"Hip" phrases used by football announcers that I wish would go away.

"Pick Six" - When anyone intercepts a pass and runs it back for a touchdown, or even has the opportunity to but doesn't, it must be referred to as "pick six." It cannot be said that it was an interception for a touchdown. It is absolutely mandatory to call it "pick six." That was maybe cute for a while, but it is wearing thin. It's not even true alliteration.

"In Space" - This phrase apparently refers to the 97% of the football field that isn't inhabited by most of the players. When I first heard one of the announcers refer to a defensive player as someone "who can make great tackles in space," I was thinking, "Wow. That guy must be REALLY good. But how to you practice tackling somone in space?" I'm a very literal guy...

"Guys...?" - This is for the female sideline analysts and announcers back in the studio. When they want to turn it back to the announcers doing the game, they say "Guys...?" in the interrogative. Like, "Guys, will you now come in a rescue me from that really stupid observation that I just made that almost anyone watching the game could have concluded by themselves and makes it questionable as to why I am getting paid to do this?" Watch for this one. Once you notice it, it's almost impossible to not hear it every single time.




"Dial up" - Defensive coaches "dial up" their calls, like blitzes and different coverages. They can't just "call plays." No, they must "dial up" a blitz. Jeez, not only does the use of a "hip" term sound silly after continual usage, that is just SOOO 1990's. Dial up web access is an anachronism, a thing of the past. I don't even have dial up access anymore. Maybe they should say that the defensive coordinator has a App for that. Need a blitz? He has an App for that.

I suppose the thing I detest about sports announcers in general, and this really applies to the pre-game "analysts", is that they either feel they must, or have been directed to by their superiors, act like 22 to 25 year olds out at a bar after three rounds of drinks. Loud, rather obnoxious, constantly interrupting each other, every single thing that comes out of their mouths is said with absolute certainty at a very loud volume... This is particularly unattractive behavior when all the men in question are in the late 40's and beyond. I suppose they are trying to connect with their intended audience, which is mostly 22 to 25 year old males full of testosterone and brimming with self-confidence. But it sure wears thin. I don't bother watching anything on television that isn't the game itself, and those are becoming limited.

Unorganized, completely random non-political thoughts on a dreary, overcast Sunday morning.

- I think that all the television networks should just go ahead and get where they obviously want to go, which is to take over the lower third of the television screen and broadcast commercials 100% of the time, even while the main programming is ongoing. They are almost there anyway. They might as well go ahead and go that last mile right now and get it over with. Hey, they could even run commercials DURING commercials! Just think of the additional revenue!

- Why does the Sci-Fi Channel (excuse me, SyFy) show professional wrestling? Does anyone actually watch those Ghost Hunter shows where all I can see happening on the previews is a bunch of people filmed with night vision equipment whispering to each other and yelling “What was that?!?” Why does the Arts and Entertainment Channel show absolutely nothing related to the arts, or even entertainment? Why doesn’t the History Channel show any history? Why is there a goddam reality show on every single specialty channel on television?

- Airlines are now charging 40 bucks if you would like “UP TO six more inches of legroom”, a chance to get in line early and if you want to pay more money to earn more frequent flyer miles so you can subject yourself to more of the same torture you are currently going through sometime in the near future.

- My computer keeps asking me if I want to download a new version of this or that, such as iTunes or my e-mail, without telling me what the new version is going to do for me or any existing problems that I might currently have that this new software will fix. Why would I want to install something that I don’t even know what it does for me and the current version works fine? Is our society now so spring loaded to accept anything new related to electronics or software that we don’t even ask WHY first?

- Do the voice actors and actresses that do English dubbing of Japanese anime feel stupid or foolish when they are making those really stupid, squeaky voices? The overbearing, highly authoritative and/or menacing voices sound pretty silly, too.

- Speaking of feeling silly, did Jimmy Johnson of NFL and NASCAR fame feel ridiculous when he was filming those commercials for Extendz, those “penis-enhancing” pills with that young, really nice looking female “reporter?” Because if I were to try something like that, I believe I would have died of embarrassment right there, on the spot.

- Except for people who own stock in the huge corporations that own movie studios, why does anyone care how much money a movie earned on any given weekend? Is this any indication, at all, about how good a movie this might be? Whatever happened to critical reviews as an indicator of the worth of any particular film. Money? That’s all it’s about, even for the audiences? “Ooohh! Iron Man 2 earned eighty trillion dollars this week! I have to go see that one!”

- Players fighting during a baseball game garners the participants a fine and a suspension. Players fighting during a hockey game earns them five minutes in the “penalty box.” Football players will do almost anything rather than admit they are hurt. They will continue to play through all sorts of pain and blood. Soccer players (the OTHER football players) will scream, collapse on the field (sorry, pitch) and writhe around for minutes, sometimes requiring people to come out and carry them off with a stretcher, all because they got bumped or clipped by a player on the opposing team. Universities pay millions of dollars for coaches’ salaries and for upgrades to stadiums, which mostly include luxury boxes for those wealthy corporate interests. Those same universities get millions of dollars from television contracts, wealthy donors and requiring “donations” for those sports minded individuals who would like season tickets. Yet, the players get absolutely nothing other than a chance at a mostly free education. Cities, communities and states build huge, lavish sports arenas and stadiums with all or mostly all public funds, all to benefit obscenely rich team owners. I have no real observation here, other than to say, not only are Americans way too into sporting events, we aren’t even consistent. But then, we apparently don’t care. Go team! Rah!

- eBay really sucks. I refuse to use Paypal, but they now require it. Why? Because they can make more money, as they just happen to own Paypal. What a surprise. Is there anything in this country anymore that isn’t driven by the desire to extort the maximum amount of money from the general public as humanly possible?

- And finally, a bit about the Hardy Boys. You know, those brilliant kids who solved every sort of mystery that came their way and apparently stayed in high school for about 45 years? Those books were one thing that really got me through childhood and also taught me that reading was enjoyable. I know that the target audience of those books were, shall we say, less than critical. But really... Frank and Joe were not all that brilliant. They were extremely lucky. “Clues”, as they called them, just fell into their laps. They happened to be walking along and hear a conversation that just happened to relate to the case their famous dad was working on. They just happened to find a notebook with everything that the criminal they were chasing had every written down or thought of. Everything that happened to them was related. And their parents! What terrible parents! Sure, let them go out at all hours of the night and end up getting tied up or shot at by desperate criminals. Sure, go explore some abandoned mines in the hope you might find some gold that has been missing for 40 years. Just be careful, don’t get caught in any mine collapses and be sure to be home for dinner. Sheesh.

"No, Buffy. You are at fault here and you must admit your mistake."

"After all, if it hadn't been for you falling in love with Angel, we wouldn't currently be overrun with good-looking, brooding vampires that attract young girls. The world would have never been exposed to Twilight, Underworld and the Wizards of Waverly Place if it hadn't been for your rash, impulsive behavior. I hope you realize that now."

OMG, this is the end of the world as we know it!! But first, a bit about the ongoing NCAA realignment.

As I write this, the University of Colorado has jumped the Big-12 rapidly sinking ship and has joined the Pac-10/11 and counting. The University of Nebraska seems to be about to accept a bid to join the Big 10/11 and counting. All of this could change within the next few days, heck within the hour, so I wanted to give readers a context in which I am writing this.

Well, my take on all of this is that this is a bit like airlines charging exorbitant fees for checking your luggage. 1) To make outrageous sums of money. 2) Just because they can. 3) To keep up with everyone else who is doing it or will be doing it in the very near future. In each case, the welfare and well being of the main players in not the first or even the fifth priority. The airlines do not care one whit about sucking every penny they can from their customers. The conferences are intent on making as much cash as they can. The welfare of their “student athletes” is not really part of the equation here.

In the case of the conference realignment process, there do seem to be some very real and valid concerns here that are driving all this. With money tight all over (except for Wall Street CEO’s and hedge fund managers), it is pretty unreasonable for the universities of this country to expect taxpayers to fund their athletics programs. Even historically successful programs are hemorrhaging cash, and something must be done.

I won’t go further into the reasons behind all this. You can find that elsewhere. I just wanted to put down some of my thoughts and impressions here. I have two college degrees, one from a SEC school and one from a PAC-10 school. I had season tickets to the University of Washington men’s basketball for a number of years, before they started treating their season ticket holders and athletic dept. donors as major sources of revenue that must be milked dry each and every year. But I still watch them on television quite a lot.

Football is driving all of this, of course. Basketball is an afterthought, if even that. Just ask the Kansas and Kansas State, which may be left out in the cold. Having read some of their local papers, they are not at all pleased with this prospect of joining the Mountain West conference. The most hope they seem to hold out is that not all of the potential invitees from the slowly imploding Big 12 conference (Texas, Texas A&M;, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State) will accept the invitation from the Pac-10/11 and they get picked up as replacements. Having read most everything that is being written on the subject on the west coast, I haven’t ever seen this one proposed as even a long shot possibility. I feel very badly for those schools that will be left out in the cold, just because they aren’t super-desirable. Not terrible, but the circumstances just weren’t “right” for the current situation. That sort of resembles my situation during high school, so I do have some empathy there.

Now, to the Pac-10 or whatever it will be called and whatever teams might end up joining. I can’t see it staying at 11. That just screws up a lot of things, primarily basketball scheduling. Utah seems to be most often mentioned as “Plan B” if “Plan A” involving the Texas and Oklahoma schools falls through. I’m not sure how Utah would feel about all this, being invited into a conference when they know they were Plan B. But hey, pride takes the back seat when it comes to increased money and prestige, no matter how badly you feel you have been treated.

And while I am on that note, I read a lot yesterday about how it was a “slap in the face” of the University of Texas for the Pac-10 to have invited and accepted Colorado FIRST, before Texas. As Steve Martin used to say, “Well, EEEXXXCUSE MEEEE!!!!” Jeez. Is this how this is going to go all the time? They got their collective panties in a bunch because the situation for Colorado was just right and Texas and its little brothers are waiting to see what Nebraska does first? I am really concerned that the Pac-10/11 will be bringing in a LOT of baggage with the addition of the Texas schools, baggage that ultimately led to the likely demise of the Big 12. Will this be an ongoing and continual soap opera? Will Texas actually accept a role where they are not the only “big dog” on the block? Hey, USC (even with the NCAA penalties imposed) is still a heavyweight. Even though, as a UW Husky fan, I don’t like to admit this, the University of Oregon with Phil Knight’s money is a wheeler-dealer. UCLA is one of the biggest names in college basketball. Washington, although down for many years in football, is still a major player, as is Stanford, California, Arizona and Arizona State. Will Texas accept being just “one among many?” I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem really likely, no matter how much money is involved.

I am also wondering about the potential for cultural differences. LA is pretty laid back about most everything, where football may be equal to religion, in terms of the importance it plays in people’s lives, in the state of Texas. How will people from Texas and Oklahoma deal with being in the same conference as those liberal bastions, Seattle and California’s Bay Area? What will they think of the trip to Pullman, Washington (home of WSU)? Pullman is very nice, for a small town with not a lot to do. It is home to Keith Jackson, football announcer extraordinaire, Edward R. Murrow, and the Giant Palouse Earthworm. But it is certainly not a travel destination in any sense of the word. How many people will make the trek from Lubbock, Texas, to Pullman, Washington, to see a football game?

Yeah, if this happens as many people expect, I will probably pay some extra money to see Pac-Whatever sports on the new Pac-Whatever television network. I will probably still go to some games. But I can’t help but wonder what will happen to these soon-to-be mega-conferences that have truly terrible travel arrangements within the conference if the economy really tanks and real hardship continues and increases within the country. Sports, including college sports, in a commodity and, as such, is subject to discretionary spending by its consumers. Will these conferences be able to survive in their bloated states when the customers are no longer beating down the doors because they are too concerned about their own survival?

I have lots of mixed feelings about this. At least my teams will not be on the short end up the stick after this coming nuclear war. My schools will still be part of a major conference, which is a lot more than can be said of many schools that are now part of the Big-12, ACC and Big East. It might be exciting to see Oklahoma and Texas coming to play in Seattle on a regular basis. But something fundamentally is changing here, and that never really feels good unless your current situation is truly terrible. And, truth be told, our current situation regarding college athletics is not terrible. At least for the consumers of the product, it isn’t terrible.

I can’t help but think we are all making a huge mistake, one that we might end up regretting in the long run. The influence of huge money is ruining many aspects of our society. College athletics is no longer pretending to be about anything but making as much money as possible. That doesn’t feel very good. "Student athlete?" Phht. Don't make me laugh. As someone else somewhere on the web said yesterday, we might just as well call these professional football teams that are stationed near colleges.

UPDATE: Yes, well, I rather suspected that things would not turn out as predicted. Texas and the rest have decided to stay with this Big "12". Texas got lured by the promise of a bigger pot of money. They will have their own television network, which I understand would not have been allowed if they joined the Pac-10. There were a lot of other factors, mostly about money. And it appears that someone fabricated a reason to blame the Pac-10 for the deal falling apart, claiming that the Pac-10 all of a sudden wanted to include Kansas instead of Oklahoma State. The Pac-10 commish says this is not true, and I believe that. If they wanted Kansas, that would have been their going in position. They didn't really want Baylor and had no problem about aiming at Colorado instead.

Anyway, the Pac-12 now includes Colorado and Utah. Not necessarily a blockbuster, certainly not a "Super Conference." I would really rather have stayed at 10. But you know, if the Pac-10 was really intent on expanding, I am not at all unhappy with this deal. We have two schools that really wanted to be part of the Pac-10, and I think they will fit within the culture of the Pac-10 very well. They most certainly won't demand that everyone else cave into their demands, which is what I believe probably would have eventually happened with Texas. I read some columns out of the newspapers in SLC, and they seemed overjoyed to now be part of a BCS conference. Welcome, Colorado and Utah.

Now, is this nonsense about done with? Can we stop now?

10 Minute History Lesson: Was Katherine Howard a slut?

The final season of Showtime’s The Tudors is having a sexy old time with Katheryn Howard, who viewers first saw as a naked nymph on a garden swing. For subsequent appearances she donned clothes, though given the high-school-cheerleader mien adopted by actress Tamzin Merchant, you’d think that a short skirt and tight pep sweater would be more appropriate.

The real Katheryn was young, no doubt about that, and foolish, impulsive, imperious — but probably not as much of a knockout as the series would have us think. Since no absolutely authenticated portrait of Katheryn exists, we have only the words of her contemporaries — one of whom calls her “a young lady of moderate beauty but superlative grace, in stature small and slender.” The portrait shown here is often identified as Katheryn; if so, it looks like she unfortunately inherited the Howard nose.

Not that an oversized sniffer or her moderate beauty were handicaps. By all accounts, she was full of life: dancing, smiling, entrancing all who saw her. We’d call her bubbly today, and that was a large part of her charm. She certainly dazzled Henry, as she’d dazzled men like Henry Mannox and Francis Dereham before him.

She grew up as the daughter of one of the least wealthy of the Howards — her father was Edmund Howard, brother of the third Duke of Norfolk. He seems to have been a bit of a flub, never gaining Henry VIII’s affection or even his trust. His first marriage was to Jocasta Culpepper, and one of their ten children was Katheryn Howard. The impecunious family welcomed the chance for Katheryn to live with her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, joining young people of her relatively high birth but low economic standing in what amounted to an aristocratic boarding and finishing school. Living in a super-heated (but half-supervised) atmosphere of courtly pubescence, Katheryn must have shared in the declarations of love that preceded sexual dalliance. Our own age might label her emotionally neglected by her family; certainly she and Dereham seem to have made promises to each other that she’d later claim amounted to a pre-contract of marriage. Her grandmother called it something else when she caught wind of the affair, beating Dereham and sending Katheryn to the chaplain for moral correctives.

It was her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and Bishop Gardiner who probably brought her to Henry’s attention — not the work of Francis Bryan, as the TV series would have it — as a way of breaking the Anne of Cleves marriage and bringing down Thomas Cromwell. Did Katheryn tell the anti-Cleves faction about her chequered past? Unlikely; though sexually experienced, she was a political innocent and probably saw only what was dangled before her: the chance to be queen of England.

Why did she throw the chance away, first by engaging Dereham as her secretary, then by having an affair with one of Henry’s gentlemen of the bedchamber, Thomas Culpepper? That secret died with her, but in the case of Culpepper — most likely a cousin — it seems to have been an 18-year-old’s love for a young man universally praised for his good looks. Her barely-literate declaration of that love pulses passion across the centuries:

Master Culpeper,

I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. It was showed me that you was sick, the which thing troubled me very much till such time that I hear from you praying you to send me word how that you do, for I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now. That which doth comfortly me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company. It my trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust upon still, praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment, thanking you for that you have promised me to be so good unto that poor fellow my man which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him for then I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you that I may sometime hear from you one thing. I pray you to give me a horse for my man for I had much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one by him and in so doing I am as I said afor, and thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again and I would you was with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you.

Yours as long as life endures,
Katheryn.

Then to Culpepper. The Tudors is an intriguing series — not because of what they get wrong, because there’s a lot of that, but because of what they get right. In this case, theirs might be the first historical retelling to include the nasty back story on Thomas Culpepper, so often shown as an innocent young man who unfortunately bites forbidden fruit. Yes, the episode showing Culpepper raping the wife of a park-keeper is accurate; he was convicted of that crime and of the murder of at least one person who came to the woman’s aid. However, he was pardoned by Henry, who sometimes favored such high-spirited young gentlemen. (He did the same for the Earl of Surrey, but don’t get me going about the series’ inaccuracies regarding that scion of English nobility.)

With Culpepper and Katheryn, who seduced whom? Possibly Katheryn was hoping to become pregnant by Culpepper and pass off his baby as the king’s, since Henry’s health and obesity made another heir a long shot — but it’s more likely that once she realized how under the gold-tissue trappings of royalty lay an aging, ailing man, Katheryn became disillusioned and ripe for an emotional connection of her own making.

In any case, though several romances of Katheryn include in her dying words on the scaffold the statement “I die queen of England, but I would rather have been the wife of Thomas Culpepper,” there’s little doubt she felt the sentiment. Ill-educated, hungry for affection and fed on visions of courtly love, Katheryn inspires considerable pity. In the bare-bones picture we have of her inner life, there are hints that she was playing at a game of the courtly ideal, armed with little beyond her youth and energy. It wasn’t enough. Abandoned by Henry, repudiated by the Howards, she had to face death alone. The night before her short life ended, she had an executioner’s block brought to her rooms so she could practice placing her head properly. The image is heartbreaking. Was she hoping, perhaps, that the physical grace she’d relied on for sustenance would be enough to take her into the next world?

(Posted by Philm Phan. For more on Henry's wives, this one about Anne of Cleves, click here.)

I'm still here. Not dead yet.

I realize I haven't made a new blog entry for quite some time, on this or my other couple of blogs that I have or contribute to. I don't know how many times I have started on something and then just faded out, staring and the computer screen in disgust. I don't like anything I am writing anymore, and it seems to be a very large effort to write anything not related to work right now.

I think a lot of my problem is the subject matter. Things are just getting more and more bizarre in this country. It's no longer fun or cathartic to even complain about the insanity. I may try to blog about something here in the near future. But it's pretty difficult right now. For those of you who keep coming back and looking for something, I do appreciate it. Keep with it. I'll find something to write about soon. Hopefully....

So, just to pass the time, here are some Daleks, for all you Dr. Who fans. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

Comcast blocks CTV's coverage of the Winter Olympics.

That's just great. NBC gives us really crappy coverage, but Comcast is going to make sure those of us near the Canadian border don't get to watch the Olympics on the Canadian network, which provides far superior coverage. Hell, on the west coast, NBC even refuses to show the Olympics in real time. Everything is delayed. So, even though Seattle is 100 miles or so from Vancouver and is obviously in the same time zone, we can hardly watch anything in real time. NBC must be allowed to package up the Olympics so that they appeal to NBC's ideal viewer. Lots of human interest, mostly all American, put all the high profile sports in prime time, even if that means delaying them for hours or even a day. It was not unusual for me to know exactly who won an event and probably even watched it on CBC before NBC ever got around to showing it.

THIS IS WHY THE COMCAST/NBC MERGER WOULD BE A HUGE MISTAKE! Media outlet providers, such as cable television or high speed internet providers, should NOT be allowed to own the content providers. This is such an obvious example of what will happen if the merger is allowed to proceed. NBC and its sister networks (MSNBC, CNBC, a few others) will be favored over the other networks and those other networks may find themselves blocked.

You don't think that would happen? I do. The avarice of U.S. corporations knows no bounds. They will do anything they can get away with in the chase for as much money as they can possible extract from the system.

I have just one question for Comcast and NBC. If NBC's coverage is so superior, so wonderful, as we are told every two years, then why are they both so threatened by the possibility of viewers going elsewhere? If NBC's coverage were that great, wouldn't we all watch the Olympics on NBC? We wouldn't need to go elsewhere.

UPDATE: Boy, am I pissed of at NBC. I knew the results of last night's short track speed skating at about 7:30, thanks to the "crawlers" on ESPN during a basketball game. But NBC didn't get around to showing it until almost 11:00 p.m. Does NBC really think that no one knows the results? Seattle is about 160 miles from Vancouver, and is in the same time zone, but can we watch the event live? No, of course not. And NBC obviously think we are hanging on every work out of Bob Costas and his guests in their sit down studio. Talk some, show some commercials, talk some more, show some more commercials, show Apolo Ono tying up his skates, show some more commercials, THEN show the race. God, NBC sucks. I hope they lose 100 million dollars.

UPDATE 2: I was in error here. The Canadian broadcast is on CTV, not CBC. And my cable doesn't carry CTV. So, I don't know exactly what was the newspaper story I saw where Comcast was blocking the Canadian broadcasts. But I still haven't changed my opinion of NBC's coverage. It sucks. NBC would rather show Bob Costas TALKING about sports rather than actually showing sports. Cripes. I will say that I do like the fact that the announcers for the ice skating events have toned it down. They aren't talking ALL THE DAMN TIME like the usual do. NBC would provide commentary to a symphony orchestra if they could.

UPDATE 3: I do like to watch curling. That's a pretty cool sport. Sort of chess and bowling on ice. And I think I am in love with the Japanese curling team....

You know, this is all Ted Turner's fault.

He created the 24 hour a day news channel, CNN. Many people laughed at the concept when it was first introduced. I remember being skeptical. But look what has happened since then. At least, what, five all news channels (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg), plus their spin-off such as Headline News and Fox Business Channel. Each is on a 24/7 news cycle, and the Beast must be fed. You must have content to fill up something like that, and they all must turn a profit. That's where you start playing to an audience to get the viewers, which brings in the $$$. News programs are now not really there to inform; they are there to entertain, to put notches in the belt of viewer demographic numbers, to be a steady income stream to their home corporations. This gives us Glenn Beck, Shaun Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Keith Olbermann, etc. etc. (I refuse to lump Rachel Maddow in there, because I think her program, although really slanted in the liberal direction, is there to inform and not just to inflame passions.) This process has turned our political process into one big carnival, including clowns and sideshow barkers. Informing the electorate of important issues is really not even on the radar screen anymore.

Thanks a whole goddam lot, Ted Turner. You should have stopped at colorizing movies.

Zoinks!!

“Let’s get out of here, Scoob! It’s that horrible fiend, the obamanible Healthcare Reform Ghost! He kills old people and little dogs, and he’s also a socialist!”

(I assume that everyone remembers how every single episode of the original Scooby Doo ended, with the monster/ghost being unmasked to be one of the main players in the game who had an interest in scaring everyone off. Now, who might that be….? This sort of ruins the joke, explaining everything, but sometimes I am rather obtuse. I hate being the only one who gets one of my jokes.)

"I'm here to kick butt and mind meld. And I don't meld with imbeciles."

For Oso, who asked for this.