Hue, Bowie, and Uno: While We’re Waiting…

It’s no normal Thursday, WFNYers; for today is the dawn of a new day in Berea and Cleveland and the World. The Cleveland Browns hired a new head coach on Wednesday. His name is Hue Jackson, and Browns fans and headline writers alike rejoiced (the former at his sterling reputation around the league, and the latter at his name which so generously lends itself to puns).

Everyone with a passing interest in the Browns will surely have an opinion on Jackson’s hiring, many of which will be disseminated here on WFNY throughout the weeks to come. I wouldn’t be qualified to be on this site if I didn’t have something to say. So here it is: not bad, Browns.

I regard everything the Browns organization does with a healthy dose of skepticism. But Jackson’s hiring came with an avalanche of endorsements from people who had nothing to gain from providing one, such as Bengals offensive tackle and captain Andrew Whitworth, Carson Palmer, and even the insubordinate Ochocinco! Dang. Jackson may possess genuine leadership qualities, and played the part of a professional coach convincingly in his introductory press conference. Granted, Hue Jackson’s not the first coach to ace his opening press conference, and talking doesn’t win football games on Sunda— oh, but my coach is showing now.

Hue Jackson's tips to your first presser:
1. Repeatedly compliment the owner's wife
2. Point out you weren't there for any of the bad stuff

— Kyle (@kcwelch330) January 14, 2016

Anyway, the Browns hired Jackson and I didn’t hate it. Progress! I’ll feel better if they put a halfway capable staff around him and hire a “personnel guy” who’s simpatico with Jackson, DePodesta, and Haslam. Here’s to no shenanigans and no Shanahans.

David Bowie passed away this week, and it’s seemed to be the only thing people want to talk about (besides lottery tickets). Scott touched on Bowie’s passing in Monday’s “While We’re Waiting…,” as did Will on Wednesday, but it was something I felt like I couldn’t shrink from mentioning. Even if you were never a Bowie fanatic (I never used to be), you have to appreciate the monolithic figure he was in pop culture.

So many great pieces were written about and stories were shared about Bowie this week, and it really affected me. There was Iggy Pop’s story about his friendship with Bowie and claim that Bowie “resurrected him” in the New York Times, Bowie’s emotional performance of “Heroes” at the Berlin Wall that parts of the German government credited for help tearing down the wall (and the story about it on Vox), and Bowie’s message to the 9/11 first responders during the Concert for New York City (as relayed by Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald on their podcast), and many many others. On my way to work on Monday, a time normally reserved for my jams or my pods, SiriusXM’s Classic Vinyl¹ opened the air up to callers (which never happens on SiriusXM’s music channels) and people just talked about their memories of Bowie and what he and his music had meant to their lives. All of this was surprisingly touching.

In any event, Bowie’s passing leaves a cultural crater like John Lennon and Johnny Carson did and like Paul McCartney and Lorne Michaels will some day.² Beyond being one of the most diversely talented musicians ever, Bowie meant a lot of things to a lot of people — he generously gave people the freedom to extrapolate what they wanted from his personas. Bowie made it cool to be weird, and we can all thank him for that. So whether he was Ziggy to you, or Major Tom to you, or The Thin White Duke or the guy who tore down the Berlin Wall or the Goblin King or just the guy who judged the walk-off in Zoolander, hopefully there was something you took from Bowie and shared with the world. Here’s Bowie with David Gilmour doing “Comfortably Numb” in 2007, for something different.

As WFNY’s resident scholar on the utterly pointless in sports (my greatest obsession in the past year was the Cavs’ mid-season bowling trip), I wanted to share these deliciously amusing stories from this week; from two of our nation’s most prestigious newspapers, no less! Think of it as “Actual Sports Reporting (of the completely trivial).”

First, Scott Cacciola of The New York Times on the Atlanta Hawks’ obsession with Uno. Maybe the Cavs should start playing Canasta the next time they have a losing streak.³

“They get serious,” guard Justin Holiday said. “Real serious.”

It all started innocently enough when Jeff Teague, the starting point guard, brought a deck of Uno cards on a trip last season. He gradually recruited several teammates — Bazemore, center Al Horford and guards Kyle Korver and Dennis Schroder — to start participating in a regular game.

The conventional objective — first player to get rid of all his cards wins — was enough to keep them interested, but they soon wanted to spice things up. So Bazemore and Schroder hatched the idea of adding some of the more notorious cards from at least two other decks — all the Draw 2s, Wild Draw 4s, Reverses and Skips. The players referred to the extra cards as “heat.” The game was born anew.

“I think everyone should play it that way, because it’s no-holds-barred,” Bazemore said. “It’s the W.W.E. of Uno, man. It’s crazy.”

Next, Ben Cohen of The Wall Street Journal on Nick Saban’s obsession with Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies.⁴

It seems the first time Saban spoke about oatmeal creme pies was when he was the Louisiana State coach in 2001. He wakes up before his wife, “so the coffee’s never made,” he said then. “I have one cup of yesterday’s coffee. I put it on the microwave, punch in 1-1-1, walk out to the road and get the paper, come back—beep, beep, beep—the coffee’s ready. I get me two Little Debbie cookies, sit down, read the paper and have my coffee.”

It was as if Saban had said his plays were being called by a kangaroo. There was such an immediate and overwhelming interest in what Saban eats for breakfast that he said two years later he shouldn’t have said anything at all. But then he said more. “If I’m not motivated for anything else in the morning, I’m motivated to have my two Little Debbie cookies,” he said. “I’m like an alcoholic. I nip a few others during the day. I have a couple at lunch. A couple at night. Maybe with a glass of milk before I go to bed.”

Your Calvin and Hobbes strip of the day. Hopefully Paul DePodesta, the Browns’ new “analytically”-minded Chief Strategy Officer, doesn’t approach football the same way Hobbes approaches math. Otherwise, the Browns will be taking the field with some weird formations. Let’s not over-complicate things.

And now for the random 90s song of the day. Unlike @Reflog_18’s controversial 90s bracket this week, everyone’s a winner in the random 90s song of the day (and Radiohead, Oasis, and Soundgarden are welcome). But today’s R90sSotD is for the Black Crowes, one of the best bands of 90s who seems to have few vocal supporters — which I theorize is because they sound so much like a 70s band. (After all, Jimmy Page toured with them in the mid-90s, the ultimate rock-god blessing.) The first three Black Crowes albums, Shake Your Money Maker (1990), The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1992), Amorica (1994),⁵ were like starting a career with three MVP seasons.

I normally pick a song with a video to put here, but a lot of my favorite Crowes tracks like “Gone,” “Thorn in My Pride,” and “Descending” don’t have music videos or HQ live videos.⁶ I also wasn’t in the mood for “She Talks to Angels.” Here the Crowes do their best impression of Led Zeppelin meets Def Leppard, playing a great primer for the baseline classic hard rock they embraced and branched out from.

And no one will ever wanna know
Love ain’t funny
A crime in the wink of an eye

1. Earle Bailey was hosting, if I’m not mistaken. [↩]
2. Not soon, preferably. [↩]
3. Just the thought of a tatted-up Kent Bazemore yelling, “Draw four, bitch!” at a confused Al Horford during Uno makes me so happy inside. Also, you can’t convince me there’s not some serious money on these games. [↩]
4. Saban does have a weakness! He’s human after all! I wonder if there’s a way to teach an oatmeal cream pie to play quarterback. [↩]
5. Bonus points for Amorica‘s album cover, too. [↩]
6. Check out this “Thorn in my Pride” if you have have 13 minutes to kill — it’s got a harmonica solo! [↩]