Whipped Cream Difficulties

Tuesday! Tuesday! Tuesday! Nitro-burning Tuesday Morning Quarterback after the jump!

Before we begin, though, we’d like to recap the reasons why we do this, for the benefit of any new readers:

Sometimes, Easterbrook does good work; he spent much of last season discussing the NFL’s response to head trauma among pro athletes, and I felt he was right on target. Sometimes, he uses his column to argue for things like increased Federal vehicle mileage requirements, and I think someone needs to respond to those arguments. Sometimes, he uses his column to go off on various SF TV shows for their lack of plausibility. And sometimes, Easterbrook just goes completely off the damn rails.

With that out of the way, let’s get started on the first TMQ of the new season.

Dear James Harrison, Ray Edwards, and other players: the game evolves. If you don’t like the way Roger Goodell runs things, get out and start your own league. You can now skip the first 805 words of Easterbrook’s column.

However…

One thing going on is that Goodell is the guy who imposes fines. Some players think of themselves as gladiators who should be allowed to do as they please in an arena of combat. Some feel it is double-talk for NFL management to impose fines for exactly the types of hits that coaches encourage. Some think there is such a thin line between clean and dirty play, practically anything could be fined except running out of bounds. Some just don’t like to pay fines.

It would be nice to see TMQ address this in a future column. We don’t care much for the gladiator theory, or the “I don’t like to pay fines” theory, but the other two accusations against Goodell and the league are worth more detailed discussion, in our humble opinion.

Thinking about it some more, TMQ’s “play by the rules or get out” theory is also worth some more discussion. It is easy to say that we agree with TMQ’s attitude in this specific case, where the rule changes in question are intended to make the game safer. But flip the coin around: if players were concerned about safety, and the NFL refused to make those rule changes, would TMQ still have the “play by the rules or get out” attitude? We suspect not, but is there a consistent moral theory that applies here? Perhaps Kant’s categorical imperative?

Harrods and Selfridges already have Christmas displays up. Oh, Ghu. The Christmas creep has started already.

“The ‘Wonder Woman’ remake starring Adrianne Palicki was cancelled by NBC before that first episode aired.” No, Gregg, it wasn’t. David E. Kelley made a pilot for a proposed “Wonder Woman” series for NBC. NBC chose not to proceed with making the series based on what they saw in the pilot. This isn’t “cancelled before the first episode aired”. Every year, producers make pilots for television shows and show them to networks. Some of those pilots are “picked up” by networks and are turned into series. Sometimes, the network will ask for a second pilot before they make a decision, or pick up the series but ask for changes from the pilot. If the network is Fox, some of these pilots are picked up, but the series never airs. In many cases, networks see the pilots and decide not to pick them up for a series. (In the old days, failed TV pilots were frequently recycled as TV movies. These days, they mostly just vanish, with a handful of exceptions.)

(As a side note, we’ve seen that picture of Adrianne Palicki in costume a lot. And frankly, we understand why the series wasn’t picked up. We’re sure Ms. Palicki is a very nice and very attractive woman, but that costume and makeup…they do not flatter her, to be polite.)

“Since she was governor for 942 days, half of which is 471, this equates to 50 printed pages of email per day, including Sundays and holidays. When did Palin have time to govern?” We don’t know, Gregg. But we’ve worked full-time jobs for the past <mumble mumble> years since email became popular. And if you printed out all the emails we sent on a daily basis, in addition to doing our regular jobs, it probably would amount to 50 or more printed pages a day. (Especially if you’re using Outlook, which tends to add a lot of cruft to printed emails. And if you organize things one email per page, and if you consider that a lot of emails are responses containing the full text of the original, it’s easy to see how simple one word responses can turn into a lot of printed pages.) Also: “including Sundays and holidays”? If Ms. Palin hadn’t been sending emails on Sundays and holidays – if she had been treating her responsibilities as governor as a nine to five Monday-Friday job – we feel confident TMQ would have been among the first to bash her for that.

(WCD has our issues with Ms. Palin, too. But fair is fair.)

(Speaking of fair being fair, since we bashed the Adrianne Palicki photo, fairness requires us to note that the Anna Paquin photo does show her assets to great advantage. Also, the photo of the Dallas Mavericks dance team is pleasing to look at. And we applaud the inclusion of a Nixon photo, too: WCD is generally pro-Nixon references.)

One nice thing that TMQ does is picking up obscure obituaries. We were unaware of the passing of both Maynard Hill (perhaps the greatest builder of model airplanes ever) and Judge Terence Evans. Both men sound like people WCD would love to have been friends with: a guy who flew a model airplane across the Atlantic Ocean, and “the sole federal appellate judge ever to place fake cheese on his head in public”. (We’re not sure about the fake cheese part: has anyone checked with Alex Kozinski?) WCD joins TMQ in mourning the passing of both gentlemen, and extends our regards to their families.

J.J. Barea, man of the year: praise for the Dallas Mavericks, and LeBron bashing (insert fourth quarter joke here).

“‘Madden 2012’ will have realistic concussion results”? We’re curious about how this will work.

Murdoch bashing. Comments on the Ohio State scandal.

Tressel admitted he was warned that OSU players were breaking NCAA rules, but said he did nothing because he “couldn’t think of who” to report this to. Ohio State has a six-person NCAA compliance office. It took me 45 seconds to get the names and phone numbers.

We were unaware that Tressel’s resignation and $250,000 fine had become a retirement, a waiver of the fine, and $50,000 to Tressel in severance pay. There’s also some interesting detail about Ohio State’s academic performance claims.

Tweety Bird, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Creep returns, and we wish it hadn’t. Thank you to TMQ for reminding us that the Arena League is still functional, and for making us aware of the “Southern Indoor Football League“.

“In Zimbabwe this winter, the country’s 100 trillion-dollar bill was trading for about $5 US.” Yeah, WCD would pay about that for one as a souvenir.

The 1960s caused priestly pedophilia. Why does a $500 bribe to fix a $100 ticket make economic sense? (Short answer: insurance.) “TMQ Likes Mini-Golf Courses With Pirate Ships and Dragons”. WCD does, too. We should take our nephews mini-golfing soon. (Not this weekend, though, as we are planning to take them to the Snake Farm.) We’d also like to extend an offer to TMQ for a few rounds of mini-golf if he ever makes it to Austin. (And if we can find a mini-golf course; the decline of mini-golf courses should probably be a subject for a future WCD post.)

Armageddon tired of Doomsday predictions. WCD is happy to see TMQ point out the lack of biblical support for Doomsday predictions, but we wish he had cited Matthew 24:36.

Bottle rockets are not for indoor use. There goes TMQ, sucking all the fun out of life.

“TMQ thinks her new Oprah Winfrey Network should be called Oprah Winfrey’s Oprah Winfrey Network Starring Oprah Winfrey Presented by Oprah Winfrey.” This joke was funnier when it was on FARK. And when it substituted “Tyler Perry” for “Oprah Winfrey”.

TMQ:

David Protess, who did magnificent work of national significance at Northwestern University’s journalism school, was forced to resign while John Lavine, the school’s dean, who fabricated a quote and then lied about it, kept his job.

Actual quote from the linked article about John Lavine:

The committee found that while Lavine did not have notes or e-mails proving the students’ comments were real, there was no evidence of fabrication and that the quotes “were consistent with sentiment students expressed about the course,” Linzer wrote at the conclusion of the investigation. [Emphasis added – DB]

TMQ literary fraud watch: Three Cups of Tea.

Magazine articles are fact-checked; many newspaper stories are reviewed by researchers; much of what appears on ESPN.com is fact-checked.

This, apparently, does not include TMQ’s ongoing item about the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

“This summer’s best [summer series -DB] is the USA Network show ‘Necessary Roughness.'” Meh. Maybe. We haven’t seen it. Props to TMQ, though, for giving “Police Squad” a shout-out.

And what happened with that lockout, anyway? “For all the sturm und drang between the players and owners, the new collective bargaining agreement just isn’t that different from the old one.” Minimums go to $375,000 in 2011 and $435,000 by 2015. “Former players now can keep their league health care plans for life, though must pay premiums.” This may be a good thing, but WCD would really like to see what those premiums end up being. It’s nice that they have the plan available, but if the premiums are out of reach for the average player, what’s changed?

What’s the dirty secret of the NFL, the one that explains why there was so much resistance to opening the books? “…that an NFL franchise is such a license to print money, almost anyone could run one.”

SF film bashing: “Source Code”. 104% meat. Bonus SF film bashing: “Battle: Los Angeles”.

Governors wasting taxpayer money: Chris Christie and Deval Patrick. More Goodell complaints. TMQ’s favorite inn in Maine. The Rory Awards for the most gratuitous use of the words “Belgium” and “Libertarianism” in a TMQ column.

WCD wishes to confess that we have fallen behind in our “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” updates since Julie Taymor was canned. We hear the revised version is a vast improvement over her previous one. We also hear that just about anything, including a complete substitution of the “Manos: The Hands of Fate” screenplay, would have been a vast improvement. Fortunately, TMQ is there where we are not.

Prominent plagiarists. “…by degrees, I could call myself Dr. Easterbrook, but TMQ is a more fun title”. But wouldn’t “Dr. TMQ” be even more fun? Shirtless Congressman. The NYT hates Muammar Qaddafi, who, by the way, wrote an editorial for the NYT in 2009.

And that’s a wrap, Jack. At least for this week.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Austin, Hysteria, Law, Nixon, Obits, Photography, Planes, Sports, Theatre, TMQ watch, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.