Friday Fun
Make it clap clap, dance in your backseat, ain't nobody strapped
Note: While this is a weekly post of the random things I have collected during the week, I’m liking skipping next week as I’ll be up in Bandon Dunes, the Happiest Place on Earth (not sure that’s actually their brand, but stay with me) and it’s unlikely I’ll have time to post between all the golf.
LeBron James broke the career scoring record in the NBA this week, going by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who has his own Substack and wrote eloquently (as usual) about this.
What a cool world, where we can know exactly how Kareem feels about this. A friend noted that in 20 years or so, people will just default to saying LeBron is the greatest ever, because the media folks who keep a light on Michael Jordan (the true GOAT) will be out of the spotlight, and it will be full of people who only saw LeBron play, not Michael. That’s sadly probably right. I know many young people who insist that the greatest wide receiver ever was Randy Moss, and while he’s clearly the 2nd best receiver, he’s not even close to Jerry Rice. Rice is in a class all by himself, but the ones arguing this never saw Rice play. Getting old isn’t all that awesome.
That said, you can take your Space Jam remake and put it in a sack, LeBron. Kareem has you way beat in the acting chops:
Yeah, the Super Bowl is this weekend, and it SHOULD be a good game. I’m already sick of the Kelce brothers, so I can’t IMAGINE how much this will be overplayed during the game. I thought the Harbaugh brothers was bad, but this is much, much worse.
My thoughts on the game is this - Philadelphia really didn’t play anyone this year. They had a no-contest against the 49ers, which doesn’t mean they can’t get their high octane offense back on track - they had no reason to do so against the 49ers. But they weren’t impressive, even on defense before the quarterbacks went down. The Chiefs haven’t been dominant all season - though they THRASHED the 49ers earlier in the season. In a weird turn of things, after losing to the Chiefs, the 49ers didn’t lose another game until they played the Eagles in the playoffs. But I’m just a dumb fan. You know who isn’t? 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk, who played both teams. Here were his thoughts:
“If I was a betting man, which I am not … hypothetically speaking, if I were to bet on this game, I would take everything that I own, get it in cash and put my money on the Kansas City Chiefs,” Aiyuk said. “Like I said, I’m not going to talk about Philly but …
“Look at me, I’m sitting on the couch, I have no room to talk about nobody playing next week. But like I said, I got the Chiefs. I think the Chiefs… I just, I don’t know. [The Eagles] got their hands full. I don’t know fully about that defense. I don’t know. They talk about them being a good defense, I’m not too sure.
“I think the pass game, this Kansas City pass game will expose what we thought we were going to be able to expose before some unfortunate circumstances happened. So we’ll see. But like I said, you gotta get lucky to win a Super Bowl. And they just got extremely lucky last week, so who’s to say they can’t do it twice. Like I said, I’m not going to speak too much on it.”
I don’t know what to think, but I do think that’s fairly interesting. For what it’s worth, the Eagles are 1 1/2 point favorites. I think I’m taking the Chiefs, as I don’t bet against Patrick Mahomes.
Are you watching The Last of Us? You should. Listen, YES, it’s a show about zombies and the apocalypse. That said, there have been four episodes and there’s been two full episodes essentially without a single zombie in it. It’s tremendous.
I also watched the documentary Meet Me In The Bathroom this week. I’m like the perfect audience for this - it’s about the music scene in New York in the beginning of the millenium, with bands like The Strokes, Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs featured prominently.
The book was incredible. The movie was … not. I wrote about why on Letterboxd but I just need to also use this space to ask whether Ryan Adams, who got Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr hooked on heroin (to join serious allegations about how he treated his now ex-wife Mandy Moore and others who had the misfortune to date or work with him). I ask this question - is Ryan Adams THE worst? Cause also, his music isn’t good.
Mandy Moore deserves better. WE ALL DO.
Yeah meet me in the bathroom wasn't that great. For one, the title made sense for the book, not so much for the doc. They should have just done a Yeah Yeah Yeahs doc.