Recently, I posted about how many black … and black and white … cats are languishing in rescues around the country. If they are lucky, they are in a no kill rescue, meaning they have a forever home, even it’s a cage. Those in shelters that euthanize cats are more likely to euthanize black cats because they are the last to be taken. Why? Because a sizeable slice of our supposedly modern society still believes the ancient superstitions that black cats are bad luck.
On Monday, I was talking to a friend about the Super Bowl. Talking about Denver’s victory … and more specifically the demise of Cam Newton’s miracle season … he said, I’m always glad to see a showboater get his comeuppance. It is an old fashioned sentiment to be sure. I haven’t heard anyone under 50 call an athlete a showboater for years, mainly because what we used to call showboating is the norm in sports these days. And comeuppance? Who says that anymore? But it captured my sentiment exactly. OK, for those of you with Younger Eyes:
Showboating: One who seeks attention by ostentatious behavior; a showoff.
Comeuppance: a fate or punishment that’s deserved, like an arrogant trash-talking quarterback who fumbles the ball on the last play and loses the game for his team (Really. That definition is right here). (more…)
Yep. It’s that day. And like 67% of American men**, I will be watching what is often referred to as The Big Game. Because The Big Game’s real name is trademarked, doncha know? And like 44% of American women, my wife, Muri, will be watching. We will not be watching at a Super Bowl (er … Big Game) Party like 20 million other Americans, unless you count the two of us sitting in the family room with an assortment of
appetizers and the two cats (Mr. P and Elvis) as a party. Elvis will probably watch, sitting on his favorite spot on the coffee table but it’s darn near certain that Mr. P will nap. On my lap. Until there is an exciting play and my body English sends him scurrying upstairs. Las Vegas has the odds that Muri will take a nap at 3 to 1, while the possibility of an Older Eyes nap are running about even. This is the kind of game I like … I have a favorite but the preference isn’t so strong that I’ll be miserable if they lose. The Seahawks are an exciting team and I like both their coach and quarterback. But they knocked the team I really wanted to see in The Big Game, the Packers, out of the playoffs. I also get tired of the Marshawn Lynch’s I-won’t-talk Beast Mode schtick, Richard Sherman’s big mouth and The Legion of Boom crap. So I’ll root for the ball-deflating Patriots. Once a New Englander, always a New Englander. (more…)
So, tell me, is it reality or is it a Saturday Night Live skit?
As the #DeflateGate controversy continues to overtake Super Bowl XLIX, the first tangible evidence other than footballs being underinflated (which the NFL has acknowledged) emerged Monday, when Jay Glazer of FOX Sports reported that a Patriots employee took a bag of football that had been inspected and approved by officials into a separate area. That individual has become, per Glazer’s report, a “serious person of interest” as to the question of how the footballs came to be underinflated. As PFT reported last night, adding to Glazer’s bombshell, the separate area was a bathroom in which the employee spent approximately 90 seconds. (more…)
This has been a Thanksgiving week for the grandkids, almost to the exclusion of everything else, but Saturday, I took the afternoon off to watch my USC Trojans play Notre Dame with my son-in-law, Lars, at their house. Oh, the kids were around but there are a million kids in the neighborhood, so the grandsons were content to play outside. Savannah drifted in and out, insisting on a game or two of Old Maid. There are only three people that could get me to play Old Maid during a USC football game but Savy is one of them. This has been a disappointing year. We (the spectator we) lost several games in the final seconds and worse, we were beaten soundly by the basketball school across town last weekend, a loss that made it likely that they would play in the Pac-12 championship game. Still, in spite of the delusions of most UCLA fans, our biggest rivalry is Notre Dame, a game that Forbes Magazine, no less, calls college football’s greatest because of the long time excellence of both programs. The game started well, with USC going up 35-0 before Notre Dame’s second string quaterback led them on a touchdown drive to end the firat half. Given, the Trojan’s penchant for second half collapses this year, I was happy but anything but confident. But the second half went much like the first, the game ending with a 49-14 score. Yay!
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I am a sports fan and I probably will be until the day I die but there are times I wonder why. Sometimes, I wonder why I care about whether spoiled soon-to-be-millionaire college athletes win or lose just because they wear the name of the university where I got my graduate degree on their shirts. I watch unsportsmanlike behavior on the field and unseemly behavior off the field by young men who have been treated like stars since junior high. I see boorish behavior in the stands by fans and over-the-top taunting of opponents on internet message boards and sports websites. I listen to sports talk bozos who sound like overgrown adolescents with opinions to match. I wonder, Do I really want to be associated with these people? I get to see men who are making millions for playing a freaking game sound and act like hoodlums on and off the field and wonder, Why do we deify these people? (more…)
If you’re a sports fan … and maybe even if you’re not … you’ve probably heard about Seattle Seahawk player Richard Sherman’s tirade after his team won the NFC championship last Sunday. Having made the game saving play for his team, he gestured with the choke sign at the opposing quarterback and taunted the receiver for whom the pass he tipped was intended. He then responded to a simple question by a sideline reporter thus:
Periodically, something happens that makes me stop and wonder why I love sports so much, why the success of my teams (note that I have no ownership in any team) can make me so happy and why I can be so disappointed when we lose (we, although I don’t play on any team either). This time it could be a hangover from enduring college football Rivalry Week (enduring = we lost, rejoicing = we won). Yes, my USC Trojans lost to UCLA. I had to endure seeing my friend, Ben, post Go Bruins! Who’s your daddy, USC? on Facebook. (I responded, You’ll have to win a few National Championships to be our daddy! It was a pretty snappy comeback but not as much fun as winning). Maybe I’ve been spending too much time in the car listening to sports talk radio. I’d suggest that nowhere on the planet can one find a larger assortment of over-grown adolescents and clueless doofuses than sports radio. I want to know what’s going on with my teams but after a while, I feel like my IQ is dropping just listening to these guys. Other times, I notice the sheer lunacy of many fans and wonder if I want to belong to this club. Perhaps painting yourself purple and gold, then doing the Macarena mostly naked in freezing weather is just fun-crazy, but how about making death threats toward kickers and poisoning a tree on your rival’s campus? (more…)
Like the sun breaking through the autumn gloom here in Orange County today, Monday Smiles are a little late in coming. And just as I knew the sun was there behind the gloom, I knew the smiles were waiting. I was just to busy to smile them. You see, at 7:45 this morning when I groaned out of bed, there will still those last few lost files to be loaded into my new computer and several programs that needed installing. Several needed to be run in compatibility mode because they’re a remnant of my Windows XP days. And then there was the state of my office, with several computers and various hard drives scattered around the room, cables running helter-skelter between them. But now, it’s 3 pm and all that remains is my brand new Dell desktop humming quietly beside me, chock full of all the data that I thought I’d lost. There is a part of me that loves the challenge of a seemingly insurmountable computer problem, a part of me that keeps me going through the frustration. And that part of me is smiling big time. (more…)
At approximately 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, Muri and I were out looking for rugs for our almost-finished kitchen. The radio announcer was saying that Super Bowl Sunday is an unofficial American Holiday, which made us feel, well, pretty unAmerican. We rarely make a big deal of the Super Bowl, although we both admit that’s partly because we aren’t invited to any parties. Still, we finished our chores in time for the kickoff, set out some chips and salsa and settled in to watch the game. And the commercials. And the half time show. And here on Older Eyes, where it’s Top Sites Tuesday #189, I thought I’d give my reflections on the game … and the commercials … and the half time show … from the only perspective I have: an older one. (more…)
Older Eyes 