every one of them. The pre-eminent team of the 1960s, the Packers won championships in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967, including the first two Super Bowls, and though much of the team’s success was built on a ferocious defense, some of the game’s great players — including quarterback Bart Starr, halfback Paul Hornung and fullback Jim Taylor, all Hall of Famers — made Green Bay a powerful offensive force as well.
At 6 feet 1 and about 245 pounds, Thurston, who played left guard, was an excellent pass blocker for Starr. More significant, along with right guard Jerry Kramer, he was a crucial cog in the sweep, the play that was the foundation of the offense.
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Fuzzy Thurston was part of a Packers dynasty in the 1960s.Credit Vernon Biever/Green Bay Packers
In the sweep, sometimes called the Lombardi sweep for the coach’s fine-tuning of a play that originated in an earlier football era, the two guards are required to pull. That is, instead of pushing forward against the defensive players lined up in front of them, they race in tandem along the line of scrimmage toward one sideline or the other before surging upfield, one ideally blocking a linebacker and the other a defensive back, providing an avenue for the runner behind them.
With Hornung and Taylor carrying the ball behind Thurston and Kramer, the Packer sweep was close to unstoppable, even though opponents often knew it was coming. Generally speaking, guards are among the most anonymous players on the field, but the Green Bay sweep was iconic enough that Thurston and Kramer became well known to football fans.
In an interview on Monday, Kramer spoke about the coordination that was necessary to run the sweep effectively, not just between him and Thurston, but also among all the linemen (including center Jim Ringo and tackle Forrest Gregg) and the running back. Kramer said Thurston never made a mistake, never pulled in the wrong direction, always positioned himself properly for the pivot toward his block and timed his cut perfectly.
These two are forever linked in football lore -- and in friendship.
“If somebody broke down, the play broke down,” said Kramer, whose diary of the 1967 season, “Instant Replay” (written with Dick Schaap), is one of the landmark books in sports literature. “Fuzzy was great at pulling. He had quick feet. And if you look at pictures from that time, with Fuzzy and me leading Hornung, all three of us have planted our feet. We’re synchronized, where we cut and turn upfield at the same time. It was like we were one.”
Frederick Charles Thurston was born in Altoona, Wis., near Eau Claire. His father, Charles, was a laborer who died when Fred, the youngest of eight children, was 2. (The nickname Fuzzy dates from his childhood.) His mother, the former Marie Miller, struggled to support the family, and for a time, she sent Fuzzy to live with an aunt in Florida.
He graduated from Altoona High School, where there was no football team, and went to Valparaiso University in Indiana on a basketball scholarship. He did not play football until his junior year.
“He had a growth spurt in college — or maybe a weight spurt,” Kramer said with a laugh. “I think he found beer, or something.”
Drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1956, he did not stick with the team. After serving in the Army, he was a backup guard for the 1958 Baltimore Colts, who won the N.F.L. championship, defeating the Giants in the title game.
(Thurston is one of a handful of players to have played on six N.F.L. champions.)
The offensive coach for the Giants was Lombardi, who became the Packers’ coach the next year; the team traded for Thurston before the season began. In 1961, when the Packers sweep first asserted itself, Thurston was named a first team All-Pro by five news organizations, including The Associated Press and The Sporting News.
Thurston’s wife of 55 years, the former Susan Eggleston, died in 2012. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two sons, Mark and Griff, and three grandchildren.
After his playing career, Thurston for a time owned a chain of taverns around Wsconsin. Long a popular figure in Green Bay, where Fuzzy’s #63 Bar & Grill remains a gathering spot for Packer fans, Thurston was known as a good-humored player, one of few who could get the severe Lombardi to crack a smile and who seemed to recognize that in the end, football was just a game.
In the memoir “Golden Boy,” Paul Hornung recalled that as good as Thurston was, he always had a difficult time blocking Roger Brown, a tackle for the Detroit Lions, the result of which was Thurston’s invention of what came to be called “the lookout block.”
“So this one game, Roger Brown sacked Bart about six times,” Hornung wrote. “It got to be a joke. Finally, Fuzzy got set to pass-block, and just as Bart was getting ready to take the snap, Fuzzy looked over his shoulder and yelled, ‘Look out, Bart.’ That cracked everybody up.”
Matt Charboneau, The Detroit News 
Richard Ryman
