The headline in today's The Athletic begins: "Ted Ginn, Jr, ex-NFL receiver and UFL coach...". Ted Ginn Jr? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.

Ginn, for those of you who haven't wasted the past few decades following the rotting corpse of a once great football team called the Miami Dolphins, was the 9th overall pick in the 2007 draft. He played his college football for Ohio State, where he set a record for scoring on punt returns. I presume that's why GM Randy Mueller (who had been installed as something of a figurehead GM during Nick Saban's head coaching tenure only to find himself in over his head when Saban abruptly skipped town) drafted Ginn as high as he did. Ginn had great foot speed but hands of stone. He was an immediate bust.

I happened to be in the stands when Ginn finally scored his first NFL punt return touchdown following the Eagles' opening drive in week 11. The Dolphins were to that point winless on the season, and I had already soured on Ginn. My brother, an Eagles fan, knew it. So when Ginn scored, he immediately taunted me with "Who's your fav-rit play-er? Ted Gin Jun-ior!" He would repeat that whenever Ginn's name came up in NFL broadcasts in the following years.

Admittedly, the 2007 coach and roster Mueller assembled didn't do Ginn any favors. (Can you name any of the three quarterbacks who started for the Dolphins in 2007? There will be a quiz later.) But after just three years in Miami, he was traded to the 49ers. Thereafter, he spent equally short terms with the Panthers, Cardinals, Panthers (again), Saints, and Bears. That's actually a pretty good career by NFL standards, and he wouldn't be widely considered as a bust if he hadn't been drafted so high by a team that needed so much help.

Anyway, all that is what I think of when I read the rest of that headline: "...arrested on DWI charge in Texas." I have to say that it's nice to know that some things don't change. Nearly twenty years later, Ted Ginn, Jr. continues to disappoint.

Pop quiz, hot shot! The Miami Dolphins 2007 quarterbacks: Trent Green (5 starts), Cleo Lemon (7 starts), John Beck (4 starts). Lemon was the only QB on the roster when Ginn was drafted. Later-career Trent Green was signed in June on a one-year deal to shore up a terrible roster. John Beck was the rookie QB taken after Ginn with the 40th overall pick, after JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, and Kevin Kolb. There's a reason 2007 is considered one of the all time worst QB classes.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dear diary dolphins dolphins quarterbacks suck family football news nfl ted ginn jr trey

Not so long ago, qz.com reported a statistical analysis of broadcast NFL games revealing that an average broadcast of 3 hours and 12 minutes contains only 11 minutes of actual action. One hour of the broadcast is commercial breaks, about 20 in all with a total of 100 commercials.

So about two full hours of NFL broadcasts are players just standing around. Somehow, that was the best part of watching the Dolphins lose their opening week game 33-8 to the Indianapolis Colts.

It also bears mentioning that the Colts hadn't won a season opener since 2013, and even more impressively, according to ESPN, no team had scored points on all 7 of their offensive possessions since 1978. (The last team to do it? The Baltimore Colts.)

Another year, same old shitty Dolphins.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dolphins football nfl

30/2462. Alma's Rainbow (1994)
Another '90s black indie coming-of-age movie that aired on TCM, and also quite enjoyable, assuming you like '90s indies and/or coming-of-age movies, as I do. The pacing felt a little uneven, but that's adolescence, isn't it? I found it charming.

31/2463. Scarecrow (1973)
I've said it before, but it bears repeating after his recent, tragic death: When I was a kid, I didn't like watching Gene Hackman in a movie, but as I've aged, he's become a favorite. And it was in his memory that I watched this, which had been languishing on my DVR largely because I expected bad things from his co-star, Al Pacino (who I disliked as a kid and still dislike). In many ways, it's a dark, dark buddy road "comedy" movie based on Of Mice and Men with extra homosexual rape and mental breakdowns! The version I watched seemed to be edited in such a way as to only suggest the rape, but I read online several reviews that agree that the scene was more explicit in its first-run release. I don't know if that's true or another example of the Mandela Effect.

Coke by the barrel? Yes, please!

32/2464. The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)
A post-apocalyptic movie in which the only survivors are hung up on the fact that white and black people shouldn't kiss. Maybe this was as progressive as Red Scare 1959 Hollywood could get, but golly, I spent the movie very irritated that race was even as issue in the empty ruins of New York City. Maybe that was the point, but it's a frustrating viewing experience.

33/2465. The Domino Principle (1977)
More Gene Hackman! This time he's a imprisoned murderer recruited by The Government to carry out a clandestine execution. His wife (who he killed for) is played by Candice Bergman, dressed down in a bad wig to look just awful even by mid-70s style standards, and his best friend, Mickey Rooney, is given a plot twist that makes less than no sense. I didn't hate it, but really, only because of Hackman's skill at portraying a grumpy everyman scrambling to get out of proverbial quicksand.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: coke movies

Smokey Bear turned 80 on August 9. That was during the Olympics (when I had Izzy out front), so it took me a little extra time to get this big boy to the street.

Obviously, I cannot take credit for that design, just the painting. (I'm pretty confident that the original line art was by Rudolph Wendelin.) I didn't even take any liberties with the colors, as the U.S. Forest And Service has very strict Smokey Bear Guidelines: "Smokey always appears only with his traditional blue jeans, belt, buckle, and 'campaign' hat. Optionally, he carries a shovel."

I'm not interested in running afoul of the USFS, no sir. They employ bears.

That bit of fluffy white you see at the bottom of the image isn't fire-fighting foam: it's Henry the Poodle, who refused to get out of the frame. Oh, Henry.

Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: art diy dogs henry smokey bear

In the past 24 hours, I finished the book I've been reading at night, 60 Songs That Explain the '90s (a series of semi-autobiographical essays adapted from a podcast of the same name), the book I've been reading in the bathroom, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (a very in-depth history of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s), and the video game I've been playing in between, Deathloop (a stealth action sim set in a repeating time singularity).

I hadn't intended that those endings should so neatly coincide; it just sort of happened. I only comment on it because it is kind of unusual. For example, in the time it has taken me to get through Easy Riders, I also finished the books Three Rocks: The Story of Earnie Bushmiller the Man Who Created Nancy, The Quality [Comics] Companion, and Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane (as well as the video games Marvel's Midnight Suns, Psychonauts 2, and Portal 2).

And, of course, none of that counts the movies I've been watching and rewatching, including such classics as The Bad News Bears, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and The Thin Man.

What can I say? I like to stay entertained.

The big question now is what will I be reading next? I've had Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania on my bedside table for months now, but I think I'm going to start These Are the Voyages: TOS Season 1 instead because I always need more classic Star Trek. (Thanks, Cam!)

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: books star trek video games

I'm sure this is a joke, but it really says something about modern times that the joke is that you shouldn't kill your friends.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: bears twitter.com

I watched only 8 new-to-me movies in October — partly because I spent time watching several movies I had seen before, movies like Unforgiven, The Bad News Bears, and Metropolis. I'm still 17 short from 150 on the year with only 2 months remaining. Will I get there? Oh, the drama!

125. (1984.) The Rocket Man (1954)
Plot: A boy with an unusual voice is given a magic gun by a spaceman who wants him to do good; hijinks ensue. Is this what ran in Saturday morning matinees before everyone had television? (Fact: I watched the whole thing just because the female lead was Spring Byington, and my Mom likes Spring Byington.)

126. (1985.) The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
This movie was widely panned for its lack of focus, but I think I enjoyed it more than the original. Damning with faint praise?

127. (1986.) Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989)
This dark, dark comedy is not a great movie but is still totally worth a watch for Penn & Teller fans, but it blew my mind when I discovered that the director of this movie also directed Bonnie and Clyde. How does that happen?

With Penn & Teller, you half expect one of them to drink the drain cleaner. Drain Cleaner: the original uncola!

128. (1987.) Frozen II (2019)
Two-thirds of this movie is better than the original, but illogical third acts are what this franchise is all about, I guess. (This was watched on Disney+, by the way. I finally went ahead and just reset Dad's password. Sometimes a manchild has got to do what a manchild has got do to.)

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: coke dad family mom movies

Stuffed animals often become a comforting, reassuring presence for their owners, and 2020 was a terrible year. Put those two things together, and you might have predicted a stuffed animal boom in 2021. But did you realize what form they'd take?

If you said teddy bears or puppy dogs, you haven't been paying attention to pop culture lately.

That last one there is a tie-in with the unmemorable Emoji Movie, which reminds me that back in the day my brother had a stuffed, vinyl E.T. doll that I found particularly unattractive. I owe you an apology, 1982 E.T.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dear diary fuck you america movies piles of shit toys

Anyone reading this is likely familiar with the fact that although the character his creators called Superman has been published continually for 81 years, it hasn't always been the same Superman. The vigilante social justice warrior of the 1930s bears little resemblance to the omnipotent policeman seen in comics today.

In reality, those changes over time have often been dictated by publishing trends and a series of lawsuits by Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, about just what rights they had given DC Comics to profit from their intellectual property. But in comics, those eras have always had hard boundaries, each contained in its own dimension, or "alternate Earth." Until now.

Last month, DC published a story explaining that all of those alternate realities are really the same one, each the natural universe's response to a god-like creature, Doctor Manhattan, changing some of the seemingly random, fundamental forces that drove the creation of each environment. In other words, all those Supermen are aspects of the same being, all of them owned by DC Comics, who finally prevailed against Siegel and Shuster's heirs earlier this decade.

The irony in this situation is that Doctor Manhattan's behind-the-scenes history is just as complicated as Superman's. Manhattan was created in the 1980s by Alan Moore under a contract stipulating he would gain ownership rights of his characters should Manhattan's original appearance ever go out of print for a single year, a condition DC has studiously avoided for three decades and counting.

So Superman's contentious publishing history is being justified through the use of a character with an equally contentious history by a publisher with a contentious history. Forget truth and justice; bald-faced greed is the American Way.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: comic books rant superman

What is it that makes Man the apex predator on the planet?

It's not size. Bears think we make good snacks.

It's not tools. Otters have thumbs, too.

It's not problem solving. Octopusses cannot be contained.

It's not teamwork. Lions have pride.

It's not agriculture. Ants farm underground.

It seems to me that the one thing that mankind does that nothing else in the animal kingdom can match is writing lists like this. Humans are the unparalleled champions of navel gazing.

Take that, dolphins!

Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: animals