Hey, remember the first five minutes of the Eagles game Sunday? Yeah. That was cool. I had to run out right after Steck’s second touchdown, but I’m sure the rest of the game was fantastic. So with the Vikings’ loss, we’re still right in this thing, right? RIGHT???

Guh.

Oh, if only I believed in miracles. Just add it to the list of things I do not have in common with Marty Balin. That and never having had the opportunity to bang Grace Slick.

I don’t believe in jinxes either, but I’m gonna go ahead and hedge my bets just in case, and do what everybody else on these here internets seem to be doing these days… looking past Chicago and into the offseason.

But first, allow me a short Miracles rant, if you don’t mind. I have quite the complex, lifelong relationship with this here track.

I was four years old when Burt Cashio started spinning Miracles on WCKW. My dad dug the Airplane big time, and to this day I can remember him washing our big blue 1975 conversion van out in the driveway and me boogie-ing my four year old ass off to this song. They tell me I used to pitch a damn fit when it ended, and I’d demand that my dad let me push the button on the 8-track that cued it up again.

Some fifteen years later, having been through the We Built This City phase, I was spinning this track as frequently as possible as a disc jockey at WXLT in Baton Rouge. It was sometime during one of those three summers that I realized my parents probably had sex to this track about a million times. Unfortunately, at the time, I was having sex to this track my own self. That was an awkward sudden lurch for the "Skip" button on the CD player. Especially since my dad’s name is Skip. Yikes.

And now, some seventeen years after that, it’s still on my "Never Go A Month Without Playing This Track" list. But I’m just now coming to the realization of how fucking stupid this track is. What a crazy, haphazardly-thrown-together pile of puppy love tropes. And it makes me sad, because I now realize that I’ll never be able to have sex to this track ever again without running the risk of laughing my ass of at an inappropriate moment. Probably around the 4:40 mark… "Pretty please, with sugar on it."

Seriously… "When I start dancing inside ya"??? You’ve gotta be shittin’ me with all that. Wow. How is it that I never picked up on this before? Marty Balin, you magnificent, golden-throated bastard. You’ve had the wool pulled over my eyes for three decades. Mickey Thomas could only manage about three years before I realized he sucked. (Then again, I’m quite sure that Find Your Way Back will eventually find its way to Today’s Tuneski. And/or Elvin Bishop’s Fooled Around And Fell In Love. God I’m a sap.)

I still want to bang 1968 Grace Slick though.

Oh yeah, you probably clicked over here to read something Saints-related, didn’t ya? My fault. I always get all misty-eyed and nostalgic around the holidays. Sorry about that.

So… yeah… they suck. Fire everybody. Coach Payton is an arrogant asshole who doesn’t learn from his copious fuckups and always makes the wrong call at crucial times. Gary Gibbs is an incompetent boob, one step above Rick (WOOOOO by God) Venturi. It’s Haslett all over again. And everything else sucks too!!!

Right?

Wrong, internet message board douchebag. It’s called perspective. Come get some.

Look, I get it. I’m as disappointed as the next guy. Expectations are a bitch.

But the Saints are mathematically eligible for the playoffs going into week 17 for the second consecutive year. This just in… that’s not exactly standard operating procedure for this here franchise. The Saints were 3-13 two years ago. This team was in the NFC Champeenship Game last year. Somebody is doing something right.

And it ain’t you, internet message board asshole. It’s the people you look down your nose at with internet-based scorn because they’re not as football-smart as you are.

One thing you can count on around this time of year is that Internet Message Board Guy is going to hang up his coach’s visor and don his GM toupee and scout’s chinos. That’s always fun. You’ll be seeing the term "overpay" about a million times over the next few months. Nobody’s really sure what that word means exactly, but boy is it popular.

Know what’s great about having a cap-savvy GM like my boy Mickey? It’s having the means to "overpay" every now and then when you have to. If you can’t dump a ridiculously large pile of million dollar bills at the feet of some jackass with the needed skillset every now and then, what’s the point of managing the cap in the first place?

You’ll also be reading an awful lot about "value" and "reaching" and "best player available." Funny how that works. Before the draft, "BPA" is the buzzword. It’s the only right way to do things. You draft the best possible guy, regardless of position.

Right up until the Saints take a wideout in the first round.

At that point, BPA ceases to be the least bit relevant. "But we needed a linebacker!!!!" Oh now you want to fill holes, do ya champ?

See, now I’ve gone and gotten myself all pissed off. I had intended to go ahead and break down all my own personal likes and dislikes going into the offseason, turn-ons and turn-offs, etc. But I guess that’ll have to wait until the urge to kill subsides.

Meantime, my point is this:

Grace Slick used to be fucking hot.

Or something.