House of the Falling Suns: Phoenix-Cavs, Behind the Box Score
January 28, 2016Tyronn Lue named Eastern Conference coach at All-Star Game
January 28, 2016It’s Thursday, folks — indisputably fourth best day of the week on average. Obviously your own stance on Thursday is subject to your own work schedule, obligations, and life habits. Maybe you do something totally bitchin’ on Mondays like play Extreme Uno, so it’s better than Thursday. Or maybe you work on weekends, so Thursday is one of your best days of the week. Whatever your circumstances, don’t take it out on “While We’re Waiting… .” The Cavs won on a Wednesday, but not a championship. So, While We’re Waiting… .
The Cleveland Browns hired a new personnel guy! Andrew Berry is the new Browns Vice President of Player Personnel Development and Management and Senior Analytical Assistant to the Regional Manager. He seems like a great guy and borderline inspirational go-getter. Berry’s another Harvard grad, so that means any on-field failures will be met by an avalanche of snarky comments about fancy Ivy Leaguers and nerds and calculators and academics and over-thinking and how they don’t belch or pee in a trough enough to run a football team; all of which will suggest the new hires are “too smart” for football. These criticisms might not be ultimately wrong, either — though we won’t know for years. Sashi Brown and Hue Jackson had a lot of predictably nice things to say about Berry, all of which I copy and pasted into the cover letter that I’ll use for every job application I ever complete again.1
Kanye West went all kooky on the Interweb yesterday (on the Twitter, in particular). If you don’t already know about it, I wouldn’t bother trying to make sense of the details. It was fairly amusing, though — so much so that outlets like CNNMoney were discussing it.
I don’t bring it up to say much about West (or “‘Ye”) himself, but there are people who lose their minds when West does crazy things. Some folks get legitimately pissed when West interrupts Taylor Swift’s trophy acceptance or says hilariously vain things like that he’s “the greatest artist since the sentience of any lifeforms in the universe”2.
For me, it comes back to the Cam Newton thing. You don’t have to like Kanye West or Cam Newton — but if you’re letting West’s nonsensical rambling or Cam Newton’s towel-throwing actually affect the quality of your day — you lack some serious mental fortitude and could stand to reevaluate mental priorities. It’s like engaging your crazy family member in an argument about politics or culture at Thanksgiving dinner. It’s better to just shrug it off and move on with your life. There are no positive alternatives. West says such ludicrous things that you’re a fool to take him seriously.
Maybe you think social media to be the downfall of civilization or our culture’s obsession with celebrity to be the scourge of our time — but West is only a symptom of that, not the root cause.
I find Kanye West to be a comically over-the-top, consciously crafted caricature of an egomaniac; or an amusingly unhinged narcissist. Whether his new album is called Swish or Waves or Skinny and Tall or Better than the Beatles or HAM Sandwich, I will listen to it because it will be great at the best and interesting at the worst. However, I am a little annoyed that this quote tweet is forever out of context now that West deleted most of his rant.
To be fair they're very clever and it's really hard to swim out of a moat filled with alligators. https://t.co/GX22GTEJD5
— Kyle (@kcwelch330) January 27, 2016
Your Calvin and Hobbes strip of the day. Fresh off firing two head coaches in three weeks, the City of Cleveland (to no one in particular):
And now for the random 90s song of the day. Whether it ultimately ends up the right move, it was a shame to see Coach Blatt fired by the Cavs. He may have been doomed from the start, but he also adopted a clumsy coaching style that neither demanded the most out of his star players nor satisfied his team’s basketball aspirations. The offense chronically underachieved, but he nevertheless did an admirable job piloting a damaged team to the NBA Finals; and for that Cavs fans (at least “I”) will always be grateful. I also kind of appreciated how prickly he was with the media.
To sing Blatt out as the screen fades to black, we have the most enduring mawkish ballad from the signature 90s perpetually adolescent punk band: Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” (Let’s focus on the “time of your life” part.) Goodbye, Blatt. I won’t sit on the couch and look sad while I strum chords for you, but I’ll post a video of someone else doing it. May your future superstars be obedient, your playoff timeouts be unlimited, and your skies be clear for you to spread your fighter pilot wings.
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right
I hope you had the time of your life…
Anyway, it’s Ty Lue’s turn to fill the championship void in our lives. LET’S DO THIS!
7 Comments
Nice Office reference.
smarty pants …
nerds rule !
we do the song “good riddance” in my band … love it.
Good stuff, Kyle. Completely agree on the Kanye stuff.
If there’s any saving grace of Twitter, it’s that my entire TL seemingly watched this all unfold and just stood by in awe. Then it led to a slew of memes and hashtags and laughs and it was all great. Anyone bent out of shape about any of it should be institutionalized.
Why is Kanye West tweeting dumb things news?
Since we are talking music – anyone got any Floyd, Beatles, or Zeppelin vinyl to sell?