Separated at birth? Newly hired New Jersey Devils coach Claude Julien . . . and Bill from King of the Hill. Thank you to the Photoshop virtuoso who created this. Incidentally, here is Bill's Wikipedia page. Here I thought I knew way too much about that show.- So can I get an ETA on when the commentariat will finish their self-righteous sermons about how Ben Roethlisberger should have worn a bike helmet? Suddenly every sports columnist in North America is an expert on motorcycle safety and public policy. Here's hoping Big Ben makes a full recovery. Here's hoping he will wear a helmet next time, but please, get off your soapboxes, especially you, Peter King of Sports Illustrated.
Your lot probably never gave two seconds' thought to motorcycle safety before Monday, and by the middle of next week, you never will again -- until Roethlisberger resumes practising or playing and this story gets run into the ground some more, or the next time some other dumb jock makes the same mistake. And make no mistake, there will be a next time.
As for the politician whom King lambasted for saying the crash wouldn't make him change his support for Pennsylvania not making helmets mandatory, good for him! In this day and age, it's rare to see an elected official who doesn't change his/her mind just because something terrible happened to some celebrity. Just like 1991, when Magic Johnson contracted HIV and suddenly, we were supposed to pretend to care about HIV/AIDS. Stupid a--holes. If it takes something like that to make you care about a certain issue, then you don't have it in you to care.
Question: Doesn't it stand to reason that King, who regularly works self-indulgent references to Starbucks lattés, The Sopranos and the trials and tribulations of his daughter's high school softball season into his columns, would have been free to write about motorcycle safety if so inclined? So why didn't he before Big Ben's crash? You tell me.
(Note: Rant also applies to the late Christopher Reeve and stem cell research, but politicians should support stem cell research, since it will improve the everyone's quality of life.) - You know the NHL spin now: Carolina winning the Stanley Cup is all but a fait accompli. Paraphrasing Charlie Dressen, the Oilers is dead. Do these words written in the hours after Game 1 ring a bell?
... it was building up to be the rare Stanley Cup final that's as good as the series that led up to it, with excitement and interest building with each game. Then two plays -- The Injury and The Giveaway -- turned the Oilers from vital to a vapour.
Or in a word, Deadmonton. - Miami won Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night 98-96 thanks to a effort by Dwyane Wade that I don't enough English to describe. Just a thought: You know who might be (silently, albeit) pulling for the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA championship? Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo. Italian blue-chip prospect Andrea Bargnani has drawn favourable comparisons to Dirk Nowitzki, and if the world's tallest Hasselhoff fan leads the Mavs to the promised land, that would help Colangelo sell a restless a fan base on the belief that Nowitzki-types -- a guy with centre size and small forward skills -- are the future and drafted a raw, untested Euro-prospect first overall is sound thinking. That is, assuming the Raptors don't trade down. The Toronto Star's Doug Smith says if it were up to him, it would be a frontcourt of Bargnani, Chris Bosh and Charlie Villaneuva, rather than the latter two with Adam Morrison.
- A classic story from The Onion.
- World Cup: It's all about Sweden vs. Paraguay on Thursday.
- Vintage Roy Halladay last night: One run on six hits and just one walk in a 7-1 Blue Jays victory that took just two hours 11 minutes. Worth noting: the Orioles are 1-9 on the year against lefty starters, which the Jays are throwing at them the next two games. Trouble is, it's Scott Downs and Theodore Lilly.
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca. Let's hear it for F!ght F!ght F!ght.
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3 comments:
You seem to be biting the hand that feeds you. The media in general, not just you sports hacks, follow stories in one-week increments all the time. For instance, whatever happened to stories about the Gommery Commission? Or the debilitating poverty and racism in America in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Which way do you think it is? The media feeding a fickle population, or the populations taste changing, and the media adjusting to it?
Nonetheless, while I ride a motorcycle, I do in fact care about M/C all the time.
Nice to read in the Toronto Star that Halladay's diminishing S/O ratio is due to a concerted effort by him to induce ground balls in batters in order to get them out quicker. His lower S/O ratio and the couple miles off his fastball had me concerned that his shoulder was not 100%.
Excellent points, Pat. It could be that the public is fickle and has a short attention span. But what caused it to become that way? Probably the way in which their information was delivered to them.
It's a chicken-and-egg argument. I don't think we could ever solve it totally. But this proves Jon Stewart was right when he said the media is like a bunch of 7-year-olds chasing after a soccer ball.
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