Monthly Archives: February 2013

IT’S ALL HAPPENING! “The Zero Dark Thirty-Four” edition, 2/4

by John Walters | Leave a comment

Or would you prefer “The Power Outrage” edition? Friday Night Lights Out? Or, for you fans of ’90s Irish rock, “The Black XLVII” edition?

Starting Five

1. Jacoby Jones returns the opening kickoff of the second half of Super Bowl XLVII 109 yards (oh, 108 yards? Whatevs, NFL) to put the Baltimore Ravens up 28-6. Shortly thereafter, the Superdome is plunged into darkness, providing fans a brief reprieve from Jim Nantz and Phil Simms while Twitter experienced its own surge of one-liners. Me: “Beyonce opened for The Darkness” and “Goodell: ‘If I had a son I’d think twice about allowing him to become an electrical engineer.”

34 Minutes? Why didn’t CBS air an episode of “2 Broke Girls” in the interim?

Thirty-four minutes later play resumed and the Forty-Niners quickly put power back into the contest before ultimately succumbing, 34-31. Lots of story lines here, of course: Three consecutive and feckless pass plays from SF from the Ravens’ 6-yard line when the running game was working so well; a safety in which the Ravens held EGREGIOUSLY and no flag was thrown (granted, penalizing that play would only have resulted in the same outcome, so Baltimore had nothing to lose; maybe the NFL needs to change that rule); the shameless beatification of retiring Ray Lewis (quoth the Raven: “Nevermore will I suit up…”), an outstanding middle linebacker whose displays of evanglism run counter to his actions. Keyshawn Johnson’s comment on ESPN typifies the stupidity: “I said before the game that if the Ravens won, Ray Lewis would go down as the greatest middle linebacker of all time.” Really? Why?

You want to read a good column on Mr. Lewis? Bill Simmons asks valid questions here and presents a terrific contrarian point of view.

2. Ravens QB Joe Flacco threw three touchdown passes and no interceptions, but we are still naming Beyonce the game’s MVP for her halftime show. Even if it was more of an aerobics workout than a musical performance. Honestly, that 13-minute workout would be better for you than Zumba. Nice mini-reunion with Destiny’s Child. With pre-game performances by Alicia Keys (national anthem) and Jennifer Hudson (America the Beautiful), it was a landmark moment for African-American females, all of it taking place in the Deep South.

“I’ll take ‘Outfits the Three Tenors have Never Worn Onstage’ for $200, Alex.”

 3. Former Navy SEAL and Iraq War sniper extraordinaire-turned-best-selling author Chris Kyle and a friend are murdered at, of all places, a shooting range. Suspend your inclination for irony for the moment — one bad guy with a gun, or at least one mentally deranged guy with a gun, took down two good guys with a gun — and recognize that Kyle was actually trying to help out a fellow Iraq War vet who then turned the gun on him.

4. The “So God Made a Farmer” ad totally reinvigorates the career of Paul Harvey, which would be awesome for Paul Harvey if he had not died in 2009. It was our favorite commercial of the Super Bowl, too; except that it had existed in a slightly different form on YouTube for a couple of years already. And now you know…the rest of the story.

The Budweiser ad, in which a trainer is reunited with his Clydesdale horsey while Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Landslide” plays in the background also hit some emotional cords (althouhgh, we will admit, for the first six to seven seconds we assumed it was a Burger King commercial). A quibble and a question. The quibble: That’s not Chicago in the background. You can tell by the blue street signs in the final panoramic shot that it is likely a city in California or perhaps Arizona. The question: Was the kiss between the trainer and the colt more or less provocative than the one between Bar Refaeli and the young man who looked like an extra from “When the Whistle Blows?”  

 

Just close your eyes and imagine it’s Leo…or a Clydesdale

 

5. The Los Angeles Lakers are 2-0 without Dwight Howard. The Boston Celtics are 4-0 since Rajon Rondo was lost for the season. The Los Angeles Clippers, who earlier this season won 17 games in a row, are 5-5 without Chris Paul.

Reserves

No. 3 Indiana defeats No. 1 Michigan in a replay of the 1976 national championship game, but the team that is totally under the radar –okay, not exactly beneath the radar but certainly not garnering the national attention it should be — is Florida. The Gators raced out to a 13-point halftime lead versus No. 16 Mississippi on Saturday night before idling home to a 78-64 win.

Since losing to Kansas State on December 22, Florida has won 10 consecutive games by –are you ready for these margins? — 17, 21, 33, 22, 21, 31, 17, 35, 39 and 14. Average margin of victory? 25 points. Now just imagine if Bradley Beal had remained in Gainesville for a sophomore season.

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The good news? We have photographic evidence of President Obama firing a shotgun. The bad news? The shotgun has now filed for unemployment.

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Terrific job by Ed Sherman and The Sherman Report this weekend in Super Bowl media coverage. Particularly enjoyed this clip of the pregame show from Super Bowl III. Less is more, gentlemen. Less is more.

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Why has Joe Posnanski gone from Sports Illustrated to Sports on Earth to NBC Sports all in the span of one year? Posnanski, who for years was a columnist at the Kansas City Star, where he was consistently lauded for insightful work, finally made the leap to national exposure a few years ago when he took the SI gig. The magazine and its website gave him as much of a platform as anyone there bereft of Coffee Nerdness could have, but Posnanski would leave after less than three full years.

Certainly, there was some friction over how Pos and the mag handled the Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky story and, for me, his November 6, 2011 column (which I can no longer find on the web) in which he recused himself from reporting on the story because he was in the midst of writing a biography on Paterno, is Posnanski’s “It depends what your definition of “is” is” moment.

Sports On Earth, which would provide Posnanski a national web platform with an exciting assemblage of talent, as well as allow him to cover his beloved baseball to his heart’s content, seemed like a wise enough move, especially since there’d been enough burned bridges at SI. But now, after less than eight months, he’s on the move again.

Some columnists are just THAT good. Posnanski, while talented, is not. Privately, some SI staffers have confided that he was a prima donna and, having worked there myself for 15 years with some of the biggest names in the business, I can tell you that almost none of them were that. Big egos? Yes. Hard to work with? Absolutely not.

There’s a certain “Aw shucks, I’m just a throwback” persona that Posnanski likes to affect in his work and writing and, as this picture attests, for his image. And I’ll be the first to admit: I hardly know him. But as tough as the media can be on a coach who leaps from job to job, there’s been very little scrutiny as to how come Posnanski has jumped from lily pad to lily pad to lily pad in the past year. And, yes, you can argue that nobody cares, but I can remind you that Richard Deitsch has more than 70,000 followers on Twitter. So, yes, people do care about what goes on in sports media.

“So God made a sports columnist…”

We are not certain what Posnanski’s role at NBC will be, but since the network has no MLB, we’re not sure what the thinking was here on either side. As for him being an on-air presence, well, you don’t have to look like Josh Elliott to appear on TV. Then again, if it was a brilliant SI senior writer that NBC was after, they should have gone harder after Jon Wertheim, who did some wonderful work for them at Wimbledon last summer.

Day of Yore, February 1

by bhubbell | 1 Comment

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Both of these photos were snapped on February 1, one gave the world a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s right nipple and one gave the world a glimpse of the horror of war. Both were “wardrobe malfunctions,” in a sense. In the first photo it was the lame cover up story, in the second, the South Vietnamese Police Chief is shooting a Viet Cong policeman who was randomly killing police and civilians alike while in civilian clothes. The first photo, from 2004, lays in the pile of history as a bad joke, the second won a Pulitzer Prize for photographer Eddie Adams and is one of the most gripping photos ever snapped.

Today in 1884, the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published. Yo, it’s cra cra, there’s like vowels in almost every word, wtf?

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Tonight in 1982, NBC debuted “Late Night with David Letterman.” The show changed television, and comedy, forever.

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Today in 1978, Roman Polanski skipped out on his bail and fled the United States. Polanski had plead guilty to having sex with a 13-year old girl.

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David Stern was named NBA Commissioner today in 1984. Stern is credited with globalizing the NBA and taking it to its greatest heights of popularity. It probably didn’t hurt that Stern entered the league the same year as Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, John Stockton and Charles Barkley.

One of Stern’s lackeys, Gary Bettman, became the first NHL Commissioner today in 1993. He didn’t no anything about hockey then or now.

Happy Birthday to my wife, Jennifer, who turns….. more lovely every day.

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— Bill Hubbell

 

 

Posted in: 365 |

IT’S ALL HAPPENING! 2/1

by John Walters | 3 Comments

We’ve never had a jones for January, much less a January Jones (Who do you think we are, Jason Sudeikis?). Happy to bid the month goodbye, as we are sure Lance Armstrong, Manti Te’o and the marketing team behind “Movie 43” are as well. On to February…

Starting Five

1. Lefty Shoots 60 in Scottsdale

Former Arizona State golfer Phil Mickelson, who knows a little about waist management, narrowly misses shooting a 59 in the opening round of the Waste Management Open in Scottsdale. Lefty’s penultimate shot rimmed out, giving him a 60. Mickelson described himself, good-naturedly, as “mortified” by how the shot lipped out, but we would have gone with “taxed.”

2. Caleb Moore Dies

The 25 year-old X-Games competitor dies one week after failing to land this somersault aboard a snowmobile in Aspen. So, yes, snowmobiles were not designed for mid-air somersaults. (Pardon me here while I go on a rant about human nature….). When I was a boy and Evel Knievel was the coolest thang, we kids in Middletown, N.J., would construct dirt ramps and then launch from them on our bikes. The natural inclination was to keep building the ramp taller until some of us began wussing out or, as happened with Pat Ryan, someone broke an arm.

Testosterone. As long as there are men, and there is testosterone (and deer antler spray), there will be a place for danger in sports. What Caleb Moore was attempting was really no different than what Ed Reed or Michael Crabtree will be doing on Sunday — in the most-watched television event of the year. The only difference is that Moore, the first fatality in the 18-year history of the X-Games, suffered one colossal blow whereas NFL players endure a series of hits over the course of their careers.

Fatal fall

Roger Goodell should stop talking about making the NFL less dangerous, just like ESPN should stop putting out intelligence-insulting statements following the death of a dude who propels himself upside down in mid-air strapped to a 450-pound snowmobile about how they will “conduct a thorough review of freestyle snowmobiling events and adopt any appropriate changes.”

Unless the gang in Bristol know something about gravity that we do not, there’s no way to take the element of mortal danger or at least permanent paralysis out of the X-Games. And that’s fine by me. I’m not the one getting big air above the half-pipe and neither are you. To quote a famous mantra from “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training”, “Let them play.”

ESPN showed this crash five times within the moment it happened. The color commentator probably had no idea how accurate he was at the time when he said, “That is just about the worst thing you can imagine happening…”

Meanwhile, present and past NFL players: You know it’s a dangerous sport. The NFL doesn’t owe you anything BEYOND THIS POINT. Past players, sure, give them a cut. But any current NFL player who believes it is the league’s responsibility to protect him from permanent disability needs to have his head examined (wait, did I really just type that?).

3. 30 Rock Signs Off

Was Tina Fey’s sitcom brilliant or just exceedingly clever? Fey was raised in my era, in the era of classic sitcoms such as M*A*S*H, All in The Family, The Odd Couple and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. While 30 Rock may have contained more clever lines than those four combined (and Rolling Stone has compiled a nice little gallery of them), I never felt that I had to watch this show. Beneath every sitcom, even Seinfeld, there has to be a small undercurrent of gravitas. I never felt that with 30 Rock.

When life hands you Lemon…

Sure, just hearing the terms “Werewolf Barmitzvah“, “Hot Box” and “Beeper Salesman” induce a smile, but I never cared about these characters the way I did Oscar and Felix, Archie and Edith, or even Hawkeye and Radar. 30 Rock, and it was the best network sitcom of the past seven years, was more of a smirk-com. It was a 22-minute one-liner delivery sytem, not unlike the way bacon is simply a salt-delivery system.

4. How long until Mr. Ed becomes the spokesequine for Burger King?

New from Burger King: The Filly Cheese Steak

5. The Dallas Mavericks are hosed at the end of consecutive Western Conference road games and coach Rick Carlisle says, “I’m disappointed and I’m very concerned. Concerned about what’s happening at the end of games with officials. I can only be honest.”

Reserves

Jason London, a.k.a. Randall “Pink” Floyd, arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., after an altercation at the Martini Grille. Reportedly defecates in the backseat of the police car — on the eve of the Waste Management Open. Niiiiiiice. UPDATE: Coach Conrad says London can play quarterback next season if he signs a document promising not to poop in squad cars or hang out with Wooderson.

“Anyone wanna poop in a cop car?” “Alrightalrightalright.”

Another round of layoffs at Time, Inc., where 6% of the staff (approximately 480 people) will soon be let go. When did journalism become The Hunger Games? Oh, right, when the internet arrived.

FEBREWERY

Each day this month we’ll highlight a different beer. Today we’ll start with an obvious choice, but it’s my favorite go-to beer: Stella Artois. First brewed in Leuven, Belgium, in 1926, Stella is known as “Wife Beater” in the UK becausse excessive consumption of it leads to violent behavior (as opposed to excessive consumption of other beers?).

Type: Lager

Remember: It’s a chalice, not a glass

 

Kelly Olynyk of Gonzaga is an Oscar Robertston Trophy finalist. Like last year’s winner (Anthony Davis, Kentucky), Olynyk started out as a point guard and then had a huge growth spurt in high school (seven inches in one year). Also like Davis, he did not play college basketball the previous year — Olynyk red-shirted because, frankly, last season the seven-footer just was not very skilled. Now, despite looking like the love child of Randall Floyd and Mitch Kramer, he’s a lottery pick. Nice story on him here by Bud Withers of The Seattle Times.

Olynyk: With a surname like that, he’ll have to play for Team Canada in the Olympics and the Knicks in the NBA