Keith Olbermann - Entertainment is probably the best way to categorize these ridiculous "Special Comments" that litter the liberal blog rolls every month or so. I don’t understand how simply holding a certain point of view excuses the bombastic, juvenile, and downright nauseating manner in which he presents it. Isn't this the type of thing he gets on his perceived "rival" for? Seriously Keith, put down the thesaurus, take a Xanax, and shut the fuck up. You’re not carrying on the legacy of Edward R. Murrow. You’re only dragging the level of political discourse in the country down even further. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he broadcasts out of New York City - I’m proud that most Beltway insiders couldn’t give two shits about him and that the American viewing audience continues to tune him out on a consistent basis.
Nevertheless, it’s good to see him doing sports highlights again – they’re probably the only bright spot of an otherwise redundant and increasingly pointless Football Night in America.
The WGA Strike – Letterman’s regrettable absence notwithstanding, I’m reading and writing more, catching up on the Netflix queue, getting a good 7 hours of sleep every night, and have even become borderline competitive at Wii golf. I don’t know about you, but I’m in no rush to see unbearably schmaltzy monologues from Meredith Grey return to my life in the form of countless away messages and Facebook quotes. Nor am I particularly eager to see what new and creative ways writers on The Office come up with to destroy whatever real-life associations and empathy viewers had with the Michael Scott character. I’ll concede that I’ll probably be singing a different tune come February when the best sports option is an Antonio Daniels led Washington Wizards team and that rumored D.C. season of 24 is postponed until next autumn.
Speaking of Antonio Daniels (I guarantee that you’ll never hear those words ever spoken/written again)…
Gilbertology- Coined by Coach Eddie Johnson, this term has basically come to embody Gilbert Arenas’s diverse, often confusing but generally entertaining antics for basketball fans in the Washington area. While I’m not decrying the practice of taking halftime showers in full uniform and eschewing team outings on road trips in favor of sitting in your hotel room and ordering colon cleansers off of infomercials (and by no means would I ever criticize someone for blogging), after checking out these Gil TV clips, I think something is lost when he’s not gracing us with his presence on a daily basis. We need those clutch shots and surreal post-game interviews to back it all up. With Gil in street clothes, he goes from being one of the few truly unique and fascinating athletes in professional sports to someone who probably just needs professional help. I’m no hater Agent Zero, I just want your swag to be perpetually phenomenal.
Boston, Massachusetts – Obviously Washington, D.C. is a City that is literally teeming with young professionals and graduate students. Many of them completed their undergraduate careers at one of Boston’s fine 30-something institutions of higher education. What has always interested me is not the lukewarm way they characterize their time in that City, but the simple fact that they’re reminiscing about it from someplace far away – Boston has a piss-poor undergraduate retention rate. Personally, I don’t know any Boston undergrad that stayed there for more than a few months after graduation, and a quick Facebook (Yes, if you haven’t gathered already I’m back onboard) search reveals that all my high school classmates who ventured up there have since moved on.
I’m not sure why Boston enjoys such a squeaky-clean reputation, but I honestly think some it is racism – Just because Sully and Tommy O’Malley are white doesn’t mean that there aren’t parts of "Southie" that are just as dangerous as any part of D.C. east of the Anacostia River…SE simply hasn’t had the benefit of a wildly popular feel-good flick to romanticize it. The same goes for The Departed, which did the same exact thing for the rampant, perpetual corruption that infuses every level of intra-City politics; the same corruption that nullifies the intellectual arrogance these "chowdah-heads" so often have.
Culturally, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything in Boston that you can’t in any other major US city.
And at the end of the day, its primary identity for a century was an underachieving baseball team. Isn’t that just a tad disconcerting?
Listen, Boston is a great place to visit and probably a great place to spend 4 years toiling away in academia. But at the end of the day, Minneapolis does the whole "Boston thing" a lot better than you actually do.
And while on the topic of US cities…
Detroit’s Resurgence – Is it alright to make fun of Detroit again now that it didn’t pan out? Michiganders can be so damn annoying. As sports fans, they’re arguably worse than Philly fans. And these insufferable pricks got together before Super Bowl XL and decided it would be "insensitive" for anybody to rip on their bombed-out mess. After all, what’s so funny about poverty, the decline of the American auto industry, and the plight of poor minorities after the 1968 riots? The thing is, I’ve never met or heard of anybody from Michigan affording the same luxuries to cities like Newark, Oakland, and Cleveland. As a New Jersey native, I understand the insecurities that come with living in a punch-line, but these assholes go out of their way to pass the buck, so to speak. Your city was a shit-hole long before the Steelers and Seahawks rolled in, has been since, and will continue to be going forward.
Small Batch Bourbon – Knob Creek, Basil Haden’s, Bookers, etc…Unless I’ve had an absolutely awful day that was capped with some of those infamous "residual delays" on the Metro, it’s eventually going to be mixed with something after a few sips. Sure, my palate just might not be refined enough to taste through the burn to those rumored hints of toffee, overripe peaches, and honey. But I’ll save the extra $10-$20, stick with the cheaper stuff if I’m going to cut it, and take tenuous comfort in the fact I don’t drink enough to be able to appreciate the "subtleties" of 100 proof liquor on a nightly basis.
Fantasy Football – Yes, I say something similar every year, but still…Compared to the other sports, it’s so hopelessly finicky and luck-driven. If not for a handful of Patriots and Cowboys, I’m pretty sure every team in every league this season would have finished close to .500. The real world rewards stamina and stick-to-itiveness and the NBA and MLB have seasons that resemble marathons, not sprints. Fantasy managers who update their rosters on a daily basis and know enough about the intricacies of the sport to snag the next Francisco Liriano or Josh Smith should be rewarded, not forced to endure the cruel and unusual punishment that is losing in the 1st round of FFL playoffs to an oblivious office secretary because your QB happened to come up lame early in the first half of an otherwise meaningless Week 17 game.
PS – You know who is not overrated in any way? Eye Street’s own Erica Jenkins!
Action Shot: Our EJ laughing at QB Aaron Rodgers’s Grizzly Adams impersonation during last week’s Green Bay v. Dallas game not unlike the way my friends humor me when I do my patented Donald Trump or Matthew McConaughey.
PPS – Just because I pride myself on not being an overly negative person and because I was always a fan of how the end credits of the old James Bond and Superman movies would usually feature a tantalizing promise of a sequel down the road…
Stay tuned, loyal readers! 2007 may be getting on in days but will still feature entries on what Red Line to Awesomeville – Pop: Me deems to be underrated, Christmas in D.C. and that recently unearthed ‘Lincoln at Gettysburg’ photo! Good night, and good luck.
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