Warning: Sports Content

Only about two of you will get this, but it helps me vent my frustrations over an ex-Cal player. (Though not over Cal itself, and their boneheaded loss this weekend. Stupid, stupid Cal!)


From ESPN's Page 2.

Note for most of my readers: DeSean Jackson is a football player who did a very stupid thing.

TV: Tilt

I finally was able to catch the first two episodes of Tilt, ESPN's new poker drama. Which was harder than it sounds. ESPN is making it a bitch to catch an episode (as Augie will also attest to... twice). The first time I tried to TiVo the pilot, it ran long (due to, what else, a sports program that didn't finish on time) and the last five or ten minutes got cut off. The second time I tried to record it, ESPN promised me Tilt, but then just decided to broadcast something else instead. Thanks, ESPN! Good thing you didn't spend any money on Tilt, and therefore clearly don't care if anyone is able to watch it or not!

I finally got the complete pilot episode by programming the TiVo to add fifteen minutes to the recording time. But then I tried the same thing with the second episode -- and this time, it was late by thirty minutes. So I missed the ending again. Jesus, why even bother? Seriously, why say you're going to air a show at a certain time when you clearly are unable to meet that commitment? Why air the show at all, when it's obviously such a low priority?

I was able to catch a repeat of the second episode by setting TiVo up to record an hour extra. So now I've seen the first two shows. After all that -- was it worth it?

Surprisingly, I think yes. Michael Madsen has always been such a wonderful, brutish, intimidating actor, and he's certainly all that as Don "the Matador" Everest, the most famous poker pro in Vegas -- one who's gotten where he is by cheating. But Everest is more of a background character. The three real leads of the show are Eddie Cibrian, Kristin Lehman, and Todd Williams, as Eddie, Miami, and Clark, three young players who were all cheated by the Matador, and who have teamed up to take him down. I'm not familiar with any of those actors, but I found them all genuinely likeable, and I'm interested in their efforts to either win bankrolls big enough to challenge Everest, or to con their way into his inner circle.

A couple things I'm not wild about so far: one, the Matador's daughter, Dee. She's draped in furs, living high on life, rolling in riches provided by daddy, yet it's her ambition to strip for one of the local clubs (which her father uses his connections to prevent). Yeah, that's believable. Anything to get a strip club in the show, right, ESPN?

And two, the poker players aren't very good. As Nat has correctly pointed out, "The winners win because every hand they're shown playing, they have the best hand. Yawn." Anyone can win with the best hand. (And even then, only a good poker player will still get the other guy to bet.) A good poker player wins when he's got the worst hand. And we haven't seen that yet. (In the second episode, Everest wins with the worst hand, but only because Eddie intentionally throws away the best hand to let him win.)

It's worth it right now for me to jump ESPN's scheduling hurdles to see Tilt. I'm hooked enough to care what happens next. But it's not a must-see show just yet, and if ESPN keeps screwing with me -- hell, Kenny Rogers taught me to know when to walk away.

TV: The bowdlerization of Cheap Seats

I've recently become a fan of Cheap Seats, but I am most definitely not a fan of ESPN Classic's censorship policy.

Hosts Randy and Jason Sklar aren't potty mouths, exactly, but they do use mild expletives which have become all but ubiquitous on any programming other than perhaps Saturday morning Disney cartoons. Like, "ass." Did your face melt and brain explode when you read the word "ass"? My guess is no. But that appears to be what ESPN Classic fears will happen should that word travel unbleeped over their airwaves.

Same with "bitch." In fact, in a repeat I caught this week, "Superdogs, Superjocks" (a competition involving unremembered Olympic athletes and, well, dogs), the word "bitch" was bleeped when it was specifically applied to an actual female dog. That's the word, for crying out loud! That's the proper term! There's nothing even vaguely dirty about it when you use it in its intended meaning! Idiots.

But wait, there's more! ESPN Classic likes to bleep words that aren't dirty in any context, too. In the same show, one of the hosts used the term "crotch-sniffing." Oh no you don't! Not on ESPN Classic's dime! "Bleep-sniffing" is what aired. Wow, that is some cowardly bleep, right there. Later, one of them said of the show, "We've hardly begun to sniff the butt of this thing," and they bleeped "butt." Man alive. Maybe in context, sniffing coupled with butt made the censors jumpy. But come on! This ain't Sesame Street, people! I don't think you need to be that fearful of an FCC fine. You're not showing Janet Jackson's titty, you're saying the word "butt." Have we really come to this, as a country? Has the fear really possessed us to this extreme a degree?

But the capper is when one of the brothers said something sucked, and that got the bleep treatment, too. Dude, that's a word that even those Saturday morning Disney cartoons will say. But not ESPN Classic. "He and the dog basically bleeped." How can you possibly pretend to be a real network* when you're afraid to say the word "sucked," even after midnight?

Grow a set of bleeps, ESPN Classic.

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*I'm being generous by presuming someone, somewhere, actually does think of ESPN Classic as a real network.

TV: CatchphraseCenter

I caught last night's SportsCenter -- the 90-minute special edition called SportsCenter Old School. These special editions, which will be running all week in celebration of ESPN's 25th anniversary, feature alumni of the show returning to once again take the anchor's chair and call the highlights. Last night, it was Craig Kilborn coming back to take a seat next to Dan Patrick. And as I watched, I realized: not only do I not miss the smug and smarmy Craig Kilborn, I don't even miss SportsCenter.

The last time I watched the show with any regularity was about four or five years ago, when I worked in an office with a big football pool, and felt like I had to do my homework. Nowadays, I'll watch football when it's on (NFL only, no college -- unless Cal is playing, and come on, how often does that get televised?), and I'll occasionally sit still for a Dodgers game called by Vin Scully, or the women's nine-ball tournaments, which for some reason I love, or the odd tennis match or three, or golf if it's Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. But I certainly don't care about what's happening in all those other sports events I'm not watching, which makes SportsCenter kind of useless for me.

Especially since it's so goddam annoying. (Back me up here, King Kaufman.) The point of SportsCenter long ago ceased to be delivering sports highlights; the point is for the anchor to insert himself into the highlights with his "wry" "hip" "humor" and "clever" catchphrases. Old School illustrated this fact by showing highlight reels of Kilborn's catchphrases, having Patrick quiz Kilborn on his catchphrases, having Kilborn first coyly refuse to revive the catchphrases as he read the baseball highlights, which became redundant and annoying enough to be a catchphrase unto itself ("No catchphrases, that's simply a home run"), and finally having Kilborn use every one of his not-so-fondly-remembered catchphrases after all ("Jumanji!" "Krakatoa!"), even adding a few new ones ("You stay classy, San Diego," straight out of Anchorman).

All the current SportsCenter anchors are guilty of this catchphrase style of announcing to some degree or another, but it's Stuart "Booyah!" Scott who is currently the most egregious offender. He so desperately wants to be stolen away from ESPN by a major network, or to host his own talk show, that it almost hurts to watch him. But Chris Berman's nickname-game isn't far behind in terms of obnoxiousness.

The only two SportsCenter catchphrases I've ever enjoyed aren't even SportsCenter catchphrases. The first is "Sweet sassy molassey!" from the classic Saturday Night Live send-up of SportsCenter, as spoken by Ray Romano (which, of course, the ESPN people immediately appropriated for themselves). The second is of nebulous origin: I seem to recall that it was from a Rich Eisen-hosted ESPN game show, a very short-lived one (not 2-Minute Drill), and I believe Peter Gammons was actually the contestant (maybe this was some 20th anniversary special show that I'm not recalling correctly). Anyway, the question was, "Which of the following is not a catchphrase used to describe a home run on SportsCenter?" I forget the other three choices, but the correct answer, the one not used, was "a four-base hit," which was by far my favorite. Wouldn't you like to hear the sentence, "And Barry Bonds gets a four-base hit!" "That is an upper deck four-base hit for Sosa!"

I was kind of looking forward to watching all of the Old School specials this week, catching everyone's return appearances (except for Keith Olbermann, who is still hated at ESPN, and wasn't invited back). Now, I'm thinking I'll just watch whatever the heck I want to watch on TV tonight, but describe whomever I'm watching as being "en fuego," or shout out some random word, Tourette's-like, every few seconds: "Yahtzee!" "Roanoke!" "San Buenaventura!" That should be about the same.