It’s a new week, kids! And due to Memorial Day, our US brethren and sister-en really are just starting a new week. I always questioned the American practice of placing “observed” holidays on Mondays instead of Fridays.

Except our long-denied National Hangover Awareness Day, to be observed on Super Bowl Monday.

Both oversights probably stem from some persistent Puritanical impulse to smother Real Fun.

Anyway, we have Actual Real Football News to discuss!

*Three-time Defensive Player of the Year, Rightful Super Bowl MVP, and reigning QB Pants-Shit Inducer Aaron Donald is strongly suggesting that he will retire this summer if the Rams won’t meet his expectations for reworking his current contract.  This is amid reports that Donald and the Rams are actively renegotiating his six year, $135 million deal after last season’s Super Bowl win.  Donald, who as a reminder is this fucking intimidating when he’s NOT rushing directly at you with violent intent:

went on the I Am Athlete podcast saying he is “at peace” walking away and issued the following…cryptic…statement:

“It ain’t about the money, it’s a business at the end of the day, That’s what you’ve got to see. For me, it’s about winning. I don’t want to play football if I can’t win anyway, so I feel like … if I got a real opportunity to win another Super Bowl, then it makes sense to play. But again, it’s still a business. We’ve got to handle the business side of things, and if that wasn’t to get handled then, you know, it is what it is type of situation. I’ll be fine regardless.”

So it isn’t about money, but it IS about business. And winning. But also business.

I give Donald a pass on this, not only because he could break every one of us reading this in half by accident, but because context is everything.  In this case, “context” includes the fact that the I Am Athlete podcast is hosted by three of the wackier figures in the last 20 years of NFL weirdness: LeSean “Shady” McCoy, Brandon “Wife Stabbed Him In The Abdomen With A Knife And They Are Still Married” Marshall and Pac-man “Pac-man” Jones.

That’s an environment so steeped in madness and marijuana that anyone (particularly anyone who has sustained 8 years of pro-level subconcussive hits) might find his thoughts wandering a bit.

The bottom line is this: pay the man his money.  At 31, he shows no signs of slowing down. After carrying the defensive half of the team for 7 years, he and Fat Elvis got you over the top.  He may only be halfway through his deal, but he’s got almost no guaranteed money left after this year and the market has exploded.  You frontloaded the deal so that you could cut him or trade him easily if he started to go downhill. You lost that bet in the best way possible. Now Pony the Fuck Up, Les Snead.

I’m trying to decide if Donald does walk away, will it (arguably) be in the same league of embarrassment as the Lions losing Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson at 31?

1. You understood why Sanders and Johnson would rather walk away than continue to sacrifice their bodies and talent in a futile cause,

2. Based on his Hall of Fame induction speech, Johnson was playing crippled nearly his whole career, and

3. It’s the Lions- everything they do reeks of humiliation.

Here, you have an incredible mid-career talent on the reigning Super Bowl Champion team. You have very little in the way of up-and-coming stars who will need to be paid coming off rookie contracts, because you traded away all your picks to Win Now. If the best defensive football player in the league decides he’d rather walk away from football altogether instead of playing in THAT situation, it’s almost laughably absurd. And yet the Rams could pull it off!

*Akiem “The Dream” Hicks signed with the Buccaneers, ending one of the few successful experiments of the Ryan Pace-era Bears.  The victim of LSU recruiting violations, Hicks played most of his college ball for the University of Regina Ra(u)ms and was only the 9th Canadian Interuniversity Sports player drafted into the NFL.  After several middling years with the Saints and Patriots, he came alive with the Bears.  He will be missed.

*Jerry “Judge” Jeudy had his criminal tampering charge dismissed.  It remains to see how the NFL might or might not discipline him over the domestic violence charge.

MOVIE OF THE WEEK:

Down Periscope!

Mid-Fraiser Kelsey Grammer! Lauren Holly! Rob Schneider! Harry Dean Stanton as the Insane Engineer! That fat guy from Herman’s Head! RIP TORN AND BRUCE DERN IN AN EPIC OLD MAN CROTCHETY-OFF!!!!

Ok, so the cast is…middling, although the fact that Grammer can still evoke sentiment despite me knowing that he’s a climate-denying Pro-Ben-Carson-and-Trump conservative shitmaven in real life continues to amaze me.  It is an endlessly quotable movie, including (but not limited to):

“Now, call me a prude if you want, but I don’t think it’s good policy for the Navy to hand over a billion-dollar piece of equipment to a man who has “Welcome Aboard” tattooed on his penis!”

Made in 1996, I consider it (and it’s underrated contemporary, which will be next week’s feature) perhaps the last of the “Stupid Zany Authority Comedies”, whose heights included Stripes and Police Academies I-IV (Citizens on Patrol),  It is a breath of fresh air, Go watch it!