Monday 2/10/25
Went to the market Saturday and there was a mountain of bags of chips on account of the Super Bowl. Mount Chips. Says something about what a country of drooping, lowest common denominator, get-drunk-in-front-of-our-massive-TVs people we are. You could have scaled this thing. Chip Mountain was encircled at the bottom by a ring of containers of dips minus their tops.
Mentioned this to a friend. They immediately asked if I had bought peppers and kale. I guess I'm that predictable in these matters. The kale I actually bought on Friday. At the market I was getting peppers--so correct there--and onions and mushrooms. The peppers should have been bought at Haymarket but I didn't go.
How are Americans so dense that they don't know Super Bowl is two words? If you live in this country and can so much as print your name, you have seen the term Super Bowl again and again. Thousands of times. So how bad do you have to be at reading and retaining--ever--anything that you read not know it's two words?
Publishing people usually hate sports. They do so because sports requires ability and there is competition and sports also involve a level playing field. That publishing people and MFA types hate sports is another reason why they are so bad at writing.
You have to be competitive to write well and you also cannot be weak. Those who fear competition and have always sought to avoid it and be sheltered from it are weak. When you are weak you are less adept at handling reality and truth.
When you are not dealing in reality and truth, when you don't accept reality and truth, and when you don't know how to make these things clear to a reader in ways that the reader would not have seen, known, and felt on their own, you cannot write well.
People who are competitive want to earn. They don't want to be handed. Most people in publishing and the MFA people and the horrible writers want and needed to be handed what they get without earning it or deserving it.
That's how they've always wanted it to be, needed it to be, led to believe it should be, used money to ensure that's how it will be, and their system serves as a club where that's how it will be.
The Eagles got their title and the Chiefs didn't get their third consecutive. I saw none of it--grabbed some sleep so I could get back to work. I did see the box score though, of course. What is next for Kansas City? Are they on their way down and out? A bad game from Mahomes. Chances of making it to four Super Bowls in a row may be lower than winning three consecutively. It could be Buffalo's time.
I'm not saying the Chiefs or Mahomes are done. But I will say that when things end in sports, they end fast. You think something will keep rolling on indefinitely--or for a good while yet--and then it's gone. Sometimes that happens so quickly that whatever you thought would necessarily happen never materializes. Add in age and what it takes to maintain an edge and it's easy to understand the here today, done tomorrow nature of sports at the highest level.
Brady lost three Super Bowls, but they were all close. I've written on here about how I don't think Mahomes will approach what Brady did when all is said and done--Brady went until age forty-five with no drop-off and won in three different decades--but these things all matter for the resume.
Americans spent a billion dollars betting on this Super Bowl. I'm telling you: a time could very well come when the games aren't even played. Apps and AI will determine the result. The Super Bowl will be simulated. This world is making a push to remove reality from it, to make everything virtual. We can remove ourselves from the earthly equation and leave an app/AI version behind. How many people like sports just because they're in a fantasy league or they have money on the game? Sports get worse. Everything gets worse.
Regarding the response to the half time show: The white guilt cat people are so self-warped that they could never become un-warped. It's like the mental version of cutting one's self, but for attention and credit; next to none of them mean anything that they say and care only about themselves and how they look. To anyone but themselves they look ridiculous. And worse. They're so pandering. Horny moral pandering, which is immorality.
Beanpot title game is tonight between BC and BU. I'm more interested in that, frankly, than the Super Bowl. When the team from one of these schools wins the national championship, they do so after having won the Beanpot that year. I think it can be an important tone-setter of trophy season.
A couple of Jeremy Swayman stats: He is currently fortieth in the NHL in goals against average and thirty-sixth in save percentage. What this means is that Jeremy Swayman is one of the worst goalie in the NHL this season. It's no blip/dip. That's who he has been since reporting to the team at the end of training camp.
I have no issue pointing this out/driving these factual points home because Swayman talked himself up. He wanted to be the market setter. He said he was great, and he has not been great. In three of his last five games, his save percentage has been below .900. That's typical. He doesn't put good stretches together. Sounds like a guy who's a co-starter and not the clear-cut number one starter, doesn't it?
Charlie McAvoy having an "A" on his shirt for Team USA for this Four Nations tournament. There is a lot to pick apart from McAvoy's game, but what I'll say right now is that offensively he's basically Rod Langway. A forty-point a year player. When he's supposed to be your main guy on your back end for your power play and an offensive contributor and your big minutes guy and supposedly this great skater (which he isn't). That is so far from good enough.
There is perhaps no player in the league who has a bigger disparity between his reputation and his actual game than Charlie McAvoy, and that's with his reputation coming down some in recent years. I think he's a team culture problem, too. Got paid, stopped working. Regressed, when he wasn't that great to begin with. Bad example. Bad leadership.
An observation: Three of the four Boston teams are just flat out boring now. The Red Sox lack for stars and pizzazz and even when they were doing their small ball thing last year and playing an athletic game you knew they weren't going anywhere and knowing a team isn't going anywhere and that ownership sucks and doesn't care about winning makes it hard not to be boring.
You hear nothing about the Red Sox in Boston now. They aren't talked about. You wouldn't know spring training is about to start. The Bruins aren't going to make the playoffs, the Patriots have devolved into a moribund franchise--and you can only get so excited about a new coach who has had limited success in his coaching career and a quarterback who may or may not be the answer at his position--and still the Red Sox rate no commentary.
That speaks to where baseball is at, too. The people who are into the game now are into it in a TikTok-y kind of way, not a watch-the-game-and-think-the-game smart fan's way. They follow for the clips so they can post about them on social media. Take away social media, and would anyone watch baseball or talk about it? It's like we're too dumb to watch baseball. We are the right amount of dumb for football. Those who would be interested in the Red Sox know they're not trying to field a competitive team.
They look around the league and they see the social media-ization of the game with the countless posts about Ohtani and Judge and Sox fans know they don't have anyone like that on their team. They used to--Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz. Those guys were these guys from before. The big guys in the game.
Now it's like Jarren Duran? Anyone expecting him to do what he did last year? Rafael Devers? A low-level, out-of-shape star who isn't injured enough to be out of the line-up but is injured the right amount for people to make excuses for his ho-hum--and boring--levels of production--if they're of a mind. The Sox' pitching is blech year in, year out with guys who were never that good on retread deals after injuries and later in their career when they're on their way out. What is supposed to happen? A .500 record and fourth place in the division, which at least isn't last?
The Celtics just beat the Cavs on the road and blew out the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Impressive, right? Less impressive with yet another home loss to the Mavericks sandwiched in between. I've said since the beginning of the season that the Celtics are a bad home team. Why? Because they're so much better than everyone and they don't get up for the games? They're not so much better than everyone. So what's the problem here?
I don't believe in switch-flipping. Teams that think they can flick a switch on when they want to are teams that don't win, in every sport, and always have been.
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