2001: A Year In Two Acts

Well, here we are wrapping up a year many of us never thought would end. Looking back on our spaced-out odyssey through 2001, I can only think two things: 1) I had to get one more "Space Odyssey" joke in before the year was over, and 2) it's hard not to divide the year into 2 halves, one before September 11, and one after. I almost did my end-of-year list that way, giving my salute to one person or thing from before 9-11 and one from afterward. However, I decided that was kinda dumb and it focused attention on the attacks, and that's certainly something we don't need to do anymore than has already been done. So, therefore, it's on with this year's really dumb list of noteworthy events, because if I don't make fun of people, then the terrorists win, dammit...

The "We Hardly Hated Ye" Award: the XFL, hands-down. Any sporting league whose main attention getter is a guy who puts "He Hate Me" on the back of his jersey is doomed to failure. That of course didn't stop me from watching it for the first couple weeks, but just like the rest of the country, I tuned out. Still, there were some positives to take away from the whole experience: "He Hate Me" himself, Rod Smart, has a promising career as a Philadelphia Eagles special teamer, and as TV shows go, at least the XFL lasted longer than "Bob Patterson".

Dumb PETA Protest of the Year: Originally, this was the Dumb Protest Award, but since it was virtually assured of going to PETA, just like it did last year, I just gave them the award for good. This year, it was at the Ultimate Fishing Derby on Syracuse's Onondaga Lake in early August. PETA put up a billboard by the side of the lake showing a dog with a hook in its mouth, saying "You wouldn't do this to your dog, why do it to a fish?" My answer: because unlike Korea, we don't eat dogs here.

Funniest Thing I Saw This Year: a bus coming down South Main Street in front of the radio station where I work, with a lighted destination sign that read, "Are We There Yet?"

Afroman: Meet Lou Bega and the Baha Men. I'm sure you'll have a lot to talk about.

Dumbest Lawsuit: Coming in just under the wire this month, a parent sued the local school district in Union City, California, after his son didn't make the varsity basketball team. He is suing for the coach's termination, and oh yeah, $1.5 MILLION!!! The money, he says, makes up for lost wages the kid could have made someday as a pro. Oh please, you gotta have a lot of faith in your kid if you think he's guaranteed to go to the NBA and he can't even make his school's varsity squad (and yes, I know Michael Jordan got cut once). Of course, up at West Genny, all the parents had to do there was whine and complain to get the coach to leave, which is how they went from 16-6 last year to 2-7 this year.

The Final Insult: the release of the media recount of the disputed Florida presidential ballots, right in the middle of our war on terrorism. Although Rolling Stone claims that it was a total spin job to keep Bush's approval ratings up, people don't read Rolling Stone for political insight, they read it to see near-nude pictures of Britney Spears. The end result is what we knew all along: Bush won, the Supreme Court did not elect him president, end of story. Funny how nobody wants to bring that up anymore...

Most Overplayed Song of 2001: Let me put it to you this way, "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks came on the radio in my car the other day and even though I hadn't heard it in months, it STILL reminded me of "Bootylicious".

Road Rage Incident of the Year: March 22 in Annapolis, MD, the perhaps misnamed Majestic John Gough III was stopped by a flag man in a road construction zone. Gough proceeded to get out of his car and beat the crap out of the flag man. He'll be spending the next 10 years in jail, but isn't kicking some construction guy's ass something we all wish we could do?

Dumbest Invention: By far, the Segway. You've seen it, the scooter-like thing that goes 20 miles an hour and is supposed to get you places quicker. The inventor explained this product by saying, "If you're going from New York to Philadelphia, use a car. If you're going from 21st Street to 42nd Street, use this." Uh, no. How about if you're going from 21st Street to 42nd Street, you WALK! I can see a nation of obese people using these as just another excuse to avoid any form of exercise.

Best CD I Got This Year: Once again, Pink Floyd can't win this award for their greatest hits compilation, but I did get it and of course I loved it. This year, the honor goes to Ben Folds for "Rockin' the Suburbs", which has pretty much gone under the mainstream radar, but then again, the "mainstream" is still trying to figure out how Staind can sell more albums than 'N Sync.

Who Will We Talk About In the Next Year In Music: Foo Fighters, more from Alicia Keys and Michelle Branch, The Strokes, Jimmy Eat World, Weezer, Pink, the Rolling Stones, and Brandy.

Who Will (Hopefully) Just Go Away In 2002: I think you know where I'm going here... Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, O-Town, Britney, pretty much the whole TRL bunch, as well as Kid Rock and the interchangeable Disturbed-System of a Down-Linkin Park rap-metal groups.

My Record On 2001 Predictions: well, Christina Aguilera got yet another #1 hit for "Lady Marmalade", and while Mandy Moore didn't get a sitcom like I predicted, she is practically a VJ now, so I was sorta right there. I hit the nail on the head for big years from Dave Matthews, Destiny's Child, and Tool. However, the new STP album fizzled, Jessica Simpson, O-Town, and rap metal still won't go away, and oh yeah, I said the Chicago Bears would go 1-15.

Dumbest Thing I Wrote Here This Year: Other than the aforementioned 1-15 Chicago Bears prediction? Well, I of course, think that dumb statements from me here are rare. Actually, I would point out the number of causes I thought were important to talk about (moderate Republicans leaving the party, kicking young people out of their primary hangouts and onto the streets, even all the coach and ref-bashing in high school sports) that seem pretty silly now after the events of 9-11.

Finally, A Couple of Thoughts For 2002: First of all, those of us who are over 11 years old are lucky enough to be the few who will get to live in two palindromic years in their lifetimes (numbers read the same forward and backward-- 1991 and 2002). The next one won't be until 2112, which was a pretty good Rush album, by the way. And secondly, there's a live-action Scooby Doo movie in the works for next summer, rumored to be starring Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Fred and Daphne. Now, considering the fact that Freddie and Sarah are dating, doesn't that lend credence to that whole "Fred and Daphne split off from the rest of the gang so they could boink" theory???

Oh, and Happy New Year.

Bowling For Morons, Part 2: The Who-Cares.com Bowl

I'll bet you didn't know this, but we have arrived at the most tedious point of the college football season, the bowl season. It's easy to forget about the start of the bowl season; after all, there are so many of them now, and all have interchangeable or forgettable names and they match up two equally interchangeable or forgettable teams with 7-4 records to play for the right to say they won an extra game this season. And of course, it's all about money.

The bowl season kicked off Tuesday with the inaugural New Orleans Bowl, pitting the champion of the Sun Belt Conference (is that even Division I-A?) against some Big 12 or Mountain West or WAC also-ran. See how easy it is to get confused? Anyway, apparently nobody in town even knew it was happening, because only 18,000 people showed up for the affair, and one of the teams didn't even have a winning record! Next year, if this keeps up, Susquehanna may be playing in a bowl game.

The next night, we were treated to the GMAC Bowl, which used to be the Mobile, Alabama Bowl, but unfortunately Mobile can't spend the big bucks on naming rights like the good people at GMAC can. East Carolina and Marshall slugged it out for 4 1/2 hours, through two overtimes, before Marshall emerged victorious, 64-61. Most people saw the result and thought it was a basketball result. "And why the hell are they playing in Mobile? Some kind of Christmas tournament?" Marshall came back from down 30 to win the game, don't know why I bother with the details, because nobody cares.

And that is the point of all of this. NOBODY CARES ABOUT BOWLS ANYMORE!!! Not since the BCS rendered all bowl games but one (or two this year) irrelevant. And especially not since we hit bowl game overload in the past few years. We now get treated to a smorgasboard of Oahu Bowls and Silicon Valley Bowls, and my god, there's even one in Seattle! They DO know it usually rains there this time of year, right? And then there's the mother of all abortion bowls, the Humanitarian Bowl. This game is played every year in (get this) BOISE, IDAHO! Why, you may ask? Because the National Humanitarian Hall of Fame or something like that is in Boise, which is remarkable, because the only thing I thought was in Boise, Idaho was a bunch of Idahodians. Can you imagine being the team that won its way into THIS spectacle?:

Players: "Yeah, we made a bowl game, where are we going? Florida? Arizona? California?"

Coach: "Nope, you're going to Boise, Idaho."

Players: "Is it too late to cancel?"

Here's how messed up Boise is: they can't even get the color of their FIELD right!!! IT'S BLUE!!! YES, IT'S A BLUE TURF FIELD!!!

Meanwhile, the other big problem is the glut of advertisers that put there names before the bowl, or worse yet, ON the bowl. It used to be we had the Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl; hell, for a few years, we even had such wonderful yearly events as the Garden State Bowl, Cherry Bowl, and even the Bluebonnet Bowl. Recently, corporations started attaching their names to the games, like the FedEx Orange Bowl or the Mobil Cotton Bowl or the OS/2-turned-Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Then, they decided that just wasn't good enough, so voila, you have the Blockbuster Bowl!!! Then, Huizenga dropped his sponsorship, and it became the Carquest Bowl. Then, Carquest dropped their sponsorship, and it's now the MicronPC.com Bowl, or something like that. It's easy to get confused, there are so many of these .com bowls, it's ridiculous. We have the Insight.com Bowl, where Syracuse is playing this year, and so help me god, the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl. Then again, anything's better than the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl. Or not.

What you end up with all of these games is a watered-down pool or games that nobody watches outside of the fans of the two teams involved, and sometimes even that's not a sure thing. The attendance is small at these games, one has to wonder how they even make a profit. But sure enough, there they are, matching up the 4th place team from the Big East with the 6th place team from the SEC or something like that. Once again, I say, let's go back to the old days. 12-15 bowl games, all of them by invite-only (conference finish means nothing unless you win it, then it's a sure thing). Maybe then, people will consider making a bowl game an accomplishment again, as opposed to now, where a 6-5 record gets you in.

And finally, on an unrelated but football note, I need to say something about the aftermath of the Cleveland Browns riot last Sunday. I saw the whole thing play out live on my TV screen and I hadn't been more shocked or flabbergasted by what I was watching since I saw the World Trade Center collapse on September 11th (and that's not humor, I'm being serious). However, I knew what was going to happen in the hours and days following this incident, and it did. An endless parade of talking heads and holier-than-thou sportswriters all looked down their collective noses at the beer-swilling masses who root for the orange and brown and went on and on about how improper this all was. And they trashed Browns owner Al Lerner and GM Carmen Policy for having the gall to make excuses for the behavior, saying they were freezing and loyal to their team, and hell, at least nobody got killed, right?

Well, I do have a problem with fans who take their frustrations out in the form of projectile throwing that doesn't involve pre-mounted targets and a license to conceal and carry. However, I also have a problem with writers and commentators who see these things and suddenly feel qualified to speak about the human condition, or in this case the drunken human condition. Speaking for the great unwashed, I say the following: WE DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!!! They were pissed, and people do dumb things while fueled by emotion and more than a few brewskies. Doesn't make it right, but at the same time, it doesn't condemn the citizens of Cleveland to a lifetime of ridicule and second-class citizenship. Besides, setting the river on fire a couple decades back already clinched THAT deal for them. Two perfect examples of why I'm right on this: 1) The other night on Monday Night Football, as the Saints fans did their best impression of Browns fans, Al Michaels ridiculed the fans for their behavior and "everyman" Dennis Miller took my side on all of this. 2) An ESPN.com poll asking people who made the biggest ass out of themselves last week showed that more than twice as many people thought kicker Bill Gramatica of Arizona, who blew out his knee jumping up and down to celebrate a made field goal, was more of an ass than the Browns fans. I do believe the American people have spoken.

Bowling For Morons, Part 1: How the Geeks Stole Christmas

Welcome to Advanced College Football Mathematics and Logic, otherwise known as NCAA 501. It has to be an advanced-level class, because apparently only the smartest among us know how to figure out this joke of a postseason system we have. I'll spare you the obligatory "the BCS has one too many letters" joke, we know it's BS; in fact, this year it's BS-squared. And so, the controversy (which I shall get to momentarily) rages on, and an endless parade of analysts get to come on our TV sets for the next several weeks and tell us why there should be a playoff system or what else is messed up with the system. This is done mainly to pass the time during the glut of meaningless 5th and 6th tier bowl games we now have to put up with (more on that next week).

Well, first thing's first, let's rev up our trusty BCS Rank-o-Meter and figure out how this whole mess came to be. In a perfect world, two teams would finish the year unbeaten and that would settle everything. Unfortunately, some team always comes along and plays the role of spoiler, throwing the system into utter chaos. In the past, this mess could not be solved, due to certain conference entanglements, including the fact that the Big Ten and Pac-10 were not allowed to win an outright national championship because their champions had to go to the Rose Bowl. Thus thwarting the national title bids of the 1991 Washington Huskies, 1994 Penn State Nittany Lions, and 1997 Michigan Wolverines, respectively. Washington and Michigan won half a title, and Penn State was stuck at #2. Makes you wonder why those 20, whoops, 21 (forgot Penn State) teams even bothered showing up to practice if they had nothing to play for. The closest any of them came was 1997, when Michigan won the Big Ten, entered the Rose Bowl at #1 in both the AP and Coaches poll. However, being from the Big Ten, they were forced to play a lower-ranked Washington State team, rather than #2 Nebraska. Michigan throttled Ryan Leaf and co. (a sure sign of things to come for Mr. Leaf), so they win it all, naturally, right?

Well, no. #2 Nebraska won their bowl game as well, and it just so happened to be legendary head coach Tom Osborne's last game. Michigan naturally won the AP's national title, but the coaches gave Nebraska their championship as a going-away present to Osborne. Considering Osborne already had a title to his credit, this was kinda pointless, but there it was. However, the coaches poll has always lacked legitimacy to me. First of all, they could never keep a sponsor, bouncing from UPI to CNN and now to ESPN and USA Today. And secondly, they reward teams that run up the score on inferior opponents. If Oklahoma beats the Sisters of St. Mary's 45-0, they may get some love from the coaches, but if they show no mercy (and considering they're playing sisters, that's a pretty rough thing to do) and win 80-0, they get an extra bounce in the polls. Hence Steve Spurrier's tendency over the years to keep his Florida starters in until late in the fourth quarter, just to ensure that 60-point margin of victory.

So, to fix this problem, the Bowl Championship Series was invented, and instead of writers and coaches flexing favoritism, the task of deciding a college football champion was left to a bunch of computer geeks. They each have their own way of determining strength of schedule and they enter the numbers into their IBM Big Blue or whatever the hell it is and it spits out two worthy teams. Then they factor in "quality wins" and how many losses they have and it all shakes out correctly, right?

Well, again, no. Miami made it easy on everyone, going unbeaten at 11-0, so they're clear-cut #1. Even the computers couldn't screw that one up. Oklahoma was unbeaten, but Nebraska beat them, then 2-8 Oklahoma State beat them. Oregon was unbeaten, but they blew a late lead to Stanford. Florida was unbeaten, but they lost to Auburn and then to Tennessee. Now, here's where it gets interesting... Nebraska was unbeaten, but they lost to Colorado, thus knocking them out of the Big 12 title game and ending their season with a loss. Also, did I mention they gave up 62 POINTS??? I thought Syracuse was the only ranked team capable of that. Texas then became the favorite, but Colorado upended them in the Big 12 title game. Tennessee got into the SEC title game with the #2 ranking, but LSU upset them. And did I mention BYU was unbeaten entering December as well? Only they were completely shut out, because by playing in the weaker Mountain West Conference, they weren't guaranteed a spot in the BCS. So, they threatened to sue the BCS (ah, you knew litigation had to enter this eventually) if they didn't get in. Then they promptly went out and had Hawaii hang 72 POINTS on them, ending their title shot.

So, who's left? Oregon has 1 loss, Maryland has 1 loss, Colorado has 2 losses, but they're obviously on a hot streak. And oh yeah, Nebraska has 1 loss, but remember it was their last game, and they gave up 62 POINTS to Colorado. So, who does the computer say is #2?

Nebraska. Sorry, Oregon and Colorado: Merry Christmas, you've been ho-ho-hosed.

Which leads me to wonder if these computer geeks even WATCH COLLEGE FOOTBALL!!! DO THEY EVEN KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT FOOTBALL??? Then again, you don't have to watch the games to enter your little statistics into your computer and spit out a result. Anyhoo, the point is, for the first time ever, a team has LOST its way into a shot at the national title. Hell, if they had won that game, then lost to Texas the next week, we wouldn't even be talking about this, it would be Miami vs. Texas. And not only that, they're ranked ahead of the team that hung 62 POINTS on them. So, the fur is flying, and the fans want a playoff system and the talking heads want to just yak cuz they get more face time from all of this (so much for only seeing Mel Kiper, Jr. on draft day).

You know what I think they should do??? GO BACK TO THE OLD SYSTEM!!! Sure the coaches putzed it up, but that can be solved. Here's what you do: if the AP says one team and the coaches say another, have a playoff, writer's pick vs. coaches pick. Play it at Tennessee's stadium, therefore ensuring a crowd well over 100,000. Bingo, instant champ, just add water. And it would actually bring back some life to this totally blah bowl system that is completely meaningless except for the last game. It's almost not worth sitting in front of the tube all day on New Year's Day and watching the bowls anymore, because they mean nothing. I want it to be just like 1983, where a Miami team can enter January 1 ranked 5th, watch #2, 3, and 4 lose or win a poorly played game, then upset #1 and steal the championship. That's what I like, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, all on the same day (some of them at the same time, so there's scoreboard-watching). Of course, since very few people want it, it'll probably never happen, but that's what happens when you have a complex solution to a simple problem. The only way people figure they can fix it is to mess it up even more, until eventually, you have something that doesn't even resemble the original.

Now, as for the 25 or so OTHER games that have to be played in the coming weeks, well, I'll reserve my comments on that for next week...

When a Few People Ruin It for All of Us

Ah, a big tip of the cap to this great country we all live in, where we're free to say whatever we want about whatever we want (within reason, there's that whole FCC thing and the yelling "Fire" in a movie theatre bit). However, sometimes I see things happen and it makes me think that some people equate the freedom to express their views with freedom to make sure their views get heard and acted upon. Which leads me to a couple of examples of whiny political correctness that is sure to make your holiday season that much brighter. Or not.

I suppose you've all by now heard about the recent mess in Kensington, Maryland with the ban on Santa. To rehash for those of you who haven't, Kensington is a small town, a bit larger than Camillus, perhaps, and it's near Washington, D.C. Every year about this time, from little towns like Kensington to big important places like Rockefeller Center and the White House, you have Christmas tree lighting ceremonies. In Kensington, the tradition is to have Santa himself do the honors, which of course begs the question: If he's out doing all these PR appearances, how does he have any time to check his list once, much less TWICE? Anyway, two households complained to the town council that Santa was a religious symbol and therefore violated separation of church and state.

OK, I can show you two things wrong with that last statement. First of all, if Santa is a religious symbol, then maybe The Onion is right with its annual Easter decorations gag, and it really was the Easter Bunny who got nailed to that cross. Although Santa Claus does owe some of his origins to Christianity (St. Nicholas, for example), Santa is about as non-denominational as it gets. He delivers toys and flies through the air on a sleigh pulled by nine reindeer, one of whom has a glowing red nose. Is there anything religious about that? People don't worship Santa, he's not mentioned in the Bible, or the Quran, or the Book of Mormon, or even "The Power of Positive Thinking". These two residents in Kensington, however, believed, perhaps short-sightedly, that Santa=Christianity, therefore he's gotta go. While I would like to tell you that revealing the religion of these folks means nothing to the story and is therefore unnecessary, that's not the case, so I gotta tell you at this point that these people are Jewish.

Michael Olesker, Baltimore Sun columnist and also Jewish, referred to this in a recent column of his as a "political headache". Which leads to the second thing I find wrong with all of this. IT'S TWO FREAKIN' PEOPLE!!! Obviously not the first time this has happened, unfortunately; we've seen examples in past Decembers of only one atheist having to open his yap in order to get nativity scenes and the like tossed out, especially if that one person has the much bigger than one-person force known as the ACLU behind him. My point here is that sure these two people had freedom to express their problem with this, but the council also had a right to tell them to (expletive) off. Instead, they dumped Santa and replaced him with a cadre of firefighters and policemen, to pay tribute to the fallen heroes of September 11th. Nice try, but that ain't gonna fly in this case. So, on the big day, reports of anywhere from 21 to 50 people arrived to the gala dressed as Santa. Thankfully, none of them were arrested for "offending the public". However, this also gave the anti-Semitic crowd a chance to display their small minority views, flashing signs like, "If Jews can ban Santa, can we ban Jews?"

This whole tempest in a small town started, innocently enough, with the issue of putting a menorah alongside the traditional Christmas decorations, which I have no problem with. My problem is with the people who think that December was apparently only created for Christians and retail stores, so nobody else can have their holidays observed, at least not in a public place. This situation is currently rearing its ugly head right here in Chambersburg, Pah, where a bunch of fundamentalists are protesting the local hospital's decision to have a Holiday Party instead of a Christmas party, so as to include Jews, Muslims, and whomever else has reason to celebrate this time of year. Well, that rankled a certain minister from a certain local church who gets a certain radio hour on a certain local radio station. She happens to work at the hospital, and so she rounded up some 1800 signatures (and considering this IS Chambersburg, that's a pretty large amount) on a petition to protest this decision. She has yelled long and loud to anyone who would listen (and it's not many, trust me) that somehow deciding to respect all religions means that Christianity is not respected.

There's a certain lack of logic with that statement. Christianity is respected, it's not the only religion respected, but it is respected. This woman, however, would prefer that hers be the only one respected, and you know what the result of this is most likely going to be? No party at all. Therefore nobody gets offended, because nobody gets observed. That's what I don't like, is when people decide that the answer to not including all religions is to EXCLUDE all of them. There's a nativity scene next to the fountain in downtown Chambersburg, the one you have to drive around to get anywhere, and I have no objection to it, even though I characterize myself as agnostic. I would just prefer that if someone wanted a menorah there, put it up. The problem today is that our leaders are so afraid of ANYONE protesting, be it the religious minorities or the Christian "majority", that they often act irrationally in their decisions over just what is the best way to celebrate this time of year. Here's the easiest way to do it: include anyone and everyone who wants to be included, and to those who think they shouldn't belong, yes you have the right to protest, but as I have said in the past in this column, we don't have to listen to you.

Happy Chanukah, Happy Yule, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Ramadan, and oh yeah, Merry Christmas...