Playoff Preview - Holiday Movie Analysis

The Byes

#1 Seed - Trichotillomaniacs -Gurley and the three Vikings are a powerful combo pushing toward the plaoyffs.  AJ Green's resurgence last week was welcome. The Trichs need him in order to be able to blow other teams out of the water.

"Get out there and tell them I'm leading the sleigh.
Nobody else has to die, old man."

Holiday Movie - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer - Rudolph, basically the same plot as Shaka Zulu, but Christmasified, remains a classic of the revenge action genre. Banished for his hideous mutation, Rudolph roams the badlands killing to survive until he reaches the Island of Misfit Toys. There he goes on a shamanic vision quest with a discount Aslan and realizes his true destiny to subvert Santa's kingdom and begin a rein of terror on those who wronged him. Flanked by his loyal goons, a massive flesh-eating giant and a small torturer who pulls out teeth, Rudolph quickly liquidates all opposition and leaves Santa as a puppet monarch, for now.

#2 Seed - TakingTigerMountain - the Tigers have watched Kamara develop into their prime scorer, so his health is key to their playoff run. With Goff hot and cold and Mariota starting to get more with his legs, the QB starting spot is still open. Hyde and Hopkins are enigmas on broken offenses, can they produce enough to move up the ranks?

Cha-ching

Holiday movie - Frosty the Snowman - From the Snowpiercer universe, a young girl in a disturbingly short skirt a powerful snow elemental ride a futuristic worldwide train ever further north.  Pursued by an evil magician dressed as a capitalist villain from the Monopoly era, Karen and Frosty explore their non-socially acceptable feelings for one another. Like Salvador Allende, Frosty is suicided by a right-wing coup. Consumed with guilt, Karen founds a religion exploiting the childish notion that Frosty will be come back to life.


The Wildcard preview -

Then the Grinch though of
the Big Lie. A lie
so big all the whos in
Whooville couldn't
doubt it

# 3 - Aethernauts - With Antonio Brown and Kareem Hunt leading the way the Nauts are primed to break through to the second round. Questions about Matt Stafford's ceiling and how the Jags defense will deal with Seattle this week put a cap on expectations. They're the favorite but not a shoo in.

Holiday movie - How the Grinch Stole Christmas - The Nauts are crypto-reverse spoilers like the Grinch. Famously, the Grinch stole the Whos' Christmas and was poised to dump the lot of toys over the cliff. After hearing the Whos singing his "heart grew three sizes" and he replaced all he stole. But realistically, which is more likely that the sworn enemy of Christmas had a sudden pulmonary enlargement, or that he realized that the only way to truly ruin Christmas was to re-commercialize it. Riding into town distributing the plastic, noise-making crap he had the power to destroy, we realize that the devil's greatest trick was making us think he had a change of heart. So, too the Nauts seeking  a first championship from the position of commish, underdogs all the while plucking the narrative strings.

Men do not climb mountains
because they are there
they climb them because
life is meaningless

#6 psych dog - The Dawgs are led by Connor Wentz and LeSean McCoy. Zeke's suspension delay tactic probably secured their playoff place, but his late season absence puts their championship run in jeopardy.

Holiday Movie - Charlie Brown Christmas Special - The Dawgs are like Charlie Brown at once the center of the narrative and the butt of cosmic jokes. The downbeat philosophizing and already-world-weary elementary schoolers contrasted with the exciting inner life of a dog, tell us the truth that the universe is an uncaring and brutal place. It's the atomized hopelessness that makes the pathetic holiday message so mawkish and fake which brings so many Americans back to this atheist classic.


#4 SanFranciscoFerries - the Ferries are led by Russel Wilson. Behind him are a bunch of hit or miss starters in Ajai, Drake and Ertz.  With Phily, Seattle and the Rams represented, it's fair to wonder how their starters will be used in the upcoming weeks.

thousand yard stare

Holiday movie - Home Alone - America's favorite child soldier, Kevin leads a brutal guerrilla class war against a couple of poor schmucks trying to get by. Raised on  television, sugar and US imperial aggression, Kevin is thoroughly prepared for the Ragnarok he unleashes. The delicate mix of bourgeois family destruction and off-putting Tom-and-Jerry violence against real people make the teary reunion all the more out of sync. Of course, careful viewers will have inferred that Kevin has killed and eaten the flesh of the homeless man he encounters and only returns to the family for the perfect cover. We know he must kill again.

"God has a hard-on for Marines, because we kill everything"

#5 The Pelican Brief - the Grishamites have Dak Prescott at the helm and Mark Ingram in the backfield (if healthy). A 1 game Gronk suspension dramatically lowers their ceiling of a team that's already light in pass catchers.

Holiday Movie - A Christmas Story - Basically the Wonder Years Christmas, an obsessed adult narrator over follows around a goggle-eyed child actor in his Christmas season quest for a rifle. But the movie has more to offer than repeated references to shooting oneself in the eye and the knowledge that the tip of your tongue will grow back if forcibly ripped from your head. Sopping around in mid-century nostalgia at roughly Quantum Leap levels, the movie meanders through some worn comic set pieces.  Beloved for it's view of Christmas as a prolonged tedium punctuated by trauma and neglect, fans of the novel know it is the prequel to Full Metal Jacket.