The last few days have been quite the whirlwind for Your World Champion New Orleans Saints. And the real fun hasn't even started yet. I don't know about you, but I could get used to this. High five!

The weekend started at home with the annual Black & Gold Scrimmage. Which was perfect, because Metairie is a place where you can practice. Some places you just can't practice, you know? But in Metairie, there's a bunch of sugar cane and vegetables and different stuff. Back in the day when camp was in Vero Beach, you'd be pushing trees out of your face for hours trying to get some vegetables. There were berries all over the goddamn place, but it's just not the same, you know? The sign leading into Vero Beach has Paul Orndorff's face on it. And that dude was an asshole. Never before and never since has the nickname "Mr. Wonderful" been so erroneously applied.

(Disclaimer: Former Saint Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff is not an asshole. Quite the opposite, actually. In my experience, anyway. City Champ may or may not agree. I hear he was always a big JYD guy. Old grudges die hard. THUMP!)

We here at moosedenied found ourselves repeatedly draining our boots as we trudged through the knee-deep pile of WWL Steaming Audio coverage Saturday afternoon. We'd put the footage of our bemused boot-draining up on YouTube, but we know when we're clearly outclassed and overmatched.

It had been a while since we last tuned in to the aural equivalent of Saintsreport. We were quickly reminded why. Who'da figured that 2½ years hence, the best Saints-themed talk show on terrestrial radio would be the one hosted by Kenny Wilkerson? What planet am I on?

How do you know I'm an idiot? Somehow it still surprises me how brutally shitty Bobby and Deke are at… well… radio. These guys talk over each other so much, it makes me nostalgic for the good ole days of CNN's Crossfire. Those guys knew how to do cacophony with (some small degree of) finesse.

In Deke's defense, he usually only does it when Bobby has interrupted him for about the 400th time and he's making a point by refusing to stop until he's finished. Not that it ever does any good, it just makes Bobby talk louder. Meantime, you can't understand a fuckin' thing either of them are saying. The good news is that it probably doesn't really matter.

But to hell with defending Deke, because he does the same damn thing anytime a caller dares to attempt to get more than about 3 or 4 words in. Unless Bobby beats him to it, that is. It would be hilarious that one of Deke's stock lines these days is "We're gonna let you make your point…" if it weren't so damn insulting, because you're sure that the "but" which inevitably follows really means "That was your 3 seconds, podnuh. Hope the half hour on hold was worth it."

You know what would warm my cockles? (Besides living in a place where you can live, and go get a shitload of vegetables and stuff, that is.) If a significant number of callers, enough to get the point across, would start by saying things like "Hey, I got a comment that's 27 words long. That okay? You gonna let me get 'em all out? I'll talk fast." Or asking things like "How long you gonna let me go before cutting me off? Can I get 10 seconds? It's just 2 sentences, let me say 'em both, alright?" Throw that "We're gonna let you make your point" bullshit right back at 'em pre-emptively. Oh sure, you'll get hung up on and Deke will make some smarmy, pissy comment about you. But that's probably gonna happen anyway, so you might as well make it count. Rest assured that thousands will stand and applaud.

At any rate, Drew sucked. Then he ran a dozen gassers or so while flogging himself with a cat o' nine tails and shouting "Stupid, stupid, stupid! You suck, Drew! Suck!" as Pete Carmichael Jr. chased him and pleaded "For the love of God, don't injure yourself!"

Meanwhile, Message Board Guy was accusing Drew of having gone all Hollywood post-championship, and starting an online petition to sign JaMarcus. Deke and Bobby were repeatedly shouting down any notion of Chase Daniel(s) winning the backup QB gig, while insisting that Patrick Ramsey isn't nearly as shitty as his entire career so far would suggest that he is. Say, anybody know what Joey Harrington is up to these days?

The defense, on the other hand, apparently kicked a bunch of ass. Especially Junior Galette, Troy Evans, Leigh Torrence and Reggie Jones. Uh…. yay? Or something? Hey, good for them. Here's hoping we don't have to face any of them in the regular season.

Later that evening, the Who Dat Nation turned its starry-eyed gaze toward Canton, Ohio. Soon thereafter, it got a real up close look at its own palms.

Oh, don't get me wrong. City Champ was fuckin' awesome. Always was, still is, always will be. He's like a little lake town where you can fish and live and go get some vegetables pretty much whenever you damn well feel like it. I mean, leave it to #57 in your program, #1 in your heart to absolutely ROCK that lid, hunch down on one elbow over the podium, leave the index cards in his pocket and just shoot from the hip.

"Look up, get up, and don't ever give up?" Irvin can shove that insipid, over-rehearsed, made-for-tee-vee, designed-for-maximum-quotability bullshit right up his ass. City Champ's droppin' knowledge about some south Florida horticulture, bitches!

Leave it to City Champ to let 'em know that they're a bunch of dumbasses if they don't get over themselves and put an end to all this impending lockout nonsense. Leave it to City Champ to shine the light of shame on past franchise-relocation shenanigans, future ones that are sure to come eventually, and one in particular that was just barely avoided. Sure, he badly misplaced the credit and misrepresented the circumstances by which Benson Football Inc. was dragged kicking and screaming… aw, fuck it. It doesn't really matter.

He did it the only way he knew how to do it. Real. Raw. Unedited. Barely-comprehensible. It was perfectly representative of the whole Saints Experience as it was for us back in his day. Equal parts beaming pride and epic facepalm. Equal parts the entire Dome Patrol starting the Pro Bowl and "diddly poo."

It was just Rickey Jackson. The very embodiment of everything that was so badass about the Saints of our youth. Unvarnished, unpretentious, unapologetic.

In a lot of genuine, legitimate ways, those are still the Good Ole Days. And for a lot of us, deep down, I suspect they always will be.

Thanks, City Champ. For everything. For reminding us. For not glamming it up. (The hat doesn't count, because that was just 57 kinds of awesome.) For doing it like you do. For keeping it real. Always.

Then yesterday, the Saints made their long-awaited trip to the White House to be gladhanded by the president. No word on whether or not City Champ was in attendance, but hopefully he was. I've heard great things about the First Lady's vegetable garden. On the other hand, DC's not exactly one of those places where you can live. Not your soul, anyway.

Fortunately, they high-tailed it right the fuck out of there in short order. Drew managed to suppress his Inner Hannity (oh, you know it's in there) long enough to avoid being sacked by Secret Service for "approaching menacingly" and the old man just smiled awkwardly and kept his mouth shut for the most part. Which probably qualifies as something pretty close to "best case scenario." I'm sure Mickey Loomis was grateful for the opportunity to finally exhale as he wiped the flop sweat from his brow and thought to himself "See, here's where not re-signing Fujita almost comes back to bite you in the ass."

From there, they headed up to Foxborough, where by all accounts they've been getting their asses handed to them all day by the Patriots. (Need more context though… at this point, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it was really just Usama Young. Which, well, you know…)

I had planned to work in a preview of Thursday night's additional pushing and shoving, but I'm jonesing for some vegetables. And you probably said "fuck this" and went in search of vegetables yourself several paragraphs ago. I don't blame ya. You've gotta live, man! LIVE!

I'll try to spew forth the aforementioned preview sometime tomorrow, or at least sometime before kickoff Thursday evening. I wonder how early Belichick will pull his starters this time? Heh. High five!