No matter where you stop your grocery cart, it immediately attracts a shopper who needs to browse items on the shelf behind it.
7 years ago
Friday, November 21, 2014
Friday, November 7, 2014
Kids, Go to Your Rooms!
Today I came across this Sports Illustrated item about the multimedia kerfuffle between two highly paid, high-profile ESPN commentators and personalities, Bill Simmons and Mike Golic.
As the kids say, I can't even.
Sports is supposed to be the fun relaxation you have after everybody's done with their workday and then done screaming at each other about the news. Of course, we also have to know what's going on with our favorite teams, so there's another informational layer atop the actual sports we enjoy: the news about sports.
Then, however, things get sillier and sillier. In the order of decreasing relevance and increasing distance removed from the games themselves, we have
As the kids say, I can't even.
Sports is supposed to be the fun relaxation you have after everybody's done with their workday and then done screaming at each other about the news. Of course, we also have to know what's going on with our favorite teams, so there's another informational layer atop the actual sports we enjoy: the news about sports.
Then, however, things get sillier and sillier. In the order of decreasing relevance and increasing distance removed from the games themselves, we have
- Opinions about the news about sports;
- Opinions about the opinions about the news about sports;
- Opinions about the people who have opinions about the opinions about the news about sports;
- Program producers who encourage the airing of strong opinions about the people who have opinions about the opinions about the news about sports;
- Sports networks, including ESPN, that egg on their program producers to encourage the airing of strong opinions about the people who have opinions about the opinions about the news about sports;
- The management aspects of sports networks, including ESPN, that egg on their program producers to encourage the airing of strong opinions about the people who have opinions about the opinions about the news about sports.
- News about the management aspects of sports networks, including ESPN, that egg on their program producers to encourage the airing of strong opinions about the people who have opinions about the opinions about the news about sports.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Jürgen Klinsmann on the Hot Seat
First-time U.S. Men's National Team soccer coach Jürgen Klinsmann, a former German National Team player, seems to have made his personnel decisions very personal.
Klinsmann recently made the inexplicable decision to not only bench the face of U.S. Men's soccer, Landon Donovan, but to leave him off the U.S. roster for the upcoming World Cup tournament in Rio de Janeiro altogether. In NFL terms, he's tried to avoid a quarterback controversy by shooting the charismatic incumbent.
We can reasonably conclude that the Donovan decision took on the dimensions of a ego-supremacy battle for Klinsmann. In the immediate aftermath of the roster decision, his teenaged son crowed at Donovan on Twitter, an immature and classless act but one that also suggests the promulgation of a "Him vs. Us" mentality around the dinner table. It would appear Daddy has been taking his work home with him.
The Donovan episode reminds me of another battle of wills: German engineers vs. American test pilots in the early days of NASA, as depicted in Tom Wolfe's book and the subsequent movie "The Right Stuff". The control-minded engineers had designed a faceless, windowless capsule, and barely bothered to disguise their contempt for the pilots, viewing them essentially as laboratory animals; whereupon the daredevil astronauts-in-training rebelled, demanded windows and aircraft controls, and insisted their vessel be recharacterized as a human-piloted spacecraft.
Even if Klinsmann is technically right about Donovan's late-career decline, the roster snub is a crude attempt to squelch the essentially American character of the U.S. team by eliminating its signature player, the one individual whom history suggests can save their bacon in stoppage time. It's a hostile and contemptuous act by an insecure leader.
Landon Donovan's place in U.S. soccer history is secure, with or without Rio. All he's done since Jürgen Klinsmann's roster debacle is surpass the all-time MLS goals record. Meanwhile, as the result of one blinkered decision, Klinsmann's tenure in the Western Hemisphere may be over almost before it's begun.
Klinsmann recently made the inexplicable decision to not only bench the face of U.S. Men's soccer, Landon Donovan, but to leave him off the U.S. roster for the upcoming World Cup tournament in Rio de Janeiro altogether. In NFL terms, he's tried to avoid a quarterback controversy by shooting the charismatic incumbent.
We can reasonably conclude that the Donovan decision took on the dimensions of a ego-supremacy battle for Klinsmann. In the immediate aftermath of the roster decision, his teenaged son crowed at Donovan on Twitter, an immature and classless act but one that also suggests the promulgation of a "Him vs. Us" mentality around the dinner table. It would appear Daddy has been taking his work home with him.
The Donovan episode reminds me of another battle of wills: German engineers vs. American test pilots in the early days of NASA, as depicted in Tom Wolfe's book and the subsequent movie "The Right Stuff". The control-minded engineers had designed a faceless, windowless capsule, and barely bothered to disguise their contempt for the pilots, viewing them essentially as laboratory animals; whereupon the daredevil astronauts-in-training rebelled, demanded windows and aircraft controls, and insisted their vessel be recharacterized as a human-piloted spacecraft.
Even if Klinsmann is technically right about Donovan's late-career decline, the roster snub is a crude attempt to squelch the essentially American character of the U.S. team by eliminating its signature player, the one individual whom history suggests can save their bacon in stoppage time. It's a hostile and contemptuous act by an insecure leader.
Landon Donovan's place in U.S. soccer history is secure, with or without Rio. All he's done since Jürgen Klinsmann's roster debacle is surpass the all-time MLS goals record. Meanwhile, as the result of one blinkered decision, Klinsmann's tenure in the Western Hemisphere may be over almost before it's begun.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Blues Brothers 2015
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| Downtown Milwaukee prepares for the filming of the new "Blues Brothers" movie sequel [photo credit: @danteswardrobe] |
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
A Rank Reveal
Ian, Ian, Ian. You were so close to a five-star rating.
In The Black Book, the fifth novel-length installment in your Inspector Rebus mystery series, you've manufactured a rebellious hero with a worthy crime to solve, eight or nine threads of misdirection, and enough stops in the pub to outdo Masterpiece Mysteries' Inspector Morse. Your story has winningly wise-ass sidekicks, frustratingly bureaucratic bosses, and belligerently boastful bad guys. You continue to describe the Edinburgh milieu colorfully with each new Inspector Rebus episode, with most of the colors being browns and grays. Your well-paced plot kept me turning pages through an entire four-day visit to Schenectady (but that's another story).
And then, Mr. Rankin, you do this: you have a hell-raising suspect disclose the final reveal in the form of a narrative, eight-page diary entry -- eight pages! -- written as fully and articulately as you yourself write. Why, it reads as though it could have been an early plot outline that you'd prepared for your editor, or even a short story worthy of inclusion in The Hanging Game.
Such a pity. You were so close. Oh, Ian.
In The Black Book, the fifth novel-length installment in your Inspector Rebus mystery series, you've manufactured a rebellious hero with a worthy crime to solve, eight or nine threads of misdirection, and enough stops in the pub to outdo Masterpiece Mysteries' Inspector Morse. Your story has winningly wise-ass sidekicks, frustratingly bureaucratic bosses, and belligerently boastful bad guys. You continue to describe the Edinburgh milieu colorfully with each new Inspector Rebus episode, with most of the colors being browns and grays. Your well-paced plot kept me turning pages through an entire four-day visit to Schenectady (but that's another story).
And then, Mr. Rankin, you do this: you have a hell-raising suspect disclose the final reveal in the form of a narrative, eight-page diary entry -- eight pages! -- written as fully and articulately as you yourself write. Why, it reads as though it could have been an early plot outline that you'd prepared for your editor, or even a short story worthy of inclusion in The Hanging Game.
Such a pity. You were so close. Oh, Ian.
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