Greatest Song Evah 5/16/25

Badge

For years I struggled to figure out the meaning of this song title. I used to listen closely - is someone in the background singing the word “badge?” Nope. As it turned out the story behind the title is mundane. Eric Clapton and George Harrison co-wrote the song, and on the sheet music Harrison wrote the word “bridge” at the point where the bridge to the song was located. Clapton misread Harrison’s handwriting as “badge,” and it thus became the title. As someone with notoriously illegible handwriting I can relate to this story. My scribbling is so bad that my yearbook quote came out wrong. Oh well.

Badge appeared on the final Cream album, appropriately titled Goodbye Cream. As I said, this is a Clapton/Harrison collaboration; Ringo even contributed some of the lyrics in the form of some nonsense he spewed whilst drunk although he did not receive a songwriting credit. In addition, for contractual reasons Harrison’s rhythm guitar contributions in the recording are credited under a pseudonym.

Cream’s songs frequently included long instrumental sections which spotlighted the virtuosity of the trio. That’s not the case here; it’s a 3:00 single with a basic verse/chorus/bridge structure and a clean guitar solo. Despite its simplicity it is a magnificent record. It’s also completely Clapton’s baby. Well, Clapton & Harrison’s baby but you know what I mean. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker provide support, the bass line in particular really thumps, but it is Clapton’s voice and guitar playing which dominate the track.

With 3 dominant personalities in the band, it’s little surprise that Cream only lasted long enough to record 4 albums. They produced a lot of outstanding work in that small amount of time, and Badge was the highlight of their output. It is a damn near perfect record. I’m so glad that they were able to release a record this good before they brought the curtain down.

Opening Weekend(s)

The 2025 WNBA season begins tonight, a season which promises to serve as a transition into the league’s next era. Every metric indicates that the Caitlin Clark Effect is sustainable; a sizable percentage of the new fans who checked in last season have liked what they have seen and are sticking around to see more. Ticket sales and ratings are impressive, new TV deals are greatly increasing revenues, and the Golden State Valkyries lead off the newest round of expansion with 3 more teams to come. Toronto and Portland will join the league in 2026, the location of the 16th franchise is TBD, and there are multiple cities bidding to get in on the action. The future of the WNBA is promising.

There are 4 teams (the Liberty, Lynx, Aces, & Fever) who appear to be legitimate title contenders, and the depth of the talent pool continues to grow. The transition into the next era that I spoke of? Virtually every veteran player is signed to a contract that will expire after this season. Why? The collective bargaining agreement expires as well. With the explosion in revenues there is considerably more cash in that pot to divide and there figures to be a major windfall in store for the players. Any free agent is gonna get paid. It took much longer than it should have for the casual sports fan to recognize the quality of play in the W - blame the cottage industry of uptight dudes on the internet who threw shade at the league for years - but the league finally has found its proper place in the sports hierarchy.

This weekend is also qualifying week for the Indy 500. I’ll have more to say after the field has been formally set, but there is one notable change this year. Fox is the new rights holder for the IndyCar series, so I am interested to see how differently the network will cover the race. As for the qualifying, as has been the case for the past few years there will be a total of 34 drivers attempting to qualify for the 33 available spaces on the grid. One poor driver is going to be left outside when all is said and done. No one is guaranteed a spot; the fastest 33 make the race. If for some reason one of the top drivers has a catastrophic mechanical failure and can’t reach the necessary speed, he is out of luck.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

This has been Upfront Week for TV networks. For ages it served as the opportunity for networks to present their upcoming fall schedules, but as the importance of network television has diminished the week has evolved into a series of exercises in corporate synergy, as each megacorp makes a promotional presentation of all of their assorted assets, with linear network TV acting as only a small portion of this. One such was the presentation from Warner Brothers Discovery. One of the tidbits that WBD CEO David Zaslav announced was the news that Max will be renamed yet again this summer. The “new” name? HBO Max.

This came mere days after I lightly mocked WBD for ignoring the prestige of the HBO brand in their name. Intellectually I know that the timing of the announcement is a coincidence, but I prefer to believe that Zaslav uses a burner account to subscribe to Tending the Herd and that I shamed him into reverting to the streamer’s previous name. Now that I know Zaslav has my ear, I will continue to offer advice on how to run his corporation. Dave, can I call you Dave? First, bring back the old programming that you had purged. You would be pleasantly surprised to find that some of these shows have an audience. After that, why not try obtaining the rights to shows that other streamers have disappeared? I never finished watching The Good Lord Bird before it vanished. I’ll work on the remainder of my friendly suggestions.

RIP

There are a couple of recent celebrity deaths that warrant mention, beginning with Oscar winning director/screenwriter Robert Benton. He won a total of 3 Oscars for his work on Kramer vs. Kramer & Places In the Heart, but he never became as big of a household name as other filmmakers with similar trophy collections. His filmography is quite impressive, with a nice array of small scale yet wonderful films. He directed one of the better movies in the later portion of Paul Newman’s career, Nobody’s Fool. He co-wrote the fantastic screwball comedy homage What’s Up, Doc? He even co-wrote the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie. His masterpiece, however, was the script for Bonnie & Clyde. One can make the argument that it was with this movie that the New Hollywood era truly kicked off. Benton was 92.

Joe Don Baker was an actor who fell into that category of not being recognizable enough to be a star, yet at the same time too recognizable to be a true That Guy. One of the many soon to be well known faces in Cool Hand Luke, he was most famous for starring as Buford Pusser in the first Walking Tall movie. (He did not return for the sequels.) That set the template for his career; as an imposing figure he was usually cast as the tough guy on either side of the law. Baker was exactly the type of actor for whom when you saw him on screen you knew that you were going to see high quality work, regardless of the quality of the rest of the film. He would give you an honest, professional effort. Baker was 89, and even at that age I would not dare mess with him.

SNL Preview

Season #50 will draw to a close with this weekend’s episode as Scarlet Johansson joins the seven-timers club. I found it interesting that even before she married Colin Jost she became part of the SNL family; there was little comedy in her early filmography and her icy beauty made her seem like an overly serious personality. But like any of the most successful serious actors turned SNL hosts she shows a great eagerness to let her hair down and bring out her lighter side.

The end of a season also means that it will be the final episode for at least a few people in the cast. History tells us that if any of the major players are planning on departing they will announce it either today or tomorrow so that there is an opportunity to say farewell. Less established names generally depart quietly over the summer. If this is in fact the finale for Che & Jost expect to see a no f***s left to give edition of their traditional joke swap.

It’s not a hard and fast rule, but season finales often include a larger than average number of surprise cameos. Which means that any regulars on the bubble might not have much of a chance this week to state their case to Lorne and/or NBC one last time. Which reminds me once again - the assumption had long been that Lorne would call it a career after the 50th season, but in recent months he has indicated his intentions to stick around after all.

So, Lorne will almost certainly be back for season #51 and beyond. To recap my predictions on who will leave the show - either voluntarily or involuntarily - they are: Michael Che, Mikey Day, Heidi Gardner, Colin Jost, Devon Walker, and Jane Wickline. Let’s see if I’m right.

50 Years Ago - Rollerball

These 2 tropes have long existed, but filmmakers were particularly attracted towards two types of plots in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era: the paranoid conspiracy thriller and the dystopian future thriller. Rollerball was a prime example of the latter. In addition I always get a kick out of the time frames for movies that are set in the future. Rollerball was set in 2018 so we are theoretically in the era that the people behind this movie envisioned. Was it prescient? Let’s take a look.

In this story’s vision of the future, society is run by corporations. The populace is distracted from that corporate takeover by an extremely popular, extremely violent sport. The rules of the sport are constantly tweaked to satisfy the bloodlust of the audience. As part of the sport’s appeal the participants are forced to stress the needs of the team above their own individuality. Nope, none of this is relatable.

Casting is a crucial element to the success of a movie, and in this case the two leads were perfect matches for the established personas of their respective actors. As the lead, you want a hotheaded loose cannon who is gonna go his own way dammit and will not blindly submit to authority. Enter James Caan. And as the chief antagonist/corporate head they went with John Houseman, who was the epitome of a blue blood, condescending authority figure.

I’m not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but one of the problems I had with this movie is that the actual sport of rollerball was an incoherent mess. It was a mixture of practically every high octane sport that you can think of, the more action packed the better, especially in the third act of the movie as the lords of the game ramped up the violent elements in order to put Caan’s character in his place. It’s not as if I would expect the filmmakers to present the gameplay in a way that I could keep score, but the scenes set during the matches were such a visual cacophony that it almost feels as if you’re watching a Michael Bay movie. That is not a compliment.

Ultimately Rollerball is a movie of its time, which is part of the reason why the remake from 2002 was a big failure. It had some exciting moments, but there were lots of similar movies from the same era that were both much more effective and have also aged much better.

Closing Laughs

Is is the weekend already? It’s the weekend already. Take the opportunity to reboot and I’ll be right here waiting for you all to come back on Monday. See ya then.