Soccer Ball

 

In honor of the World Cup, which I guess happened recently, here is a derelict soccer ball.  

O. J. Simpson is Dead

 

I had been thinking about making my next blog post about another item of paleontological art, but then O. J. Simpson died.  And, as one of the few people left alive who is old enough to remember the Nineties, I felt obligated to comment.  (And then, of course, it took me a few weeks to actually do it.)

As I noted before, the O. J. trial gave Saturday Night Live its greatest Weekend Update moment ever.

Perhaps my most significant personal O. J. memory is that, during the trial, I had no idea that Simpson had been regarded as one of the best professional football players of all time.  I have never been a sports fan at all, and during his football career I was too young to be aware of popular culture in general.  Thus, though I had some vague knowledge that he had played football, I knew him mostly as an actor and rental car spokesman.  And I really didn’t understand why everyone was making such a big deal about a guy who was in The Naked Gun.  (If Leslie Nielsen had been accused of murdering two people, would that have been the Trial of the Century?)

And then there was a Hertz commercial that aired a few years before the murders, in which a line toward the end proved rather prescient:

“Brutal, Juice, brutal.”

I Read Somewhere that Blog Posts About the Super Bowl Get Lots of Views

  If the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl, will they pour Gatorade on Taylor Swift?

NBC Is Bringing Back the Olympics Triplecast . . . This Is Getting Weird

First I express the desire for mummies to make a resurgence in popular culture, and then find out that a major mummy movie (say that three hundred times fast) will be released next summer.  And now, after hoping, for no good reason, for NBC to revive its failed Nineties experiment, the Olympics Triplecast, I learn that they are doing just that.  Well, it’s not really the Triplecast, but it is a new cable network devoted entirely to the Olympics, which is close enough to make me feel as if I have at least a mild case of prophecy.

As far as I know, no one is currently producing a crossover of iCarly and I, Claudius.  But still, two of my blog wishes have come true, so I’m going to come out and say it: I want the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals to come back, and indeed I would like to be the one to introduce them to the world, and for some of the larger ones I would like to be able to get on their backs and ride around on them.  

The Olympics Triplecast

The summer Olympics are almost here, and my only thought on the subject is wondering whether NBC will bring back the Olympics Triplecast.  

And if they bring back the Olympics Triplecast, will they have Bill Cosby do another commercial for it?

Okay, maybe not . . . 

If I were a sports fan, I would probably have a head full of Olympic memories about Michael Phelps, and Mary Lou Retton, and Bruce Jenner from before . . . well, it’s probably best not to get into all that. 

But I’m not a sports fan, so all that I remember about the Olympics from my youth is the Triplecast, which I never actually saw (nor did many other people), and which was a financial disaster for its network. 

I wish that I had had an opportunity to discuss the issue with the president of NBC.

Me: Will NBC be bringing back the Olympics Triplecast for the 2016 Olympics?

President of NBC: There are no plans to do that.

Me: Will there be any plans in the future, like for the winter Olympics, or the next summer Olympics?

President of NBC: No. 

Me: How about applying the Triplecast retroactively to the 2012 Olympics?

(On a final note, I’ve spent the last few decades thinking that the program was called the “Olympic Triplecast”, but upon researching this post I found that the correct name was “Olympics Triplecast”.)

The Super Bowl, Again

The Super Bowl was Sunday.  I am not a sports fan, and thus I did not watch it.  I used to try to watch it just for the commercials, but the commercials were never all that great.

I once read that "Super Bowl" was the best term to generate hits for one's blog.  I can believe it;  the pointless and very silly blog post that I wrote on the spur of the moment about the 2011 Super Bowl has received 57 page views, more than twice the number of any other individual post on my blog.  

From what I can remember of Super Bowl history, which covers maybe the last thirty years or so, the game has gradually become more of a holiday than an athletic event.  I wonder how many people who watch the Super Bowl have no real interest in the game itself, and instead just want to go to a party, eat too much, and then spend the next day complaining about having eaten too much. 

But then, that's probably not a profound or novel insight on my part.  

The Kentucky Derby and Geology

  I noticed that there were not one but two horses at last week's Kentucky Derby with names related to somewhat geological topics. 

First there was Gemologist.  A gemologist is, of course, someone who studies gems. 

Then there was Sabercat.  Sabercat is a term used for extinct felids such as Smilodon, which were once known as sabertoothed tigers, but which were not closely related to modern tigers.  

(The Kentucky Derby website has a page for each of the horses, as linked above, but the information  there was mostly genealogical.  I wish that the pages had included more personal details, such as the horses' favorite movies and television shows, where the horses went to college, and who their horse role models are.)  

Let's Play Some Moneyball

A few days ago I saw Moneyball. Everyone at the theater received a lovely gift bag containing a Brad Pitt bobblehead doll, a pouch of chaw, and an air freshener in the exciting new "locker room" scent.

That is not true. There was no gift bag.

But I did see Moneyball.

The movie is about a general manager and his assistant who led the Oakland Athletics to an unprecedented string of twenty consecutive victories by implementing a set of controversial hiring practices based purely on statistics. These practices were originally called sabermetrics, and eventually became known as "moneyball" after the book which first chronicled the events in question.

(The movie does not address whether the principles of moneyball have spread to other sports. For example, in professional hockey, is there moneypuck? If a hockey team cannot afford a player who is missing seven teeth, can it compensate by acquiring two other players, one of whom is missing three teeth, and the other of whom is missing four teeth?)

I am not a sports fan, and normally don't see sports movies. The reason that I saw Moneyball was that the general manager's assistant, a character named Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill, was based on a real person named Paul DePodesta. As I have previously noted, I went to school with Paul for many years in elementary and middle school. I saw the movie because I was interested in seeing a story about Paul, and also because I like to think that if someone made a movie about me, Paul would see it.

I haven't seen Paul in at least twenty years, but I could still pick out some differences between the real and fictional versions of him. Peter Brand looks like Jonah Hill; Paul DePodesta, to judge by internet search results, looks uncomfortably like Anthony Weiner. Peter Brand grew up in Maryland and went to Yale; Paul DePodesta grew up in Virginia and went to Harvard. And, most importantly, Peter Brand has almost no self-confidence; Paul DePodesta had more self-confidence when he was in fifth grade. He is someone whom I could imagine easily navigating the corridors of power in professional sports. He is even someone whom I could imagine being invited to play basketball with the President, kind of like, well, someone else with whom I went to school.

As I have said, I am not a sports fan, and thus the wrong person to appreciate a movie about baseball. And for the most part, it wasn't even a movie about baseball, it was a movie about people talking about baseball. (It was also a movie about spitting–most of the characters spent waaaaay too much time spitting tobacco juice into paper cups.) I suppose that the most interesting part of the story was how the general manager, Billy Beane, had to go to extraordinary lengths to convince or force other people in his organization to go along with his plans.

Beyond that I can only say that I was duly impressed by the smallness of Brad Pitt's nose, which is shown many times in profile.

An Uncharacteristic Sports Post

I haven't blogged in over a month. There are lots and lots of things about which I want to blog, but I don't have the energy. On most days, when I come home from work I'm exhausted, and I fall asleep, and then I wake up, think Ugggh, and just watch TV.

I am using the occasion of the Super Bowl to force myself to write a blog entry. I don't follow sports, and I have no partisan feelings on who should have won the game (but if i had been forced to choose a team I probably would have gone with the Steelers because I would not have been required to wear cheese on my head).

My question is, what's the deal with Green Bay? Does it really exist? All my life the only times that I've ever heard about the city of Green Bay are in conjunction with its football team. But how could a city get a football team if no one had ever heard of the city? It's almost like a fake city that was made up for a soap opera, along the lines of Bay City or Port Charles.

(This is only a random comment, not meant in a spirit of malice or hostility. If you are a Packers fan, please don't get mad and throw your cheese at me.)

People Whom I Have Known Part II: Basketball

Whatever shock I might have felt to learn that my former middle school classmate Paul DePodesta would be portrayed in a major motion picture by Jonah Hill was far exceeded on the day after Thanksgiving, when my high school classmate, Rey Deceraga, accidentally elbowed President Barack Obama in the upper lip during a basketball game, causing an injury that required twelve stitches to close.

As I understand it, things went something like this: Rey zigged, the President zagged, zig met zag, and all hell broke loose. And we were left with the conclusion that they play some smashmouth basketball in the Federal government. (At least I think that it is smashmouth basketball. Smashmouth is a word that sports journalists seem to like to use. Of course, Smashmouth was also a catchy/annoying band from the Nineties. Anyway, I am discussing the actual smashing of a mouth, so I am probably right in my usage.)

By this point the story has crested and subsided, but it was briefly big-time news. I cannot hope to recap all the serious coverage; if one wants that, I would recommend a Google search. Instead, I will note a few of the odder references to Rey in the media/entertainment universe.

Over the weekend following the incident, Rey inspired the Drudge Report headline Elbower doesn't say sorry.

On Monday, November 29, Jimmy Kimmel in his monologue referred to Rey as "Roy Deceraga" and identified him as Mexican, although in reality Rey originally hails from Panama.

On Tuesday, November 30, Jay Leno showed footage from a news report concerning the incident, and at the point where Rey's name was mentioned, the real video was replaced with a scene of a man being thrown out of an airborne helicopter. (The helicopter scene was presumably meant to show the retribution exacted against on Rey.)

As a final comment, let me say that no one who knew Rey would have expected him to become involved in a brouhaha, or even worse, a brouhahaha, with a sitting President. In our senior class, Rey was voted both Most Popular and Most Mature, and he is widely known for his natural diplomatic skills.

People Whom I Have Known Part I : Baseball

About a month ago I was watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The guest was Jonah Hill, an actor best identified as Seth Rogen's mini-me. Hill discussed filming a movie called Moneyball starring Brad Pitt. Hill will play a character based on Paul DePodesta.

Paul DePodesta is a baseball executive who rose to fame in 2004 as the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, making him one of the youngest general managers in Major League history, at the age of 31. Unfortunately, as best I can understand with my feeble knowledge of professional sports, things, um, didn't quite work out right, and he was fired in 2005. He then worked for the San Diego Padres as a "front office assistant", which is presumably more prestigious than it sounds, before being hired by the New York Mets as the "vice president of player development and scouting", in which role he does important baseball stuff.

I am not a baseball fan, and indeed all that I know about managing a baseball team I learned from George Costanza. What makes all this interesting to me is that from around first or second grade until eighth grade, I went to school with Paul. I was even the campaign manager in his failed run for sixth grade class president. (Do not trust me for political advice.)

Of course, there are probably hundreds of people out there who went to school with Paul at one time or another, but that's not important, because none of those people is me (or, more grammatically, none of those people is I, although that sounds weird). And I would like to take this opportunity to wish Paul well in his future endeavors, and to thank him for giving me this brush with fame—fame in its most modern sense, which translates as someone having his own Wikipedia entry.

In a final odd sub-coincidence, while researching this post I learned that, before the DePodesta-derived role went to Jonah Hill, it was set to be played by an actor and comedian named Demetri Martin. I didn't know him, but he was in my class in college.

An Attempt At Understanding Sports

The top news story on Friday was the press conference of Tiger Woods, who is no longer burning bright in the forests of the night. (At this point I could discuss the disparate levels of media coverage given to the marital indiscretions of Tiger Woods, who is an irrelevant sports figure, versus those of John Edwards, a politician who tried to become leader of the Free World, but that topic is too serious for this blog.) I am not a sports fan, so I don't normally think about someone like Tiger Woods, except when he somehow makes it into the regular news. I don't know much about professional athletes; I can sometimes form some confused ideas as a result.

As a case in point, for a long time, whenever I heard the name Gilbert Arenas, I thought that it referred to the venue in which the Wizards play.

And, moving to the college level of basketball, I often have trouble remembering that Greivis Vasquez wasn't a character in Episode III.