This (Non) ) Sporting Life: Super Bowl LX

So Andrea and I ventured forth from the Fortress of Ineptitude to spend time with her dad watching the Super Bowl. My father in law cited a craving for KFC chicken so I got a bucket of that along with potato wedges for our Super Bowl party snacks. (It was I think an improvement over last year's surprisingly underwhelming Bojangles.) 

As for the game itself, it was for a long stretch a bit of a snooze with the Seattle Seahawks shutting out the New England Patriots through a series of 3 point field goals. Jason Myers set a super Bowl record by making all five of his field-goal tries.

By the third quarter, Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold threw a touchdown pass and Patriots quarterback Drake Maye answered with one of his own. Only then the did game itself start to get even remotely interesting to me. 

My wife and her dad were pulling for the Patriots because Drake Maye played college football for UNC. 

For what it's worth and I really didn't care that much about it but I guess I was rooting for the Seattle Seahawks. Because Seattle is Ken Jennings' home town, perhaps?

Well, I picked the winning team as the Seahawks defeated the Patriots 29-13 and won the Super Bowl.

So... yay me, I guess? 

Meanwhile, what about the much ballyhooed half time performance by Bad Bunny?

I will admit I didn't get it but hey, I'm not Bad Bunny's core demographic. But objectively speaking, what I saw was a visually engaging spectacle with a palatable positive energy.

Bad Bunny's set paid tribute to his native Puerto Rican culture. His performance included cameos from Cardi B, Alix Earle, Karol G as well as Pedro Pascal and Jessica Alba as well as Lady Gaga (that's her in the photo above) and Ricky Martin. 

The show contained a wedding scene that was not a scene but an actual wedding for a couple of Bad Bunny fans. So that was cool! 

Bad Bunny was accompanied by violinists, trumpets and an entire horn section while surrounded by dancers representing a variety of generations.  

A giant screen projected the message “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

Did all of this piss off Donald Trump?  Of course it did.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence.”

Well, I think I get where Li'l Donnie's coming from.

Bad Bunny put on a show full of love with a warm and positive spirit. Of course something like "makes no sense" to someone like Donald Trump. 

Meanwhile and elsewhen, what about the other big draw for the Super Bowl, the commercials?

Here are my favorites from the evening. 

• Ben Affleck returns to shill for Dunkin' with an ad that turns the movie Good Will Hunting into a sitcom called Good Will Dunkin' featuring de-aged 1990's sitcom stars Jennifer Aniston, Jason Alexander, Matt LeBlanc. Ted Danson, Alfonso Ribeiro, Jaleel White and Jasmine Guy as well as why the hell not Tom Brady.  
• Sabrina Carpenter is "tired of boys" and in need of a real man, Carpenter builds one out of Pringles.  Which she proceeds to eat.
• Appliance retailer Bosch turned beloved foodie Guy Fieri into just a regular guy without a goat or bleached tips and wearing drab shirts and slacks.  The horror! Oh, the horror!
• Two time Oscar winner Adrien Brody in an ad for  TurboTax? While "trying to tap into the pain of taxes", the ad's director tells him to dial it back a bit. To which Adrien replies, "If there's no drama, there's no Adrien Brody!" And he storms off in a huff.
• In an intense black & white ad, Emma Stone is angry and frustrated that the domain name of Emma Stone.com has been taken by some other Emma Stone and turns to Squarespace for help.
• Danny McBride and Keegan-Michael Key team up to present us with Halfway There Insurance while Hailee Steinfeld laments she should've gone with State Farm. Thankfully Jake from State Farm and Jon Bon Jovi is own damn self show up to save the day.  
• The Backstreet Boys are back and T-Mobile has got 'em even if the stage T-Mobile provides isn't quite big enough for all five of them.  Backstreet delivers a really funny ad.  
• Andy Samberg becomes "Meal Diamond" to sing about the wonder that is Hellmann's mayonnaise. 

So that is that for Super Bowl LX.

Which is "60" for the Roman Numeral impaired out there.

We're back tomorrow for the Tuesday TV Touchbase.

Until then, remember to be good to one another and “the only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

Race To the Bottom

 Warning sign of racism: When someone says, "I don't want to sound racist but..."  

Yeah, very likely some racist shit will follow.

Or how about this sentence: "I'm the least racist person you know."  

That sentiment is frequently espoused by Donald Trump.

So here's a spoiler: Donald Trump is racist as fuck! 

Since the days when Trump was a younger self professed real estate wunderkind, Li'l Donnie has made it clear his adversion to anyone with a darker skin than his.  

His whole rise to political prominence was fueled by his racist propagation of the lie Barack Obama was not born in the United States. 

His racism was not a bug but a feature with a large enough electorate who was fed up that a black man dared sully the White House with his mere presence for 8 years.  

Trump 2.0 has even more fully embraced the rhetoric and ideology of White Supremacists.  

So it should come as no surprise when Li'l Donnie posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

The video is ostensibly about the 2020 "election fraud" that poor widdle Donnie still thinks cheated him of his big win.

SIDE HASSLE:  After November 2020 when Donald Trump was whining and bitching that Joe Biden and the Democrats cheated and he really won and by a lot, a lot of Republicans in positions of power who supported Trump still remembered what their jobs were and that their loyalty was to the Constitution and not to der Führer.  Repeatedly and consistentlty, efforts to justify Trump's wild accusations of voter fraud were rebuffed by the Department of Justice and dozens of courts. 

For Trump 2.0,  a lot of Republicans in positions of power are in those positions for their loyalty to der Führer and not to the Constitution.

Which explains the raid on the Fulton County (Georgia) Elections Office by the FBI for private voter information to support Trump's delusions of fraud. 

Also on the scene was Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.  As DNI, Gabbard is in charge of international operations such as the CIA.  She had no business being on site for a domestic operation being carried out by the FBI. 

Gabbard was on the phone with Trump during the Fulton County raid and put der Führer on speaker so he could give the FBI agents a pep talk about what a great thing they were doing for the country. 

If all of that sounds suspicious, well, it is. Not only is Trump investing government resources paid for by your tax dollars to further is deranged dementia fueled delusions, but he's trying to stir up distrust in our voting systems ahead of the 2026 mid-terms.  

Which if the Republicans lose control of Congress, Trump and his cronies are in so much deep shit. 

But I digress. 

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Donald Trump is a racist.

Comparing African Americans to primates is a well-worn trope of your standard issue racism and it was so overtly wrong and inappropriate, yes, there was outrage.

No, there wasn't. The outrage was "fake".

Propoganda minister Press secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately leapt into action to defend der Führer. “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

The outrage is fake, you say, dear fraulein? 

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the sole Black Republican in the Senate might take issue with that assessment.  “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”

That just one guy, right? No wait! There's more. 

• Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said it’s “totally unacceptable.” 
• Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) went further by calling it “blatantly racist and inexcusable.” 
• Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) said it shouldn’t have been posted, adding it is “not who we are as a nation.”
• Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) wrote "Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.”
• From the House, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) urged Trump to apologize to the former president and former first lady for his “incredibly offensive” post.
• Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) described it as “heartbreaking." 
• Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) dubbed it a “a grave failure of judgment.”

Reminder: Leavitt defended the racist post and claimed any complaints about it amount to fake outrage.  

And the post remained up and active for 12 hours.

After the complaints from erstwhile Trump supporting Republicans, only then was the post deleted with the following explanation: The video was “erroneously” posted by a staffer.

Who did what when to what now?  

Trump claimed he reviewed the first section of the video and passed it along to a staffer, who then failed to review the whole thing and did not catch the offensive content at the end. “Somebody slipped and missed a very small part."

By the way, for those Republicans who called on Trump to apologize? Well, fuck that option. Trump says he did nothing wrong and has nothing to apologize for.  

FUN FACT: President Harry Truman had a sign on this desk that read: "The buck stops here."  

I suppose if Li'l Donnie had a similar sign, it would read, "The buck stops over there." 

And yeah, Trump assures us once more of his lack of racism: "the least racist president you've had in a long time".

Again, if you have to SAY you're not racist, well...

SIDE HASSLE:  If you watched that clip above to the end, yeah, Trump is holding infrastructure funding hostage to his ego to get his name slapped on things.

There are no limits to his pettiness and his narcissm.  

OK, back to the topic at hand: Trump's a racist.

Anyway, the whole kerfluffle was just a simple misunderstanding caused by a mistake made by somebody else and hell no, we're not buying this.

1) The video is not that long and it's very unlikely Trump did not see it to the racist content at the end. Unless Li'l Donnie's attention deficit disorder is worse that we think.

2) Trump's adherence to racist themes and white supremacist ideology is well documented.  The depiction of the Obamas as apes to Trump would not be a bug but the whole damn point.

3) The offending video stayed up for 12 hours, long after objections to it were made known.

4) It was only when Trump allies in Congress called this damn thing out was the video taken down.  

Click here for a comment on this topic by Mark Evanier.  

The thing is Trump 2.0 has no limits or filters on his raging disdain for people who are not him and no reason to restrain is persistent racism.

Trump's on a race to the bottom to see how quickly he can drag us there with him. 

______________________

BLOG BIDNESS: The Super Bowl was yesterday. A blog post about that will be forthcoming later this morning. 

Winter Weather.... Geez, Enough Already!

 

Winter weather.... geez, enough already!

Here at the Fortress of Ineptiude, Andrea and I have reached the limits of our endurance of exile against the snow and ice.

It's not like we actually go out all that often in the first place.

When given a choice between going somewhere or staying home, we will opt for the more sedentary choice.

But it's one thing to not WANT to go somewhere.

It's another when you CAN'T go somewhere.

Two weekends ago,  several inches of snow and ice were dropped on us here in central North Carolina.

One weekend ago, several more inches of snow and ice were added to what was already there.

Wednesday brought us some more. 

And the snow and ice we were getting had little chance to melt with grey skies and even when the sun did get  a chance to shine, temperatures were below freezing or even in the single digits. 

Winter weather.... geez, enough already!

As I write this on Saturday, the sky is clear and sunny and the temperature is cold but just above freezing.

And the vast wastelands of snow and ice that surround the Fortress of Ineptitude are starting to recede.  

But we've got a big problem with wind.

Wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour. 

By the time this posts on Sunday, the wind is supposed slow down and temperatures will start to climb into the balmy 40's or 50's.  On Wednesday, one week after our last snow, we're supposed to get all the way to 60.

Break out the sun screen, y'all!

As interminable as this winter weather has been, I suppose it will be spring then summer soon enough and then we'll have something new to complain about.

Why is it so hot? When will this heat wave ever end?

And we'll all be feeling....

Summer weather.... geez, enough already!

This (Non) Sporting Life: Duke Vs. Carolina 2026 -Part 1

This is My (Non) Sporting Life, my blog post about sports from a guy who does not know much about sports.

Or care.

I do no care! 

Last night was the first match up between the Duke Blue Devils and the North Carolina Tarheels Men's Basketball teams.

My wife Andrea is a Carolina fan.  She really REALLY cares about her team.  It's a life long passion. Her Carolina fandom is a core component of her reason for living.

I am allegedly a Duke fan because.... why the hell not?

For 39 minutes, Duke was winning this damn thing.

Yay, Duke!

But college basketball games are not 39 minutes long.  

They last for 40 minutes.

And in the last minute...

Carolina ties up the game and with 4/10ths of a second, Seth Trimble launches a 3 pointer which goes in and...

And for the first time the entire game, Carolina has the lead.

And the win! 

You know, I tell you I don't care. I don't have the same depth of feeling for my team that Andrea has for her's but....

What the fuck! Duke was supposed to win this thing!

NO! 

I am not a sports guy and I do not care. 

Fine, let Carolina have their win in their little sportsball game thingy! See if I care.

'Cause I don't! 

Damn it! 

Movie Time: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

It's Movie Time!

Today's movie post is about a movie that came out in 2018 written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen.   

I've posted about movies by the Cohen brothers before such as Barton Fink and O Brother Where Art Thou?.  The Cohen make movies that are distinctive in their voice and aesthetic. Their films challenge the senses and the mind. 

The movie I watched last weekend is very much right in the Cohens' wheelhouse, daring you to follow where they lead and defying your expectations once you get there. 

From 2018, it's The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. 

The full title as it appears on the title screen is The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier. The movie is a collection of 6 separate stories with nothing in common  other than being set in the American western frontier.

And perhaps also there's this connective tissue: life is brutal and unfair. 

Well, that seems kind of dark, don't it?

A darkness that is belied by the appearance of Buster Scruggs in the film's first story. 

"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"

Decked out in white while singing and yodeling on the back of his horse, Buster is a genial, affable gent of wit and intelligence.  He conveys a sense of innocence against the harsh and brutal environs of the American west.

Until he deins to enter a saloon where he is not welcome and we discover that Buster Scruggs is quite the killer, fast, deadly and insanely accurate with a gun.  

A visit to a 2nd saloon goes badly there as well. 

And Scruggs proves to be quite deadly without a gun.

Here's a clip with the "Surly Joe" song 'n' dance number.

You might get an idea of what kind of movie you're getting from that clip.

And you would be right AND wrong.  

You might think you're in for some Blazing Saddles level of absurdity.

But (SPOILER) things do not end well for Buster Scruggs.

Or maybe they do as the toils and cares of this oh so brutal world are left behind. 

"Near Algodones"

Our next story concerns a bank robber for whom Murphy's Law seems to be a constant companion. Whatever can go wrong goes wrong and our erstwhile robber winds up in a hangman's noose.

He gets a temporary reprieve from his sentence but things still keep going wrong.

Good news! He's finally freed from the noose but damn it! More things keep going wrong until....

He winds up in a hangman's noose a second time. 

You might expect he might cheat death a 2nd time but...

Nah, we've moved on to our next story.

"Meal Ticket"

A somber story about an aging travelling impresario and a performer known as Harrison. When he draws back the curtain on his mobile stage, the audience is greeted by a pale dour looking young man.

With no arms and no legs.

But by God, he has a voice.

With a beautiful, powerful speaking voice, Harrison regales his audience with a variety of oratory ranging from Bible passages to Shakespeare to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.  

These performances are working against the ever colder winter weather and competion from another travelling act. 

A chicken.

A chicken who does math. 

The impresario buys the chicken and now has a choice to make: kill the competition or keep the chicken and lose Harrison.

Given the dire and bizarre turns these stories have taken, I'll leave it to you to guess who wins out in a competion between humanity and poultry.

Because we're off to our 4th tale, as we follow a grizzled prospector into a lush, beautiful mountain valley.

"All Gold Canyon"

You know what this valley needs? Holes! 

Our prospector gets to diggin', lookin' for gold! 

After several days of hard working and constant digging, the prospector finds a mother lode of gold!

Success! 

But a young man with a gun shows up with other ideas. 

Given how these stories have played out so far, you might think you have an idea how this turns out.

And you would be right AND wrong.  

"The Gal Who Got Rattled"

The fifth story on our journey is one where the ending of this one hurts me the most.

Alice Longabaugh is on a wagon train heading to Oregon with her older brother, Gilbert.

Gilbert dies, leaving Alice alone with no family, no support and no prospects awaiting her in either Oregon or back east if she turns around.

Over time, Billy Knapp, one of the wagon train leaders, finds himself in the position of taking care of Alice and the two develop a strong bond with each other.  

Billy proposes and Alice accepts and hey, one of these damn stories ends on a happy....

Sorry... it does not.

The ending is exceedingly heartbreaking. 

"The Mortal Remains"

Our last story picks up in a stagecoach making a midnight run across the plains to Fort Morgan, Colorado.

There are five peope inside the stagecoach:

An Englishman (Thigpen) and an Irishman (Clarence) who are in business partners "ferrying cargo", meaning the wrapped up corpse on the roof of the stagecoach.

Frenchman René is a suave sophisticate as well as an invertebrate gambler. 

There is a nameless fur trapper rambling about his past relationship with a Hunkpapa woman in which neither knew the other's language but they got along just fine (wink! wink!)

Sitting between René and the Trapper is Mrs. Betjeman, a stern austere woman, a fine upstanding Christian who can't believe she's stuck in a stagecoach with all these sinners.

These 5 people engage in an intense and passionate discussion about the nature of humanity and differing views of morality.

Such a frank discussion is not something the morally uptight Mrs. Betjeman is prepared to cope with and she becomes apoplectic.

 René calls for the coach to be stopped and we get our first glimpse outside at the driver, a faceless man in a dark cloak swirling about him as the stagecoach rushes through the dark.

Thigpen explains that the stage company's policy is not to stop for any reason. 

Thigpen and Clarence clarify their line of work as "reapers", or bounty hunters. Wanted Dead or Alive? Dead works just fine for Thigpen. He describes his joy at watching his prey die,  especially the expression in their eyes as they "negotiate the passage" and "try to make sense of it".

The coach arrives in Fort Morgan and stops in front of the hotel, a dark and foreboding edifice. More funeral home than Holiday Inn. 

Thigpen and Clarence drag their "cargo" inside while  Mrs. Betjeman, René and the Trapper stand outside the doors of the... hotel, reluctant to go in. 

The stagecoach leaves without dropping off any luggage.  

Guys, I might be a bit slow here but I think this whole last story is some kind of metaphor for death or something.

Something for me to ponder when I try to go to sleep at night as the credits roll.

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department 

• Tim Blake Nelson was Buster Scruggs. He was Delmar O'Donnell in O Brother, Where Art Thou? .  Tim was the only actor in the  Soggy Bottom Boys to do his own singing.  
• One of my favorite character actors is Stephen Root who plays the bank teller.  Root was Milton in Office Space and Jimmy James in NewsRadio which is just two of the dozens and dozens of roles this man has played.  
• Liam Neeson is the Impresario who takes Harrison to his performances.  Hard to tell under that grizzled old western look.  
• That guy at the boarding house with Alice Longabaugh kinda looks like that weird train guy from Big Bang Theory and Kevin from Kevin Can Fuck Himself. Yep, it's Eric Petersen.  
• Underneath a thick mustache and a thick French accent is Saul Rubinek as René. Much like Stephen Root, Rubinek is an actor who is frequently in some damn thing or another. Right off the top of my head, I know him from roles in Frasier, Leverage and Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

Ballad of Buster Scruggs is challenging as most films by the Cohen brothers can be. In any given moment, in any scene, the comedy can come at you from an unexpected direction and likewise, so can the tragedy take surprising turns.  

The off kilter nature of the Cohens is accentuated by the chosen format of telling not one story over the course of a movie but rather exploring six distinctive narratives. The broad absurdity that begins the film with Buster Scraggs evolves through different tales before ending with a dark and disturbing meditation on morality and death.  

I may not have gotten what I expected from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs but what I did find in this film was something that was genuinely entertaining and thought provoking. I was in turns amused by what I saw and I was disturbed by it as well.

Which means mission accomplished  by Joel and Ethan Cohen. 

Your Friday Video Link: Taylor Tomlinson

One of my favorite stand up comics working today is Taylor Tomlinson. Your Friday Video Link post for today is a collection of some of her routines.

Taylor finds out her audience is a bit younger than she suspected.

Taylor has a discussion with an audience member about when to say "I love you". As well as the number of adult friends a grown woman can have. 

That woman has seven friends?  SEVEN?

That exceed the number of my friends by..... seven.

Next up, Taylor has an idea for medical care.

An anxiety alternative to the ER sounds like a good idea.

Life in your Twenties? Taylor has thoughts....

           

I'm in my 60's now and no one should still expect anything from me.

And that is that for this week's edition of Your Friday Video Link.

We're back tomorrow with Movie Time! 

Next week in Your Friday Video Link: CANADA ROCKS!!

It's EVEN MORE METRIC!!!

Captain Marvel and the Cosmic Power of Twinkies!

Before Brie Larson was Captain Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in the comeek bukes, Captain Marvel was a dude known as Mar-Vell.

Captain Marvel was not a big seller but it served the purpose of keeping Marvel's copyright on the name "Captain Marvel" so DC Comics couldn't use it for their revival of Shazam! 

Despite not being a leading title in the Marvel Comics Group, Mar-Vell still staked out some prime territory in the ubiquitous Hostess ads that ran back in the 1970's.

Actual comic artists drew these one page adventures extolling the virtues of cupcakes, fruit pies and twinkies.

Curt Swan once said he made more money from a single Hostess ad than he did from a whole issue of Superman. 

I think this one from April 1975 may have been drawn by regular Captain Marvel artist Al Milgrom.  

Shortly after this ad appeared, DC pressed their Captain Marvel into service for the glory and wonder of all things Hostess in June 1975. (Looks like art by Bob Oskner.)  

Yeah, I may have been a DC kid but the Marvel Comics version was a better Hostess ad.