Whipped Cream Difficulties

Football season again. Soon, the air will chill. Soon, the Christmas decorations will start appearing in stores. Soon, Gregg Easterbrook will be writing about TV shows and the blur offense.

Oh, wait. Did we say “soon”? We mean “now”. After El Jumpo…

“This season, fast-break football may highlight the NFL.” This season, the Texans may win the Superb Owl. This season, pigs may fly. Ah, that little qualifier “may”.

(Also, 465 words down.)

“But when a defense sells out to stop someone or something, other options are offered.”

TMQ informs us that Peter King has jumped on the bandwagon of his crusade to change the name of the Washington Redskins. We don’t really have a dog in this fight, but we’d like to thank TMQ for reminding us that we should start reading “Fun With Peter King” again.

TMQ’s Super Bowl pick is San Francisco over Denver. Unless my pick is New England over Atlanta — the Flying Elvii just ran up 431 yards of offense using volunteers from the audience at the receiver positions. Maybe my pick should be Jersey/A — the last time the Giants opened with a loss at Dallas, they went on to hoist the Lombardi.

Kind of a shame ESPN did away with Easterbrook’s bad predictions year-end review.

Sweet: Denver-Baltimore (Manning’s first TD). Sour: Tampa-Jets (the personal foul). Mixed: Chicago-Bengals (Chicago went for it on 4th down, the Bengals burned all their timeouts).

Another year of TMQ, and more of Easterbrook’s obsession with asteroid defense.

Barack Obama announced a plan to use an automated spacecraft to capture an asteroid, then drag it to orbit around the moon, there to be studied by astronauts. The idea sounds interesting, but doesn’t have any clear relationship to preparing a defense against space rocks — mainly, this project would give the astronaut corps something to do.

We must have missed this plan somewhere. And we agree with TMQ: it seems pointless.

Building a defense against space rocks would take at least a decade and cost at least dozens of billions of dollars, would not involve the manned flights that make for dramatic TV footage, and might result in systems that are never used.

“Dozens of billions of dollars”. Or roughly one Facebook.

(We’d trade Facebook for an effective asteroid defense, you bet.)

Space historian Robert Zimmerman recently wrote that a cycle of nonsense has taken hold at NASA. President A announces a vast, sweeping space plan whose big costs won’t happen until he leaves office. President B arrives and huffily cancels A’s plan, announcing his own vast, sweeping project whose big costs won’t happen until he leaves office. President C arrives and cancels B’s plan, announcing — fill in the rest. All that happens: The pork-barrel flow to congressional districts with NASA installations continues. “America’s incoherent space program is unable to accomplish anything other than to spend money,” Zimmerman concludes. NASA has not produced an important new piece of hardware in more than a decade, though has burned through about $180 billion in that period.

Three points here:

• We love “Tangled Up In Blue”.
• We agree with Zimmerman’s main point here. We suspect our NASA employee friend who wishes to remain anonymous would enthusiastically agree, too; if we hear from him, we’ll update.
• That said, what’s the counter-proposal for NASA funding? Five year allotments?

Seats at the laugher Kansas City at Jacksonville contest — teams a combined 4-28 last season — could be had for $14. That’s below face value: owners of Jax seats were taking a loss to be rid of them.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

“Best restaurant name ever.” Oh, come on, Gregg. We’re sure we can come up with better ones. Also, we wonder who had the name first: the restaurant or the blog/podcast?

Last season, perennial power USC finished 7-6. This was spoken of by sports commentators and the Trojan faithful as some sort of calamity. Recently the focus has been on whether USC will win this season. Saturday, USC was held to 7 points by Washington State. Soon boosters may be calling for Lane Kiffin’s head.

Bring us the (metaphorical) head of Lane Kiffin! And a side salad! And some more bread!

That’s why what is disappointing about Kiffin is not the Trojans’ won-loss record, rather that under him, only 49 percent of African-American players have graduated, versus 73 percent of African-Americans in the USC student body as a whole during the same period.

Another TMQ trope making a return appearance this year. (And, again, it isn’t that we disagree with TMQ. We just despair of the meaningful change TMQ wants taking place unless an asteroid strikes the Earth and wipes out college football.)

Monday’s noon “SportsCenter” led with 12 minutes — a long time in live broadcast terms — on Texas allowing 550 rushing yards in a loss at BYU. This was spoken of as some kind of calamity. The calamity in the Longhorn football program is that in the most recent year, 46 percent of African-Americans graduated. That was not mentioned.

Concussion watch: college coaches are ignoring trainers, and high school football enrollment in Pittsburgh is down.

Atlanta: why don’t they rush?

This season, TMQ will track the 500 Club — teams that have put up spectacular offensive stats, and lost.

Filled with joy, we are. (TMQ’s examples include Rice at Texas A&M, Georgia at Clemson, and a few others.)

During the 1930s, Rep. Louis Ludlow, Democrat of Indiana, campaigned for a Constitutional amendment that would vest the power to initiate war in a national referendum. In 1938, the proposed amendment drew 209 votes in Congress. One of the objections to Ludlow’s plan was that a national referendum would take months to administer — perhaps too long if events were pressing. Today using electronics, such a referendum could be put together in days.

“Days”? We think TMQ vastly overestimates the efficiency of government. Can you imagine the debates over the wording of the referendum? And would you trust an electronic referendum?

Chicken-(salad) punts: Buffalo, Arizona. The Football Gods Smiled. The Football Gods Chortled. The Football Gods Will Have Their Revenge. Three. Three items in a row with the Football Gods. We’re waiting for The Football Gods Go Out For Some Beers.

This week in TMQ’s TV Reviews: “Under The Dome”.

“Under the Dome” calls itself based on the 2010 Stephen King sci-fi novel, but TMQ thinks the series actually is based on “The Simpsons Movie,” which hit theaters in 2007. The premise of “The Simpsons Movie” was a huge impenetrable cupola lowered over Springfield. Chester’s Mill, the town in “Under the Dome,” seems to be located in the same state as Springfield in the Simpsons.

• That thought isn’t unique to you, TMQ.
• Lord knows, we have our issues with King. But we believe Big Steve when he says that he had this idea in 1972, and tried to write it again in 1982 – long before “The Simpsons Movie”.
• Even if it was a take-off of “The Simpsons Movie”, what would be wrong with taking that premise and treating it seriously?

Led by the endless Batman and Spider-Man remakes, the Hollywood remake has spiraled out of control.

Ah, the “Hollywood is out of ideas” trope from FARK.

The summer film “R.I.P.D.” was a remake of the television series “Brimstone.”

We don’t remember “Brimstone” being a buddy cop show. “Men In Black” is a much closer comparison. (And “R.I.P.D.” is actually adapted from a comic book, Greg.)

The quickly cancelled primetime show “Vegas” was assumed to be a remake of the series “Vega$,” but actually a remake of the cult hit “Crime Story.”

No, Greggles. Just no. “Vegas” was (loosely) based on the life of Ralph Lamb, former sheriff of Clark County. “Crime Story” wasn’t even set in Vegas for the first season.

An upcoming big-budget flick, “Ender’s Game,” sounds wearyingly similar to “The Last Starfighter,” in theaters in 1984.

The original short story, “Ender’s Game” was published in 1977. It was expanded into a novel that was published in 1985 (and, we can assume, publishing schedules being what they are, completed sometime before that). But keep on (pluckimg) that chicken, Gregg.

(More things to purchase for TMQ: The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’ll actually use it.)

TMQ devotes 526 words to the Green Bay – San Francisco game and doesn’t mention the officiating once. (We looked ahead: there is an “Adventures in Officiating” item, but it is mostly about Detroit and Ndamukong Suh.)

“Browns-Jaguars on Dec. 1 Shaping Up as Worst Game of Year”. Also, we’ve found the limit of TMQ’s obsession with undrafted unwanted free agents.

Thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening. (On a side note, we saw this shirt when we were in San Antonio, and wish we had bought it.)

(What are we supposed to take away from the repeated references to “newly rich John Harbaugh”? A little class warfare there, TMQ?)

It’s the home team, not the visitors, that’s supposed to stage the big comeback.

“This could be a long season for the Steelers…” Please, God, we don’t ask for much…

Wow. Who knew that crowds would boo when things go against their team? The Football Gods Chortled. Again. They sure do seem to spend a lot of time chortling, don’t they? Must not be much else to do up there on whatever the Football Gods equivalent of Mount Olympus is in TMQ’s mythology.

But the NFL still does not require teams to use only the helmets that are believed to reduce concussion risk, nor does the NFL require the double chinstrap.

The operative word in that sentence being “believed”. “Believed” by TMQ, that is.

A study of more than 1,300 players on football teams at 36 Wisconsin high schools found that players wearing older helmets received just as much protection from concussion as players with flashy new models, said study author Timothy McGuine, senior scientist and research coordinator for the University of Wisconsin Health Sports Medicine Center in Madison.

And, going back to another TMQ obsession:

The study also found that players who wore a specialized or custom-fitted mouth guard actually had a higher risk of concussion than players who wore a generic mouth guard provided by their school.

MIT 28, Pomona-Pitzer 26. Wait, MIT isn’t an “obscure school”. (Though Pomona-Pitzer, which is actually two! two! two schools in one! may be.)

Located in Cambridge, Mass. the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers intramural air pistol.

Gregg, Gregg, Gregg. You left out the pirates.

(“Pirates of the Charles River” would be a fun movie. Johnny Depp very much optional.)

And with that, we’ll draw this week’s TMQ watch to a close, and begin working on our email to the ESPN Ombudsman asking the musical questions “Does TMQ have an editor? Or a fact checker? Or any adult supervision at all?”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 10th, 2013 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Clippings, Clothing, Movies, Neuroscience, NFL, Shirts, Sports, TMQ watch, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.