Your Wednesday Morning Read

The Year Taylor Broke Everyone’s Brains

I often wonder what goes on in editorial meetings at Fox News. What sort of bats**t theories get tossed out the window for being too insane until they finally decide on the talking point du jour? I mean, how lost of a soul does one need to be in order to be comfortable in transmitting this sort of nonsense to a national audience?

That is only one example. There are all sorts of tin foil hat conspiracies bouncing around, each one more unhinged than the last. If what I hear is correct, somehow the Biden Administration in cahoots with the deep state is conspiring to fix the Super Bowl for whatever reasons. I haven’t yet seen George Soros tied into this, but it’s only a matter of time before someone makes the connection.

I no longer watch football, so I have no skin in this game, but watching the collective meltdown over the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce relationship has turned me into a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. It brings me such joy to see copious amounts of steam coming out of the collective ears of some of the worst people imaginable.

There’s also the added twist of the anger felt over the frequent cuts to Swift in her luxury box. So what? Have these critics never watched a televised sporting event? How much screen time does she get in a typical game compared to that of famous fans such as Fireman Ed, or going back to an earlier age, Barrel Man? How often does the camera cut to Jerry Jones or Robert Kraft? You know how much time she actually tallied in the AFC Championship Game? 44 seconds! People actually lost their s**t over that?

And now Orange Napoleon wants to take her on? Good luck trying to battle the Swifties in the social media age. Good way to appeal to the younger voters that your party so desperately needs.

Ready To Fire Up The Outrage Machine

Starters for the NBA All-Star Game were revealed last week, and the announcement of the remaining roster spots will come tomorrow. It’s been an annual tradition that this is immediately followed by the multitudes screaming “how could you have left ____ off?????” It’s understandable and inevitable. I’m not speaking out of turn when I say that the talent level in the league has never been as high as it is now. With only 12 spots per conference, there are simply more deserving players than there are slots available. Just try to come up with 7 players per conference who warrant inclusion. I would bet that you’ve named at least a dozen without much thought.

That makes it extremely tough for someone who has been very productive for a losing team. I’m thinking of a guy like Scottie Barnes. He is putting together a strong season in Toronto, but can coaches justify placing him above someone whose numbers aren’t quite as impressive, but is doing it for a contender? And what does that mean for Victor Wembanyama? Fans would clearly love to see him in the game, but the Spurs have only won 10 games. Would his inclusion mean leaving off a player from the Wolves or Thunder?

I wouldn’t call this a formal pet peeve, but it mildly irks me when commentators complain so vociferously over omissions. It’s fine to make a passionate argument on someone’s behalf, but see it through to the logical end. If you feel that Player A deserves to be on the team, then please tell me who you would name as Player B that gets bumped.

On a related note, USA Basketball recently revealed the player pool for the upcoming Olympic team. There are a total of 41 players competing to make the 12 man squad. Even taking into account that several of these are only “break glass in case of emergency” candidates, I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to cut this down to the final 12. There are the obvious choices - LeBron, Durant, Embiid, Steph Curry (who has shockingly never been on an Olympic team) - and the last two spots are generally filled with guys who are willing to be role players who don’t see much action. But who else do you leave in and leave out?

Getting In On The Trash Sports Fun

Being that The Superstars was such a success for ABC - or at the very least inexpensive enough that it produced a good ROI - it’s no wonder that CBS tried their own version of the concept. The network briefly presented Challenge Of the Sexes. It was a weekly competition in which a male athlete would face a female athlete from the same sport. Each match would include a handicap to counter the size or strength advantage that the male would have. For example, in tennis the man would have to cover the entire doubles court.

When I do these looks back at older shows I start with my own memories and then later on consult Wikipedia to fill in any blanks. No such luck here. The show made such a small imprint that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. What that means is that one of the few solid memories I have is a game of HORSE between Jerry West and a female basketball player. She defeated him by spinning the ball on her finger before hitting the winning shot. West was unable to make the spin. I honestly do not remember who the female player was. But here is the bigger personal embarrassment for me. The show was hosted by Vin Scully, and watching this show was my introduction to Scully. In the 1970’s I had no access to Dodgers games, and I wasn’t watching football closely enough to identify the broadcasters, so this was was Scully V1.0 for me.

The Sunday afternoon version may have vanished into the haze, but the primetime presentation was a lot different. CBS broadcast a series of Celebrity Challenge Of the Sexes specials, and these were perfect examples of 1970’s cheese. Take the most random collection of celebrities they could find and have them compete in an equally random series of athletic events. Here’s one example, but each edition was just as wonderful.

My criticism is that it didn’t feel all that legit to me. Take the 8-ball match listed above. As the event began the commentators were sure to mention the need to call the final shot. Well, Chekhov’s 8 Ball came into play. Jack Klugman won, but was disqualified for failing to call the shot. Not buying it. Klugman sure seemed like someone who knew his way around a pool table. Am I supposed to believe he would make such a basic mistake? There’s an almost 100% chance that he intentionally made himself look foolish for entertainment purposes.

NBC had its own twist with a special called Us Against the World. It pitted 3 teams of celebrities, representing the United States, Great Britain, and a third team covering the rest of the world, in a series of athletic events, and any similarity to Battle Of the Network Stars was pure coincidence. This is another one for which my memories are fairly vague. I remember one female celebrity - either Britt Ekland or Elke Sommer - acting very whiny after a poor result in a 100 yard dash, and the show constantly promoted Rod Stewart’s appearance leading into each commercial break. They ran a clip of Stewart kicking a soccer ball over and over.

I kidded about Battle Of the Network Stars, but it was clear that this one was nothing but a pale imitation. I’m only being semi-ironic when I call BOTNS as one of the quintessential examples of 1970’s television. That show clearly deserves its own discussion. Stay tuned for that.

Solved At Last!

Back in the day when I regularly watched In Search Of… I had a particular fascination with the assorted mythical beasts indigenous to a specific region that people claimed to see. Of course, as I grew up I recognized how nonsensical most of those stories were, but is there any plausibility? I mean, is it conceivable that over the years Loch Ness developed its own unique ecosystem so that there is one particular sea creature native to that one loch and no other? Realistically, no. As huge as Ness is, if the monster existed there would be more solid evidence than a photo which looks suspiciously like a periscope.

The existence of a Yeti is slightly more believable. It’s not impossible to think that in the inhospitable climate of the high altitudes in the Himalayas that an animal could have evolved to survive in that atmosphere, and because of the thin air there is little opportunity for a hypothetical Yeti to interact with humans. Chances that there is such a creature are as close to zero as it can get, but…

On the other hand, even as a child I knew there was no such thing as a Sasquatch. There is enough of a human presence in the Pacific Northwest forests that unless they are the shyest creatures in nature it’s not possible for people and bigfoots (bigfeet?) to have failed to cross paths on a regular basis. There would need to be a lot more physical evidence than the occasional large footprint, or a famous video that looks like the sort of hoax that would have made Andy Kaufman proud. No one ever found a Sasquatch carcass? Or the remnants of a feeding? Or a Sasquatch stool? (Sasquatch Stool sounds like a good name for a ska band.)

This is the best explanation I’ve seen concerning what a Sasquatch really is - a skinny black bear. A bear newly emerging from hibernation hasn’t yet put on its full weight, and if it’s standing on his hind legs from a distance it could seem like an entirely different animal. Before you accuse me of ruining your childhood, please be assured that this theory does not apply to the Bigfoot that battled the Six Million Dollar Man.

Closing Laughs

4 out of 5 dentists recommend reading Tending the Herd as part of a healthy lifestyle. Who am I to argue with science? Thanks for reading, and see you all again on Friday.