football Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

The 2024 Year’s End Quiz continued

tax the rich!

Last year, which is to say yesterday, I started to do the 2024 Year’s End Quiz that Kelly always does. But my answers became Too Damn Long, so I split it up.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Oh, there’s a bunch of people trying to fight the good fight; I suppose there are a lot of local heroes. And there’s a person who has taken a great deal of interest in my genealogical process, which I greatly appreciate.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

There are SO many.

A wide swath of the American public seems to think that taxing rich people is a bad thing, even though they’re not rich themselves. I remember the discussion over the so-called death tax a few years ago, and people balked at it even though they’re extremely unlikely to be in that situation. The Ultra Millionaire Tax Act of 2024 (H.R. 7749) is far less likely to impact them. They won’t be making $50 million, which might be taxable. Income inequality has been rampant since Ronald Reagan’s time, and it has only worsened.

And then, there are the politicians.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) “authored a resolution that would ban trans women from women’s bathrooms at the U.S. Capitol” after saying how much of an ally she is to LGBTQ people.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), possibly the most incompetent Senator, said it’s ‘Not Our Job’ to vet djt’s Cabinet picks (psst: yes, it is)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) blames Democrats for weaponizing the weather.

Most of the Cabinet picks (Hegseth, RFK Jr, Gabbard, and especially Kash Patel)

Orange

Elon Musk and his tech bro buddies (rump jr, Vance)

Where did most of your money go?

The house, specifically a new back porch; the daughter’s education.

What did you get really excited about?

The mystery project

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Sharply sadder, though better now than in the summer.

Thinner or fatter?

Definitely fatter. There is a distinct correlation between my emotional state and my food consumption.

Richer or poorer?

Poorer.

Science!

What do you wish you’d done more of?

I’d be in good shape if I could only get that cloning thing going.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Brooding.

How did you spend Christmas?

With my wife, daughter, and MIL.

Did you fall in love in 2024?

Absolutely.

How many one-night stands?

Lessee: (two cubed) minus (the square root of 64).

What was your favorite TV program?

CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Saturday Morning, Abbott Elementary, Elsbeth.

I’ve discovered that I like watching NFL football in the last year or two that I hadn’t felt for decades. It’s always recorded. Every week, I learn something new. In a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the hated Dallas Cowboys, the score was tied near the end of the game. Cincinnati punted the ball, but Dallas blocked the kick. All the Cowboys needed to do was to let the ball go. They would have possession, and they were already in field goal territory. Instead, one of the Cowboys touched the ball but could not control it. The Bengals regained possession and soon scored a touchdown to win the game. I loved it.

There’s a thin line…

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Hate is such a terrible word. If I did, and I’m not saying I do, it’d be Elon, who helped buy an election by spending over a quarter of a billion dollars on djt and his cronies. Then he dances around, threatening to slash Social Security. As a friend likes to say, “Chuck YOU, Farley!” (Sidebar: one minor reason I don’t prefer the term African-American is that recently, someone referred to Elon Musk as an African-American, and it hurt my head.)

What was the best book you read?

Prequel and The Undertow are in the same vein.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

Cage the Elephant, who Anthony Mason interviewed on CBS Mornings.

What did you want and get?

To get to sing, listen to music, go to plays.

What did you want and not get?

Democracy

What were your favorite films of this year?

Conclave, The Wild Robot, Sing Sing, Ghostlight, Thelma, Inside Out 2, Poor Things, and Anatomy of a Fall. But my favorite was American Fiction.

What did you do on your birthday?

It was a Thursday, so I went to choir and took out the trash. Beyond that, I have no idea.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2024?

Comfortable.

Facts not in evidence

What kept you sane?

I think I went a little insane this year.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Bill McKibben

What political issue stirred you the most?

Global warming, abortion rights, book banning, racism, sexism, homophobia. Oh, and the possibility that good chunks of Project 2025, which I only mentioned a half dozen times, will be enacted, threatening democracy.

Who did you miss?

In the throes of my despair, it was my friend Norm, who died in 2016.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2024:

This is part of what Kelly wrote last year. I think it works.

The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.

If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:

I don’t take many selfies. The one above, taken at the Museum of Broadway in Manhattan (and I don’t mean Kansas) in January 2024, is the only one I can find.

The musical portion of the post

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I was leaning into the third segment of the Monster / Suicide / America medley on the Monster album. The first part is relevant but slightly clunky, but there’s something very basic about the end of Suicide. The third part is anthemic. Lyrics and the track.

‘Cause there’s a monster on the looseIt’s got our heads into the nooseAnd it just sits there watchin’

America, where are you nowDon’t you care about your sons and daughtersDon’t you know we need you nowWe can’t fight alone against the monster

Also

The other song that came to mind was American Idiot by Green Day. This is the 20th anniversary of that album. I’m fairly sure that ADD gave it to me at some point. It’s a great collection, and the title song seems very appropriate. Lyrics. “Starting off the album with a bang, ‘American Idiot’ is a scathing takedown of American culture in the years following 9/11.” The track.

Don’t wanna be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
It’s calling out to idiot America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alienation
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
For that’s enough to argue

The Juice

get it out of my head

It was oddly unsettling. When I was traveling across New York State, anticipating the April 8 eclipse with my best friend from college, the subject of O J Simpson, The Juice, came up.

I could not remember why, but MAK noted that he had seen a boxy white vehicle that perhaps reminded him of a Ford Bronco involved in the slow-speed highway chase after Simpson was supposed to surrender to police.

So he asked if Simpson was out of jail. I was fairly sure that he was, which proved to be accurate. He was “released from prison in 2017 after serving about nine years of a 33-year sentence for a kidnapping and armed robbery in Las Vegas.”

As I noted, in 2016, I watched O.J.: Made in America, “a sprawling five-part documentary on the cable sports network ESPN,” which I still recommend. It’s still on ESPN and available on other platforms as well.

After I watched the series, I wrote: ” I concluded that 1) O.J. likely did the murders but that 2) the prosecution did not make its case due to the tremendous efforts of the defense team and some of the rulings of Judge Lance Ito.” The most angry I ever saw a mild-manned work colleague was when the not guilty verdict, watched by an estimated 95 million people, was announced.

So it was weird that a person whom I hadn’t even thought about in over six years until that trip died four days later of prostate cancer, the same disease that killed my father and which basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is currently fighting.

Who are we?

On the trip, I said that the murder trial told a lot about America in terms of race, celebrity, media, and the justice system. Interestingly, Med Page Today touched on some of those in its story: “The public was mesmerized by his ‘trial of the century’ on live TV. His case sparked debates on race, gender, domestic abuse, celebrity justice, and police misconduct.”

Of course, there were countless comments after Simpson’s death. Caitlyn Jenner, “who married Kris Jenner shortly after the Kardashian matriarch’s divorce from Robert Kardashian, who was Simpson’s defense attorney during the murder trial, was among the first to react on social media. ‘Good Riddance #OJSimpson,’ she tweeted.”

I was more interested in the response by Ron Goldman’s family. They called Simpson’s death “a mixed bag of complicated emotions” tied to the civil case Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman’s families filed in part to direct the proceeds of Simpson’s sort of confessional, If I Did It. They did not receive all they were due in the judgment. And the executor of Simpson’s willl says he’ll ‘do everything’ to ensure Goldman family gets ‘zero’ from the estate.

I’ve now purged the topic from my head. Probably.

Rooting interest for Super Bowl LVIII

At Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas

I’m gauging my rooting interest for Super Bowl LVIII. Now that the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions are not in contention, I have to recalibrate.

For the NFC, there’s the San Francisco 49ers. The team has won five Super Bowls. But they’ve won none since the end of the 1994 season, losing after 2012 and 2019, the latter to the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-20. If the 49ers win, they’ll tie the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots with six. I liked the team in the Joe Montana and Steve Young years.

My parents visited San Francisco in the late 1960s for my father’s business trip, which they enjoyed, in no small part because of this incident. My sister Leslie and I went there in the late 1980s and enjoyed the place. And my favorite baseball player was stationed in centerfield there for several years.

For the AFC, the Kansas City Chiefs have been in the Super Bowl for four of the last five years, winning two after 2019 and 2022, so they are the reigning champions after beating the Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35.

TS & TC

My singular pull toward the Chiefs involves the guano-crazy theories about a billionaire singer dating a Chiefs player.

“Theories about Ms. Swift are prevalent online, but suggestions about what her political motivations are, in terms of her relationship with the N.F.L., were promoted last month by the Fox News political commentator Jesse Watters.

“‘Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?’ Mr. Watters said during a broadcast. ‘Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting.'”

From Newsnation: “On Newsmax, a conservative news network, one host took the Taylor Swift chatter to the level of obsession, decrying what he termed the ‘idolatry’ surrounding her and claiming it is sinful. Meanwhile, on One America News Network, host Alison Steinberg labeled Swift’s relationship with [Travis] Kelce a psychological operation (psyop), characterizing the entire spectacle as ‘bread and circuses on steroids.'”

The Hill notes: “Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate who has thrown his support behind Trump, is perhaps the most high-profile Republican to go after the singer so far, stoking theories that the NFL is rigging football games for Swift’s Kansas City beau as Democrats look for her endorsement.” Former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus called such talk “a powder keg of stupidity.”

Yes, there are TS experts.

On Politico, Swift expert Brian Donovan explains in detail why the political right is targeting a rich, heteronormative pop star. “I think there is a cyclical reaction happening where we saw with the Barbie movie and with the Eras Tour, a kind of woman-centered cultural aesthetic take hold of the American imagination. And I think there’s a ton of backlash to that driven by real basic sexism and misogyny…

“I think what irritates conservatives the most is that this attractive, talented, wholesome, white, successful, Christian, self-made billionaire woman is somehow not on their side. I guess that’s because she is also intelligent.”

Oh, and she just made Grammy history with her fourth Album of the Year win. Maybe George Soros arranged that.

So my loyalties are split. Root for the team that hasn’t won the Super Bowl in three decades, or hope the other team wins and watch a certain segment of the population go insane.

Documentary review: Kelce

New Heights

After I had read that Philadelphia Eagles and NFL All-Pro center Jason Kelce was contemplating retiring from (American) football after the 2023-2024 season, I watched the Amazon film Kelce. It has become the most-watched documentary on Prime Video.

“Jason Kelce started documenting what he thought was his final year in the NFL “(2022-2023). “Instead, the film intimately captures the most epic year in Jason and Travis’s life.”

The viewer gets a detailed view of Jason’s life. His wife, Kylie, tells about their online meeting and strange first date.

During the offseason, Jason notes how beat up his body was. When he was a young man, his body bounced back quickly. Still, as an old man of 35 or so, with numerous broken and bruised body parts, he wonders whether he can recover well enough to play the game at an elite level.

And he is being paid a lot of money, an estimated $14 million in his 12th season, more than any offensive lineman in the NFL. Jason and Kylie have two young daughters, and he wants to be physically able to play with them. Then Kylie discovers she’s pregnant with their third child, due about two weeks after the Super Bowl.

What will Jason do if he retires? Real estate, farming? He asks some retired Eagles brethren, some of whom thrived while others struggled to find something nearly as rewarding.

Then, the brothers were offered the opportunity to “host the popular New Heights podcast with high-profile sponsors.” Jason has also appeared in various commercials.

Really?

Travis said something his older brother thought was BS, that once you win the Super Bowl and then lose the big game, your desire to win it again becomes even greater. Jason and the Eagles won the February 2018 matchup with the New England Patriots, 41-33. Travis and his Kansas City Chiefs beat the 49ers 31-20 in February 2020 but, a year later, fell to the Tampa Bay Bucs 31-9.

The Eagles and the Chiefs met at the Super Bowl in February 2023. This matchup, brother versus brother, made their mom, Donna, an instant celebrity. The movie was more interesting than I expected, given that the outcome of that last game was well-known.

Things that bug me a little

very LOUD

After going to NYC, I started pondering a few things that bug me a little. Maybe a bit more than a little. I’m listing from most to least annoying.

Motorized bicycles are a hassle to avoid in Albany, especially the lunkheads, who insist on riding on the sidewalk. But in Manhattan, they ride in the designated lanes, yet often don’t yield to pedestrians, ignoring traffic signals.

As someone who has been going to the City since 1971, I have found that car drivers have been, in the main, more aware of pedestrians. I had to scowl at only one car, and naturally, it was a taxi driver turning left and heading toward me as I was in the middle of the walkway.

Snow removal is something I excel at. Before I went to church on January 7, I shoveled the walk. The WHOLE walk. Then, just before dark, I shoveled again. There was a dusting the next morning, which I planned to get to, but the sun took care of it.

On the 9th, the absentee landlord for the property next door, Tick, and his long-suffering wife were trying to clear that sidewalk, which had mainly turned to ice by then. Not that he asked my opinion, but he might be better served to engage one of the tenants to shovel for a monetary consideration. Heck, I’d do it myself if he paid me enough.

Bathroom etiquette

I put the toilet seats down. There’s a sign in the all-access bathroom at my church asking people to lower the seat, yet twice in 2024, the seat was up. When I grew up, I was in a household with three females and one other male. I live with two females currently.

A few years ago, I mentioned this topic to a guy who was quite perturbed. He gave me a diatribe about how women are liberated. “Why should men have to touch the filthy toilet seat?” I had no pithy response, so I just walked away. And I still put the seat down, but don’t tell him.

Hands-free cell phones bug me because the person walking down the street yakking is often very LOUD. That said, sometimes, it’s entertaining. One guy seemed to be pumping himself up when he said, “I’m ready to take on whatever they think I can do.” Another guy muttered, “I don’t know what the f*** they’re talking about.” A woman was delighted to share, “I was kind of lying telling people that Disney is involved.”

The photo, BTW, is one in a series of failed attempts to take a decent picture of the moon with my phone. I sort of like it because it looks like the moon lit the porch.

Pigskin conversation

On the other hand, I enjoyed this conversation immensely. On January 14, my wife and I ate dinner at a local Italian restaurant for our lunaversary. A television showed the Green Bay Packers playing at the Dallas Cowboys. The Pack was leading 27-0 until the ‘boys scored a touchdown just before the half.

I told my wife, ” I hate the Cowboys.” The woman at the next table, dining with her husband, said, “I can’t help but overhear what you said. I hate the Cowboys, too.”

While eating and watching the game during the second half at our respective tables, we discovered that our fathers and we were all New York Giants fans. She had one sister, and growing up, they both watched the games on Sundays with their dad. Since her family lived in Delaware County, NY, adjacent to Broome County, where my hometown of Binghamton is, we all watched the games on WNBF-TV, Channel 12, the CBS affiliate that carried the games locally.

I know a great deal about this person, including the fact that she is two years younger than me, except for her name. It was fun for us to do a running commentary of the game. At one point, I noted that Dallas, then down by 24 with about 20 minutes left, could tie the game if they scored three touchdowns AND two-point conversations. Fortunately, GB beat DAL 48-32. Our spouses were very patient.