Tribune Sports...I got nuthin'

Ok, so it's Monday afternoon. I'm a sports reporter for a major city daily paper. The local team played last Thursday, so there's not much left to dissect about the game. The next game...well, it's a little early for that. Hmmm, what can I do? Hey, I haven't called up the Bear's QB's dad lately, I'll do that. Hmm, don't know Jay Cutler's dad's number. Or Caleb Hanie's dad. Or Brett Basanez' dad. Hmm, I wonder what the father of the backup for Houston thinks about Jay Cutler?

Hard to believe newspapers are in trouble, isn't it?

...and Wolfgang Puck popped the popcorn

Oscar winner Halle Berry, Oscar nominees Don Cheadle and John Travolta (both of whom were robbed, by the way. Forrest Gump and Ray Charles, my ass), Tony and Emmy winner Hugh Jackman, Emmy winner Drea De Matteo, Oscar and Emmy nominee Sam Shepard. All brought together to bring you one of the biggest crapfests of the decade, "Swordfish," a movie that is only ever shown on HBO, and for only one reason (OK, two reasons. Heh...oh jeebus, a boob joke? It's late, forgive me).

That tops my previous favorite, which was Oscar winners Helen Hunt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in "Twister." And I guess Bill Paxton isn't going to get any Emmys for "Big Love" the way I thought he would, so this one is of limited future value, barring some sort of Jami Gertz disease movie.

I'm disqualified from commenting on what should probably be the winner in this category, because I've never had the pleasure of seeing Multiple Oscar winner Denzel Washington and Oscar winners Russell Crowe and Louise Fletcher in "Virtuosity." Small favors, I suppose.

A Few Random Thoughts

Color me completely naive for not thinking of this before, but I finally figured out something that has bothered me for a while. Most, if not all, of your major organized religions, frown on or outright ban birth control (and no, Pope Benedict, I don't consider "the rhythm method" actual birth control). I've never quite understood it, and wrote it off as simply sex=fun=bad, so unless you want a child, no sex. But maybe it's more practical than I give them credit for. Maybe it's just simple marketing (sorry, when it's a non-profit it's called "membership recruitment"). Most people are indoctrinated to their religion through their parents, so wouldn't you want those parents to pump out as many custome...uh, new recruits as possible? So they know people want to have sex, and will do so no matter what they say. But to balance out the guilt of committing sins of the flesh, they'll skip the birth control and thus greatly increase the likelihood that they'll be giving the church what they really want, which is more little'uns. Does this theory make me a cynic? Probably. But if I'm anywhere in the ballpark, I'm not the biggest cynic in this equation, now, am I?

Mad Men is a really, really good TV show. It can make you like some really bad people. They can make you laugh at really horrible things. When Roger, Bert, Don and company called in whatshisname (with the glasses, don't make me look it up) and explain their plan and he's stunned into saying "are you kidding?" and Roger doesn't even look up and says "yeah, we are. Happy Birthday" I was glad it was Diet Sprite (ahem, excuse me, Sprite Zero) I was drinking, because that diet Cranberry soda I've been drinking lately would've stained the furniture.

Note to, well, all football announcers...is Mendenhall really that much easier to say than Roethlisberger? Because you don't have any trouble busting that one out, but the other one is always just "Ben." Stop that.

While we're at it, specifically to Jon Gruden...you went to college, ok? Stop doing the whole "whoa, I don't understand all these big fancy words you guys use" shtick. I know you think you're appealing to middle America that way, but what would appeal to middle America more is someone doesn't insult their intelligence. You said this week that you heard about a couple of players who sleep in hyperbaric chambers in order to heal minor injuries faster. Then you pulled the whole "whoa, I have no idea what any of that means." Hey, Jon, here's a tip, then. Google it. Most people already know what that is (possibly because Michael Jackson supposedly had one), but if there are those who do not, how 'bout taking the opportunity to tell them about it? Just because most coaches are anti-intellectual pricks doesn't mean you have to be also.

I hate to admit this, but the health care reform debate has finally beaten me. By which I mean, I just want it to be over. Pass something, declare victory, and let's move on. The GOP strategy seems to be to say and do more and more outrageous and crazy things because they know not a lot of moderates are paying attention, so maybe this is just a temporary lull for me and I'll get a 14th wind and get revved up about it again, but we'll see.

Hmm, college basketball already? I suppose.

and now for Something Completely the Same as Everything Else.

So I've been watching, somewhat faithfully (by which I mean within 24 hours of it airing) the new Monty Python documentary on IFC. And yes, it's a well made talking-head retrospective documentary talking about some incredibly interesting people, but I'm kind of sorry I'm watching it.

Backing up a bit. I love Python, but I'm by no means a fanatic about it. I doubt I've seen every single episode of the show, though maybe I have, and I've probably only seen Life of Brian 2 or 3 times. But I love Live at the Hollywood Bowl and of course the Holy Grail and I even like the Meaning of Life more than most people. And at one point, I was enough of a fan to watch Fawlty Towers.

But one of the things that struck me while watching this documentary is that I knew absolutely nothing about these guys. Ok, not entirely true, I knew Terry Gilliam was the lone American. I knew Graham Chapman was dead. But that was pretty much it. And I realize now that I preferred it that way.

I didn't want to know that Graham's coming out of the closet caused tension in the group, not that they disapproved but because they were so shocked at it, which Graham apparently took as disapproval. I didn't want to know that Eric Idle hardly ever wrote anything. I especially didn't want to know that, when battling with BBC censors, John Cleese occasionally sided with the censors against the group. Ok, sure, I do find it amusing that Cleese's father (or grandfather, I don't remember) changed the family name from "Cheese" to "Cleese." But I don't want to hear about how John and Terry (Jones) were frequently at odds, and made everyone else pick sides. And one of the stories Cleese told (about the parrot sketch) actually contradicts the legend of how it was created (he said it was based on a car salesman Michael used to know and they immediately knew it should be a dog or a parrot. The legend I'd always heard said it started out as a toaster, they couldn't get it right and Graham, who hadn't even been working on the sketch said "forget the toaster, make it a parrot")

In other words, I didn't want to know that Monty Pyton was a collection of human beings. My preferred vision for them was that they were beamed here from another plane of existence as a unit, given the ability to create this mystical blend of satire and slapstick, and were then immediately beamed back to their home world, leaving behind older versions of Cleese, Idle and Palin to do the occasional travel documentary or "A Fish Called Wanda."

I suppose I could try to make some larger point about how back in the day we didn't need to know every little obsessive detail about celebrities, and how they go to Starbucks Just Like Us. But I think this is more of a one-off situation. I actually like knowing that Keifer Sutherland is so self-conscious about his height that they only cast people who are 5' 8" or shorter on 24. Or that Stephen Colbert doesn' let his kids watch his show because he doesn't want them to think he's really like that guy on TV. Python was different, and they should stay that way. I think I'm going to delete the rest of the documentary and just watch Grail again.

Quitting

So I was all ready to crank out this post on Republicans who quit, since Tom "The Hammer (meaning the indicted former House Majority Leader, not the Adam Carolla movie of the same name)" DeLay quit a TV show I've never once watched the other day. Apparently, he had some sort of stress fracture in his foot, which would seem to not be the kind of thing you want to have when you're trying to dance for several hours a day.

I once danced (excuse me, I need to get the air quotes from the back porch) "danced" for 30 straight hours once, and that pretty much sucked all the way around except for the part where we raised a couple thousand dollars for a charity and I got to see Alan Thicke get all sleazy and give a 19 year old his hotel room key.

Quick side note: I have twice in my life been in the same room as Mr. Alan Thicke, comedian (wait, "comedian") star of "Growing Pains" "Thicke of the Night" (on which I, for one, thought he was surprisingly tolerable) and "Pictionary: the Game Show, not at all a rip off of Win, Lose or Draw which was a rip-off of Pictionary to start with" (title approximate). Once was during aforementioned charity dancing event, for which he was the celebrity (just consider them assumed) host, and once when he wrote a book for the company I worked for. The book, which is still in print with another publisher, is called "How Men Have Babies: The Pregnant Father's Survival Guide," which I can sum up thusly: Wow, the boobs get big! But don't touch 'em, they might explode! Because the hormones, I tells ya...anyway, you get the point. It was incredibly unfunny and stereotypical and sad, considering he claimed to be motivated to write it thanks to witnessing the miracle of pregnancy and childbirth and enjoying so much the experience of becoming a father a few years back (this was in 1998 or so)...no doubt much to the confusion, chagrin and rejection of his adult children from his first marriage, who only inspired him to leave their mother for a 26 year old Miss World contestant. So yeah, he wrote this totally hypocritical and shallow book that privately we called "Bill Cosby's 'Fatherhood' for sleazy middle-aged Canadians." Or maybe that was the jacket blurb, not sure. So, as is occasionally the custom in these situations, we flew him in to chat up the sales force and have dinner. He spent the entire night badmouthing the food (it was a made-to-order stir fry type thing, which he called "pork and peanut butter"...they must not get much Thai food in your part of Canada, eh Alan?) and slobbering over my friend (name redacted), who did everything but shove her new engagement ring up his nostril trying to get the creepy old guy away from her. I guess the moral of the story, if there is one, is that Alan Thicke is creepy and horny. By the way, the 19 year old immediately started passing around the hotel key, trying to get someone else to use it, but no dice. It now occurs to me that the key was for a room in the same hotel where the meet-and-greet dinner occurred 6 years later. I feared for my job at the time, so I did not have the guts to ask him if he remembered the last time he was at that hotel.

Hmm, that really didn't pan out as a "quick" side note, now, did it? Well, that's how these things go, I guess.

Anyway, where was I? Right, Tom DeLay. Quitting. This, on the heels (relatively speaking, at least), of Sarah Palin quitting as governor of Alaska. It made me wonder if maybe this were some sort of trial balloon by the GOP, as in "let's see how far we can get by quitting" or maybe the reality show bit was just a short term test of whether they could raise someone's prospects by appearing on a show like that (much like Bill Clinton did by appearing on Arsen...hee, I can't even say it with a straight face...Arsenio Hall's wildly successful late night talk show...woof) and maybe after a couple weeks they had all the data they needed. We'll know if that was the case if we see Newt Gingrich on "The Bachelorette".

That made me think about quitting in general, and how we're so conditioned to see it as a bad thing. And it's not necessarily. There's no shame in quitting when there are better options, or even when doing nothing is a better option than doing what you're doing. I've often said that the best move I ever made in school was quitting the 8th grade football team. I sucked at it, and I hated it (those who know my love of the game now will be shocked at this, but the coach was a tyrant, I was out of shape and had very little interest in puking my guts out every day for 6 weeks so I could be a 3rd string offensive lineman, even though I was clearly a fullback or tight end). I'm not sure why I decided to quit, I just remember sitting in the bathtub after practice one night, wondering if I could risk bringing my homework into the tub with me so I could soak for another hour and...oh yeah, that's why. It was a rough time at home. My dad had recently come off a two year long layoff and was working either 2nd or 3rd shift, meaning I only saw him on Sundays, really, and he was pretty well wrecked then from the weird schedule. I didn't want to disappoint him by quitting, because I knew all of his stories from playing football at my high school (my favorite being the time he got knocked unconscious and they had to hold up the game...mainly because they couldn't get him off the field, but also because our team only had 11 players so they had to wait for him). Not having the relevant source of advice available was a problem, so I left him a note. In retrospect, I could have stayed up until he got home from work, but I seem to recall that being a) a waste of time, since it was the middle of the freaking night and he was tired, adn b) to be used only in a genuine, something's-on-fire emergency. Essentially, I asked him if he would be upset or disappointed if I didn't play football anymore. Maybe I wrote two lines. What I got back, without getting too corny, was pretty much the template for the parent I've always tried to be. It was definitive and supportive and genuine, and I don't remember exactly what it said, but I do remember the words "ABSOLUTELY NOT" in all caps (in reference to the "will you be mad at me?" question, not the question of whether I was allowed to quit). He knew that I was miserable, and was able to put aside his own biases and ideas and see things from my point of view, which is a pretty remarkable thing for a guy trying to support a family by busting his hump at a terrible job in a stupid factory for 10 hours a day. And, though no mention was directly made of the incident, shortly thereafter a job miraculously opened up on the first shift again. I'd have hated to be my dad's boss the day after he got my note, and now where the hell did my snarky little post about republicans and Alan Thicke go, and why did it suddenly get dusty in here? Damn you, allergies.

So, to regroup and recap...quitting, not all that bad of a thing. And maybe it's a trap, softening the ground for another 2012 hopeful to get massive free exposure. I'd watch next season's lineups on the reality shows if I were you, which certainly beats the hell out of watching the shows themselves.

Collinsworth opens the real season.

No, not the NFL season, but the Highly Paid Network Football Commentator Saying Something Monumentally Stupid season (or the HPNFCSSMS).

The situation: tie game, under a minute left. Hines Ward (WR-Pit) catches a ball at something like the 20 yard line, makes a nice move at the 10, and cuts back toward the end zone for what will surely be the winning touchdown, when from the back side comes a defensive back to make a one in a gajillion play and strip the ball, which was promptly recovered by the defense.

Collinsworth, new to his gig as the lead commentator for the marquee game of the week, lets fly that (I'm paraphrasing) Ward made a mental error by trying to score a touchdown...instead "all he has to do is kneel down and they kick the game winner."

On its face, this statement is factually correct. Had he knelt down at the 10 yard line, the Steelers could have run the clock down and kick the FG. But to suggest that a player should not try to make a reasonable effort to score so that they can kick a field goal later is so patently stupid and obtuse that it's almost hard to fathom.

First of all, it's not like he was dragging three defenders with him fighting for three inches. If the DB doesn't flail at him desperately, he breaks the arm tackle of the other DB and scores easily.

But Collinsworth isn't satisfied. "Even if he can manage to score a touchdown there, you've still got 51 seconds left for them to answer."

Ok, Cris, let's take that "education" you got at Florida out for a spin. What would you rather have, a 7 point lead with 50 seconds left (really 45 after the kickoff), when Tennessee has exactly one touchdown all night, and your pass rush can "pin their ears back" and go after the 36 year old immobile quarterback? Or a chance at a 30 yard field goal? Let's not forget there had already been one miss, one block (both for the other team's kicker), and one really ugly low line drive that went through. I'm doing all this by memory, so forgive me if I'm off by couple percentage points. FG accuracy in the NFL is like 80% overall. Drives that start from the 20 yard line (and there's no gurantee that they would start that deep, but they would likely have run any kick out of the end zone) result in touchdowns something like 15% of the time. Add in the fact that they had 50 seconds to do it? Well, I'll let you decide what you'd rather have.

I've often said (and I stole it from someone else from wayyyy back) that the single least qualified group of individuals to comment on the game of professional football are those who have in fact been hired by the networks to do so. Collinsworth, usually better than this, seems to be fitting in nicely.


P.S. No, it doesn't change my opinion that Hines Ward said "I need to get down there." Try to score, dude, it's your job.

In which I get fed up and start naming names...

I've yet to be political in this blog, and that's on purpose. I'm a liberal, and I'm proud of it, but I don't want this blog to become about that any more than I want it to become about my fondness for Nutter Butters and "Mad Men." But today is an exception.

If you are a certain kind of conservative, and you know who you are, who protested (or, frankly, allowed to exist unchallenged the protest) the President's address to school children this morning, then shame on you. Calling it an "indoctrination" speech, the Lunatic Right has taken a remarkable opportunity away from some children. The wingnut morons have railed against this speech to the point that several school districts decided not to broadcast it.

Read the speech here. Now, all you so-called conservatives out there, I dare you, I defy you to find one single speck of liberal propaganda or indoctrination. One thing. Go ahead, I'll wait. There's not a word of politics in there. There's not even anything political about education, which is the subject of the speech (Of course, now Karl Rove is now claiming that the White House re-wrote the speech to take all the politics out of it thanks to the protest. But we all know that's not true, and we all know that that's the easiest game to play...claim that if it weren't for your heroic efforts, there sure would've been a lot more merit to your baseless complaints). How dare they claim to know better what's best for children than a leader giving a message to kids to get an education (note: I originally wrote "what's best for their children," until I realized that most of the knuckleheads doing the protesting probably didn't have children, or sent them to private schools where they get plenty of indoctrination already).

As a result of the phony outrage, some schools are not showing the speech. The principals and district supervisors responsible for the decision not to show the speech should be removed from their positions immediately. The message they just gave to their students, that in the face of a figurative temper tantrum, the appropriate response is to find some flimsy reason to give in to the tantrum, shows they lack the capacity to educate children, and they lack the backbone to be leaders. That they would allow something as positive and harmless as this speech to be shouted down makes me wonder, what else are the children in the care of these spineless fools missing out on?

You've gone too far this time, wingnuts. This speech is simply about working hard, staying in school, overcoming personal hardships and being responsible to others in the community. Hmm...on second thought, maybe this was a liberal indoctrination speech. Hard work? Education? Not trying to take the easy way out? Those would seem to be, especially today, exclusively liberal values, because the right lacks the seriousness of purpose and the overall credibility to claim those values as their own. It makes you wonder what, if any, values they have left.