Whether you're at the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt's End
*As the Rangers fall into the funk of another September Swoon, don't even start with blaming manager Ron Washington. His offense was decimated in the off-season (Josh Hamilton, Mike Napoli, Michael Young), further diluted during the season (Nelson Cruz) and his pitching staff (Colby Lewis, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison, Alexi Ogando) has suffered significant injuries. Right? Even if they sweep the A's in Arlington over the weekend, Rangers will be in second place come Monday morning.
*I've been watching/remembering football since 1970 and Thursday night I witnessed a first. An amazing, incredible, improbable first.
Louisiana Tech kicker Kyle Fischer made a 25-yard field goal by banking the ball off both uprights. Left. Right. Through. Most unlikely three points in the history of college football. Think about it. An oblong-spheroid football - traveling end over end, mind you - bouncing 90-degree sideways off a small, round piece of metal. The "flat" surfaces of both objects are minuscule and to have them meet just right is ... I'd love to see that
Sports Science nerd or Bill Nye re-create this one. Seriously, could Dan Bailey turn that trick if he tried? Off the left upright. Then off the right upright Then through the goal post, but landing on the ground left of the original target, the left upright. No way. I'd bet him $1 a try for as long as he wanted to try. What Fischer did is the bowling equivalent of converting a 7-10 split, with an egg-shaped ball. We just saw the Halley's Comet of football. Once in our lifetime.
*I'm all for cracking down on choreographed end-zone dances in the NFL, but the fine levied for Barry Church's touchdown celebration is ridiculous. His crime? Throwing the football into the stands. His punishment? $5,250. Allowing balls tossed into the crowd is one thing baseball has right over the other sports.
*I know this is a stretch, but give me Mayweather over Alvarez Saturday night at the MGM in Vegas. He's 44-0 because he is the best defensive player in all of sports. Too quick and agile to ever get a clean hit on his cocky mug.
*
Alabama 37, Texas A&M 28. Even though it's impossible to root for
Nick Prick Saban.
*Remember all the back-to-back-to-back walk-off fireworks at Rangers Ballpark in August? Feels like years ago, eh? The Rangers have lost their way in the West because they suck at home. After getting swept by the Pirates they're only 39-32 in Arlington, but 15-16 since July 1. The A's at home? 47-27.
*Strange Thursday night in college football. The above-mentioned field goal and, in Lubbock, a fox ran onto the field during Tech-TCU. No, not a hot girl from the '70s. An actual animal. (Come to think of it, never seen
that before either.) It prompted Sybil and I to wonder - an then attempt to mimic - the sound a fox makes. She went with a sort of growl-meow. I offered the high-pitch, low-volume howl. Are we close? Or, on second thought, are foxes too sly to make a noise at all?
*Wanna hear a horrible idea?
Let's spend $15,000 to add a technological tweak to a "Whites Only" water fountain in Dallas as a reminder as to why we took them down in the first place. No, let's don't.
*
Hot.
*
Not.
(continued from page 1)
*Sorry, but if you have yourself tricked into Triskaidekaphobia - fear of Friday the 13th - then we're probably not going to be friends. Life is hard enough without being irrationally scared out of your shorts by inanimate things that have zero potential of endangering you. One of my pet peeves is being weak-minded, as in, falling for crap like superstition and phobias and knocking on wood and, yes, karma. But I've got my fingers crossed behind my back as I type this. Just in case.
*Thanks to all you who attended our official Launch Party last Saturday night at Baby Dolls. Even the guy who brought his Rangers' koozie, and bought it a lap dance. "Dude," he told me, "I don't go anywhere without it. It's good luck." Man, humans are weird.
*The sex, drugs and cheating at Oklahoma State isn't shocking at all. Surprising part of the scandal? That T. Boone Pickens and Dez Bryant somehow escaped being implicated in any way, shape or form. Good for them.
*Is it just me, or does Lorde's "
Tennis Courts" and Matt and Kim's "
Cameras" have the same beat?
*Really, Tech? Storming the field after beating TCU? The 1-loss Frogs were ranked 24th and favored by only three. Not worthy. Sorry. You know what should have happened after the game? Fans should have walked up and thanked the referees. For a blown illegal fair-catch call that negated a Frogs' punt-return touchdown. And for an interference call on a Tech punt return that turned what should have been a Raiders' fumble into Tech possession plus a 15-yard penalty. Atrocious.
*I know this sounds like a broken record, but I talked again today with a source heavily involved in a new all-sports radio station set to launch in DFW. He says the wheels are in still in motion. That the idea is alive and kicking. AM dial. 50,000 watts. "Guy talk." But, at this point, I'll believe it when I
see hear it.
*A commenter on this blog referred to me last week as a "pussy." Pretty sure he meant it in a derogatory way. But it got me to thinking. Shouldn't "pussy" be the ultimate compliment a man can give someone? We think about it all day. We crave it. We honor it, put it on a pedestal. We long to spend our days ogling photos and videos of it. We lie, steal, cheat and work 80-hour weeks to be able to afford it. We've fought wars over it. Yet somehow being called "pussy" is supposed to hurt my feelings? Calling someone a "big pussy" should be a way of acknowledging that he's one of the most admired, respected people on the planet. Of course we're also the people who bestow compliments such as "You're the shit." Man, he repeated, humans are weird.
*Twitter has filed preliminary IPO paperwork to take the company to the stock market. It has less than $1 billion in annual revenue. I'm so dumb I don't understand how it has any revenue. Never seen an ad on Twitter. You?
(continued from page 2)
*One day I'm watching these lucky Lottery winners on TV and one of the guys has on a T-Shirt that says "Keep Calm ... Chive On." Didn't understand, but didn't think much of it. Until, that is, I'm watching JumboJerry last Sunday night at AT&T Stadium. During a timeout they're scanning the crowd for hot chicks and - bam - a buh-NAN-uh in a "Keep Calm ... Chive On!" T-Shirt. So I investigated.
Damn. Gotta get me one of those shirts.
*Reminded last night that Bill Belichick is an all-time jerk. There was a skirmish at the end of Patriots-Jets and two New York linemen - Willie Colon and D'Brickashaw Ferguson - were ejected. Happened in the final minute and all that's left was one Tom Brady kneel-down and game over. But, nooo,
Belidick is insistent that the two ejected Jets are made to literally leave, forced to run from their bench across the field to the locker-room tunnel. Because, as we all know, Belichick is such a stickler for rules. Unless, of course, he's setting up secret cameras to spy on other teams' practices. Then his morals are a tad more flexible. How does anybody root for that guy?
*Those stubbornly clinging to the notion that baseball is still America's Pastime must cringe at this. The Olympics just reinstated wrestling over baseball.
Wrestling! Ouch.
*Always said I wouldn't mind living in Scandinavia, and now I know why. First, those neutral countries are never involved in world conflict. Second, they're the happiest nations on the planet. Perhaps 1 begats 2, no?
A new study says the happiest countries in the world are 1. Denmark; 2. Norway; 3. Switzerland; 4. Netherlands; 5. Sweden. The U.S. came in at No. 17. Now get back to work and worry some more on how we can fix Syria's problems!
*Didn't take race-baiting columnist/blowhard Jason Whitlock long to get into trouble at ESPN. In commenting on
Sports Illustrated's fantastic Oklahoma State scandal story this week, Whitlock said of author Thayer Evans: "Let me end by saying this and I honestly mean this without malice. It wouldn't shock me if Thayer Evans couldn't spell "cat" and I say that in all seriousness." In all seriousness? Really? Does Whitlock have any idea how stupid it makes him look to think that an elite investigative journalist can't spell a three-letter household word? Sounds like somebody's pissed a big story got broken right under their nose.
*A man - Houston attorney Tony Buzbee - paid a record $115,000 for a Texas A&M "12th Man" license plate. Even though he's giving it to an A&M war veteran, that's an Aggie joke, right? $115,000?!
*If Mark Sanchez played quarterback for the Jaguars would we even know he was hurt? Instead, ESPN is reading his texts, displaying anatomy diagrams and breathlessly reporting every detail about his shoulder injury. He's a below-average quarterback on a mediocre team. Not interested.
*Dead 'n Gone: TV theme songs. I grew up singing along to
Gilligan's Island ("Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale ... ") and
Cheers (" ... where everybody knows your name ... "). These days I love
Dexter and
Breaking Bad, but I don't know one word of their opening songs. Why? 'Cuz there aren't any. I guess
True Blood ("I wanna do bad things with you ... ") is the exception. Speaking of openings, what do we think of Carrie Underwood's
Sunday Night Football routine? Feels uncomfortable at first, but I betcha by December we won't remember how ol' whatzhername's version sounded.
*What's former Stars' star Mike Modano up to these days?
Crafting his own beer. Called "561", after the number of goals he scored in the NHL. Very cool.
(continued from page 3)
*So let me get this straight: Football is a violent game played by tough Gladiators that ... wear wigs? Watching the Red Zone channel last Sunday I was taken aback by all the long hair sticking out from helmets and down backs. Since we never notice that "in-between" length on these players, we have to believe they're wearing hair extensions, right? Man, he recited for a third time, humans are
weird. Then he looked in the mirror, remembered that he underwent two hair transplant surgeries, has an appointment for a fresh frosting of the tips Saturday morning, mumbled something about "you" and "weirder" and trundled off to bed.
*I got my eye on a new iPhone 5s. The fingerprint lock is muy bueno. And, speaking of technology, when Tweetdeck died about a month ago I fiddled around with alternatives like Tweetbot, etc. Final choice: Regular ol' Twitter. It's perfectly fine on my phone. Who knew?
*You'd think one Leon Lett Super Bowl highlight or the memory of DeSean Jackson's
Monday Night Football gaffe would do the trick, but apparently not. Twice this season already I've seen players scoring touchdowns instead drop the football just before crossing the goal line. Happened last night when Tech running back DeAndre Washington took a swing pass and sprinted down the sideline for a key score in a 10-10 game late in the fourth quarter. But inexplicably - trying to look cool, I guess? -
he casually dropped the ball at the 1-yard line. I don't want to sound too old-manish here, but does dropping the ball actually
in the end zone somehow strip you of street cred? It's gotta be the dumbest, most maddening play in all of sports.
*Remember the "friend" who I loaned $6,500 to in May? After much consultation I decided to have my attorney send him a demand letter. If he doesn't repay by Oct. 5, it's off to small claims court where it's a no-brainer. I've got our agreement, my work and his excuses all neatly documented. Hate to do it, but I'm left with no choice. If it was $65 or even $650 I'd have more patience, but $6,500 is real money. Right, Pizza Buzz?
*We hear all these people who "die", see a wonderful bright white light inviting them to Heaven before being yanked back to life on Earth. Ever hear of somebody who temporarily died and reported seeing darkness lit only by searing flames? Didn't think so. How convenient.
*Speaking of - and wondering about -
Pizza Buzz? Yeah, me too. Construction delays/snafus have continually pushed us back. At this point Oct. 1 seems realistic. And, yes, I'm beyond frustrated with starting a business from the ground up. Why didn't anyone warn me? Oh, you tried? Screw me. Being the first restaurant in the Metroplex to deliver pizza and beer will still be a success, it'll just occur after foreplay that has been longer and more expensive than I envisioned. Oct. 1. Knock on wood.
*Diana Nyad swimming is one thing.
But flying across the Atlantic via a bunch of toy balloons? No friggin' way he makes it.
*How powerful is the NFL? Last week its games were the top-rated show of the week in all 30 of its TV markets. That's how powerful.
*This weekend? Tonight Sybil and I are going to
Dia De Los Toadies at the Panther Island Pavilion in Fort Worth. Never been to this water concert venue, but looking forward to it. Saturday is tennis, followed by 'Bama-A&M. Sunday is Cowboys-Chiefs, capped off by the sold-out Dinner For Justice event, emceed by Sybil and produced by
DFWRescueMe. Don't be a stranger.
