Fly Eagles Fly

 

Trump: I watched this great quarterback who has a phenomenal wife. She’s a MAGA fan.. when quarterback wins as much as he’s won, I’d have to go with Kansas City.. pic.twitter.com/RszJlOLSdF

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 9, 2025

Then you go losing, because the Eagles soared.  Philadelphia won. The birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A minority-majority city Trump hates because we have no use for his ass. 

I don't especially care about sports, but I love my city, and I love it when Trump is wrong. I am wearing green tomorrow and being fucking insufferable. I want to point out Trump had some braindead shit to say about Patrick Mahomes and Tommy Tuberville, and I still consider Mahomes a great player.  This wasn't his night, and I don't blame him for what Trump says or does.

But I celebrate my city and this win because, because, because. 

Good things happen here, and we will celebrate them. 

Sometimes this city wins. Sometimes people Trump doesn't support wins. That's all I'm saying. 

What in the Slap-Happy Hell?

 

Power Slap—the series developed by UFC prez Dana White—drew in nearly 300K viewers in its debut on Wednesday. The TBS show outperformed the Young Sheldon reruns that took its place last week after White exchanged slaps with his wife on NYE. My @FOS story. https://t.co/uTDbEdjEVy

— A.J. Perez (@byajperez) January 20, 2023

I have a hard time watching football anymore because of the issues regarding CTE.  A lot of good athletes and decent people have experienced brain trauma that changed their personalities, caused serious life repercussions, even cost players their lives and the lives of people around them. 

I grew up loving professional wrestling. Sadly, professional wrestling also has a reputation for being a sport where people can experience a shortened life span, and a lot of that has to do with the toll constant physical trauma has on--well, just every damn part on one's life, from pain management to potential brain damage. The incredibly talented Chris Benoit was found to have had CTE after he killed his wife and child and himself. I've seen too many people die young who are associated with that sport, as well. 

So, call me a killjoy, but I just don't see any joy in a so-called sport that revolves around rattling the fuck out of someone's brainpan and subjecting yourself to getting your own skull rocked. In any fighting discipline, it's true that you can learn how to take bumps in a way that protect your neck and head and minimize the damage your extremities experience. 

My Nostalgia Is Acting Up

Eminem defies NFL and kneels in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick during Super Bowl halftime show https://t.co/XDI07ULqDk

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 14, 2022

They told Slim Shady to please stand up, but Slim Shady said God sent him to piss the world off.

There was a lot of commentary on Twitter about how this half-time show was about my generation, and frankly, we never did say we were going to die before we got old. We said don't you forget about me. And we are getting old, and I wish more of us were getting wise. 

The fucking kids aren't all right. Charlie Kirk thinks the half-time show was full of sexual anarchy. This dumb man-baby must have been peeing in his diapers through the Janet Jackson and Prince half-time shows. He literally comes off like John Lithgow's character in Footloose.  That's two Footloose references I've made this month. I may be getting old. I repeat myself. Matt Walsh, middle aged but younger than me, doesn't know "woke" means aware, and Marshall Mathers is aware he's a white guy who owes a fuckton to Black music and Black people. That he's supposedly making amends for anything else is Walsh's own bullshit. 

I'm glad the convoy asshats didn't come to LA to fuck with the Super Bowl despite what loons like Wendy Rogers and Senator Rand Paul wanted. That would have been a shitshow--all those Confederate flags in LA. I don't think those two remember how things could go, because they forget that urban America is also real America. They think it would scare the shit out of people who live in the cities that right-wing dumbasses think have been burned down by BLM. They forget riots that have happened not even thirty years ago. 

I don't, The truckers don't, either, and they probably know that unlike Ottawa or Windsor, if you go to LA or NY or Philadelphia, you might meet with an entirely different atmosphere that isn't going to wait for police action because nope. Residents will find a way. People have turned out en masse for deceased kids they didn't even know, and some jackasses want to disrupt the shelves at Acme and whether our own kids get fed--are you for real? 

Let's Not Make the Super Bowl Weird, OK?

I don't follow sports because for the most part, nothing is actually ever going to be as good IMHO as WWE/WCW/ECW through the mid-to-late 1990's. That was just an incredible era for wrestling, and the fact is, I never bothered to learn all the plays or teams or could follow who was part of what team anyway. I really did super great at fantasy baseball for a couple of years because even if I suck as a sports fan, I am really great at understanding how statistics work and managed to get players like Wade Boggs and Lenny Dykstra in my batting rota to maximize hitting for on-base which routinely led to higher scoring, while keeping stiffs like Canseco off because who needs the errors? He totally gave up more bases than he hit for (homers are a misleading stat).

Anyhow, I don't know much about football even if I once wore one of the world's homeliest Eagles starter jackets back in the day (I think it was like this) when I was dating a total sportshead. (I looked so boss, though, with my mall-bangs, door knocker earrings, and skintight acid wash jeans. I am so glad pictures do not still exist of this late '80's/early 90's incarnation of yours truly, even if I was quite the Generation X East Coast artifact.)

But anyhow, the Super Bowl is like some kind of weird national holiday even for people who don't really follow sports. Even if you don't like football, there's something just right about the everybody eating snacks and judging commercials that feels so uniquely American. We're watching millionaires give each other brain damage, but we're also coming together as a nation to absorb something to say to our co-workers the next day in the break room.

Then along comes this weird post-2016 election season where people are still all politicized and being weird. Tom Brady and Bill Belichik are Trump supporters, apparently. Anyhow, the graphic above represents some alt-right guy making it weird.

Um. I don't really think it's cool to make the fandom of people in the US northeast about white supremacy without their signing off on it, and from what I gather--not all of them really would based on things like the electoral scoreboard. I'm not sure it's really a great thing for Trump that some of his followers automatically assume his support is also an endorsement of white supremacy, but I am damn sure it is not a great reflection on the New England Patriots organization that the alt-right wants to co-opt their talent and sports prowess to try and make some bullshit point--but I don't think the team invited this at all. And I know of so many NE sports fans who manage to be gung-ho about their sports teams while not being actual RW assholes at all! They are cool people who are homers! They just represent with the jerseys and the ticket buys. They aren't like, goose stepping and what not.

I'm just saying--let's not make the Super Bowl weird, where odd political signifying nonsense takes up our bandwidth, instead of factual sportshead stuff like whether the Atlanta defense collapsed and Brady et als capitalized. Let's just enjoy nachos and rewatch commercials like they were shorts put up for Sundance. C'mon. This should be entertainment. Not another "But I want to punch Nazis" day.

FWIW--I kind of always want to punch Nazis. But that has nothing to do with football. And also doesn't always mean "with a fist".

The St Louis Rams Displayed Community Spirit

Several of the St. Louis Rams football team players expressed solidarity with the protesters against police brutality and unlawful slaying of black youth triggered by the August 2014 death of Mike Brown by multiple shots from the weapon of police officer Darren Wilson.  They made the "hands up" gesture that should signify that a person has no weapon in hand, and is no threat. They also linked arms during the national anthem.

As messages go, this is gentle, but resonant. There was nothing violent in their display--what they were saying was that the surrendered body needs to be treated by law enforcement as just another citizen, maybe to be taken into custody, but not to be killed. They were saying, with bodies of color and bodies of no small athleticism or size, that this gesture is all people of color and size have to signal their acquiescence to the force of law. And maybe they were implying Big Mike made that very gesture when he was shot down.

I think the St Louis Police Officers Association is "out of bounds" in suggesting that this silent protest was a kind of disorderly conduct or incitement by the players. It will, at this point, always be open to argument whether there was any aggression on the part of the slain teen, or whether Officer Darren Wilson slew him with little to no provocation. There won't be a real trial, I fear. I'm not sure of the grounds a federal civil rights violation case would have, and a civil case may not even be truly in the offing. Darren Wilson, who recently decided to quit the force for the sake of the community (and with nearly a million dollars in donations and payola for his ABC interview) may breathe something like easy.

But people who look like Mike Brown, John Crawford, Ezell Ford,  Sean Bell, Tamir  Rice, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, and on and on, still can't exhale. Why shouldn't someone speak for them?

I'm sorry, but skeptical as I am about some parts of the Ferguson extended protests--this part was legitimate, and felt right. It delivered a peaceful message to lots of people about the vulnerability of even strong bodies. And if criticizing the use of police force on anybody that was not found guilty in a court of law  (yes, even Mike Brown needs to be presumed innocent) is somehow a crime--let's put the constitution on trial. No. They didn't tell anyone to do anything with their demonstration--they just did their own thing. And it didn't even interrupt the game. I call "no foul".