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The Grammys’ Best Moment
From my perspective, anyway.
Posted in Music, Pictures
Tagged Brooklyn Decker, Grammys, Music, Pictures, Rich Eisen, Self-Promotion, Twitter
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My Friend Bacon
I guess the first thing I should say is that it will come as a surprise to most of you that this is not actually an article about my love of pork products.
I’ve been fostering dogs for Bonnie Blue Rescue for about two years now. The first year went as I expected: I would receive a dog from the service, and, a short time later, the dog would leave me to go on a trial visit that inevitably became a permanent arrangement. A “forever home” in the parlance of the industry.
Credit: Emily Nolte-Shotwell
The length of time a particular dog stayed with me varied. Sometimes I would keep the animal only a few days if he were in transit. Sometimes it might be over a month, especially if the dog were too young to be adopted immediately. More often than not, each animal remained at my house for two or three weeks.
That was the first year. Things have been quite different in year two.
Whereas more than a dozen different animals stayed with me during my first twelve months helping Bonnie Blue, the second twelve months have been occupied by a single creature: A dog named Bacon.
Bacon came to live with me last February, when his name was still “Mick Jagger” for some unknown reason. He is a dachshund / beagle mix who stands about a foot off the ground at his highest point and tips the scales south of thirty pounds. “Bacon” seemed a more appropriate name for him.
Bacon traveled to Virginia after being thrown from the back of a moving truck by his previous owners. He not only survived the incident, but he miraculously suffered no serious injuries, possibly due to his unorthodox body type (he and I have that in common).
Posted in Commentary
Tagged Animal Rescue, Animals, Bacon, Bonnie Blue Rescue, Dog Foster, Dogs
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SitCombat: 2/9/12
The Office scored its first victory of the year with a humorous tale of responsibility-avoidance, while Archer hit a minor bump in the road after a very strong start to the season. 30 Rock was solid as usual, but that wasn’t enough to take the win last time around.
Who will prevail this week?
This was SitCombat for February 9, 2012:
Posted in Commentary, Reviews, Television
Tagged 30 Rock, Archer, Commentary, Dodge Charger, Reviews, SitCombat, Television, The Office
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SitCombat: 2/2/12
Archer and one of the two new episodes of 30 Rock tied for victory last time around, in a week in which The Office did not air. That changes in this edition of SitCombat, as Dwight Schrute and company return with a surprising new show.
Archer is two-for-two so far this year, but 30 Rock has moved past the Tracy Morgan storyline into fresh territory, so this should be a good battle for all three shows. Let’s see how this contest unfolded.
This was SitCombat for February 2, 2012:
Posted in Commentary, Reviews, Television
Tagged 30 Rock, Archer, Commentary, Reviews, SitCombat, Television, The Office
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You Won’t See This Again Anytime Soon
I love Major League Baseball, but my first and greatest love as a sports fan is the National Football League.
One of the many peculiar things about me is that I own a large DVD album filled with disc after disc of the television broadcasts of NFL games I deemed worthy of memorializing. I recorded most of these classic games myself when they actually aired. Part of my annual routine in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl is to revisit a few of these classic contests. I focus mostly on the Super Bowls themselves, but I’ll occasionally dust off a good playoff game or two.
Seeing these old games reminds me of how many commonplace facets of the sport from a generation ago (which, sadly, now means my generation) would be strange to a modern audience. These oddities ranges from the uncluttered screen of a 1980’s NFL broadcast to the presence of multiple professional kickers who thought it was a good idea to kick barefoot, even in freezing temperatures and snowy conditions like the ones present in the 1986 AFC Championship Game.
There was something else I noticed in that particular game that, insofar as I’m aware, has never happened before or since.
Posted in Commentary, Sports
Tagged Art Modell, Barefoot Kickers, Cleveland Browns, Commentary, Denver Broncos, NFL, Pro Football, Rich Karlis, Sports, Super Bowl
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Quick Thoughts on the Rumble
I’m trying my best to keep this charmingly eclectic website from morphing into an all-wrestling blog, but I feel compelled to discuss a few things that happened last night after spending so much time in fevered anticipation of same. I will preface this by making two points.
First, I like Sheamus. I really do. I thought him winning the WWE Title in his first year in the company was great, and the creative team executed that angle superbly. I think he’s a main-event-level star.
Secondly, I’m a borderline-apologist for the WWE. I’ve said over and over that the writing on RAW in the post-Attitude Era, from a television perspective, has been as good as or better than it’s ever been. The point is that I’m not the stereotypical older fan who thinks “everything sucks,” or that nothing is as good as it was in 1998. As I said in my Rumble preview linked above, I had been very impressed with the character development for Daniel Bryan, John Cena, and Chris Jericho heading into the Rumble (and, by extension, WrestleMania 28). I’m generally happy with the product.
However . . . the one thing I can’t abide is a breakdown in narrative integrity. Poor storytelling. That’s what happened last night.
Posted in Commentary, Reviews, Sports, Television
Tagged Chris Jericho, Commentary, Professional Wrestling, Royal Rumble, Sheamus, Sports, Sports Entertainment, Television, WWE, Y2J
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The End of the World (Or Maybe Just a Fun Pay-Per-View)
The 2012 Royal Rumble pay-per-view includes just four announced matches, but the show nonetheless looks like the most interesting edition within memory. The WWE has done a great job of enhancing each match with intrigue that goes beyond the basic question of who wins.
WrestleMania is a snapshot of the business and the biggest show of the year, but I find that the Royal Rumble (and, recently, Money in the Bank) is the pay-per-view that generally tells us more about where the business is headed[1]. I fully expect that to be the case in 2012. Moreso than usual, in fact.
Posted in Commentary, Sports, Television
Tagged Chris Jericho, CM Punk, Commentary, Dolph Ziggler, John Cena, Kane, Professional Wrestling, Randy Orton, Royal Rumble, Sports, Sports Entertainment, Television, The Undertaker, Triple H, WWE, Y2J
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SitCombat: 1/26/12
Archer dominated SitCombat last week with an impressive season premiere featuring Burt Reynolds. However, 30 Rock has a chance at redemption with the payoff to a two-part episode. But there’s a twist to tonight’s SitCombat battle . . .
No new show for The Office tonight. Yet, we get two new episodes of 30 Rock. So, much like an early-twentieth-century Olympic sport with few competent nations, the same competitor will get two entrants into the fray. I’ll just judge each on its own merits as if it were a different television series. Easy enough.
This was SitCombat for January 26, 2012: Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Reviews, Television
Tagged 30 Rock, Archer, Commentary, Mick Foley, Reviews, SitCombat, Television
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The Take-home Message from the SOPA Debate
Tracking the political discourse regarding SOPA proved to be quite instructive in ways I hadn’t anticipated. My own view on the proposed bill was that, while the aims weren’t entirely bad, some of the presumptions in the law overreached in ways with which I wasn’t comfortable. For example, shifting the burden of policing to websites rather than the copyright holders and allowing those sites to be blocked in their entirety if they run afoul of SOPA is problematic. Concerned about just how broad that might be applied, I opposed the new law on those grounds.
The wave of controversy over SOPA didn’t come as any shock. What I found strange was that many of those standing against the bill did such an effective job of framing the narrative precisely to their collective liking, reality be damned.
If the anecdotal evidence I amassed from political and tech blogs (plus social network postings) is any indication at all, the evolving conventional wisdom about the bill held that SOPA was an assault on “free speech” advanced by large, powerful, agenda-driven corporations. The opposition, by contrast, were egalitarian everymen who were trying to stop these corporations from stifling innovation and having even more control over the lives of the common people.
There was a very small kernel of truth in there somewhere. There were undoubtedly large IP holders who saw SOPA as a way of protecting some of their most valuable commodities against further piracy by scaring file-sharing services of all kinds out of business. However, what opponents seemed to miss was that this was in no way a battle between large corporate interests on one side and the common man on the other. In fact, it was a battle between those who profit from IP (artists, rights-holders, the Hollywood lobby, etc) and those who benefit from loose IP restrictions (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, AOL, pirates, etc).
The Axis of Ego 
The Perfect Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day (f/k/a St. Valentine’s Day) arrives to bestow upon us its annual bounty of heart-shaped confections and edible unmentionables.
I’m not going to list a series of detailed Valentine’s Day ideas or suggestions. There are hundreds of other articles that fit that structure, and, besides, what works for me may not be what works for you. All I can do is present my own Valentine’s Day agenda, which hopefully might provide vague insight—if not specific instruction—into how you can make your holiday a successful one!
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