The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue came out a week or so ago. I was buried in work the day it curled up in my mailbox. My wife and daughter grabbed it before I could see any painted body parts. They seem to enjoy it more than I do, albeit they use it for a different purpose. They actually look at the swimsuits.
The Super Bowl is Sunday. It is a big deal for football, entertainment, advertising and Saints fans. If you enjoy the NFL, thank Steve Sabol. His stories created it.
Sabol is 67 now. He became famous by turning football into art (according to Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated his week). It is a great story if you haven’t read it in the Scorecard section. (more…)
One sign of a sucky economy: NASA has put the space shuttle on sale.
The 1970’s era icon used to be $42 million. Now if you want to ride the rocket (or rather just sit in it in your backyard) the price has been reduced to $28.8 million.
This fall, the old orbital workhorses will go on sale once they quit flying. So far the space agency has gotten 20 responses. That was before they went on sale. The Smithsonian will get Discovery, but you can still pick up the Atlantis and Endeavour for nearly half off. I went to my bank and asked about a loan. They said I didn’t qualify.
I can see what a museum would do with the shuttle – duh – but what would, say, a Wall Streeter who made out like a bandit (literally) do with one of these things?
I can see one renovated into a yacht or an RV. I guess the RV would be a little big for the highway, but hell, that’s half the fun. Sink about 30 big V-10’s in the belly, crank it up and head to the Grand Canyon with the family.
Perhaps you could plant it at the end of a cul-de-sac and put shutters on the shuttle and have a space party every week. It’s a shame it takes so much power to make it actually fly. It would be so much cooler to see the shuttle cruising over a stadium, painted with the Goodyear logo than a blimp.
Me? Being from Alabama? I’d slap some big, knobby tires on it and turn that beast into a monster truck and hit the circuit. The shuttle would bury Gravedigger, crush Big Dawg, flatten Bigfoot and bite Black Widow simultaneously. Can you see King Crunch or Goliath looking in the rearview mirror at the space shuttle bearing down with thrusters redlining?
If Jan Gabriel, the man who’s voice made the echoed phrase, “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” so popular, had not died on January 12th, imagine what he could have done announcing ads for the shuttle?
During the holidays I was hit by a moment of revelation while watching Bobby Bowden coaching his last game at Florida State. After his final win, he gave a press conference. He was classic Bobby B. I flipped channels and there was Paula Dean on the Food Network. That is when it hit me; Paula Dean is Bobby Bowden in a wig. They both have the same face, accent, voice, mannerisms and enthusiasm for their profession.
Speaking of credibility:
I love college football. Always have. But there are parts of it that chew at me. This is one of them:
I know full well that college football is damned near pro football – perched right on the edge, sniffing the rim like a dog in the bathroom. I know that major teams are raking in millions while players scramble to keep from getting a season-ending/scholarship-ending injury. I have no defendable reason to love the game, the pageantry, the smells, the sounds and colors. I didn’t play college ball. I just went to a school that curses alumni with the crimson plague that never ends, a disease known as “Roll Tide.” I suffer greatly from it Saturday after Saturday this time of year. (more…)
It is fall; time for leaves to turn orange, yellow and red and butts to gravitate towards aluminum bleachers all over America. College football started last week and most big stadiums are surrounded by massive inclines of gleaming aluminum aching under the weight of thousands of screaming heinies. Every high school in the country has at least a small stand of bleachers in which to stack their fans and some schools have college-sized wedges, jutting up from tracks or grass.
What did we use before aluminum? We did wood. (more…)
If you have seen, heard or read about sports in the last 25 years, you know Len Berman. Every day, Len’s punchy descriptions, devoid of hype and jargon ding into my email inbox. If you don’t get Len Berman’s Top 5, you are missing the purity of what sports used to be and should still be.
His philosophy is simple: “Not everyone is a sports fan. We are so inundated with sports information somebody has to sift through it all to find some interesting talking points. That someone would be me.” (more…)
After 24-hour-a-day basketball, what are we supposed to watch now? American Idol? Baseball that doesn’t matter? Diners, Drive-Ins and the Toast Chees I used to eat every day for lunch? (more…)
I went to a Southern university where proper ladies and gentlemen of culture wore suits, ties and sundresses to football games on Saturday. Since I was neither proper nor cultured and wouldn’t recognize a lady or a gentleman if they bit me in the ass (a suggestion I offered to more than a few of the nicely-clad drunks on countless occasions while watching the Tide treat an opponent like boudin), I wore the loyal opposition’s uniform: jeans, t-shirt and Chuck Taylor’s. Altercations – even if only verbal – were bound to occur. Some went much farther. (more…)
An old friend of mine, Peter Kaufman, recently invited me to a function where it was my job to be a panelist, talking to a fairly large group (who paid to get in – more for the drinks than the entertainment) about Super Bowl commercials. I was supposed to be a critic, comic, commentator – something along those lines. I did this job last year and for some inexplicable reason, I was invited back. I suck at this job, by the way. (more…)
We tend to attach logos to the ends of our accomplishments in branding. I’d like to look at the last 29 years, however, as experiences (plural) rather than experience (singular). There is a big difference. (more…)
When I was a kid in Montgomery, Alabama, my dad took me to the Montgomery International Speedway on Saturday nights to watch men like Donnie and Bobby Allison race Red Farmer and maybe some shade-tree mechanics from Prattville or Wetumpka or guys from local garages and car dealers or maybe former moonshiners. There I saw the visceral core of authentic American competition in brutal action without the slick, corporate polish. There was no “car of the future.” There was a dented car from the recent past with a huge engine and a homemade paint job. The cars were not yet homogenized into Stepfordish monotony. The vehicles looked like what your mom and dad drove – a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler. The men who drove these bored-out, double-barreled V8’s were hardly spokesperson material. (more…)