New Vice

Just like quarterbacks are said to get more credit and more blame than they deserve, HBO is neither as excellent or as awful as it’s said to be – at least in the time that I’ve had access to it. The truth lies somewhere in between as is the case with pretty much everything in life.

Still, the station is on a pretty decent run right now including fresh episodes of Veep, Real Sports and Game of Thrones (full disclosure: I’ve never watched it) plus the debut of the Christopher Guest comedy Family Tree and the acquisition of West Anderson flick Moonlight Kingdom – just to name a few.

And then there’s Vice.

The Tapes: May 17

Typing this on Ma and Pa Fury’s iPad. Please excuse any errors.

* Fans of the BBC’s Sherlock — and you should be watching — will enjoy this New York Magazine story on Benedict Cumberbatch. Oh, fans of the new Star Trek will also like it.

And I’ve stopped using the iPad because I can’t figure out how to highlight some text.

* Alan Sepinwall offers up an appreciation of The Office. And the famed TV critic reviews the series finale.

* Nick Saban does not enjoy being compared to Satan.

* Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams talks to some old-school NBA players about what travel was like in the past.

* For soccer fans! Like Terry. Brian Phillips on Alex Ferguson, famous coach over in England who is hanging it up.

* With a new Trade Center opening, the New York Times looks at how security around the new building will cut it off.

* The mayor of Toronto was probably caught on camera smoking crack. Oh, Canada.

* Are newspapers making a comeback? Maybe. Maybe.

* The glorious return of Arrested Development is a week away. Like TV, Will Leitch liked the show the first time around – before it was cool.

Long live the Beez

The Birdman did not look like this during his time in Fargo.

The Fargo-Moorhead Beez live on in the NBA Playoffs. Don’t pretend like you didn’t know that.

I mean, it’s common knowledge that the franchise jumpstarted the pro careers of current Miami Heat forward Chris Andersen and San Antonio Spurs assistant Ime Udoka. In fact, they played for the Beez in the same season: 2000-01.

The team was in the International Basketball Association at the time, a league below the Continental Basketball Association. Yes, there was such a thing. Among the better IBA stories that I can remember: A player running off the court and out of the gym in an attempt to avoid arrest and a franchise relocation from America to Canada while the team was on a road trip.

Tips from a 1921 Good Housekeeping

It’s 1921. You’re a parent. You have a boy or a girl. School doesn’t offer the challenges your child needs, or maybe it doesn’t provide the discipline that will be required when the kid goes on to their next step in life. Fortunately, if you subscribed to Good Housekeeping, you can look at 13 pages of advertisements for various military academies, boys’ schools, girls’ schools, Bishop’s schools, art schools, home economic schools, powder point schools and much, much, — no, really, much — more.

When we arrived at my parents’ house in Minnesota on Tuesday afternoon I quickly noticed a stack of very old magazines sitting on their very new dining room table. Old Life magazines. Look magazines from 1964. A Ladies Home Journal from 1961.

And a Good Housekeeping from June 1921. How could I not spend an hour digging through these?

Extra, extra

So I made my music video acting debut over the weekend. But don’t worry – I didn’t gyrate atop a yacht or anything. Kept it classy. I’m not trying to be just another Joe, all up in the videos.

All joking aside, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the video-extra experience. A friend asked on short notice if I could fill a spot. I didn’t have anything else planned and got the OK to include my 9-year-old daughter – it would be good blog fodder and some temporary hero status at home, if nothing else.

It wound up being more than that – not the part, but the idea. 

Tracking the changing NBA, through the boxscores

Go to any YouTube video of an NBA game from the 1980s and count the dramatic ways the game is so different from today. The shorts, sure. No one needs to see that much of Bill Laimbeer. But there’s so much more. The players are skinnier. There are more fastbreaks, more scoring but the defense is much worse, much less intense. You could score four points in those games. Big guys play down low and when they try to handle the ball you can tell they’re having flashbacks to the time in 7th grade when the coach screamed at them that anyone who’s the tallest player on the court should never try to dribble. In today’s game 6-11 guys handled it like 6-1 guys did in the past.

It’s all there on the video. But if you don’t have the patience for viewing, simply read the old boxscores.

The Tapes: May 10

* Mount Union’s Larry Kehres is retiring after going 332-24-3 with 11 national titles. Not too bad. His son Vince, the longtime defensive coordinator for the team, will take over. This also means that the career victories record for John Gagliardi will almost certainly never be broken. Gagliardi won 489 but Kehres was winning 15 games a year so could have had a shot if he had stuck around.

* The Columbia football team is in the news, but not for good reasons. A defensive player is accused of a hate crime and several other players had their racist/homophobic/anti-Semitic/asinine tweets revealed. That Ivy education really paying off. The CU Lions Blog has more information.

* The Great Gatsby is opening to less-than-stellar reviews. Here’s Wesley Morris’ for Grantland. No matter how bad the reviews I’m looking forward to seeing it. Team Leo.

* Not everyone loves The Great Gatsby the book. In fact, New York Magazine’s Kathryn Schulz absolutely despises it. Is she just being contrarian or are there some good points? Or both?

* Why don’t superheroes work on television?

* Oh-oh. According to The Wrap, American Idol might dump all of its judges for next season.

* Sad newspaper news. The Daily News got rid of numerous employees this week and some of the big names in sports include Tim Smith and Sean Brennan. But the biggest name was the legendary college hoops writer Dick Weiss, whose nickname is actually Hoops.

* Short first names mean bigger paychecks. Plan accordingly.

* The horrific case of former Minnesota State Mankato football coach Todd Hoffner took another turn this week when he left the school, though it’s not known if he was fired or left on his own. Hoffner was arrested and charged with possession of child porn last year before being totally exonerated. He was innocent. No technicalities, nothing like that. Wrongfully arrested. Unfortunately he lost his coaching job and now his reassigned position at the university.

* Rolling Stone has a profile on popular rapper Macklemore and his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. It feels unusual to read about an artist trying to avoid chemical excess at the height of his powers rather than embracing it.

* From the department of nonsense, Late, Late Show host Craig Ferguson recently declared TV’s town – Sioux Falls, S.D. – as the booty shaking capital of the world. Um … what?

Podcast: NBA Playoffs – Round 2

Another week, another podcast. This time, TV and Fury discussed the early goings of the NBA’s conference semifinals.

But don’t worry, NBA haters, it’s not all pro basketball. No, the guys also break down the thrilling Season 1 finale of Splash on ABC. … You know, Splash. The celebrity diving show. Yes, that’s a real thing. And, yes, we watched parts of it.

Just listen to the podcast. Here’s the link.

A Minnesota sports dad talks sports

Guest post
Author: An Anonymous Minnesota Sports Dad who’s seen it all
Age: 50-75
Occupation: Insurance salesman/farmer/grocery store owner/bar owner/factory worker/high school teacher/bank manager/mechanic
Writing influences: Larry King

You can’t tell me the Vikings wouldn’t have won a Super Bowl under Burnsie, if only he hadn’t been so god damn loyal to Bob Schnelker. Ya gotta get Steve Jordan more involved in the offense, especially at the goal line.

Serenity now

Bill Walton must be spinning in his grave at the level of earnest overreaction that seems to be sweeping the nation. And by the nation I mean the people who yammer about sports in the media, social or otherwise.