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Friday, September 26, 2014

Rick Ollerman … Dopey celebrations … fighting in the NHL … No video no crime: a social issue …

Amici:


Rick Ollerman … he’s one of the nicest people IN THE WORLD (bar none) … he writes the best book intros and the funniest emails … he’s also a hell of a novel writer, and he’s got two books (in one) coming out at the same time (the show off) … check out Dana King’s interview with Rick here:


This guy handsome or what?

Get Turnabout and Shallow Secrets here:

Visit Rick’s website here:



What was he celebrating, yous ask? What else, a sack? He was mocking Aaron Rodgers' Discount Double Check commercials. And he WAS their starting middle linebacker and now he’s GONE for the season. And, yes, ESPN had a ball with this one. So am I.

How that mocking routine work out for him (and his team)?

Most of yous know about my beef with celebrations in sports today—they have ruined two sports for me (baseball and football). Yes, I’m a dinosaur. Yes, I’m old school. Yes, I’m (dare I say it) a progressive. I’m also laughing my ass off now that yet another moron in the NFL (but it can be any sport) has ended his season and put his career in danger by celebrating something that doesn’t include winning the Super Bowl.

"Detroit Lions linebacker, Stephen Tulloch, is out for the season after tearing his ACL during a celebration on Sunday."

The linked article starts by saying they are FUN AND NECESSARY. Well, that’s bullshit. They’re wrong. Sports have been played for many years before celebrations were introduced to us via Monday Night Football and then ESPN. Here’s a list of 10 morons from various sports who’ve injured themselves well short of the ultimate goal in team sports—a championship.



Fight Club (in the NHL) … it’s the ONLY thing I don’t like about the NHL … the reliance on fighting to promote the game. Dumb as rocks. It’s the 21st century. Outside of the goons each team employs to do their dirty work, players do not get compensated beyond the contract for injuries suffered from a fight (i.e., concussions that may result in ALS).



Here’s a fight I watched last year … the knockout artist did the right thing immediately after the knockout (called to the other team’s bench for help), but how necessary was this to the game? Did it make for a better game? Or did it fulfill some of your blood lust?




Did that give you wood? Here’s a bunch of them …




Again, what’s the point? A knockout is a concussion. A concussion is serious. Several concussions are deadly (i.e., lead to ALS) … and for what? Fan blood lust? It shows how macho hockey players are? I thought the fact most of them return to the ice missing teeth and sporting dozens of stitches did that. Will you be cheering your favorite hockey fighter when he’s breathing through a straw someday?

Let’s face it, the rules will change AFTER somebody is killed. The rules should be changed now. You need to see knockouts, watch boxing or MMA. You want to see constant contact (head banging way more severe than what takes place in the NHL?), watch the NFL. There’s no contest … in the NFL there is constant head banging, every single play, and by people who bench press 500+ pounds and can run sub 4.9 forties. And the BIG hits in the NFL are way more plentiful than in the NHL. And the NFL has the honor of leading in the number of its former players developing ALS … at least as far as what’s been reported thus far.

Hockey provides more than enough physicality as is, nobody needs to see the bullshit fights. To suggest eliminating fighting softens the sport is absurd. Any asshole can throw and/or catch a punch to the chops (never mind a helmet). I’ve thrown and caught a few myself (and I consider myself as big an asshole as anyone else). Blocking slap shots traveling at 90-100 miles per hours is far greater display of guts than a fight will ever be. It’s kind of like catching a big-ass rubber bullet.

Fighting in the NHL can be controlled (including eliminating most of the cheap shot artists) with just a few rule changes. Will it happen? Once again, not until somebody is killed or gets to spend the rest of their life in a coma and/or as a vegetable. But that’s just the owners having their way in a world where the players are chattel (and unfortunately, more than happy to put their lives and health at risk for the “privilege” of playing professional sports). It’s about time the unions in all major sports do their jobs and protect players with more than lip service.



No video no crime ... Let’s face it, without the video(s) of Ray Rice’s knockout of his fiancé in an Atlantic City casino elevator, the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL would’ve conducted their “investigation” the way they always conducted investigations … and 2 games would’ve been considered too much.

Only the public viewing of the video changed things. A conviction in the Greg Hardy case may (or may not) stand, but that too wouldn’t have resulted in his missing playing time if not for the Ray Rice video. In fact, even with the video out there for 2 weeks, Hardy played the first game and was cancelled just before the 2nd game of the season (this after being convicted). As for Adrian Peterson’s child abuse charges, let’s face it: no pictures, no charges. And we all witnessed the back and forth debacle by Vikings management over that incident.

It’s no different with the police, except all too often with police, offenders (bad cops) somehow manage to skate the justice system. The latest tell all video appeared in yesterday’s news cycle. It happened in South Carolina and involves yet another white cop shooting a black unarmed man.




This isn’t an attack on police, so please spare me the righteous indignation. I have friends who are cops, and know of way too many good cops to generalize and condemn all cops. This is commentary on what SOME bad cops get away with far too often to ignore and/or defend. The number of these instances seems to have skyrocketed of late. Whether it’s the guy in Staten Island using an illegal choke hold to bring down an unarmed man (over selling loose cigarettes) or the cop in Ferguson, Missouri, shooting an unarmed man several times … to the video above and/or below. It appears to me that the power that corrupts (and thus, absolutely) requires punishments that fit the crimes (i.e., jail without protective custody).




Here’s the thing … in the above video, how aren’t all the cops in the video under arrest, fired, and then taken to trial on appropriate criminal charges?

Stop resisting? Stop going for my gun? That cop is the epitome of what we in Brooklyn used to call, and still call, a punk.

Now just imagine what happens without that video. That poor bastard was going to jail.


—Knucks

In reverse order … from Tosca …

The Big Guy … Pavarotti, E lucevan le stelle




Angela Gheorghiu … Vissi d'arte …