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

70/2502. Professional Sweetheart (1933)
Yes, the title of this pre-Code film is suggestive of prostitution, and star Ginger Rogers plays a radio personality who is, shall we say, not exactly the darling girl she plays for the public. But the title actually refers to the gullible rube the show's sponsors hire to grease contract negotiations with their temperamental singing sensation. The best thing about this melodrama is, of course, Rogers.

71/2503. Pie to Die For: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2025)
Once a delight, this Hallmark mystery series is experiencing some terrible diminishing returns. The guilty suspect is obvious from the start, and everything just drags on. And seriously, enough already with the mother mugging for the camera to create "comedy" moments. You're embarrassing yourself.

72/2504. Krush Groove (1985)
Hollywood's fictionalized version of the Def Jam Recording story is mostly after-school special morality play built around stellar musical performances by Run-D.M.C., The Fat Boys, Sheila E., Kurtis Blow, and LL Cool J. If nothing else, it's a great time capsule of its era (even if Russell Simmons looks nothing like Blair Underwood).

Coca-Cola: The taste of the hip-hop generation!

73/2505. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024)
This feels like yet another example of a movie made by a studio who felt compelled to make a movie with their intellectual property to appease the lawyers without really having any interest in spending the money to make it right. Sure, it has the appropriate tone and gags for a shorter Looney Tunes cartoon, but it plays out much too slowly and none of what makes it on screen sparkles. This would have bored me even if I was a kid.

74/2506. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011)
Jenny Slate is too good a comedian for this (work it, girl), David Cross is clearly just taking a paycheck, and don't even get me started on why they hired Amy Poheler, Anna Faris, and Christina Applegate to play the Chipettes if their signature voices and personalities were going to be opaque to the audience. The target demographic is obviously pre-teens, and they can have it.

75/2507. Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (2025)
This anthology documentary of the early years of Ms. magazine feels like a television series they couldn't sell so they crammed into one movie. That's not a complaint so much as an observation. I actually liked it quite a bit.

More to come.

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

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweet.

Shakespeare wrote those lines in 1597,^[1] by which time Greenland had been called "Greenland" for 611 years,^[2] which I mention only to give perspective to the following bill introduced this week into the United States Congress,^[3] itself founded 173 years after Shakespeare died.

---

119th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 1161

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 10, 2025

Mr. [Earl L. "Buddy"] Carter of Georgia introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Natural Resources, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland”.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be cited as the “Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025”.

SEC. 2. Purchase or other acquisition of Greenland.

The President is authorized to enter into negotiations with the Government of Denmark to purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland.

SEC. 3. Renaming of Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland”.

(a) Renaming.—Greenland shall be known as “Red, White, and Blueland”.

(b) References.—Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to Greenland shall be deemed to be a reference to “Red, White, and Blueland”.

(c) Implementation.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Chairman of the Board on Geographic Names, shall oversee the implementation of the renaming described in subsection (a) with respect to each Federal document and map.

(2) REQUIREMENT.—Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the head of each Federal agency shall update each document and map of the Federal agency in accordance with the renaming described in subsection (a).

---

I wish I could say that this bill is the dumbest thing we will see in 2025, but we all know better.^[4]

We are now living in a theater of the absurd. It's only a matter of time before someone actually makes their horse a senator.

Here's drink. I drink to thee.

^[1] Source: Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, lines 38-44. (You know, the balcony scene.)

^[2] "Grœnland" is the name given by tenth century Norse colonizers, but there is no record of what the previous inhabitants called it, and the current "natives" are actually newer settlers than the Vikings. At what point does the colonizer become the native? As an American who can trace my ancestry back to the American Revolution, I can only say that I don't know.

^[3] Source: www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1161/text

^[4] I mean, for one thing, a man convicted of 34 state felonies, found guilty of sexual abuse and defamation, and charged with fomenting rebellion against the federal government and stealing classified documents from the federal government has been sworn-in as president, and in just the past six weeks we've witnessed, in no particular order, the United States under his direction withdrawing from the World Health Organization; sanctioning the International Criminal Court; starting trade wars with Canada, Mexico, and Columbia; threatening Panama, Greenland, and Denmark; buying-out the contracts of an estimated 75,000 government employees without the funding to do so; ending the corruption prosecution of the mayor of New York City accused of taking bribes from Turkey; ordering the Army Corp of Engineers to fight future fires in Los Angeles by releasing water from California dams into streams that do not reach Los Angeles; blaming an airliner crash in Washington DC on handicapped people; re-renaming Mount McKinley and Fort Bragg; firing 17 Inspectors General in the Executive branch; pledging to permanently displace all Palestinians so that Gaza can be turned into "the Riviera of the Middle East"; banning Constitutionally-granted birthright citizenship; eradicating "anti-Christian bias in government" before demanding an apology from a bishop for suggesting the president show mercy to marginalized communities; ending the "weaponization of the federal government" by appointing a man with an enemies list of "conspirators" to be FBI Director, blocking all transgendered people from the military; ordering colleges to give medals to non-transgendered athletes; refusing to enforce the anti-bribery Foreign Corrupt Practices Act because its bad for business; selling meme coins; restarting Ronald Regan's Star Wars missile defense project; removing any reference to climate change from the Department of Agriculture; freezing Congress-allotted funding agencies including FEMA, USAID, EPA, CDC, NIH, CFPB, NOAA and others; axing any mention of "Diversity," "Equity," and "Inclusion" from government websites and databases (with sometimes hilarious results); ignoring election pledges to take action on inflated grocery prices; assuring Russia that Ukraine will never join NATO; replacing the board of the Kennedy Center with loyalists so that the president could be elected chair in order to stop "wokey" productions; appointing an accused statutory rapist to Attorney General, an anti-vaxxer to lead Health and Human Services, a conspiracy-theorist to lead National Intelligence, an avowed dog-killer to lead Homeland Security, an accused alcoholic to lead Defense, and the world's richest man to lead deregulation efforts in the name of "Government Efficiency"; and, of course, pardoning everyone involved in the January 6 riot. Note that I did not mention getting rid of the penny; it is well past time for the penny to go (although the president doesn't actually have the power to do that). At least he hasn't gassed any protesters again... yet. It's going to be a very long four years.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: coins fuck you america georgia laws shakespeare

I was reading in today's newspaper about how those two astronauts that Boeing stranded on the ISS were passing the time after their one-week trip became an eight-month stay, and I made a joke to myself about how this was a good opportunity for a Gilligan's Island reboot where the hapless astronaut castaways keep getting unwanted visits from astronauts on nearby satellites, exiled dictators, rock groups hiding from groupies, and li'l Kurt Russell.

And then the voice in the back of my head reminded me that it's already been done. With Gilligan himself (and Chuck McCann).

Sid and Marty Kroftf's Far Out Space Nuts

Who says they don't make 'em like they used to?

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: far out space nuts television

"LIMITED EDITION! UGA BOBBLEHEAD SERIES," yells the headline in my inbox. The picture of 3 bulldog bobbleheads is accompanied by the number $300, which seems a bit expensive for three bobbleheads. The good news is that the fine print assures me that if I buy a whole bundle of 11, I can save $30!

That email, from "Georgia Athletics" (which spends most of its time begging for more money) links to the website for the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame*, and, as it turns out, they aren't offering me a bundle of 11 of the same bobblehead, but 11 different bobbleheads, one for each of the 11 Uga bulldog mascots of the Georgia football team over the past 70 years. Oops. I probably should have realized that. Maybe my reading comprehension skills could use some polishing.

That breaks down to buying 10 bobbleheads for $30 each and getting one free. That's not the worst deal, but does anyone really need 11 bobbleheads of white bulldogs wearing read sweaters? Only a couple of the Ugas are differentiable at a glance: Uga IX, "Russ," has a brown ear and rump, and Ugas I and II had narrower faces. And how much demand is there for a bobblehead of Uga VIII, who I'm sure was a great dog but didn't survive a whole football season before dying of cancer?

I'm inclined to ask "who really needs bobblehead dolls, anyway?" But I'll restrain myself. I've never kvetched about PEZ dispensers (because I like them), so I'm in no position to rain on the parade of any UGA fan who wants an entire kennel of nodding Ugas. It's your $300, spend it however you want to.

Besides, not bitching about bobbleheads frees up my time for complaining about my neighbors who have already set out their Halloween decorations six weeks early. Apparently, Halloween is no longer a holiday; it's a whole season! Arrrrgh!

*Hall of Fame and Museum, specifically "a one-of-a-kind museum with the world’s largest collection of bobbleheads from all genres and periods" with a mission statement that "seeks to provide access to the world’s largest collection of Bobbleheads, to advance an understanding of the historical role Bobbleheads play in American culture, and to celebrate the fun and quirky side of collecting." And also, it seems, to sell, sell, sell. Want bobblehead dolls of the Golden Girls, a jackalope, or Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue? They've got 'em!

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: football rant uga walter

57/2368. American Graffiti (1973)
I avoided this movie for years in part because I expected it to be the worst kind of nostalgia trip. It is indeed what I thought it was, but it also has a truly great cast, and the soundtrack is even better than advertised. I've got to give it to George Lucas, he really knows how to give audiences what they want when he wants to. (Which makes those later Star Wars movies even more baffling.)

Coke note: For a movie built on pure, distilled 1950s Americana, Coca-Cola is conspicuously hard to find. It only appears in a mini-golf snack shop intentionally obscured from the camera because it was obviously part of the actual snack shop and not paid product placement. (The "Frozen Coca-Cola" logo dates to 1969, an anachronism in a movie that takes place in 1962. Obviously.) What, did Coke want a cut of the box office?

58/2369. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Clearly the wrong lessons were learned from Ragnarok. The key theme of both the the A and B plots in this film are squarely focused on death, or more specifically, how to come to terms with surviving the death of loved ones. I think this is what makes the incessant, juvenile antics of Thor and company land so badly. There's just too much happening that's too heavy for the audience to enjoy casually tossed-off punchlines (mostly about destruction) and a badly underrealized visit to God City (which should be a movie in itself).

59/2370. The Hateful Eight (2015)
When I reviewed Django Unchained, I mentioned that it felt plodding. This movie moves half as fast, but since it is set up like a horror film (wearing the skin a Western), the slow pace is actually its strongest asset. (Perhaps because of Kurt Russell's presence, it becomes clear pretty quickly that John Carpenter's The Thing is the style template here.) The overriding theme in Tarantino's best work is the fluid state between trust and betrayal (the guy must have issues), and all roads lead here. Very good, I'd say; among Tarantino's best.

60/2371. MoviePass, MovieCrash (2024)
This is a documentary about how a company germinated by a good idea was killed by greed. It is a very American story, but it's clear even the filmmakers don't think anyone will learn any lessons from it.

61/2372. Scott Joplin (1977)
Billy Dee Williams plays the King of Ragtime in a period piece biography heavy on the syphilis. The movie is not great -- the director is unable to rise above its made-for-television feel -- but Billy Dee is.

More to come.

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

In America, you can be anything you want. In Soviet Russia, the government decides what you'll be.

—Yakov Smirnoff, comedian, prophet

In January, I signed a new tenant in our commercial office building in downtown Newnan, Georgia, into a lease for suite 101. In March, as a result of a change in our building management structure, I had to relocate that tenant down the hall to suite 113. In May, the new management leased 101 to another tenant under their supervision.

Today, the state business inspector finally came by the building to review the original tenant's suitability for business licensure. The inspector insisted that we renumber our office suites, switching the numbers on 113 and 101, so that the number on the door would match the paperwork that the tenant originally submitted. Otherwise, she would decline the business license application.

So we switched the office numbers. When you walk down the hall, the numbers now go 113, 102, 103... 112, 101, 114... If visitors get confused, well, sorry, that's that the county wants insists on.

The inspector "helpfully" added that after the tenant's license was granted, the tenant could apply to have his newly registered suite number changed, and then, if that was approved, we could switch the building's office numbers back.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: georgia work

Once upon a time, they called it the Blockbuster Bowl. However, corporate America being fickle and football bowl committees being greedy, it has since been sponsored by Carquest, MicronPC, Mazda, Champs Sports, Russell Athletic, Camping World, and Cheez-It (which had previously sponsored a different bowl now sponsored by the mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate). In 2023, the new tenant is Pop-Tarts. What makes the Pop-Tarts Bowl significant isn't the string of consumer product sponsor changes but its weird connection to America's real favorite pastime: eating.

A few years ago, Duke's Mayonnaise bought the rights to turn the annual Continental Tire / Meineke Car Care / Belk Bowl into the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Duke's big, attention-getting decision was to replace the bucket of Gatorade traditionally dumped on the head of the winning coach with a giant jar of mayonnaise. It's exactly as gross as it sounds. When I see it, all I can think is, "Oh, those poor eggs!" (For the record, I never think, "Oh, those poor gators!" Gators got it coming.)

Pop Tarts saw Duke's made-for-TikTok moment and raised. Their mascot this year is a Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tart which emerged at midfield in a giant toaster. Throughout the game, the Pop-Tart posed for photos with children, danced with cheerleaders, and made finger guns at the officials. Then, when the game was over, he climbed back in his toaster only to slide out of a slot in the side... where the winning team ate him.

[To be clear, the players ate a giant Pop-Tart decorated to look identical to the mascot. At least I really, really hope that's what happened. I'd link here to a video of the event in question, but that's exactly what Kellogg's wants me to do.]

I'll be the first to admit that I like both football and Pop-Tarts as much as the next red-blooded American. (My favorite is Brown Sugar and Cinnamon, but the box in my pantry is Frosted Cherry because they are very marginally less malnutritious.) And I regularly eat barbecue at restaurants with smiling pig mascots on their napkins. But if you spend four quarters giving your mascot a personality, I'm not okay with putting it in the oven and eating it, even if you claim "it wants it" — that's a mental illness, Kellogg's! I'm a red-blooded American, not a fairy tale witch in a gingerbread house.

Eat up kids. And clean your plate. Ethiopia is full of starving cannibals.

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

I haven't said much lately because I haven't felt I had much to say that was worth saying. COVID still bad. Russia still bad. Everything else still bad. I think that covers all the bases.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: walter

I don't have anything new to say today, so let's review some recently watched movies instead.

133. (1992.) Elvis Meets Nixon (1997)
Friend Otto called to tell me he had seen this and judged it "must watch." He wasn't wrong. It's the story of Elvis's infamous December 1970 meeting with President Nixon, and it is bonkers. The details are fudged, usually for comedic effect, but the fundamentals are accurate. Otto was right; I very much enjoyed it.

Elvis famously preferred a different brand of soda, but this movie corrects that flaw.

134. (1993.) The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
It's always interesting to compare how creators change a movie between versions. The lead, played here by James Cagney, is brighter than his future version will be just seven years later (see One Sunday Afternoon), but he's also angrier (because Cagney). This one also has less music, a larger cast, and a faster pace, but the only way it is really superior to its eventual remake is the presence of George Reeves as a heavy.

135. (1994.) Three Outlaw Samurai (1964)
This Japanese samurai movie is not perfect (some comedy is too broad and some story beats come too quickly), but it is better than the average movie, and the ending is dynamite. I enjoyed it.

136. (1995.) Tequila Sunrise (1988)
In hindsight, not a lot really happens in this cops-and-robbers romance/drama, but I didn't notice at the time because the cast is so damn talented. Kurt Russell, Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Raul Julia all kill it. And though the film is named for a different drink, it's a particular soda that manages to make it into a late-film montage at the start of the third act:

No movie about cocaine smuggling is complete without Coke!

More to come.

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