We’re all pretty much sick of the snow and of winter ingeneral right about now. Call it cabin fever or just the doldrums of February
and it’s easy to understand why a lot of folks are just beat. Tired, sick and
beat.
When we finally come up for air after this weekend it
will be a six-day weekend for the kids. In the meantime, the little jackals
will continue to mercilessly pummel me with half-assed little kid snowballs
before waiting until my back is turned before attacking with some arcane
martial arts punch and/or kick.
Someone (for the love of God!) open up the schools! My
body is officially a giant wound.
Hopefully, there will be nothing to dig or defend against
this weekend so some of us can recoup from a week of beatings given out by
Mother Nature and my offspring.
In the meantime, there’s plenty to keep an eye on this weekend and strangely,
none of it has anything to do with the pro teams from Philadelphia.
Oh sure, spring training opens next week, but that’s
largely ceremonial to begin with since nearly every player has a.) been working
out at the training facility already, or b.) been working out on their own with
their trainer/guru/wife/teammates. But then again, baseball is pretty much all
ceremonial. There’s all that whiny, metaphoric Opening Day stuff that should
make anyone with any association with baseball want to stuff their head in an
oven. At least were at a point in the game’s history where we can laugh at the
rituals, traditions and rituals. With the drugs, bad behavior and institutional
racism that dot the game’s long history, a little ceremonial pining for dates
on a calendar isn’t all that bad.
Speaking of ceremonies, apparently the winter Olympics begins
in a couple of hours or something—it’s tough to tell. Since all the snow
earmarked for the folks in Vancouver has been transplanted on top of us, sane
people are winter-ed out. Besides, what are these events? The luge? I did that
when I woke up with a head cold and wanted to clear my nasal passages. Ski
jumping and free-style moguls? Whatever… I did moves better than those the
first time I ever put skis on my feet. No, I didn't try to make those moves, but that's just a technicality.
Big deal, right? Apparently the winter Olympics are a big
enough deal to shut down the NHL for two weeks right in the middle of the
season. Can you imagine that? The season was motoring on as its wont to do in
February and then all of a sudden the players leave and join different teams
for two weeks… and nobody cares! Remember the last time the NHL took a break
for the whole season back in 2004-05? Remember? They called it a “lockout” or
something?
No, I don’t remember it, either.
Nothing against the winter Olympics, but I doubt I’m
going to watch. In fact, the only way I’ll watch is if I slip on some ice, luge
down the hill in front of the house and end up in traction in the hospital. If
that happens (and only if that happens) and I can’t reach the remote (because I’m
in traction and my wife LOVES the pagaentry and the costumes of the ice skating), maybe I’ll watch. Hopefully that Johnny Weir will be skating, too.
I like that dude because he fits into a the long line of flamboyant, trash-talking
athletes like Reggie Jackson, Larry Bird, Terrell Owens, Michael Jordan and
Dick Buttons.
Johnny Weir is also from the southern end of Lancaster County, which is a part
of the country that put the “thump” into “bible thumping.”
It is both perfectly logical and incredibly insane that
Johnny Weir is from Lancaster County, Pa. Please don’t ask for an explanation. If
you know, it makes sense.
Speaking of trash-talking flamboyance, the NBA All-Star
weekend takes place on Saturday where they will dunk, shoot and then play the
All-Star Game in a football stadium in Dallas. According to reports, they are
expecting 92,000 people to show up, which commissioner David Stern says will be
the largest crowd to see a basketball game “in the history of the world.”
However, Allen Iverson will not be amongst the attendees at the All-Star Game
even though he was voted in by the fans as a starter. No, we’re not going to
get into the pros and cons of fan All-Star voting and/or Iverson’s unworthiness
to participate in the weekend’s events designed to celebrate the majesty and
the egos of the best players on the planet. The truth is the NBA has the best
All-Star Game going simply because they don’t do that whole bit where every-team-must-be-represented
schtick that baseball does. Who wants to see the best player from a bad team?
No, making it to the All-Star Game in the NBA is
significant. It carries some weight because only 12 guys get to go. In last
summer’s baseball All-Star Game, Zach Duke was selected to be in the game. Oh
sure, 2009 was his best season because he went 11-16 with an ERA below 5, but
in the NBA an MVP candidate (Brandon Jennings, a stretch, but hey… he’s a
candidate) is relegated to the rookie game.
Nevertheless, the concept of the All-Star Games and
putting sledding on TV and calling it the Olympics is pretty old fashioned. You
know, old fashioned like the mail delivery that led to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue to be shoved through my door.
Look, even a beat-up and tired dude like me knows
old-fashioned when he sees it and this time it was shoved through the mail slot
in my door. So when I walked over to pick up the pile of magazines and junk mail
on the ground, I saw Brooklyn Decker
staring coquettishly from behind a bank statement. But rather than going for
the rather flimsy-feeling magazine, I went for the bank statement. After all,
in this age the fact that the bank is actually telling me I have money is the
biggest turn-on.
Brooklyn Decker?
Yawn...
Look, as one of those so-called red-blooded Americans, I
like half-naked women as much as the next person. Think about it... what else Americans
really do well any more. There's all-you-can-eat buffets; whining about
the weather; spiraling, out-of-control credit debt; and scantily clad men and
women. That's us.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
But c'mon, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue?
In 2010? Really?
Poor Brooklyn. She looks so hip, young and fresh on the
cover of a magazine sold to a demographic filthy with men in their 40s. Is
there anything less hip than that? Worse, in the age where we can see anything
at any time with our onDemand and high-speed Internet connections, what's the
point of the swimsuit issue? Is it for the exotic settings or top-level
photography? The product placement for bathing suits that only 12 people in the
world can squeeze in to?
Whatever it is, the formula doesn't seem to work anymore.
Call it an anachronism to a different era when things like swimsuit models
weren't ubiquitous. Back in its heyday, the swimsuit issue really cornered the
market for such things. There was no Maxim or any other so-called men's
lifestyle magazines littering the newsstands the way they do now. Actually, in
the halcyon days of SI's swimsuit issue, it was all or nothing. If a guy wanted
to see that sort of thing he had to go to the back corner of a drug store and
reach to the highest shelf where they kept the Playboy and Penthouse
wrapped in a brown paper bag (or at least that’s what I’m told).
Yes, the good old days. Sigh!
Yet here we are in the digital age and Sports
Illustrated is sticking to its guns. Just like it does every year, the
magazine offers up freakishly air-brushed and pushed up women dressed in
impractical swim wear. Or, barring that, body paint.
Yep, been there, done that.
Maybe Sports Illustrated already knows its
swimsuit issue is tired, yet keeps trotting it out there (and giving it away
for free on its web site) because it can. Think about it, are there any other companies whose egos are so out of control that
they can fly staffs of people to remote points on the globe in order to take
pictures of women next to nothing? When times were flush it was no big deal,
but in this economic climate? Really? These days when folks are losing jobs and
their homes, sweet, little, hipless Brooklyn strutting around in the Maldives
in her fancy britches might be a little excessive.
Can't they just blue screen or Photoshop in the beach?
Hell, they airbrush out everything else, right?
Can they brush out all the snow while they're at it?
The plan was to write something about how the Sixers willlikely finish out the season with the players they have. With the trade
deadline inching ever closer and the last playoff in the East looking more
difficult to catch with each passing game, it’s nearly time to pull the plug on
the pro basketball season in Philadelphia.