Assassin's Creed Brotherhood- Or Ezio II: Electric Boogaloo

Now that I have finished Assassin's Creed III and Halo 4 and have soaked the grounds of Colonial America and Requiem with the blood of Redcoats and Covenant aliens respectively (tangent: I want to see an Elite wearing a tricorner hat. Somebody with Photoshop, make this happen!), I can get back to talking about perhaps my favorite of all the Assassin games: Brotherhood. Now, part of this can be attributed to the fact that the game is set in Rome and I have a deep-seated yet unspoken love of that city (not unlike Peeta to Katniss). In fact, if that city were a lady, I'd be all up ons. They incorporate almost all of my favorite sites in the city that I have read about such as the Colosseum and...

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR BLOG! THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY BLOGGING SYSTEM!

Iron Dirigible Week 1 & Week 2 Double Pack

For reasons of wanting to do something special for my 150th Blog Post (btw, mission accomplished! I got so many compliments on the Hunger Games article from people I didn't even know read my blog), I did not get around to discussing Week 1 of Iron Dirigible in a timely fashion. I know, many of you are crestfallen, and by many, I mean "the seven other people in the league plus the handful of my friends who are equally football crazy". So I'm going to do the awards for Week 1, Week 2 and the Week 3 previews all in one swoop. If I don't do it today, it's not going to happen in a timely fashion either. Quick glance at my schedule for the enxt 36 hours: office hours, class, class, errands, Borderlands 2, sleep, tutoring, Borderlands 2, lunch, Borderlands 2, Office Hours, Senate, then friends over for football (editor's note: this schedule has now been thrown completely out of whack, just roll with it). Since time is of the essence, let's dive right in to the Pimps of the Week and the Gimps of the Week for Week 1!

Borderlands 2 forces me to make the hardest choice of my life: big guns, many guns, or guns & also swords.
I am paralyzed by indecision.
P.S. Is it sexist that the lady has the least number number of guns & swords and thus least appealing to me?
P.P.S. Is it a Freudian thing that all the guys in the pictures have swords and guns and the lady has a round glowy ball of death?
P.P.P.S OH GOD! WE'RE AT INCEPTION LEVEL OF OVERTHINKING! ONE LEVEL MORE AND WE'RE TRAPPED FOREVER!
P.P.P.P.S BWAAAAM! BWAAAAAAAM! BWAAAAAAM!!!!

Iron Dirigible: Championship Week Edition

You may be wondering why I haven't written about the last two weeks of fantasy football action. Well, when I neglected to write a preview for Tune and mine's matchup, I also neglected to mention that Maurice Jones-Drew is a Fantasy Shark, just lurking beneath the surface and waiting for the moment to devour all your hope. The Hope Devourer scored 37 against me and, even though the Velociraptors scored 122 points (15 more than anyone else), Team Tune scored 137 (did you really need four touchdown, MJD?! FOUR?! THE GAME WAS OVER! You were just running up the score!). So I was more than a little heartbroken.

And then, in a complete absence of upsets, I was denied the opportunity to beat the Bean for the 5th time in one year (which would be nearly three years worth of beatdowns in a single year). But at the same time, I feel like Bean playing in his third career last place game in a five year league is an even greater present.

There were no surprises last week, presumably because the NFL was saving its gifts for Christmas. Oh sure, if you look at the actual games, there were tons of surprises, but we care about the metagame of Fantasy Football. For the first time ever, we have 1 vs 2 for the championship and 7 vs 8 for the last place game. The only upset in the postseason has been the Maus Munchers dethroning the Pimpmasters. This is what Doug gets for being too dignified to slap a cat.

Pimp of the Week

For the first round of the playoffs, it has to be Maurice Hope-Devourer, I mean, Jones-Drew. Not that I'm bitter or anything. The pimp of the  week for the second round of the playoffs had to be the sick combination of Matthew Stafford and Calvin Johnson. They combined for 66 points and lifted Team McLovin into the playoffs. If they had been merely incredible rather than phenomenal and scored maybe 40 points, then Team McLovin would have lost and the Baron would be talking about renaming his team "The Fourth Reichs". But no, Calvin Johnson got 214 yards receiving, 2 touchdowns, and a motorcycle to drive off into the sunset on. Johnson willed the bike into existence so he could look as badass as possible.

Gimp of the Week

The Gimp of the Week for Round 1 is Jason Witten. Normally, tight ends can't screw up bad enough to be the Gimp of the Week, but Jason Witten took it to the next level. Witten has shown flashes of prolonged greatness this year by scoring 10 or more a half dozen times. He led the Bean to trust in no other tight ends. And then Witten gets a measly 3 receptions for 12 yards to score 1 point for the Godfearers. Everyone else scored 7 or more on the Godfearers and they lost by 5 points. That means if Jason Witten had just been tied as the lowest scoring starter rather than excelling at incompetence, the Bean would be in the winner's bracket. Did I mention he would go on to lose the next game by 1 point? A fantasy touchdown is literally all the difference between dignity and the garbage bin for the Godfearers. In Round 2, it was all of Team Gray, again. For the third time this year. I think he's set some sort of record for "Most Games Scored Below 50". But, seeing as how that dismal performance masked the collapse of the non-Tom Brady, non-Arian Foster, parts of my team and let me go to the 5th place game, I consider it an early Christmas gift and an apology for Maurice Jones-Drew.

I've been negligent in my updates this year. To make it all up to you, I'm going to do a nice year-end retrospective after Christmas. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a non-sucky day of Fantasy Football.

Iron Dirigible Weeks 3-13 Updates: Screw it, we're doing it live!

Okay, I’ve been really awful about updating the league and the blog in general. Luckily, I’ve derived a simple formula explaining why: Skyrim + Grad School + Occasional Social Life = No Blogging. It’s not my fault, it’s the fault of the Emperor Titus Mede for allowing the Thalmor Elves to persecute the good people of Skyrim, causing Ulfric Stormcloak to rally… FOCUS HUNTER! FOCUS!

"Can we finish this later? I really need to update my blog."

Anyways, normally, I always fall behind on my weekly awards because I believe if something is worth writing about, it is worth writing about in detail. As a result, it becomes too much effort to update and then I fall behind and won’t do the work to get caught up again. So I end up forgetting about doing updates, much like how the Blades forgot the sole weakness of Alduin the World-Eater and, with it, the key to stopping the draconic dominance of… FOCUS! FOCUS! YOU LIKE FOOTBALL! The pimp of the week is listed on top and the gimp of the week is listed second for each week.

I did mean to include a preview for the playoffs, but that’ll come tomorrow morning. Btw, Sam and Dylan do have byes this week, but ESPN has issues with me giving out 200 point bonuses.

Week 3 Update: Suck it, Sam!

I said "Easy Rider"! Though both have Peter Fonda.

This week has been brutal. There's that... baseball incident involving Atlanta teams and my copy of Gears 3 is getting delayed until Monday, probably. Throw in an afternoon of Tae Kwon Do (it turns out I am great at punching and jumping, but I suck at kicking, although my youth soccer coach will insist this was always the case), a haircut, and a load of chicken wings later, and I want to kick back and watch Easy Rider. After all, Iron Dirigible doesn't kick off until Sunday. But I'm not going to let that happen. Why? Spite.

The English Muffin Power Hour has never had double digit updates in the span of a single month. There are many reasons for this, such as me being easily distracted and the average EMPH update requiring me to spend my down time not playing Gears of War, not macking on the fine honeys, not tricking the Bean and not performing any combination of the three. One day, I will trick the Bean into letting me play Gears of War with a fine honey. I will have met my soul mate then. But I digress. The point is there are seasons where I don't update ten times, much less months. So I made a wager with Sam that I could update the EMPH ten times this month. If I didn't, then Sam would continue to mock my infrequent update schedule. If I did update ten times, then I'd win... um... I'd win... comedy? Let's just say I'd win comedy. I probably should have demanded some sort of stakes to this wager. I think I've been tricked.

In any case, if I don't write this update, then Sam gets an optimal outcome: more than the average dose of Hunterian Humor and bragging rights. But I'm not going to let that happen. You may beat me by 40 points in fantasy football, Sam, but you'll never take my freedom! My freedom to blog at whatever pace I feel like! CHAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGEEEE!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

This is triumphant screaming.

Iron Dirigible Week 2 Update: Update to the Future

If my calculations are correct, then this Iron Dirigible update is occurring precisely one hundred and sixty eight hours late. My experiment was a complete success! By typing at precisely 88 words per minute, the blog was able to generate the 1.21 jiggawatts of power required to activate the flux capacitor, which is what makes time travel possible. Who knows what strange future this update will find? Maybe Bean will have won a football game by now.

So readership of the distant future, let me tell you who were the Pimps and Gimps of the Week in the distant week of September 18th, 2011!

Pimps of the Week

You'd think dual wielding hammers would impeded catching a football.

You'd think wrong.

Let me tell you the tale of Miles Austin, the fantasy football John Henry. See, the San Francisco 49ers had developed a steam powered secondary. And Miles Austin said "A man ain't nothing but a man, but before I let that steam secondary beat me down, I'll pull my hamstring with a hammer in my hand". And so Miles Austin caught pass after pass, touchdown after touchdown, and scored 34 points. That was nearly one-third of all of Team Gray's points in Week 2. And Team Gray needed every point as they just barely edged out the West Katzen Maus Munchers by two points. Unfortunately, this also meant that East Katzen was invaded and the Baron burninated the countryside, burninating all the peasants. But is there anything more pimp than providing me an opportunity to make a reference to Back to the Future, John Henry, and Trogdor all in the span of a few paragraphs? No, no there is not. Anyways, the downside is that Miles Austin did pull his hamstring and will be out about three weeks because of it.

Honorable Mentions: In my time, I would start with the honorable mentions first and build up to who the Pimp of the Week would be. But in the future, I'm confident that social media has dominated the world. By the time you read this sentence, you'll have 14 tweetbooks to read and repost on Googleopolis. My only hope is to lead with the interesting stuff.

Best Fantasy Pirate

Pimpmaster Doug had what I like to call the "Lonely Island Trio" going, with Vincent Jackson as Andy Samberg, Darren McFadden as Kiv Schaffer, Jahvid Best as Jorm Taccone, and Michael Bolton as Jack Sparrow.

Mad props also go to Team Tune, for winning a ridiculously exciting game 119-118. Better yet, Tune kept his pimp hand strong despite having two players (Kenny Britt and Peyton Hillis) score above 15 points. It helped that no one in his starting line up scored below nine points too.

Gimp of the Week

Half of the Velociraptors. Okay, I know it's not cool to keep picking myself for these awards but I seriously could not make a better case for anyone else. I had 5 of my 9 starters combine for just six points. The other half of my team managed to put together 69 points. I know everyone can't be Tom Brady good, but I'd settle for slightly competent. Even if the Underachieving half just a very disappointing 5 points per player, the Velociraptors would have finished with a much more respectable score. Can I declare this half of my team apocryphal?

TROGDOOOOOOOR!!! TROGDOOOOOR!!!!

Also worthy of dishonors are Deangelo Williams and the Bills Defense. Deangelo Williams made a strong case since, despite his impressive pedigree, he only managed an awful three points. If he had scored a below average six points, then the Maus Munchers would have won and Miles Austin would have been denied the triple threat of Trogdor, John Henry, and Back to the Future. So maybe it's for the best.

The Bills finished with -4 points, which is always worth serious consideration for Gimp of the Week. After all, the Bills defense was so terrible that they form a black hole of sucking that drains the points from nearby players. However, Bean's team also lost by 52 points. So it's not like the Bills would have impacted the final result a great deal one way or the other.

Week 1 Update: And They're Off!

Gimp of the Week

That should be pronounce "Vimmen".

They say save the best for last so we’ll start this week with the Gimps of the Week. First, we have a very unusual dishonorable mention: every single Houston Texan. You may say “But Hunter, didn’t the Texans crush the Colts, seen them driven away, and heard the lamentations of their women?” and I’ll respond “Conan the Barbarian, starring the Terminator and Darth Vader, was a great movie.” I’d also add that despite the complete humiliation of the colts, the highest scoring player in that game was, in fact, a Colt (Reggie “Bruce” Wayne with 16 points). Somehow, the Texans managed to win by a huge margin without having a single player score higher than 15 points. That’s like making the Dean’s List with nothing but B+’s. It shouldn’t be physically possible, but it happened!

Another dishonorable mention goes to Frank Gore. Despite not being eaten by a shark yet, he still managed to underwhelm in Week 1 by scoring just six points against the Seattle Seahawks (whose defensive line consists of coffee baristas and computer technicians). Also, I don’t think I’ve made fun of Bean enough recently.

Like the Greek Pantheon, but twice as petty!

But the Gimp of the Week honors actually belong to a higher philosophy of Fantasy Football. Analysts say that you should never draft a kicker before the 16^th round and a defense before the 14^th round (and there are only 16 rounds). The train of thought is there’s fundamentally no real difference between kickers. The top scoring kicker was only 39 points higher than the 20^th best scoring kicker (which is slightly more than 2 points a game). Inevitably, people in every league do that. But the Gods of Fantasy Football said “No More!” this year and decided to punish the people who took the top defense and kicker.

The top defense taken this year was the Pittsburgh Steelers (who averaged over 10 points a game last season). The Baron spent an 8^th round pick on them, twirling his mustache all the while and wearing a picklehaube, saying that the Steelers would be essential for the invasion of East Katzen. But the Pittsburgh defense managed to be worse than nothing in their opener against the Baltimore Ravens (and it hurts me to write this next part). The Steelers were more like the Tin-Foilers given how Ray Rice tore them apart. They “contributed” -3 points to the Baron’s team. But that’s still not enough to win top dishonors.

How can you be worse than a negative? By being an absolute zero. Nate Kaeding, the kicker of the San Diego Chargers, was taken in the 12^th round of the Iron Dirigible draft by Team Gray. Normally, Kaeding punishes owners by being average and somehow being projected to be the number 1 kicker the next year. Last year, he was taken in the 11^th round (also by Team Gray) and finished as the 13^th best kicker. So how does Kaeding upstage the Steelers Defense? He tears his ACL and gets injured for the entire season before he kicks a single field goal. Kaeding amounted to absolutely nothing this week and will be nothing for the entire season. It is the only time in Iron Dirigible history I can say a draft pick was a complete and utter waste from which nothing good could possibly come. And if making the single worst draft decision in the history of Iron Dirigible football isn’t Gimp of the Week honors, I don’t know what is.

Iron Dirigible Week 1 Review: The Preliminary Stuff

Well, Week 1 of Iron Dirigible Football is in the books and it was kind of a massacre. The closest game was decided by 20 points. While there were a hundred tales from this weekend alone, I think it’s important that we never forget the most important lesson this week. Bean lost, despite scoring the third most points. And isn’t that what fantasy football is all about: finding new and exciting ways for Bean to lose? By the way, for those of you who are interested, here is the Week 1 scoreboard.

Since this is the first update I’ve posted on the English Muffin Power Hour, I thought I would explain a few quick pointers of what these updates contain. Normally, I declare a fantasy “Pimp of the Week” and list several honorable mentions (usually two or three). These are players who go above and beyond what is expected of them and help propel their fantasy team to victory. There’s usually a pretty even split between superstar players like Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson and pretty good players who have crazy good weeks like DeSean Jackson and Miles Austin (quick poll: did anyone who doesn’t play fantasy football know who those guys are? Did this comparison do anything but further your confusion? It’s too late to bail out now though!). Then I list the fantasy “Gimp of the Week”, for the player whose ineptitude and incompetence crippled his team the most. This is almost exclusively well known players, unless a minor player is terrible in a particularly newsworthy way (like punting a puppy instead of the football). As a rule of thumb, the Pimp of the Week must be on a winning team and the Gimp of the Week must be on a losing team, for obvious reasons. Then I normally end by highlighting the Game of the Week for the upcoming weekend. I meant to write one of those for Week 1, but I caught a bad case of Football Fever and wound up watching the NFL instead.

Unfortunately, this introduction took longer to write than I thought, so I’m going to end this early and get into the actual awards tomorrow morning. But before I go, I’d like to mention a bit about another league I’m in. This league is run by Bean and is filled with a lot of his friends from church and Belmont. You might think that while Bean would struggle in a league a football enthusiasts such as myself and Pimpmaster/Witch Doctor Doug, he would most assuredly thrive against amateurs and casual fans. You would be wrong. Bean finished with the lowest score in the league this past week (and I beat him! Hurray!). Like I said earlier, the point of fantasy football is to find all the ways Bean can come up short (pun intended). More troubling, his old roommate had the second lowest. So it seems the Bean-adjacent are cursed as well.

P.S. I remembered a joke I wanted to use when talking about the Bean Curse. I predict that this year the Bean Curse will outdo itself. Frank Gore will be eaten by a shark in a Shark vs Man Gambling Ring, which itself is organized and funded by Michael Vick, who has grown bored of simple mammalian conflict and is trying to escalate to inter-phylum fights.