CSotD: Games People Play
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I wish I thought Tank McNamara (AMS) was making an off-the-wall joke here, but it seems perfectly on-the-wall to me.
My introduction to sports gambling was also my introduction to local mafia, because when I was in college, I knew a high school kid who sold betting slips and his uncle, who was connected but far from a made-man, became a friend of mine.
I bought a lot of pizza from the uncle but IIRC only one slip from the kid. I like pizza but have never been into pissing away money. And as is often said, they don’t build those elaborate casinos in Vegas by paying the bettors.
The other thing I remember from college is that the guys on the football and basketball teams were told never to talk about injuries or upcoming games because there were people listening to get an edge and they weren’t necessarily nice people.
It was a long time ago.
What wasn’t all that long ago was the 1994 World Cup, in which Colombia was eliminated after Andres Escobar scored an own-goal. Ten days later, Escobar was gunned down.
But even shy of that outcome, there have been plenty of people whose lives were ruined by an addiction to gambling, with NFL quarterback Art Schlichter only the most visible poster boy for the problem.
What makes the problem unsolvable is that sports gambling has already begun making big returns to the states that have legalized it, as well as to the leagues and to the broadcasters who have snuggled up to its teats.
There’s no more likelihood of de-legalizing sports gambling than there is of abandoning the lotteries, which also pay off for the folks who make the laws.
As for the performance enhancing drugs, stay tuned. We’ve just begun paying college athletes; it won’t be long before we begin protecting their rights to be the best they possibly can.
Yeah, I know: The college players were generating TV revenue for their schools and not getting anything back except an education if they chose to take advantage of that. Cry me a river. Better yet, cry George Gipp and Jim Thorpe a river, since they were accused of professionalism before TV existed.
Deep Throat never really said “Follow the money,” but that doesn’t make it bad advice.
Speaking of which, Christopher Weyant has a point here. He’s focused, you’ll note, on Trump’s game of infinite delay, but he’s also right about the NCAA basketball tournament, which has begun stretching on with more teams and a longer season each year.
We used to talk about “Hoosier Hysteria,” given the game’s popularity in Indiana, but “March Madness” generates money and is trademarked, just like “Olympic.”
One good thing being that they’re gonna have to start calling it the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament because it is no longer the only game in town.
Fiona Katauskas notes that the game of greed we all love is becoming real: There is a Monopoly movie in the offing, thanks to Barbie star and producer Margot Robbie.
Barbie-the-Movie was a smashing success because little girls had written countless plots over the decades, but, as Katauskas points out, the plot of Monopoly is to make as much money as you possibly can by driving everyone else into homelessness and bankruptcy.
Real life drama can be turned into good movies, but I’ll be surprised if something so dark ends up being very popular. I remember a French movie called “Life Upside Down” (La vie à l’envers) which was a first-person account of a real estate agent’s descent into madness, but nobody else remembers it because it was extremely strange and depressing.
Perhaps Margot should watch it for some tips.
I hope her movie will be as big a hit as “Battleship.”
In fact, Brewster Rockit (Tribune) could be commenting on the Monopoly movie in a very indirect but accurate way. Maybe a sort of mashup of La vie à l’envers with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, in which the loveable lead characters don’t get any umbrellas.
Elvira Madigan starved to death, after all, and people flocked to see it.
Everything old is new again at Arlo & Janis (AMS). I was just thinking of this remake and thinking that King Kong was not just a “monster movie” but a pretty good thriller on its own, but that it’s since been lumped in with some awful drek.
Actually, I was thinking about Ray Harryhausen and wondering if he had worked on Kong. He hadn’t, but he was inspired by it and worked on Mighty Joe Young, which definitely qualified as awful drek.
Harryhausen is better remembered for sword-and-sandals work, which was okay because we all knew those movies were crap but that was what made them fun: Harryhausen’s models had better acting chops than any of the live people.
Meanwhile, in the category of “I am not making this up,” they’re also working on a remake of The Blair Witch Project, whose entire charm was based on the lack of a steadycam, of any semblance of acting and of an ending seemingly based on having run out of film.
However, to be fair, Bogart’s unforgettable 1941 film The Maltese Falcon was a remake of an utterly forgettable 1931 version. It is possible to take a mulligan.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’m sure that, if Piraro and Wayno knew that today was National Scrabble Day, they’d have held this one for 24 hours rather than running it on the 12th.
I know a handful of Irish phrases but would not want to even try my hand at Welsh. Both are Celtic languages, but the Irish are considerably more concise in writing, despite their well-earned reputation for verbal logorrhea.
Meanwhile, Whamond has found a lucrative gig in illustrating National Days, which should last a while since every day seems to be the National Day of several things. And if he ever runs out, he can, as a Canadian, start slipping in National Days of Poutine or Back Bacon to keep things going.
Finally, Man Overboard riffs on the popular game of snob appeal, which reminded me of Dean Cycon’s debunking of the stuff on one of his wonderful treks to the sources:
He sells excellent fair-trade coffee, by the way.
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