Thursdays With Raider: Episode Ten Coming Back Hard Again

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First Up Is Mac

Every wonder what happens to old rappers?  Like what does Sir Mix-A-Lot do all day long?  Where are the Fat Boys?  What does Kool Moe Dee do all day long?

I was wondering this because I started thinking about Sisqo and Thong Song.  Now when Thong Song came out I assumed Sisqo was going to be all that, but he sort of went away.  And I wondered why?  Not because I thought Sisqo was true greatness but because he seems to have been replaced by Pitbull.  Now what on this earth is Pitbull bringing to the the table that Sisqo wasn’t.  So where do old rappers go?  Are the Fat Boys dead?  Can you go to some crappy club in Baltimore or something and see Kool Moe Dee doing bad versions of Wild Wild West.

Also did you know that Tone Loc’s career was ended in a Tijuana Bar Fight?  At least I heard that.  Would the world be a better place if we had a sequel to Funky Cold Medina?

I also suppose now is as good a time as any to launch into which sucks more, Starving Students moving or Comcast.  We hired some local movers because my wife had shoulder surgery, we have a two year old who doesn’t enjoy chance and I’m getting old and moving in 100 degree weather might just kill me.  Come the day they’re supposed to arrive, the guy calls up and cancels saying, “his guys just didn’t show up.”  He then offers me $10 off for rescheduling.  So I tell him sure, then cancel on him because you know, I’m pissed and he seems genuinely shocked.

Move on to Comcast and for some reason my modem was compatible for about six hours and then it wasn’t for reasons I don’t understand.  They wanted me to rent one for $7 a month and seemed put out that I’d just go buy another one for 50.  So with all of this, we were late last week and are starting late this week.

Finally I’ll conclude with this.  BYU fans and admin claim they hated the MTN because the MTN had promised them rebroadcast rights to BYU games.  They say it as if its fact and that everyone should know this.  Yet it’s nowhere in any contract.  If this was so very important to BYU, wouldn’t they have put it in a contract?  I mean that is actually something they teach you in the first year of law school.  So I’ve really decided this is just utter crap.  But they feel fine repeating it.  I don’t get BYU.

BTW, if you want to ignore any and all of this and talk about sports or something else, feel free, I’ve been sheltered for a week dealing with life and this is all I had.  Your serve sir.

Raider

Over the years, you and many others have extolled the praises of Sisqo and I will retort like this: I once got “The Thong Song” stuck in my head for a good three weeks.  Anything that causes this kind of mental anguish is a problem.  Further, its borderline onomatopoeia, and I thought the human race had evolved beyond that after the Adam West/Burt Ward era of Batman.

As for the rap game’s legends of yore, I did some research (read: did a Google search) and found/remembered the following things:

–One of the three Fat Boys is dead.  Big Buff Love (who was known as The Human Beat Box) died of a heart attack weighing in at roughly 450 pounds.  Still, the late Christopher Rios (who young punks like me remember as Big Pun) died in 2000 of a heart attack at around 700 pounds.  My car might not weigh that much.

–Sir Mix a Lot had a flop of an album in 1994 “Chief Boot Knocka” which featured the song “Put ’em On The Glass”.  Naturally, this was the T to “Baby Got Back”‘s A.  Some think he never quite recovered from that, the hip hop equivalent to Bo Jackson bowling over Brian Bosworth in the Kingdome back in the day.

(Bo is still running, by the way…)

Seeing as how you were movin’ out of the ‘hood and what not, you may or may not have witnessed Jim Rome getting absolutely pwn3d by David Stern.  I have to wonder though, have you or have you ever seen anyone in a court of law ask the question “have you stopped beating your wife?”  Hell, I’m tempted to give law school the old college try just to see if I can get away with asking such a question.

While I’m pondering the NBA, I was reading some cyberspace literature concerning the last year of the NHL before the lockout.  On more than one occasion conversations took place that each went down like this: “look, our product sucks right now.  Maybe we need to take a year off and fix it?”  Then it hit me.  Shouldn’t the NBA have done this?  I mean, it could result in David Stern accusing me of abusing a spouse I don’t have, but I would be willing to take that risk.

I will leave you with a poll supposedly conducted by ESPN The Magazine asking what the greatest sports moment in this state’s history was.  Sure enough, the ’84 MNC was the top moment.  Oh, some of you Utahns and your anticlimax.

Back To Mac

The way hockey is run really irritates me.  Hockey’s problem used to be that unless you understood the sport well, it was incredibly hard to follow on TV because you couldn’t see the puck.  Hi Def television has fixed that.  (BTW Hi Def television has fixed many things, like I’ll watch a half hour of NASCAR in HD because its cool, I think its really made soccer work as well.  But is there a dumber man on earth than Gary Bettman and the people who run hockey.

So here is my solutions to fix the game.

1. Make it look more like Olympic Hockey, bigger ice sheets, take a lot of the hitting out.  Whatever you can say, hockey isn’t better without guys like Sidney Crosby.  Make it even more athletic,  I think people think its still the NHL of the 1970’s and the movie Slap Shot is accurate.

2. Contraction and if it were me, 8-10 teams.  Make ever game just have a crap load of talent on the ice.

3. Try and convince NBC to run a live game in prime time on Saturday and do it for three years.  I think with some patience and commitment, hockey could find a place.

As it is now hockey has been so mismanaged English Premiere League Soccer is more popular.

Here is something I will admit to you now.  As a teenage football player in Southwestern Wyoming, I got myself a flat top and shaved stripes in one side of my head and my number in the other because of Brian Bosworth.  But he was still at Oklahoma.  I also read his autobiography.  But by the time he entered the NFL, he insulted John Elway so I turned my back on him and enjoyed watching Bo Jackson run him over.  I did however see his movie Stone Cold.  I’m not proud of any of this.

Speaking of Bo Jackson, did anyone ever play as any team but the Raiders in Tecmo Bowl?

Yeah, you get douchy guys like that in court, especially in my area of consumer law because you get guys who dabble in it but don’t understand it.  But my favorite story is from law school.  I was working in a legal case suing a used car dealer. Now Used Car Dealers have the reputation they do for a reason.  Well these guys also happened to be laundering cocaine money so they were well financed and hired a guy from Preston-Gates (the firm is now KPL Gates).  In Washington, this is a big deal because the Gates of that firm is Bill Gates Sr., father of that Bill Gates.

Anyway this guy couldn’t have been a bigger prick and he buried me in paper work because he had like five interns, two associates and a para-legal at his disposal and I had me.  But oddly the one thing the guy didn’t have on his side was the law, something he never got.  So by the time we got to court, I really got to hand him his ass.  So on the way out he made one more snide comment under his breath, and I finally just said, “what are pissed because a law student just handed you your ass and made you wear it like a hat.”  He turned to me and puffed his chest out and put his finger in my chest., at which point I went what I call, “Full Wyoming” and said something to the effect of, “do you want to step outside bitch.”

At that point my supervising attorney and another attorney from his firm stepped in and they separated us an left.  They lost and about six months later he left Preston-Gates, I always wonder if I was a part of that.  And the violent coke dealers he represented, had to pay 75K to my client, not to mention we turned over a bunch of stuff to the IRS because they weren’t paying taxes.  One of the guys died of a heart attack, the other committed suicide and the world is a better place without them.

Sadly, I’m sure I’ll never top that story in my career.

The Rally From Raider

The temptation for me to discuss hockey in any space, let alone this one, is one I almost always give into, and as such I will do so once again.  Here’s some of my own cross-examination:

–A wider ice surface is something I contemplated for the NHL after the 2002 Olympics, but retro-fitting every single NHL arena to do it could get very complicated.  Take HP Pavilion, the “Shark Tank”, as one example.  It’s a little like Energy Solutions Arena (or the Delta Center, as it was called when you worked there) in that it’s not terribly big and the lower and upper bowls are stacked on top of one another.  Some franchises, like the Leafs who have more money than some 3rd world countries, it won’t matter a whole lot.  But you do have the Coyotes, who if you hearken back to my strip club metaphor concerning them a few weeks ago, you’ll understand why that could be an issue.

–Forgive me for putting words in your mouth, but it seems to me like you’re against fighting in the NHL.  I, for one, am on the “pro” side of the fighting debate simply because I believe it’s a motivational tool.  It’s like when a manager in baseball gets ejected.  Often that can fire up a team and so it is in hockey.  Even the Gretzky/Messier/Kurri era Oilers of the 1980s had a guy like Marty McSorley.  So I think that fighting does have a place in the game, even if a lot of people still only watch the game for the fights.

–You may not know this, but NHL Network already airs Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday along with one or both of the games that air on CBC north of 49 degrees.  Now, in theory, you could air one of those games on NBC and the other on the network formerly known as Versus/formerly known as OLN.  Still, I have to get my Don Cherry fix (along with my Kathryn Tappen fix), so for now I’ll stick with NHL Network.  For now.

Seeing as how the Utes have this whole home and home with Michigan thing on the horizon—and seeing as how we as Ute fans have this fetish for road trips—I have a few other schools currently in the Big Integer I’d love to see scheduled in future years:

1.      Wisconsin, even if they refused to do so I believe because of our “native” nickname.

2.      Minnesota.  If the Gophers were still in the Metrodome, I’d be against this, but you have to admit their new TCF Bank Stadium isn’t too bad.  (Oh, and you want to talk about a program that can’t seem to get out of its own way, it might be Minnesota.  It sure puts our problems into a whole lot of perspective).

3.      Indiana.  A joke I heard a while back went something along the lines of “Indiana’s State Motto should be ‘hope you brought something to do’”.  And I do apologize if I offended any Hoosiers out there, as I’ve never been to your great state.

Now, considering that this is indeed Big Integer country I’m discussing, and the fact that I’m about 5’8” and roughly 160 since I’ve spent my adult life drinking beer and liquor, if the local folk at each of these road trips may attempt to donate to some Sally Struthers type of organization. Believe me, I’m surprised that didn’t happen during my brother’s wedding in Wisconsin a few years ago.

To answer your question, yes, I did dabble in the Bo Jackson Tecmo Bowl glory, but allow me to interject with a rather bizarre glitch in an original NES game of yore, John Elway’s Quarterback. I’m not sure about your game, but in the game my brother and I had, there was a running play called “reverse play”.  If you handed off the ball to the running back in a certain way, the RB would not only be able to run at just about the speed of light, but would be so fast that it would run completely around the remaining 21 players.  It would be like if the Roadrunner were programmed into a video game.  I’ve wondered two things about that game: 1) if anyone else had that issue, and 2) if this was Elway’s subtle way of saying “listen Bowlen you dumb Okie, I need a run game or else I’m going to put out this mediocre video game!!!”

By the way, why in the world are our fans complaining about having the Pac 12 logo on merchandise?  If it were up to me, I’d have it on every single piece of clothing I will ever own from now until they have to bury me in some of it.

The days of the NES certainly were simpler days.

MAC Displays His Might

I’m not so much against fighting as I am the blind checks and hits.  Like football, concussions are something that could very well kill this sport.  You can count me as one of those people that will have a hard time letting their kid play football unless some serious changes are made.  The wife being on her way being a doctor now and knowing the risks in so much more vivid a picture.  Hockey is the same way.  These last couple of seasons haven’t been better because Sidney Crosby wasn’t around.

As for my fantasy games left.  I got to Michigan but not Notre Dame so I’d like a second chance there.  But Camp Randall has to be at the top of my list.  And I suspect that with us being a Pac-12 school they’ll over look our NCAA allowed nickname.  Ohio State and Penn St. would have to make that list as well.  I’d love a home and home with Nebraska.  I’d also like a trip to SEC country but no way in hell I’d do it without a a return trip.  Part of me would like that trip to be to Oxford because I’m told by my SEC friends that Ole Miss has the best scenery regardless of the age of that scenery.  And the tailgating is supposed to be a sight to see.

I was unaware that our fans were bothered by the Pac-12 logo.  Honestly for what that conference has done for us, if they wanted us to become the U of Utah Pac-12’s, I’m in like Flynn.  Our fanbase just needs something to bitch about.  And since not much is wrong in football and we’re pretending like what happened in basketball was a good thing, I guess this is what is left.

Tecmo Bowl was a fascinating game on so many levels.  While I’ve enjoyed Madden and NCAA, something about that game will always remain magical.

BTW did you ever play a stand up video game called 10 Yard Fight.  There was one of those in the lobby of Van Cott Hall and I proceeded to become an expert at it.  On a regular basis I would defeat our new assistant coach Sharrieff Shah.  You know there is an entire generation of kids now who have no idea what a video arcade is and how it was a social hub.

Honestly, I find myself doing that a lot lately, thinking about old times and how kids these days don’t get it.  I’m inches from telling a kid to get off my lawn.

And last, you made a point in your opening statement that I failed to address about the greatest moment in sports history in Utah.  Honestly this is why you can’t allow people to vote on these things and maybe why I’m turning against the very notion of democracy.  Is there a rational person on earth who doesn’t think the Olympics were an order of magnitude larger than BYU beating a 6-6 Michigan team?  Yet these people are allowed to make decisions and vote on who leads our nation.  Now honestly is anyone who thinks that BYU’s 28 year old Mythical National Title is a bigger deal than the Olympics, should they be allowed to decide who leads us.

Aren’t I right about this?

Raider Rides It On Home

Hopefully you’ll forgive me for having a single guy moment, but you’re likely not aware that the legendary Elisabeth Shue is now on “CSI”.  Best.  Replacement For A Female Lead Role.  Ever.  I demand 200 more episodes for CSI, including 5 or 6 episodes that air on Showtime where we see some nude scenes.  I don’t ask for much really.

Perhaps you may use such a decision from ESPN the Magazine and their thoughts on what was the finest sports moment in this state’s history to extrapolate a larger point about how we choose to lead ourselves (or even if we should choose to lead ourselves), I can’t quite get to that destination.  For one, if this was done via internet polling, well there’s your problem right there.  I’m convinced that the internet has genuinely improved the following things: 1) porn, 2) recruiting, 3) cellphones.  Outside of that, the differences and advancements are pretty negligible.  Further, I think it’s important once in a while to realize that ESPN is usually worthy of our shame and mockery and if it takes something this incandescently stupid to expose this, then so be it.

It would be like if someone decided to troll Sacramento Kings fans by proclaiming that the Golden State Warriors sweeping the Bullets to win the 1975 NBA Championship was the greatest moment in Bay Area sports history.  Not only is that clearly not the case, I don’t even think that’s the greatest moment of the 1970s in Bay Area sports.  Getting back to this particular locale, I think there can really only be three sports moments that could even come close to claiming the distinction as the greatest Utah sports moment:

1. 02 Olympics, which if you remember the IOC’s announcement and the emotional outburst that occurred here the day Generalissimo Samaranch announced that SLC got the bid.  That could be the closest thing Utah ever sees to rioting.

2. Probably some moment during the Jazz’s 97 and 98 title run, and you Jazz fans may want to interject on that one.

3. One of the Holy War games where you invoked Satan and it nearly worked.  And by “nearly” I mean you stopped sometime in the 4th quarter.

Meanwhile, Alberto Callaspo of your Angels just hit a solo homer in the 2nd to go up 1-0 on the Giants.  Very Speizio-ish if I say so myself.

I do understand your sentiment about the dirty checks and boarding in hockey, but I’m not sure that widening the ice surface will cure that.  It may make things like odd-man rushes and shots on net a lot more interesting, but you still have to forecheck, not turn the puck over in your own end, that sort of thing.  Yes, there really isn’t anything too dirty in the Olympics (and fighting is against Olympic rules I believe) but it is bad form on a lot of levels to cheap shot people in the frickin’ Olympics.  Although I have to mention as an aside that a part of me does laugh at the fact that the NHL has designated Brenden Shanahan as the league’s official Hall Monitor–explaining why players get suspended and how some sinister hit is against the rules.  If David Stern had thought of this, you just know that Rick Mahorn would probably be doing this for NBA suspensions.

Going into yet another single guy moment, Oxford, Mississippi almost sounds like what I want to imagine heaven to be like.  Here you have a place where large numbers of very attractive women go to football games, dress up and get drunk.  And do all of this on purpose.  The whole utilization of fine china and other various elements of the higher society aspect of the Grove would be a little jarring, but give Ole Miss fans credit: they are pleased with their mediocrity–either that or they simply choose to ignore it and drink hotty toddys all day.  For the record though, women doing the various and sundry on purpose is also what I imagine Sweden to be like, so ultimately my pursuit of casual relations often clouds my better judgment.

I forget that my given title for Hoyo’s Revenge is “resident scholar”, so I’ll go ahead and sprinkle something scholarly into this.  During the early portion of the Civil War, the Confederate army had among its soldiers the First Louisiana Battalion, lead by Major Roberdeau Wheat.  What made this particular battalion unique was that they were…well, they liked to have a good time, so basically how one might imagine Cajuns of this century.  So obviously that battalion was known as the “Louisiana Tigers” and it would make sense that such a hard partying group of folk would be associated with LSU.  Maybe that should be my bucket list item, to see if I can survive the vociferous nature of the LSU fan in Baton Rouge?

Like most intelligent and informed Americans, I get most of my news from The Onion, and as such I am waiting for them to do a report similar to this one about arcades.

I’m surprised this hasn’t been told of all the people who used to have C-band satellite dishes instead of cable back in in the day as well.