Tag Archives: new england patriots

Deflategate Shakespearized

I like to Shakespearize things – movies, TV shows, songs.  I love Shakespeare.  Maybe it’s trite, but I do feel that the English language’s greatest author walked the earth around 500 years or so ago (give or take a few years here or there).

I hope to turn this into a new feature, and if you have something you’d like to see Shakespearized, let me know.

Without further ado…

DEFLATEGATE SHAKESPEARIZED

By:  Bookshelf Q.  Battler

A Tale Told in the Tradition of the Bard

PRESS MAN #1 – In fair New England where we begin our tale, a legend of great treachery and sanctimonious chicanery, of gladiators of the gridiron and air dispersion most foul.

RANDOM COLTS PLAYER (staring at and holding up a football as if it were a skull) – Is this a ball I see before me?  It’s lack of weight disturbeth me with the passion of the Gods who once clapped in thunderous combat above the skies of Ancient Rome. Fi on thee, Knaves of New England, Mercenaries of the Villainous Cheese Baron!  Something is rotten in the State of the NFL.

ENTER KING BELICHIK –  Friends, Romans, Countrymen!  Lend me your ears!  Good sirs, rest thine ears upon my voice, and hear me as I say that in my four score years of leading mine knights into carefully manicured grassy fields of battle all across our land, this is the first and only time that anyone hath raised the issue of mine balls!  Merry, it surpriseth me greatly to hear men complain of a trivial happenstance, as surely as it would surpriseth me were I to waken on the morrow to find that the sun’s exuberant colors had transferred from yellow to green.

PRESS MAN #2 – Foul!  Foul!  Scandal most foul!  A plague on your house, King Belichik!  For thou failest to taketh the fall in this fake story that we hath manufactured out of whole cloth!  Thou hast thrown Sir Thomas of Brady under the bus!

TYPICAL COLTS FAN –  To inflate or not to inflate?  That is the question.  Whether tis nobler in the mind to inflate your balls to 12.5 pounds per square inch, or to take air out of your balls until they are 11.5 pounds per square inch, and in doing so, ruin them?  To inflate, to deflate, to inflate perchance to dream?  Ay, there’s the rub…on our balls!

SIR THOMAS OF BRADY – Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow…inflated balls are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying slow news days…

COLTS FAN #2 – O, I see Queen Mab!  Come she does, the Queen of the Fairies!  And she telleth me true, she fills my ears with the melodious truth, that had our balls been comprised of more air, we surely would not have had our asses handed to us in a massacre in which we lost by 40 points!  Fi!  By the beard of God I say had the game ball had one but one more pound of pressure inside of it, we would have fought boldly like the mighty warriors of the coliseum of old!

ENTER FOX AND COMPANIONS – Forsooth and hark, for we are Fox and Companions!  Bringeth yon noble viewers news of the death of the Saudi Arabian King?  Nay!  Bringeth ye news of the resignation of the Yemen Government?  Nay!  Gather round and hear a tale of balls deflated with vigorous gusto!

PRESS MAN #3 – But soft!  What lies through yonder window breaks?!  It tis the east, and the underinflated balls are the sun!  Arise fair balls, and kill the envious moon, whose maid art sick and pale with grief, that her maid’s balls are far more inflated than yours!

PATRIOTS FAN -(also holding a football like it was a skull) –  Alas, poor football, I knew him, Horatio.  Twas a football of great jest and most excellent fancy!  Once inflated to 12.5 pounds per square inch and then alas, deflated to a paltry 11.5 square pounds per inch by rapscallions of ignominious cunning and unscrupulous alacrity. Our knights, once a great bastion of the game, now reduced to wicked pissah jokes about deflated balls.

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Ballgate

I don’t like to get too controversial on the Bookshelf Battle.

You have your views on the world.  I have mine.  Someone else has theirs.  That guy has his.  Put four people in a room, ask them a question, and you might get five different answers.  Yes, I said five.  One person might be confused.

That being said, this ball inflation story is the dumbest, most blatantly manufactured non-news story I’ve ever seen.  You’ve got Isis running amuck.  The President and Cabinet of Yemen just resigned rather than face the wrath of rebels.  Boko Haram is wondering around Africa kidnapping every school girl they can find.  The King of Saudi Arabia just died.  What will that mean for the direction of the Middle East?

And what’s on my TV?  Detailed reports of the size, color, and consistency of the New England Patriots’ balls.

Ahem, their footballs.

Yes, I made that hacky joke.

WHO CARES?

Look, I’m a nerd and I’m proud of it.  I don’t know much about football at all.  I don’t really even see the point. One guy throws a ball.  Another guy catches it.  They run around and try to take the ball from each other.  And everyone watches it like its the greatest thing in the world.

And God Bless you if you like it.  I’m not knocking it.  To each their own.

But with my limited knowledge of football, I have to assume that since the Colts lost against the Patriots 47-7, NO AMOUNT OF BALL INFLATION IN THE WORLD COULD HAVE HELPED THEM!

I’m sorry.  This whole story just sounds like sour grapes.  The ball has more air.  The ball has less air.  Who gives a crap?  If you’re a football expert, please explain how more or less air can affect ball handling.  No, that’s not even a joke.  I want to know how air in a ball can affect the handling of a ball.  What?  Stop laughing!

And I mean, we can all get along.  If you think the Patriots are like, Public Enemy #1 now because they allegedly used improperly inflated balls, then please feel free to say so.

It’s not like I really even care one way or the other, but I just feel the press has a duty to report the news, not invent it, and all these talking heads opining about “who knew how much air was in the ball?” and “why wasn’t there enough air in the ball?”  and so on, just seems like people talking for the sake of hearing themselves talk.

And people need to stop calling this “Ballgazi.”  People actually died in Benghazi.  I don’t even like calling it Ballgate.  Watergate was a serious criminal operation that greatly dragged down the American people’s faith in government.  Meanwhile, this story is about a ball.

A ball!  Stop talking about balls!!!

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