a saturday four-pack of thoughts

- Hard to see how this great idea went bad….in 1972, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and the city of Ft. Lauderdale had the brilliant idea to dump thousands of old, worn out tires on the ocean floor about a mile off-shore. The tires were linked together with nylon and steel and intended to provide a reef of sorts for sea life. More than three decades later, virtually no sea life makes use of the reef and many of the tires are breaking loose and floating around in the ocean or washing up on beaches. I realize that back in ’72, people weren't as environmentally conscious as today or knowledgeable about how acts like dumping thousands of used tires into the ocean would affect the environment, but how did anyone think this was a good idea? No one thought ahead and said, “Hey, what happens if the ties on these tires wear out and they start coming loose? Wouldn’t it be a problem to have a bunch of tires floating around in the ocean?” And why was this topic not covered in An Inconvenient Truth? How can Al Gore let something like this slip?

- Add celebrity “all-star” games as events that we really don’t need to see on television. At major events like the MLB All-Star game and the NBA All-Star weekend, there is inevitably a celeb game of that same sport and networks subject viewers to the sight of out of shape, un-talented stars lumbering around the playing field, bungling up plays and yukking it up. The celebs seem pleased with themselves, but to the average viewer, it’s pretty dumb to watch some clown who’s worse than you are play just because they’re a reporter for Entertainment Tonight or they’re on a new comedy on NBC and are trying to score some attention for their show. I don’t need to see Nelly try a driving reverse layup, nor do I need to see Tracy Morgan try to turn a double play in the MLB Celebrity Softball game. Besides, the NBA already has a special league for entertainers where these wannabes can live out their basketball dreams against other like-minded famous people with lots of money and no athletic ability.

- ESPN needs to get off of the NASCAR kick. I know, ESPN, you have a contract to broadcast NASCAR for the next however many years. Fine, but don’t shove it down my throat at the expense of covering other actual sports, as opposed to NASCAR, which is nothing more than rednecks driving around in circles, making left turns and running into one another. Friday, ESPN wasted the entire first segment of SportsCenter on auto racing crap, more than 10 minutes. Also, popular shows like Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption, which I would rather watch repeats of from 2004 episodes from rather than any NASCAR crap, were bumped from the air all week so ESPN could foist its new NASCAR Now crap-fest on us for an hour. And yes, I am a little worked up, but that’s what happens when someone brushes aside real sports, ones that matter like basketball, baseball, football, hockey, even soccer, track and field and tennis, in favor of things that are basically “Redneck Demolition Derby”. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: if driving really fast, making left turns, cutting other drivers off and failing to signal when changing lanes is a sport, then I and millions of other Americans are athletes because we do that stuff every day. Less NASCAR and more real sports are what’s best for everyone, even if ESPN is too stupid to realize it.

- Album recommendation time: Inside Out by the Kooks, a British alt/rock group, is a great pickup for several reasons. One, the music is pretty darn good, a nice mix of rock and acoustic, some up tempo songs, some slower, more plodding tunes. Unlike the majority of the pop-heavy garbage on American airwaves, these guys actually know how to play their instruments and don’t rely on synthesizers and artificial help to make them sound good. Also, this is rare album in that it has 15 songs, not the normal 10,11 song cheapie albums that most groups put out. Those albums leave you feeling cheated, with 38 minutes or so of music, but this album has 15 very good songs, no throwaways and no points where you get tired of the album. See the World is the best song of the 15, a rockin’, rollicking good time of a tune that features some great guitar riffs. The last third of the album is almost entirely slower, more methodical songs, but they’re still worth listening to. The Kooks, hailing from Britain, help to continue the newest wave of the European invasion, joining groups like Snow Patrol, Ella Rouge, Minimum Serious, The Sounds, the Futureheads and more as great rock music crossing over into America. And with America hooked on American Karaoke-type garbage, we need all of the good imports we can get.