I want Chris Berman dead

By Marv Blackstone
Editor-in-chief

I'm a simple man. I like my chili spicy, my steaks bloody rare, and my gay cowboys straight. Straight, I said. Save that Brokeback Mountin' stuff for the California hippies.

I pretty much keep to myself here in Montana, except for the occasional fauna that wander onto the property. They're nice and peaceful to look at, but they also get all up in my rutabagas. "Get out of my rutabagas!" I'll scream. I usually get rid of them pretty quickly with a shotgun blast or nine, and I'll sometimes even get dinner from it if the gun doesn't misfire. Nothing like some tender venison when I sit down to watch baseball games on warm summer nights.

Those are the things I love. That's not too absurd, is it? I don't ask for much, but I will ask for one thing.

I want Chris Berman dead.

Yeah, you heard me. Every Sunday night I'll sit down, excited to watch the highlights of that day’s NFL games. And because of that blow to the head I took from a state trooper back in 1988, my memory isn’t too great –- so each and every week, I forget who hosts the ESPN highlight show.

It's Berman. So when that show comes on, I discover all over again that Berman will be narrating my highlights, just whoopin' and sweating and not making any damn sense. A talking penguin as a top play of the day? This is football, damnit! Most of you readers out there just live with that lingering knowledge in the back of your head, but not me. Every Sunday night, I find out anew that Berman is the host and it's like someone hooked a car battery to my testes. I can’t take it anymore.

So I want one of you to fix it. Just take care of him. I don't care how you do it, though I have some ideas for you if you want help.

That fat, loud man just ruins all that is good journalism. Oh sure, laugh at me, you smug little pricks. I know I've had my share of journalistic improprieties. Like that time I fabricated a story about the mayor of Boise sleeping with three rugged truckers and then smuggling coke across the Canadian border using the bodies of dead hookers. Anyone can get a source wrong. Or yeah, there was that time I filled my managing editor's coffee thermos with two quarts of my own urine after he rewrote one of my leads just because it had an "ethnic slur" in it.

Poppycock, I say.

I get what I want. And like I said, I want Chris Berman dead.

When I was nine years old, I used to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons. Most children did. However, I soon realized that Elmer Fudd looked an awful lot like my uncle, Merv Blackstone. Funny shaped head and always wearing a hat –- hell, they even talked a little bit alike. And seeing that damn rabbit messing with my uncle day after day after day just set me off. It traumatized me. So what did I do? I made it my mission to kill every rabbit that came near our house. That summer I killed more than 284 rabbits with my pellet gun. It was all I did. Pop pop pop! Pop! Pop pop rat tat tat! Haha! And then when I was done teaching those rabbits a lesson, I buried them all in the backyard under a big elm tree. And then I set the elm tree on fire and danced as it burned.

Maybe I was obsessed. But I don't care. It's the same thing now. I have to sit there in my cabin, getting Berman's smug, frosting-covered face beamed into my TV by my big satellite. My satellite isn't supposed to bring me these bad things. It's supposed to bring me televised sports and provide a venue for nude sunbathing. Anything else is unwarranted, uncalled for and inspires my rage.

So do it however you need to. I’ll ship 25 pounds of tender venison to the person who takes care of it, too.

Thanks in advance.