FOOTBALL

The Divine Miss Jones, Super Bowl Week

Our prognosticator extraordinaire introduces a serious body of evidence

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by Herself

Miss Jones is prepared for anything (just like a Boy Scout or Webelo), but what are the odds that this Bowl will be Superer than last year’s Super Bowl, Super Bowl XXXIV?

What are the odds that it will be better than this year’s Aloha Bowl? Will it even be more exciting than going bowling? Miss Jones doubts it.

So even though an estimated 17 billion people will be watching, Miss Jones suggests you look for reruns of “Xena: Warrior Princess” or, if you have a dish, spend Sunday evening watching Korean game shows.

If you have to watch the Super Bowl -- and most of us do, if only to have an excuse to submerge entire sandwiches in guacamole and then wash them down with lite beer -- you probably want an idea of what’s going to happen. And since you don’t have one, you’ve come to the Divine One.

Miss Jones doesn’t concern herself with all the stats and analysis that are zipping through the airwaves right now, so thick you have to shovel them from in front of your TV after you watch ESPN. So, she doesn’t care what Randy Cross has to say about the fact that both teams have the same number of letters in their names. Nor does she want to hear Jim Nantz blathering on about the “power of same-named teammates as it applies to Jamal Lewis, Jermaine Lewis, and Ray Lewis.” As far as Miss Jones is concerned, the over/under is meaningless unless it’s followed by the from behind.

It’s been her curse all season: Divine doesn’t even like football that much, but she knows what will happen. So, for the last time this season, the anvil of her mad science is coming crashing down on your little coyote skull. She hopes you at least have one of those little “Yikes!” signs so you can rescue a little dignity through humor.

Ravens vs. Giants
Miss Jones has often relied on the awesome power of anagrams this year to help her make her picks. She is considering founding a religion based solely on the arbitrary truth revealed in anagrams. As evidence, Divine cites the fact that an anagram of “Baltimore” can be used to explain both the Ravens’ victory over the Titans, and also NBC’s canceling of its nighttime soap, “Titans,” produced by Aaron Spelling and featuring, in a desperate casting stunt as cancellation neared, his daughter: "Baltimore" becomes "Blame Tori."

And if you need further evidence of the 8-ball-like powers of the anagram, try this one on. "George Walker Bush" tells us something we've suspected all along: A Brew Keg Lush Ogre.

Now, when Divine tells you that Baltimore also yields Ratmobile, you’ll understand why the Giants don’t stand a chance. Divine’s pulling your leg. Ratmobile has nothing to do with the game -- but it sure sounds funny. Also having nothing to do with the game but sounding funny is the fact that both Baltimore and Giants can be rearranged into Major Tom-type astronaut speak: Orbit Meal Is Tang. Ground Control to Jerry Glanville: You look stupid dressed totally in black.

Here's a Super Bowl XXXV fact you only will learn at the feet of Divine: “Ravens” has no anagrams. Unfortunately for New York fans, “Giants” renders the scary admission, I Angst. Start poking around with “New York” and you come up with both the Alcoholics Anonymous-ready, “Know Rye,” and the low-self-esteem/bad speller personal ad, “Wyner OK.”

In case anagrams aren’t enough for you, here’s some history. January 19 was Edgar Allan Poe’s 192nd birthday. I say “was” rather than “would have been” because Poe, master of the reanimated corpse in his fiction, isn’t dead in reality.

Well aware of recent Batimore mayor Kurt Schmoke’s advocacy for legalizing drugs, Poe has been hitting all the likely corners trying to hook up. You don’t ride the horse for 191 years and then just give up the ghost right before your birthday.

How do I know that Poe’s revivified corpse is still around and that he’s looking to party like it’s 1899, when he’d been dead for only 52 years? Because several years after Poe died in a Baltimore hospital, the local residents set fire to the building, trying to destroy it. Why? Because the doctors had been body snatching, robbing graves at the local cemetery and using the corpses for dissection and surgical practice. Often, bodies were interred for less than 24 hours before they were disinterred and, in Poe’s case, never reinterred.

So, make no mistake. Poe’s zombie-junky corpse is out there. And I think he’s ready for a Champagne bath.

I hope you have your little umbrella ready, cause here comes the anvil.

Ravens win.

Note: This time every year we are subject to much hype-driven hyperbole, but the Divine Miss Jones does not exaggerate when she says that without Dr. Elliott Vanskike, she is nothing.

And another thing, too: Check out the brand spankin' new Divine Miss Jones archives, a treasure trove of breathtaking insights and stylish turns of phrase.

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