Another year, gone and done. Things happened, and now those things are part of the annals of history—no, I said annals, with two Ns, not, never mind. We got a lot to do in this final Friday post, so let’s get it started.

I want to start off by congratulating everybody who made like Hazard and survived the Little Drummer Boy Challenge! Woo!

Similarly, I want to give my commiserations to everybody who, like me, or Wee Willy Wedgie, did not survive the Little Drummer Boy Challenge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G56ldFNCdok

For all of us, we can now sit back and relax and wait until next year… WHEN THE HUNT WILL BE BACK ON. At least it’ll be a shorter timeframe; this was the longest Thanksgiving (U.S., not Canadian) to Christmas (all) period that one can possibly have because the fourth Thursday can’t be before the 22nd, it’s just mathematically not possible. Next year Thanksgiving will be on November 28th, the shortest Thanksgiving to Christmas, so there’ll be six fewer days needed to survive. So maybe more of us will survive. Or maybe not, maybe it becomes a meme or something, who knows. Considering the last few years of existence, do we really want to predict 2019? That seems like just opening up the realm of maddening things people can possibly do to further irk us, a veritable Rule 34 of needless cruelties (or inconveniences), on our fellow man. Seriously, 2018 had some fairly shitty moments of people doing terrible things. And I’m not even talking about politics. Well I guess now I am. But I wasn’t just then!

But, as I’ve written, and tWBS who let me take tonight’s thread for him’s written, at the very least we have some sort of shelter from the storm (noted after the fact, Brocky/Low Commander), because here, we have friends; we have a community.

Whether it’s not much or not isn’t the point. Point is, it’s home. Thanks as always, everyone.

All right, let’s do some year-in-review stuff. Time to look at a fistful of posts, series, and other crap we did. Time for THIS YEAR IN DFO!

Loop it as necessary. We’ve got a lot to cover.

January

We kicked off the year celebrating the Browns’ (the Pauls’) 2017 futility. In song!

We took a ride on the coaching carousel field trip to the coach recycling center courtesy of BFC.

Pete Carroll started a new series, spanning the globe for THE TRUTH. OPEN YOUR EYES! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

Similarly, Litre started his offseason QB interviews in Oakland.

We started our long descent into the neon clutches of GAMBLOR with DFO Insiders predicting playoff match-ups.

Beastie wrapped up the lengthy serial portion of Hard Ride to Nowhere, starting spin-off Prisoners on the Pleasure Planet! the following week. Remember, you can read up on Prisoners both here and via the link on the side!

Rikki premiered That’s My Raiders!, a look into everyone’s favorite team that’s going to Las Vegas… at some point.

Have you ever wondered what Hippo’s like at the strip club? Well, wonder no more, there’s a BotG on it!

Shit… was Hue Jackson Thanos the whole time? Except symmetry, instead of balance. Also no, because Hue Jackson is the worst.

Snow once again began his Oscars previews! Similarly, a few days later Balls began his AVN previews because of course.

Two words: Goddess II.

We introduced a new offseason series, or series of series, DFO University. No news on whether we passed our accreditation, but no news is good news, I think.

How do you root for a matchup of Iggles-P*ts? You root for the meteor! Tales from the Meteor gave apocalyptic visions of the Superb Owl, even though I don’t think any of them happened? Similarly Hate Week returned for all your pregame vitriol.

I set the DFO record for mythology gags in one post. Joke’s on the Whore of Babylon though, right?

Balls’ AFL Beat started back up as it tries to become our favorite sport. Living on the East Coast and not having special cable doesn’t help on my end though.

February

A cavalcade of celebrities picked the game.

We got the most wonderful day of the football year, Patriots Schadenfreude Day thanks to the lesser of two eagles, I mean evils.

The offseason began in earnest with the first Request Line/[DFO] Radio and the first Sunday Gravy of the year.

Maestro opened up the 3rd Annual [DFO] Commentist Survey, results here.

Hey, we had the Winter Olympics this year! [DFO] had, well, not hard-hitting coverage, but some!

We got another installment of Baking With Litre. It’s like Sunday Gravy but with weed! (Weed not included.)

March

Rikki investigated Roger Goodell’s purported 40 time. Because Roger Goodell is a national disgrace, see.

Sunday Gravy took a week off to go to the Staples Center. Yeah right doesn’t just solely cook for our amusement! He is allowed to have a life! And also cook for our amusement!

Hippo both yelled at and analyzed (hehe) the NCAA Tournament bracket.

I finally got that Mulan McNugget sauce, Morty!

Balls taught us some Spanish soccer fútbol lesser footy terms. Don’t let anyone say we can’t be educational! I mean I talked about DFO University already.

Around the end of the month, as Smarch Smadness reached the good parts, out came the MLB preview. Please don’t look at my predictions, the season was garbage.

April

The Raiders cut Marquette King. We all came up with reasons Jon Gruden will cut someone. Our reasons were undoubtedly better.

WCS previewed The Masters. Because it’s a tradition unlike any other. Or like no other. I don’t care what Jim Nantz has to say about it.

Somehow, we are all still alive and with all our femurs undrummed after this open thread.

Happy day (for tWBS and… that’s about it), the Caps didn’t blow it this year as we did our NHL playoff previews. Shame, I liked them better when they did. I mean, I still didn’t like them but you know what I mean.

We came up with a Richie Incognito retirement drink. Did anyone ever try it?

Speakeasy Stories remain some of the best writing on the site.

HRTN had another draft special, yay! As did Horatio—well, it was a preview, but close enough.

CognacCompadreCarl gave a history lesson, as he does from time to time, on John Churchill Chase, cartoonist and illustrator.

May

Josh Rosen got a warm reception coming to Arizona for the first time. In that it was warm because it’s Arizona and it’s hot there.

Another year, another Hot Sauce Expo BotG to kick off the formal House of Pains… Houses of Pain. Whatever.

We watched the NFL Dating Game unfurl with three very eligible bachelors.

BeerGuyRob unveiled the first chapters of his masterpiece unto the world, World War G.

The rebranded BattleBots Beat premiered and kept me busy through the summer watching fighting robots fight.

Don T gave his decree on shitty sports.

Yeah Right got himself an Instant Pot, and the rest, as they say, is history.

We started the site’s World Cup Previews, and everyone did a pretty damn good job.

Everyone’s favorite former mayor defended Josh McDaniels’s McDanielsing.

Rikki had fun with buttons, and once again you can read the full archive of HRTN and Prisoners on the Pleasure Planet! by clicking on the button in that story. Or on the sidebar. Whichever you prefer.

Another year, another season of Maestro’s CFL Beat started back up!

The ending of Goddess II. May the deity of your choice have mercy on us.

If you notice, it was at this point my laptop borked. I have still not gotten that shit repaired, or more accurately, replaced. More on that later.

June

Richie Incognito told us all the true true.

Yeah Right celebrated Anthony Bourdain’s life while mourning his passing in a foreword to this Sunday Gravy.

Wakezilla showed us just how… interesting Japan can be as we wrapped up the World Cup previews and started the World Cup itself.

The search was on for someone to play for the Eagles. Including people in jail indefinitely. Y’know, 18-month old Honduran children. (Which is a hell of a line right there.)

And of course, the AFL, CFL, BattleBots Beats continued, as did World War Z and other series. But I can’t post every instance of it or I would be here for eternity.

July

We looked into the term of needs-to-be President of the NFLPA Terrell Owens.

It was the summer time, so we all went to the Dak Prescott Summer of Maturity camp!

Low Commander became an alot of beer at the San Diego International Beer Festival. It was a happy 4th of July.

Do you like roundtables? We had a World Cup one.

The World Cup final was a fantastic end to an amazing tournament. I was busy recording conducting videos that I may never use except for my own self-mocking. The roundtable once again broke it down.

And then it was MLB All-Star Week, with a Home Run Derby with… people.

During the dog days, Yeah Right decided to have a meal to grill everything. Everything? EVERYTHING!

Ol’ Internet Dad decided to talk about announcers. And why we are not the announcers. I think we’d do well!

I decided to make a Berlioz reference with BattleBots. It was a mixed success.

We welcomed Ian aboard with his look at the MLB Heart & Hustle team award winners.

August

Lest we forget the quarterback RV in Cleveland. Which in hindsight, I guess it kinda worked since #ThePauls weren’t abysmal this year.

For one day, we were able to BRING BACK MATT for the DFO 3rd Anniversary interview. As he got there before me (I blame the BQE), I still owe him a coffee or something stronger if we ever cross paths again. Also I’d like to take this time to congratulate him on his new position as the *double-checks his Twitter* director for digital video social content at ESPN. Oh damn!

FOOTBALL RETURNED, HALLELUJAH.

We had another roundtable. This one was about BattleBots!

We had our EPL Lesser Footy preview. I would like to take this time to say though I don’t have a team and don’t care too too much, is it too much to ask for somebody, anybody, to beat the ever-loving fuck out of Liverpool? The Fenway ownership can’t have this good of a year, unless it means they will summarily be crushed in 2019 like cockroaches. Or whatever’s below that on the vermin scale.

We started the beautiful NFL previews!

Internet Dad had us do a good.

Roger Goodell fixed the anthem. And then they’ll be back after this commercial break.

The Superb Owl logos have all become the same. It’s silly and Ian wants it fixed. I agree with him.

Since we had the EPL preview, of course Ballsy came up with a preview for La Liga!

Snow returned for a Beer Barrel, yay!

Pre—sorry, Individual 1 (wow, that worked out well) played Meet! Your! Illegitimate! Child!

September

Football returning meant the end of the offseason features like Sunday Gravy, which finished off with pretzels, and Request Line/DFO Radio, which featured former President Obama.

JJ Fozz is why we’re not allowed in England, probably. Dammit, now he’s probably gonna kick my ass too. But yeah, did we or did we not fight a war over 200 years ago so we didn’t have to deal with royals? Especially George Brett.

New NFL season, new season of Instant Hippo Thoughts. And a new season of Quotables.

BourbonBuddyBilliam had all sorts of fun adventures for his 50th birthday.

Balls reminded us that the neon claws of GAMBLOR can be a fickle thing. And as such he had to make Skyline chili. Yeah Right did too.

Ian started a series called The Narrative. That’s… I guess the simplest way to put it.

Game Time Decision went to go see some lacrosse, which is not just a type of Buick.

Say it with me: DUCK! got robbed.

The Browns won a game, something they would actually go onto do several more times this season.

Eli is no longer a little kid, guys.

We adopted a lesser footy team, which is why we’re all now fans of Young Boys, a phrase we’ve made jokes with so many times that there’s no way we’re on every FBI and Chris Hansen watch list now, right?

Yeah Right went to Denver and watched some baseball. Then he watched some Red Rocks.

The Bye Week Updates, mostly a time to edit our preseason predictions as a team went into their bye, began.

Something to keep an eye on in January 2019: The NFC title bet between Hippo and Balls re: RAMMIT & Bear Down vs. the field. Right now the Saints are Balls’s best bet, as RAMMIT and Da Bears are the 2 and 3 seeds.

October

The AFL season came to a close as the West Coast Eagles took the premiership and SonOfSpam took the tipping contest.

We had two tiebreaking Game 163s before the MLB Wild Card Games, arguably my high point of October.

We also had our NHL previews start up because the NHL season is approximately one eternity and unlike the NBA, there’s actually debate about who the playoff teams will be. THE FIX IS IN FOR WILLIAMSON, or STOP TRYIN’ SO WE CAN GET ZION or something. The Knicks are shit.

We worked on nicknames for Patrick Mahomes.

Band Leader Bite Force led the way in the BattleBox again, in what I had as Fight of the Year, even if Minotaur’s backup chassis got Gigabyte’d.

After World War Z, LiquorLoutLarry arranged Le’Veon’s Leaves of Grass. Le’Veon did not come back to play because he contains multitudes, ppl forget that.

Game Time Decision did his best Brian Fellow impersonation and went to the Toronto Zoo.

Ian started his march to madness with Infinite Nets, first in its game-by-game format before going to its current weekly status.

Hue was finally shown the door in Cleveland, and there was much rejoicing.

Halloween came with yet another collection of scary stories:
-The Devil and Hue Jackson, Parts 1 and 2
–A “Case” of Evil
-Another number by the BOLTMAN GROUP
–The Deadlyest Catch
–The Trading Card of Josh McCown
–Conquering the Reaper
–The Devil’s Other Advocate
–The Devil Returns to Buffalo

November

The legendary “Dr. Z,” Paul Zimmerman, sadly passed away, and so we re-ran Don T’s brilliant piece on him.

Wakezilla wrote about the ’72 Dolphins and their tradition as the perfect teams fade away.

Peter Man 2018!

Caleb Sturgis did his best Blair Walsh, and there are consequences, as we know.

The occasional WWI This Day In History came to a head as we approached November 11th, Armistice Day.

Back in September, Balls had us pick Brazil’s Miss Bumbum, which is of course a thing. He gave the results, some surprising, some not, here.

As we get late into the season, we start looking into Balls’ Crystal Balls. And then need to wash our eyes.

Sharkbait came to New York and we couldn’t meet up. TimbsDudeTy was here the last few days actually, but is leaving, and I don’t really have evenings off because musicians during the holidays. I presume we’ll have his take on Astoria Borealis, or the Great Con Ed fire of 2018 and not aliens we swear.

Football is (still) family, guys. Especially if you’re Aaron Rodgers, because then it’s the only family you have.

Bob McNair died, so he went to the Good Place. Heh. Also we watched the first season or so, and then we haven’t because I don’t know when it’s on.

Hey, remember [DFOnline}? It’s still a thing sometimes!

Maestro recapped the Grey Cup, finishing his CFL Beat, as his REDBLACKS couldn’t make it two Cups in three years, as the Stampeders finally got over the hump.

Scotchy started watching Hallmark Christmas movies. Well, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

December

Hippo was sick so we had double the Non-Hippo Thoughts.

Jim Harbaugh’ll beat Urban Meyer, right? He’s not gone, he’ll be back!

GTD got a beer advent calendar. It had some beers.

Rikki did not watch a Hallmark movie on the Hallmark channel, but he did watch it on NFL Network.

The same guys who tricked Brett Favre tricked Chip Kelly. No word yet on whether Chris Kluwe has also joined the victims via the notorious Commentist Party.

DAK! DAK DAK DAK!

We fixed the XFL, whether it needed to be before it started playing or not!

Get well soon, Drew.

Blax analyzed bowl game sponsors, which get more and more ridiculous.

BFC rebooted the mailbag, now known as Mouth Flies Open.

Instead of a Beer Barrel, Sharkbait had a Whisk(e)y Barrel!

Ian had a Bill Hader post and none of them were Stefon clips, which is impressive. Harold Baines is not as good as any of these guys.

WCS finally did his Die Hard liveblog here instead of (in addition to?) Twitter.

This Christmas, we looked at whether Ralphie’s a lying bastard and possibly the bully all along. (Yes.) And what the holidays mean to us.

And what Christmas would be complete without the song stylings of the BOLTMAN GROUP?

Whew. We did a lot and that took a while to check some 90 pages of topics and threads. Like, a lot longer than expected, because we did a lot. Like I was going to go back and review what I said during the first Friday, but hell, I’m bushed. I can say it was not wholly unsuccessful.

Back to us, I can’t say what we’ve got on tap for 2019, but probably more of the same. Maybe I’ll actually get a new laptop so I can write up my back issues of House of Pain. And have a working version of Finale to make an arrangement of Baby Shark. It’s all my students want to play. That and to do Fortnite dances. Also because I’m planning on something special for Smarch which I need to get a move on. Apart from that, we’ll have some of the things you’ve come to love and expect. And some new things we expect you’ll love.

What’s on tonight?

I’ve mostly been watching the Mythbusters marathon (Science Channel) because I miss shit getting blown up. That just keeps going, I’m not sure when it started, but it’s twelve days. Or I’ll be watching Bugglebots on the Youtubes—so far the first two episodes are out and I haven’t gotten a chance to see them. They’re beetleweight robots, so they weigh 1.5 kg (3 lbs). The most notable for the BattleBots watchers is Drizzle, a beetleweight from Team Monsoon. The r/battlebots favorite is Rikki multi-bot WeeWoo. Why?

Because memes. As for me, maybe I’ll do a write-up after either all the heats or the full season is released.

JV Footy Bowls
Iowa St. vs. Wazzu in the Alamo Car Rental Alamo Beer Alamo Bowl (8:00, ESPN)

NBA
Mavericks vs. Pelicans (8:00, NBA TV)
Clippers vs. LeBron-less Lakers (10:30, NBA TV)

JV Hoopsball
Univ. of Illinois-Chi**** vs. Wright State (Second half, ESPN 2)
Southern vs. #18 Marquette (8:00, FS1)

Okay, that should just about do it. I should probably come up with one sure-fire sexy picture to sum up 2018, but I’m not sure if anyone needs to see gratuitous Ryan Reynolds Deadpool, or Michael B. Jordan in Black Panther or in Creed pics. (Dude looks good.) That just seems like too easy of an answer, an easily searchable one. And I’m not sure who the It Girl was this year, to be honest.

Plus I blew my sexy picture lookin’ time on articles. Which I guess people pretend to say about Playboy. And I made a Rule 34 joke earlier. Eh, we’ll be fine, I trust us. Plus, it’s a four-day weekend thanks to New Year’s, so that’s pretty sweet.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, let’s all go out there and post our hearts out. I mean, still responsibly. But like, let’s go all out for it, right? This weekend ends the regular season, and then the year, let’s have some fun with it. You don’t need me decreeing the genre of sexy tonight, and you do a much better job of it than I do.

(Note to self, there is almost no way this ends well.)

Eh, what’s the worst that can happen? Happy New Year, folks.

(Oh, and remember to send submissions for the advice column at [email protected])