Damn Cal! Also: Weekend TV

I'm still so sour over Cal's idiotic loss to Oregon State I can barely even think about the other TV I watched this weekend. I don't normally get this wrapped up in sports. I mean, I get angry when my teams lose (stupid Dodgers!), but this got me so furious it pretty much ruined my whole weekend. I kept feeling like a wrong had been inflicted against me, personally, like I was getting audited or someone had keyed my car or something. Which is crazy, I know, but there you have it. And I kept being surprised by why I was feeling so bad. I would become aware that I was all anxious and upset, and wonder, "Did I bounce a check? Did I lose my keys? Oh, yeah -- fucking Cal lost."

Not only do I think backup QB Kevin Riley, who made the most boneheaded play I have ever seen in football, college or pro, should be cut from the team, I now find myself wondering whether Coach Tedford should even be allowed to remain as coach. That's how disastrous this loss was, and that's how inappropriate Tedford's response to it was. Here's what he had to say about Riley, whose idiotic failure to throw the ball away and stop the clock cost Cal the game, and a chance at the #1 ranking in the country: "It's not his fault whatsoever." Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Tedford also said, "We didn't lose the game because of that play," which is wrong, but at least I understand what Tedford was getting at here: the entire Cal team is to blame for playing horribly enough to put the team in the position of needing a last second field goal to send the game to overtime. They missed a long but makeable field goal on the opening drive. They fumbled on their own 16, setting up an Oregon State TD. They couldn't score a touchdown with four chances from the one-yard line, and turned the ball over on downs. Right there: that's where they proved to me that they deserved to lose. But they kept shooting themselves in the foot, as though they hadn't already done enough to give Oregon State the win. They fumbled the kickoff after Orgeon State's go-ahead TD, which resulted in a field goal and a 10-point deficit halfway through the 4th quarter. And then, after closing to within three, with 14 seconds left from Oregon State's 12-yard line, with an excellent chance to win outright, or at least send it to OT, Riley's colossal blunder ended it all.

And so, instead of proving they were #1, they proved that they don't deserve to play football. They fell to #10 in the AP Poll, and in the Bowl Championship Rankings, which were released for the first time this week, they're not even in the top ten. What a miserable, miserable failure.

Not that I'm bitter.

Hopefully, that's out of my system now.

In other weekend TV: NBC did indeed reair Chuck on Saturday night, and I thought it was pretty good. It's still funny enough, and I like the actors enough, to stick with it, as long as NBC keeps reairing it on the weekend (TV conflicts prevent me from watching the original airing on Mondays).

I missed The Sarah Silverman Program on Thursday, so I had to catch the rerun on Sunday. Damn funny episode. This is the one where she licks her dog's butt. But she has a good reason: since the dog is always licking its own butt, she wants to see what's so darn delicious about it. Her judgment: "That is fair at best." Now branded as an animal sex offender, she winds up in rehab, on the advice of her friend Homeless Mike, who is now just Mike, because rehab helped him give up crack. Sarah, sympathetic as always: "Aw, but that was your favorite!" Possibly even funnier was the side story, with Brian and Steve inviting Sarah's sister Laura and her cop boyfriend Jay over for board games. My favorite line comes when Brian insists he never breaks the law, and Steve challenges him to take a look at the lamp (a bong hidden under a lampshade). Sweet, naive Laura: "There's a lamp law?" Love this show.

The Simpsons was a little better this week; I enjoyed hearing Steve Buscemi as the bug-eyed (of course) bank robber, and I really got a kick out of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' cameo, a return appearance as Mr. Burns' former/Snake's current girlfriend. I think that's cool, that she would show up for just a couple of sentences, which other stars of her stature might consider beneath them, or not worth their time. It's like how Joe Mantegna insists on always playing Fat Tony, even if he's only got one line.

King of the Hill, once again, featured way too much Bobby, but it was still a solid episode, with the biggest storyline for Boomhauer's character since Brad Pitt played his brother (which was back in 2003). There was a lot with poor, stupid Bill as well, which is always good.

Family Guy, unbelievably, was a repeat. Only four weeks in, and already a repeat?? Ridiculous. Anyway, I'm still enjoying American Dad more than any other show in Fox's animation block, which is as much a shock to me as it is to you. The Roger & Steve story was hilarious, with Roger convincing Steve that a crack den was the American extension of Hogwarts, capped off with a Scarface-inspired bloodbath. And I enjoyed Stan's attempts to convince his new best friend not to be an atheist anymore, packed with a lot of funny reflections on how the religiously ultra-devoted often can't even seem to comprehend atheism. And Martin Mull's debauched, faithless Father Donovan is always a hoot. Stan: "My best friend is an atheist!" Father Donovan: "I'd hardly call us best friends, Stan." Later, to Stan's wife: "Am I gonna see some jugs, or am I just wasting my time?"

Tonight's TV brings us one of the last debuts of the Fall Season, Christina Applegate in Regarding Henry. I mean, Samantha Who? Applegate is a woman with amnesia who discovers the person she used to be isn't very nice. Surprisingly, this show has been getting some good critical buzz, so maybe it won't be quite as painful as I've been expecting.

Also tonight: How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory (with another Roseanne guest star, following last week's appearance by Sara Gilbert: Laurie Metcalf as Johnny Galecki's mother. Nice!), Aliens in America, Heroes, and Journeyman. Chuck, as I said above, will have to wait till the weekend.