Set your DVRs: Puppy Bowl VI only one week away!

Break out the Pup-Peroni sticks and Pabst Blue Ribbon, because the Big Game is almost here: Puppy Bowl VI.

Give the props to the Animal Planet executives for green lighting up this alternative programing to the Super Bow. Puppy Bowl producers reportedly drew their inspiration from the Yule Log counter programing aired on Christmas Day. If people willingly stare at a television screen depicting logs burning in a fireplace with Andy Williams, the Carpenters and Garth Brooks holiday tunes playing in the background, won't they watch damn near anything? Film puppies romping on a mock NFL field, add water-bowl cameras, and hire NFL Films announcer Harry Kalas to call the play-by-play -- and you've got a hit.

Competing against the ratings titan of the Super Bowl, the Puppy Bowl V broadcast drew eight million viewers last year. That's roughly the weekly audience of Family Guy or 20/20. And brilliant alternate programing to the most-anticipated day of television commercials, or a marathon of Lifetime network movies with Lindsay Wagner and Kellie Martin. Even with Puppy Bowl's tiresome Bissell Kitty Halftime Show.

Puppy Bowl VI airs in two-hour spools beginning at 3 pm on Sunday, February 7 on Animal Planet.

http://animal.discovery.com/tv/puppy-bowl/puppy-bowl.html

Fifty percent chance of apocalypse

The victory of the New Orleans Saints in the National Football Conference (NFC) championship game Sunday marks a National Football League (NFL) sign of the apocalypse... and a 50-percent chance of the End of the World As We Know It.

Somewhat less disconcerting is the embarrassment to which dog owners heap upon their canines to demonstrate the humans' own athletic alliances for their own gratification.

Here's the thing: How do you know that your dog support your favorite sports teams?

Do you think that outfitting your dog with a University of Alabama collar guaranteed that he cheered, "Roll, Tide!" during this year's national championship game? Maybe he was singing "The Eyes of Texas." How do you know that your white standard poodle resents the blue horseshoes that you denied in her hair? Maybe she thought New York Jets quarterback Marc Sanchez is a bigger stud than the Indianapolis Jets' wearisome play caller Peyton Manning.

But back to the NFL signs of the apocalypse. While the Colts' American Football Conference (AFC) title may stave off destruction of the planet that we call earth, you might also consider holding off on purchasing the Colonial Penn life insurance policy that Alex Trebek peddles on television.

Note to the parks department: Lose the loo

As previously reported the Seattle Parks Department removed several trash cans at the Genesee off-leash area. A few cans -- at the entrance and scattered in areas opposite the dumpster -- remain.

Don't expect the cans to come back and the dumpster to go away. The city's parks department removed the trash cans out of concern for their employees who risked hernia or lumbar strain lifting the heavy cans... and the danger of flying debris. The parks department may place a second dumpster in the dog park.

If the parks department wants to improve the ambiance of the Genesee dog park, it will remove the sawed-off porta potty -- the top half removed -- located next to the dumpster. We assumed that when the city brought a truck into the off-leash area and attached a hose to the porta potty that they were removing stored dog waste. Wrong-o! A human denizen reported that the city was depositing waste from other parks in the porta potty at the Genesee off-leash area.

Why is our dog park in the lovely Rainier Valley a repository for the city's canine waste? Why are we being disrespected? The sawed-off porta potty also draws a few male human users who would rather urinate essentially in public than walk 400 yards to the restrooms near the soccer field.

Do us a favor: lose the sawed-off loo.

Contact the city's park department to share your opinions:

• Park maintenance at (206) 684-7250;
• General parks information at (206) (206) 684-4075;
• City of Seattle's parks department website: http://www.seattle.gov/parks/contact/

Lions and tigers and bears... but no dogs allowed

As the Jacksonville Jaguars experience financial turmoil, the looming question is when the National Football League (NFL) franchise pulls up stakes to Los Angeles. Duh... the City of Angels boasts the second-largest media market in the country.

Here's the 77,000 question: What will be the name of the next NFL west-coast team? This may seem like a frivolous question until one realizes that the NFL boasts no team with a canine mascot.

Consider that the NFL has five organizations with avian orientations (Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Philadelphia Eagles, Phoenix Cardinals and Seattle Seahawks), four teams with cat names (Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Detroit Lions and hanging-by-a-thread Jacksonville Jaguars) and two clubs honoring horses (Denver Broncos and Indianapolis Colts). Nothing canine oriented. The NFL would rather identify with fish (Miami Dolphins), nautical bandits (Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and marauders (Oakland Raiders).

The future Los Angeles club ought to consider a canine image -- drawing, perhaps from the area's regional milieu. The Beverly Hills Purse Dogs? Westwood Wild Dogs? Orange County otter hounds?

Or how about venturing down memory lane, and honoring a franchise with pigskin roots in the City of Angels? Formed in 1936, the Los Angeles Bulldogs aspired to join the National Football League (NFL), which instead opted for the Cleveland Rams. (How's that for irony?) In 1937, the rejected Bulldogs went undefeated with a 16-0 season -- including going 8-0 in the American Football League (AFL). Spurted again by the NFL, Los Angeles, the Bulldogs toiled in the American Professional Football League (nee AFL), Pacific Coast Professional Football League (PCPFL) during the late 1930s and 1940s. The Bulldogs routed the likes of the Columbus Bullies, Dayton Bombers and St. Louis Gunners.

Unlike the homogeneous NFL, the PCPFL teams yielded teams with African-American athletes. In 1941, the Bulldogs' backfield included a former University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) running back named Jackie Robinson, who left the team the following year when he was drafted by the Army the following year in the midst of World War II. The demise of the PCPFL spelled the end of the Bulldogs.

A proud piece of Los Angeles history needs to be restored. The NFL needs a team with a canine persona: the Los Angeles Bulldogs. You can talk to me.

Pigskin prediction of doom?

Pigskin fans who follow the Dog Denizens of Genesee Park (DDGP) must be wondering about the baseball-centric focus of the site. If the DDGP muses about non-dog-park related issues -- the Seattle Mariners 2010 squad, Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF), Milton-Bradley childhood games), why don't we focus on what many believe is really "America's game"?

With the Super Bowl only three weeks away, the DDGP breaks its silence. The results of the conference championship games this past Sunday results in a 75-percent chance of producing one of the four National Football League (NFL) signs of the apocalypse scenarios:

• Brett Favre -- not Fran Tarkenton, Daunte Culpepper or Tommy Kramer -- leads the Minnesota Vikings to their first Super Bowl victory.
• The New Orleans Saints -- the venerable laughingstock of the NFL -- win the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy before the Seattle Seahawks.
• New York Jets Coach Rex Ryan receives a kiss on his Super Bowl ring from Bill Belichick, the abrasive head coach of the New England Patriots.

Then, there's the 25-percent possibility that Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts and his band of robots will win all the marbles on February 7. But more important, there's Puppy Bowl VI on Animal Planet.

Happy MLK Jr. Day!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day from your friends at the Dog Denizens of Genesee Park (DDGP)!

If you followed the directive of President Barack Obama you took a "day on" and spent the holiday volunteering for a local organization. And if you were savvy, you would've linked your efforts with the Disney Corporation so you might obtain a free park pass to one of the theme parks. (That's $80 for entry at Disney World and Epcot Center to tour the Doris- Kearns-Goodwin-inspired Hall of Presidents and sample the beers of the world. Airfare, accommodations, and airport travel obviously not included.)

But if you're like some of us less motivated folks, you took the day off and are watching reruns of Pawn Stars or Little People, Big World. The least we can do when we take our dogs to the Genesee off-leash area -- how can you not on a warm and sunny January afternoon? --is to take a few minutes to keep the park beautiful. Pick up a scooper, and pick up.

Move your steroid truck, sucka!

Genesee Park's least-favorite neighbor -- the big-assed, hauling truck -- is parked alongside the off-leash park area. Notice to the truck driver and the business operator: You and your Mark McGwire-sized vehicle are nuisances to the park.

Who are you, and why have you chosen the perimeter of the off-leash area along South Genesee Street to park your truck? Clearly, you don't live in front the park, so convenience and proximity to a residence or business are not at issue. Instead, you house your 10-foot-high truck in front of the park... and thereby inconveniencing the us the off-leash area users who have to park down the street.

We can't help but notice the truck barely looks operable. Consider Seattle Municipal Code (SMC) 11.72.500 (junk vehicles):

A. No person shall park a junk motor vehicle on a street, alley, or way open to the public, or on municipal or other city property.

B. Violation of subsection A is a Class 1 civil infraction s contemplated by Chapter 4.80 RCW for which there shall be a penalty of Two Hundred Fifty Dollars ($250), which penalty shall not be suspended or deferred.

Fred G. Sanford's monster truck may receive a parking ticket.

As Aunt Esther used to say in Sanford and Son, "Better watch it, sucka."

Thirty-six percent of baseball writers can't be wrong

Cooperstown will have to wait another year.

The Baseball Writers Association of American (BWAA) selected the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF) Class of 2010 today. The Dog Denizens of Genesee Park (DDGP) fell short in assisting in the media campaign to secure former Seattle Mariner Edgar Martinez his rightful -- and hopefully, eventual -- place in Cooperstown. Of those eligible to vote, 36.2 percent of the BWAA members supported Edgar's first HOF candidacy.

A nominee has 15 tries at the HOF... provided that he garners at least five percent of the support of BWAA writers the prior year. Edgar boasts a solid foundation upon which to build his candidacy. The sportswriters voted him ahead of Tim "Rock" Raines (30.4 percent), Mark McGwire (23.7 percent), Alan Trammell (22.4 percent), Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff (21.4 percent), and Don "Donnie Baseball" Mattingly (16.1 percent).

Of the talking heads who disputed to Edgar's nomination, NBC and Baseball Network anchor Bob Costas' opposition seems the most surprising. For one who professes to know all, Costas is dead wrong in his assessment of Edgar as nothing more than an overrated and glorified pinch hitter. In a DDGP analogy, Costas is the mouthy pooch that incessantly yaps at the other canines... and then runs tail-between-the-legs to the gate when an exasperated bigger dog barks back. Stick a sock in it, Mr. Know-it-All. We liked you better when you were a quirky late-night, talk show host.

As they said in A Little Night Music, "Maybe next year."

Meanwhile, congratulations to Andre "Hawk" Dawson, the only former player who garnered the necessary 75 percent of the BBWA to earn a place in Cooperstown. If class were the sole criterion to the Hall, you would be a first-ballot selection.

One dumpster, one disaster

Say good-bye to the garbage cans that collect dog dowdy at the Genesee off-leash park. The great minds in Seattle's municipal government is removing the garbage cans that collect refuse and replacing the receptacles with one dumpster for doody collection. The one-dumpster policy begins January 9.

Think dog-waste collection compliance is bad now? Imagine the fecal land mine that will develop when people become less inclined to walk across the 3.2 acres of the park with the rusty scooper to collect doody.

We are not debating the point of collecting your dog's waste: the law requires your compliance. But when the great minds of the city enact a policy with little explanation or rationale for the policy change. Nobody has explained:

• What is the waste collection policy changing?
• What i the frequency of waste collection of the dumpsters?
• Will the city provide additional poop bags to ensure compliance?
• Are all city-operated off-leash parks subject to the one-dumpster policy... or is it only dog parks in the Lovely Rainier Valley? (Do you believe that all the cans at Magnuson and Golden Gardens parks will be replaced with one dumpster per location?)
• Why aren't the garbage cans at the soccer fields being replaced by a single dumpster? Is this a dog-park policy?

Contact the city's park department for their rationale:

• Park maintenance at (206) 684-7250;
• General parks information at (206) (206) 684-4075;
• City of Seattle's parks department website: http://www.seattle.gov/parks/contact/

What is it, girl? Did Timmy fall in the frozen pond?

"I never want to see a day that's over 40 degrees..." -- Snow Miser, The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)

With the daily temperature "highs" now hovering in the mid-40s, one might consider breaking out the baggy short, T-shirts and flip-flops. El Niño has come to the Pacific Northwest, and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) prediction of a mild winter has come true...

Not so fast, Brian Wilson: Seattle isn't "surf city" yet. December's overall weather picture suggests that you reconsider imbibing that funny white substance. From December 6 to December 13, the outdoor thermostat never climbed above 39 degrees. From December 5 to December 12, the daily "low" ranged from 16 to 28 degrees. The absence of precipitation saved us from last year's snow disaster... as if the brain trust at the city's Department of Transportation was equipped to handle snowfall.

While unusually dry, the Greater Seattle area saw precipitation of 0.43 inches (December 16), 0.41 inches (December 19) and 0.55 inches (December 21).

Local weather prognosticator O'Doul the Collie disputed NOAA's El Niño forecast earlier this winter. The amount of hair combed out of the canine's coat suggests the climate in the Pacific Northwest is more St. Olaf than St. Petersburg. In the O'Doul v. NOAA battle, the collie is kicking butt. And the shedding continues.

Happy New Year! Time for the 10s!

Enough of the "noughts".

Let's stick a fork in the past decade and its symbols of mediocrity:

• Sport utility vehicles;
• Energy drinks;
• Dog the Bounty Hunter;
• Kansas City Royals;
• Windows Vista;
• Turducken;
• Apple martinis;
• "You are not the father!";
• "You are the father!";
• Ryan Seacrest;
• Wikipedia as a news authority;
• Shamwow®! ("Holds 12 times its weight in liquid!");
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes;
• Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis;
• WAMU (aka Washington Mutual Savings Bank);
• Subprime mortgages and the home-lending crisis;
• "FOX News";
• "Mission accomplished."

Raise your chai green-tea-and-soy latté and toast the new decade!