Category: Sports

  • ODDS and ENDS: I’m a Failed Drummer, Failed Tottenham, and We Sell Frogurt!

    ODDS and ENDS: I’m a Failed Drummer, Failed Tottenham, and We Sell Frogurt!

    (I thought it was the real thing…)

    I have got drumming on the brain again. I posted about Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and I can’t get Clem Burke’s drums out of my head. I don’t like hyper-precision drumming, or supper fast and accurate drumming, which is what everyone sounds like now. It sounds lifeless and artificial to me. But Clem; Clem on that song is vital – adding another character to the song – driving, passionate, and accentuating theme of the song. And what I am most thankful for is to be a failed drummer. See, as one who sat behind a drum kit, and tried his hand at playing for a rock band, I learned two things; first is that drumming is a shit ton of fun, and second is that great drumming is exceptionally difficult. It has made me appreciate what great drumming on a song can do, how it can transform a song into something that isn’t just fun to listen to, but can ingrain itself into the core of what a song can make you feel. And just listening to Clem, man, I would kill to be able to play like that.

    Oh it’s bad. I mean, I didn’t think it could get much worse, but it did. Spurs melted like snow on warm ground against Crystal Palace yesterday – it was just awful to watch. Embarrassing is another word that I would use. I know the seasons isn’t over yet, and the odds are still on their side that they WON’T get relegated, but Sonny over at Sonny Talks Spurs has a rather different take than me, but not by much. I have been following the club for ten years now, and I had no idea that that 2016/17 was their high water mark. Ever since then, it has been a slow slide, or car wreck, or train wreck, or growing dumpster fire, what have you… I’m used to supporting a team that lives at the bottom of the barrel (I am a Cubs fan after all) so, seeing a team you love fail isn’t exactly new to me. But this is the first time that I have supported a sports team that gets kicked out of its league because its so bad. Chalk one up for a new experience, I guess.

    For no other reason than it makes me laugh.

  • ODDS and ENDS: The Cold That Won’t Die, Writing in a Blazer, and Tottenham Woes

    (Cryin’ never did nobody no good…)

    So, I’ve had this cold for almost a week now, but it’s not a normal cold. Stuffy nose, post-nasal drip, coughing, but I don’t feel run down like I normally do when I have a cold. Also, this cold only seems to come alive for the first two hours of my day, and then all night when I try to sleep. Other than that, I feel rather normal. But the damn thing won’t go away. It won’t get worse, and it won’t get better. It just exists in a perpetual state of being… Neither gaining nor losing energy.

    I am sitting and writing in a blazer today. No real reason to be this formal, other than I want to sit on the couch, my computer on my lap, trying to think up three jokes to write about, with a blazer on. It’s not cold in the house, and I have no one to impress, just felt like something I should do. Like, how I should put jazz on, get a glass of wine, and catch up on some reading. Hell, here’s a picture to prove that this is really happening.

    So, Thomas Frank got sacked as manager for Tottenham Hotspur this week. I think it was a mistake, yet I also freely admit that things can and will get worse for this team. They just can’t get out of their own way, and with the injuries piling up, there seems like little chance of hope. Relegation is a very real possibility. I won’t blame Frank for this, as it seems like he just has had the worst luck for a first-year manager. I put the blame for this situation on Daniel Levy and Peter Charrington. Levy created an untenable situation where the expectation is that managers are interchangeable. Honestly, the team hasn’t been the same since Mauricio Pochettino was at the helm, and he was fired for a stupid reason like not being successful enough. Sure, do wish we could go back to those days when we were in the Champions League Final and at the top of the table in the Premier League. Honestly, I don’t put it past West Ham to get enough of their act together and make a run to get out of the bottom three, and kick either Nottingham Forest or Spurs down the ladder. I don’t want to see Tottenham in the Championship, but if that’s what it will take for the owners to get their heads out of their respective asses, then so be it.

  • Personal Reflections: The Super Bowl, Commercials, and Bad Bunny

    Personal Reflections: The Super Bowl, Commercials, and Bad Bunny

    The Super Bowl sucked. Let’s just start right there. Not that it was bad so much as it was boring. Defensive battles, or whatever people are calling it, are dull to everyone except defensive players and defensive coaches.

    In the end, I’m glad that Seattle won, as I do think they were the better team, not just in the game last night, but the best team for the whole season. And it was a rather exciting NFL season, with lots of drama and close games. Which makes this “meh” of a Super Bowl such a letdown.

    But that’s sports for ya!

    This bring us to the commercials, and for the life of me, I cannot remember a single one. Nothing stood out as particularly interesting or creative. Just felt like the same old slop. And there was lots of AI slop on display, too! The impression I was left with is that America is a sickly nation that needs more drugs and screenings, likes to bet on everything, and still thinks crypto isn’t a scam. There might be something to be said that the cost for a fifteen to thirty second commercials is so expensive now, that it has made brands, marketeers, and ad wizards hesitant in trying anything new, as so much money is on the line. This situation has made what used to be entertaining advertising into something that is homogeneous now.

    Which gets us to Bad Bunny who was the real big winner of the evening. (Other than the Seahawks.) I’m not going to go into the controversy, because there was no controversy, because Trump only said the stuff that he said to try and create a distraction from the Epstein Files/Poll Number/ICE, and Turning Point USA was just a little too thirsty to get involved and in the end created a half-assed badly lip-synced train wreck of a dumpster fire that 6 million people watched which isn’t bad if you consider that 12 million tuned in for the Puppy Bowl…

    But I’m not going to get into it.

    What I will say about Bad Bunny’s show was that it was fun, and cool, and was exciting to watch and had guests and Easter Eggs, and what I thought he did was show off how wonderful, and complex Puerto Rico’s culture and people are, AND he did that really great thing that great performers do, which is makes his audience feel connected and vital to the show being performed. It was great.

    But I did make Buffalo Wings, and they were really good.

  • Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

    And it would be nice if the Cowboys won, too!

  • What It’s Like To Be a Stay-at-Home-Dad? (“Mommy Has Questions” Podcast Interview)

    Here is the episode of the podcast Mommy Has Questions that I was interviewed on. It was a fun conversation about stay at home parenting, male roles in the family, and the couple of other things. I had great time, enjoyed the discussion, and the whole Mommy Has Questions team made me feel comfortable and right at home. So thank you for having me.

    Please, give it a listen – follow, subscribe, leave a comment. You know the drill.