The 2006 NFL season finally begins tonight! It’s been a cold and empty six months since the Super Bowl in February - full of yoga, brunch, “quality time with Mary Milan” on Sundays - but alas, no more!

Hello, couch.
Hello, beer.
Hello, little, spicy chicken wings.
Oh yes, it’s me, I’m back.

Since the beginning of the season is when everybody is in first place and where high hopes are still kind of allowed, let me just say that I am excited about the 49ers this year.

Yeah, yeah, they went 4-12 last year but they played one hell of a schedule and they gutted each one of them out. They probably could have won 4 or 5 more games (Dallas, Seattle, Chicago, Jacksonville, Arizona) last year if injuries and youth had not conspired to betray them.

So I’m being a homer. I don’t care. I’ll be the first to say it: I think the 49ers will be .500 this year, maybe even roll into 2nd place in the NFC west if the Rams are frauds and Arizona implodes like they do every year.

Who knows?

What I do know - what I am absolutely sure of - is this:

Since Redskins coach Joe Gibbs is a NASCAR owner, the partnership between Tom Cruise and Dan Synder (owner of the Washington Redskins and chairman of Six Flags Inc.) means that we are one step closer to absolute cinematic nirvana: Days of Thunder II.

In fact, I am so sure of it, I’ve already written the synopsis:

DAYS OF THUNDER II

We open on Cole Trickle. He is no longer the young hot-shot driver we came to know and love in the first movie. He’s a broken man. Ever since Harry Hogge’s (Robert DuVall’s character) death which Trickle holds himself responsible for.

Plunged into the Marianas Trench of self pity, not even Dr. Claire Lewicki can help him. She leaves him for some country singer that she’s met at one of the races.

Trickle works at a Six Flags theme park doing maintenance on those kiddie race cars that run on a track. At night, when everybody is gone, he drives them around the track. It’s a safe reminder of the good old days.

One day, Joe Gibbs, who will also serve as a technical consultant, shows up at the theme park. He is Harry Hogge’s brother. There is a race to be run. Hogge was working on a special car for Trickle to drive against an evil owner, possibly the one who actually killed Hogge. But Trickle can’t. It’s just too painful.

Gibbs is able to break down Trickle’s defenses - and there are many of them - for just one last race; the race of their lives.

Sweet, huh? So sweet, it’s wga registered, bitches.

You can’t stop the Thunder, you can only hope to contain it.
Cruise/Wagner, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tony Scott, Robert Towne, I got my eyes on you…

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