Pop-culture predictors for the Packers-Chargers game
What are you doing here, Iceman?
What can you say about the San Diego Chargers? Really, what? Because all we’re coming up with right now is Philip Rivers is usually good and some outdated LaDainian Tomlinson and Junior Seau references. Unless it’s to check fantasy football stats, AFC teams don’t garner much attention in Wisconsin until the post-season. So even though the Chargers are perennial contenders, we still don’t know (or care) much about them outside of thinking their helmets are cool. However, maybe some of the San Diego pop-culture references we’re kicking around can help predict what the Packers will be up against when they head to sunny Qualcomm Stadium.
Top Gun
Set in San Diego, Tony Scott’s hyper-kinetic action classic juxtaposed the macho world of fighter jet pilots engaging anonymous MiGs with one of the sultriest shirtless volleyball matches ever captured on film. But perhaps more importantly, it presented the world with the archetypical Iceman, a humorless dick who is nevertheless respected because of his skill. Rivers is hardly humorless, and he actually seems like an okay guy, but his Iceman-like numbers are something that should be feared, even if he’s playing more like Goose ejecting into the canopy at the moment. Despite coming off a humiliating fumble that cost his team the game, Rivers’ career numbers indicate that at some point in this season he’ll get the hang of playing with the boys again.
The Real World: San Diego
In case you haven’t noticed—and you haven’t—The Real World is still being produced, and is currently working through its 26th season and 2nd in San Diego. As has been the case with every other season up to this point, the house is filled with morons, like homophobic meat statue Zach and drunken buffoon Frank. You might think the Chargers, who’ve had nearly twice as many seasons, would be a little smarter, but that didn’t appear to be the case two weeks ago when they lost to the Jets. Pro Bowl left guard Kris Dielman was so obviously rocked after a play in the fourth quarter that even people watching the Dolphins game were able to correctly diagnose him with a concussion, yet he was kept in the game and later suffered a seizure on the plane. The Packers should look to exploit that ineptitude and the Chargers’ players should hope to survive.
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy
If you haven’t seen Adam McKay’s movie about a sexist (and sometimes mentally retarded) San Diego TV news team forced to deal with changing times, then you’ve had it recited to you. But to be fair, the movie is packed with funny lines, like the titular anchorman explaining to new co-worker Veronica Corningstone that San Diego is German for “a whale’s vagina.” Come Sunday, those memorable words could take on new meaning. The Chargers will undoubtedly dedicate much of their truncated break between games preparing for the Packers’ death-from-above passing attack, which could leave holes in their defensive line the size of a certain great mammal’s sex organs for Ryan Grant and James Starks—who looked outstanding at the end of the Vikings game—to run through.
Cameron Crowe
The director, raised in San Diego, fell off the map after his 2005 stinker Elizabethtown. He’s back now with a new feature, We Bought A Zoo, out in December, but his characters never left us. Especially Kate Hudson’s simultaneously compelling and annoying Penny Lane from 2000’s Almost Famous, with her hands all up in people’s faces and hokey words of wisdom like, “You are home.” Though she meant it in some metaphorical, hippy way, Aaron Rodgers can take it more literally, seeing as how this will be his first time playing an NFL game in California in a while. Even though the distance between Chico and San Diego is probably the same as the distance between Racine and Boston, getting a rare chance to play in front of a home-state crowd seems to motivate most pro athletes to go above and beyond. In Rodgers’ case, that most likely means he will throw for 1,500 yards on Sunday.
