Tag: football

If it was 30 years ago, why do I remember it so well?

“The Beatles, lead by John Lennon, created music that touched the whole of civilization.”


Unfairly or not, I always associate John Lennon’s death with the breakup of my girlfriend the week before. It was Monday, December 1, 1980, and, unlike all of those “grownup” breakups in the movies of that time, this was painful and acrimonious. About the only cinematic aspect of it was the line from near the end of the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall, delivered by Alvy Singer (Allen): “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

So when the FOLLOWING Monday night came around, it was incumbent upon me to do whatever I could that would be contrary to what I would likely be doing with her. The choice was clear: I needed to watch Monday Night Football. It’s not as though I never watched the game, but it was usually a bit here and there. This time I was going to watch the whole damn thing.

And, if I recall correctly, it was a pretty close game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, when announcer Howard Cosell said at about 11:15 p.m., “One of the great figures of the entire world, one of the great artists, was shot to death horribly at the Dakota Apartments, 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City. John Lennon is dead. He was the most important member of the Beatles, and the Beatles, lead by John Lennon, created music that touched the whole of civilization. Not just people in Liverpool, where the group was born, but the people of the world.”

Here’s a snippet of the broadcast after that point.

So the first thing I do is call my good friend Karen, who had written, for our sixth-grade newsletter, a fantasy story about winning tickets to a Beatles concert, and who, that very fall, was working for his record company and promoting his and Yoko’s album, Double Fantasy. But her line was busy. I called my ex-girlfriend and told her; she was appreciative of the fact that I told her. I called Karen several times after that, but the line remained busy. I began to listen to my favorite radio station, WQBK-FM, Q104, and listen to the requests pouring in. It was either that night or the next morning that I asked for, oddly, The End by the Doors, and they played the whole 11-minute version.

Eventually reached Karen at about 1:40 a.m. When she heard my voice, she just cried for 10 minutes. We talked the next day, when I went out and bought, at lunchtime, Rock ‘n’ Roll; there wasn’t a copy of Double Fantasy to be had.

And thinking about time period STILL fills me with a surprising amount of sadness.

JEOPARDY! factoid: Calling him a Revolutionary, in 2000 Fidel Castro dedicated a statue of John on the 20th anniversary of his murder.

I was watching LENNONYC this past weekend – it’ll be repeated on my local PBS station tonight – and it was a good portrait of John’s life from 1971 until the end. Much of the info I knew, but a few bits I did not, such as Yoko going back to the studio after John died to listen to his outtakes.
***
Denise Nesbitt remembers.

R is for Redskins

I also puzzled over the Major League baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, less over the name, and more over what I consider the bizarre caricature of Chief Wahoo.



It’s football season in America – I mean, using the ball to the left, NOT the ball to the right.
When I was growing up, my father and I would watch, on our local CBS-TV affiliate, all the games of the New York Giants of the National Football League, who actually played in New York, not New Jersey, at the time. Their main rivals were, and are, the Philadelphia Eagles, the (hated) Dallas Cowboys, and the Washington Redskins. Even then, I found the nickname of the Washington team peculiar. Most teams were named for animals – Lions (Detroit NFL) and Tigers (Detroit baseball) and Bears (Chicago NFL), e.g. The ones that were named for people tended to be about geography (New York Yankees-baseball) or occupations (Pittsburgh’s baseball Pirates and NFL Steelers). “Redskins” seemed somehow unseemly, and this was long before I’d ever heard the pejorative term “politically correct.”

So, I was a little surprised to read here and elsewhere that the team’s owner had meant it as an honorific. This writer talks about the term’s historical usage, going back to the writings of American novelist James Fenimore Cooper, whose “use of redskin as a Native American in-group term was entirely authentic, reflecting both the accurate perception of the Indian self-image and the evolving respect among whites for the Indians’ distinct cultural perspective, whatever its prospects. The descent of this word into obloquy is a phenomenon of more recent times.”

Nevertheless, for some time, it has been the source of controversy, as American Indian Sports Team Mascots notes. In fact, only last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Washington Redskins can keep the team name. “Seven native Americans had sued to force the Washington Redskins to change the team name,” but the Court “let stand a ruling that their challenge came too late.” still, this article explains the issue well.

I also puzzled over the Major League baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, less over the name, and more over what I consider the bizarre caricature of Chief Wahoo. Here’s an article about the Indians’ mascot.

I suppose the Atlanta Braves baseball team name bugs me less than the incessant use of the tomahawk chop, more obnoxious when I heard it in Fulton County Stadium in 1995 than the video suggests.

And what of the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame? This does not seem to be an issue. Then again, everyone’s Irish in America, especially in March.

What thinkest thou?

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

June Ramblin’

From the Monty Python movie “Life of Brian”, What have the Romans ever done for us?

Just a reminder that you have only three more full days to enter my giveaway. Rules are on the sidebar, but basically, from now through July 3 at 11:59 EDT, every time you comment to a post, assuming you haven’t commented already to that specific piece, gives you a chance at some prizes, including a complete DVD box set of The Dick Van Dyke Show and a Michael Jackson greatest hits CD.

Speaking of Michael Jackson: in honor of the anniversary of his death this past week, the full-length video of Thriller, performed with Legos.

I KNEW there was a way to post something on Twitter and have it show up on Facebook, but couldn’t suss out the instructions. This really helped me. And, in fact, it was one of my Facebook friends who provided the link.

Author Rebecca Skloot has interesting info about her best-selling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on her website, including audio, video, and an excerpt.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.

Here’s a link about the book being discussed on PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

Nice tribute to 7’7″ Manute Bol, noted as a basketball player, but noteworthy because of his humanitarian causes, who died last week at 47.

I’ve always liked U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who died this week at the age of 92. Even as his politics evolved, from his brief flirtation with the KKK to civil rights supporter, from Vietnam hawk to Iraq dove, his love of the U.S. constution remained steadfast. He died at 92 this week, and here is an appreciation.

This may make sense only if you know football; I mean, American football: Unsportsmanlike Conduct Jesus.

A singalong version of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a song originally from the Monty Python movie “Life of Brian.” That always reminds me of my favorite segment of the film, What have the Romans ever done for us?

Neil Gaiman defends libraries.

visit4info – The Place for TV Adverts and Funny Video Clips from the UK

T is for Titans

Three actors were on NBC programs that started after their appearance in the movie.


Uncharacteristically, I was flipping through the TV channels recently. This is highly unusual, because generally, when I watch television, I go to a particular show, usually prerecorded. I came across this 2000 movie I saw in the theaters, Remember the Titans. Part of the IMBD synopsis:
“It’s 1971 in Alexandria, Virginia and successful high school football coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton) has just been deprived of the head coaching job at the new integrated T.C. Williams High School to make way for equally successful black coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington). Yoast debates pursuing opportunities elsewhere, but when most of his white players vow to sit out the season unless he coaches, he changes his mind and stays on as Boone’s assistant.”
The Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: “An inspirational crowd-pleaser with a healthy dose of social commentary, Remember the Titans may be predictable, but it’s also well-crafted and features terrific performances.”

Well, yes, predictable, including having the Big Game. I enjoyed it well enough, and it at least tried to tackle the issue of race.

Looking back at it, though, I noticed an interesting coincidence:

Donald Faison, who played football star Petey Jones, became Dr. Christopher Turk, best friend of quirky Dr. John Dorian on the TV comedy Scrubs (2001-2010), with seven years on NBC, and the final two on ABC. Turk and JD were probably the epitome of a word I’m not fond of, “bromance”.

Ethan Suplee, who played big-hearted lineman Louie Lastik, was the some-what simple-minded younger brother Randy Hickey to the title character on the comedy My Name Is Earl (2005-2009, NBC). Earl dragged Randy into his plans to fix the outcomes of some of their less-than-desirable activities after the elder brother discovered karma following a car accident.



Hayden Panettiere played Sheryl Yoast, daughter of Coach Yoast: “My daddy coached in Alexandria, he worked so hard my momma left him, but I stayed with coach, he needed me on that field.” She initially resents Coach Boone for supplanting her daddy, but:
Sheryl Yoast: Coach Boone, you did a good job up here. You ran a tough camp from what I can see.
Coach Boone: Well I’m very happy to have the approval of a 5-year-old.
Sheryl Yoast: I’m 9 and a half, thank you very much.
Coach Boone: Why don’t you get this little girl some pretty dolls or something, coach?
Coach Yoast: I’ve tried. She loves football.
After playing Ally McBeal’s daughter in that program’s last season (2002), Hayden played Claire “Save the cheerleader” Bennet on Heroes (NBC) from 2006 until its cancellation in 2010.

So all three actors were on NBC programs that started after their appearance in the movie but that are all now off the air.
***


When the upstart American Football League (AFL) was formed in 1960 to challenge the long-established National Football League, the franchise in the US’s largest city was called the New York Titans. Major League Baseball’s National League experienced an expansion in 1962, and the city got the New York Mets. When the Titans were sold to new owners in 1964, the team changed its name to the New York Jets, to nominally link it to the popular, though inept, baseball franchise. The AFL merged with the NFL in 1966, though it wasn’t finalized until 1970. the Jets, of course, were the first AFL team to beat an established NFL in what became known as the Super Bowl, in January 1969. (The Mets would win the World Series later that same year.)

Another of the charter members of the AFL was the Houston Oilers, which relocated to the “state of Tennessee in 1997, first playing temporarily in Memphis for one season before moving to Nashville. For two seasons, the team was known as the Tennessee Oilers before changing its name to Titans in 1999.” So the Titans’ name lives again.

When I was collecting comics in the 1970s through the mid-1990s, I was pretty much a Marvel fan (Spider-Man, Iron Man, Fantastic Four) rather than a DC fan (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman). I never read, never even sought out, the original Teen Titans, a book about the sidekicks of the established stars from back in the 1960s. But because of the creative team of writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez, I did collect the NEW Teen Titans, starting in 1980, even though Robin was the only character I knew, and it became one of the most popular titles of its time.

There was also a Teen Titans TV series in the first decade of the century. New episodes stopped in 2006, but they are rerun often; I watched a part of an episode just this week to get into the spirit of this post.

Here is an extensive team history of the Teen Titans.


Finally, there is Clash of the Titans, the cheesy 1981 film with Harry Hamlin, and the 2010 remake. But I’ve seen neither, so I thought I’d just do the photo comparison.


ABC Wednesday

Now (Don’t) Cut That Out!

I was ALSO watching Heidi Bowl.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the classic last episode of the TV series Newhart, which the local CBS in the Albany-Schenectady, NY area cut off 30 seconds too soon. Watch Bob Newhart talk about The Last Newhart.

It got me thinking about TV events that were interrupted. Surely, one of the most significant is the so-called Heidi Bowl, which I was ALSO watching.

It was an American Football League regular-season game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders, played on November 17, 1968. the Jets were leading 32-29 with only 65 seconds left, and NBC-TV ended the football coverage at 7 pm in favor of broadcasting the premiere of Heidi, a made-for-TV version of the classic children’s story. Meanwhile, the Raiders came back and scored 14 points, winning 43-32. Ultimately, the NFL’s television policies were amended, requiring games to be broadcast in their entirety in the markets of the teams involved.

Lately, I’ve been having difficulty for more prosaic reasons. I hardly ever get a chance to watch a TV show live. I record almost everything to the DVR to watch later. And I’m usually an episode or two behind. So it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that the results show of American Idol on FOX has been running two to four minutes long, the effect of which being my recording of Glee cuts off early. I DO have the ability to extend the recording of the later show and have. But it seems weird that a RESULTS show can’t end on time.

Any shows cutting off for you?

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