Sniggerlings: "Raging Bull"

Sniggerlings: Raging Bull

      If you all are interested in Classic movies, classic TV, and boxing, I have a treat for you. I just saw Jake LaMotta -- “The Raging Bull” -- on an episode of Car 54, Where are You” on MeTV. He played Bugsy, a number two thug in a “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” comic episode entitled “I‘ve Been Here Before“(airing originally January 10, 1963.)

      For those of you currently desiring a quickie education in the topics mentioned above, I’ll fill you in. First, Jake La Motta was World Middleweight Champion from 1949 to 1951. His life was portrayed in the movie Raging Bull by Robert De Niro, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor as La Motta in 1980. Along with a career in boxing, he also has survived seven wives(Wikipedia 2/15/14) and admitting that he threw a fight for the Mafia in 1947.

      Car 54, Where are You?  was a sitcom on ABC from 1961 to 1963. It was about a fictional police department in the Bronx, NY. It was filmed at the Old Biograph studios in the Bronx, which was built in 1912 and was patterned on the Edison studios’ “Black Maria” in West Orange, New Jersey(it was to avoid patent infringement lawsuits from Edison that DeMille, Goldwyn, and others came west to a place previously unheard of, named Hollywood.) D.W. Griffiths filmed at Biograph with actors like Mary Pickford and the Barrymores and directors like Mack Sennett -- whose “Keystone Cops” were undoubtedly a model for Car 54. Note: When you think of Sennett, think of his protégé, a poorly dressed fellow named Charlie Chaplin(see United Artists.)(Wikipedia 2/15/14.)

      I also saw an episode of The Untouchables on TV from about 1959, in which Claire Trevor -- one of my favorite actresses -- portrayed Ma Barker, in a frightening tour de force. Ma Barker was the mother of a gang of bank robbers and murderers in the Thirties, who violently and successfully plied their craft until Ma sent her oldest boy in Chicago a cake for his birthday and Eliot Ness tracked it back to her hideout in Florida. Then Tommy guns and hand grenades and waves of Federal agents.

      Claire Trevor was John Wayne’s love interest in the classic John Ford western Stagecoach in 1939 and an aging gangster’s moll to Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo, opposite the married Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. She won the Academy Award in about 1947 for Best Supporting Actress in that movie. She was a successful radio personality, an Emmy winner, and one of the most beautiful women I ever saw. And smart as Hell.(Wikipedia 2/15/14.)
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"Waiting for the Super Bowl"

Waiting for the Super Bowl

      I took a nap about 8:00 this evening. When I woke up, I had the strangest feeling that I was ready for the Super Bowl to begin. Then I realized that it -- or something like a Super Bowl -- had already been played. Bruno Mars sang; so did Queen Latifah. But if it happened, it had been mostly played in some unreal way. I felt like the couple in the episode of The Twilight Zone, who woke up in a strange town and discovered that the trees were artificial, the people were manikins, and the train made one stop -- back at the same station it had started at. Surely, the real Super bowl was about to begin.

      But soon the quiet concern with which my dear wife(a Seahawks fan) did not mention the game to me, together with a distorted collection of memories of East Rutherford, New Jersey, began to bring my senses back into line with reality. There had been a Super Bowl, but only one team showed up. I longed to climb into my DeLorean and dial back in time to January 19, 2014, to the exact moment when the universe diverged into two separate realities and then redirect Marty and me to the time when the not-so-evil Biff is washing cars and the Super Bowl is about to begin. The football has not yet sailed over Peyton Manning’s head and anything can happen. But…I don’t have a DeLorean, and that accessory on my ‘95 Thunderbird stopped working years ago, with the brake lights.

      Yes, Virginia, there had been a Super Bowl, and my Broncos played like the Washington Generals versus the Harlem Globetrotters. At least the Globetrotters let the Generals score once in a while. 43 to 8! What in the world! I began to look for an excuse for this embarrassing outcome. For example, I don’t think the real Peyton Manning showed up. I think the guy wearing number 18 should be DNA tested or drug tested or both.

      Because I had previously asserted that this was the Broncos of the ’90’s(2 Super Bowl wins), after the game one fellow fan responded to my previous blog by asking me whether this game reminded me of the Broncos in the ‘80’s instead(3 Super Bowl losses.) He was right. This game did remind me of the Broncos of the ’80’s and the ’70’s: Super Bowl XII: Cowboys 27 - Broncos 10; Super Bowl XXI: Giants 39 - Broncos 20; Super Bowl XXII: Redskins 42 - Broncos 10; Super Bowl XXIV: 49ers 55 - Broncos 10(Heck, the Broncos didn’t even score their usual 10 points in Super Bowl XLVIII.)

      I note that you can see the Broncos’ loss differential getting steadily worse. They lost by 17 points in 1978 and then by 19, 32, and 45. One bright spot is that the Broncos only lost this Super Bowl by 35 points, so improvement from 1990. 10 points improvement in 24 years. By that fact, we can see the Broncos breaking even by 2098 in Super Bowl CXXXII. So there is something to celebrate and to look forward to.

      But I digress.

      Another possibility that might explain to the superstitious the loss in today’s Super Bowl is that I was personally jinxed by a well meaning loved one who gave me a John Elway jersey from the ‘80’s not the ‘90’s for my birthday. I am not superstitious and love my jersey, which has barbecue rib, ketchup, and glazed donut stains all over it. But it makes you wonder. … diabolical(?!)

      More seriously, though, let me confess that my “scientific” proof of the score being 33-13 Broncos was tongue in cheek. I’m sure most people immediately realized that the coincidence that the Chinese New Year had just occurred and that this is the year of the Horse is no scientific proof of anything. Neither is my backing into the 33 - 13 number by choosing an over/under score of 46 and then multiplying the also coincidental percentage of 71% of old hand victors versus newbies times the 46 to get 33 - 13. But it looked good. So much so that I got a little out of hand discussing Champ Bailey and Knowshon Moreno, et al.

      Feeling a little guilty, I did straddle the fence on this game by providing my Facebook friends with a statistically verifiable estimate of the eventual score from my alter ego, Arnold: Seahawks 27 - Broncos 16. I did this at 2:00 a.m. before the game, and Arnold was prescient, as he warned us that the game would go the Seahawks way due to turnovers. I didn’t want to hear it, but there it is. By the way, a couple of the numbers in my spreadsheet were incorrectly put in, so before the game I recalculated it. Arnold’s final number as of noon of game day was Seahawks 28 - Broncos 15.

      The game went as Arnold predicted. From my viewpoint, the Seattle defense defanged the “greatest passing offense in history” by smothering Eric Decker with Richard Sherman, forcing Demaryius Thomas to go long in the face of coverage from Maxwell and Kam Chancellor(who was the guy I had most respect for), and mugging Thomas if he went over the middle. I’m not complaining; that’s the way it’s done -- I’ve seen the Broncos do it, too. They got enough of a rush to hurry Peyton, who threw some bad passes.  The Seahawks also did not draw into a shell but continued to pass even with a 29 point lead. With a huge Quarterback rating(127?), I think Russell Wilson should have been MVP.

      Wes Welker(84 yards) and Demaryius(118 yards) had good days despite that. Where was Julius Thomas? The Broncos defense handled Lynch very well and the rest of the offense well. Manning had an okay day with 280 yards passing. But it has always been very hard for a team to move the ball when it cannot run because of lack of time, and this was the Broncos’ situation.

      In Manning’s case, I’m reminded of the famous line from A Raisin in the Sun, a Broadway play and movie by Lorraine Hansberry about a black family that comes into some money. The young man of the family gets into trouble, like Peyton did today, and -- rather than condemning him -- the mother says, “When’s the time to love someone? When they done good? Or..”. I still love Peyton Manning.

      Finally, let me offer some advice. Why? Because when your team gets its bottom spanked like the Broncos did today(or am I dreaming and I‘ll wake up soon for the kickoff?), what is left but to fall back on the consolation of philosophy. To my fellow Bronco fans and Arnold, who warned me against my foolhardy prediction, I offer the following clichés: “There’s no fool like an old fool” and “Hope springs eternal.” I’m looking forward to next year.

      How about also some perspective. When I was 27(1978) years old, the Broncos lost their first Super Bowl. I watched it with pride but with chagrin. They kept going back to the Super Bowl and getting, as we have seen, worse and worse(I was told that in 1990, they were the number one defense in the league, like the Seahawks this year, but surrendered 55 points.) The Broncos finally won a Super Bowl when I was 47(1998). Now, I’m 63. At that rate, I’ve got to wait until 2018 for the next Bronco team winning the Super Bowl. They’re almost due. Oh, well, not so bad.

      Hug your kids, kiss your wives, and enjoy life. It’s only football.mm

America's NFL Super Bowl: "The Year of the Horse"

America’s NFL Super Bowl: “The Year of the Horse”

      As I sat down to write this blog, I happened to notice in my calendar that today is Friday, January 31, in the Year of our Lord(Anno Domini -- A.D.) 2014. This day happens to be the Chinese New Year(in the Year of their Lord) 4712, and this is the beginning of the Year of the Horse. That is the first scientific reason I think the Broncos will achieve a large victory over the Seahawks. My prediction: Broncos 33 Seahawks 13.

      This is the second: the inexperience of the Seahawks quarterback. Don’t get me wrong: I love Russell Wilson’s ability and intelligence and expect this fine organization to be back to the Superbowl in the near future led by him. However, I expect him to spend the first half with Superbowl eyes, a look like that found on the countenance of a deer caught in the lights of a sixteen wheeler coming downhill on a mountain road. By that time, it will be too late. If this sounds improbable, tell me how many points great quarterbacks like Rivers and Brady scored in the first half of the last two losing playoff games this year.

      In backing up my estimate, I first challenged Wilson’s relative youth on the hypothesis that young quarterbacks had not fared well in the history of the Super Bowl. I found that age had nothing to do with it. Quarterbacks younger than twenty-eight won their fair share of Super Bowls: Namath was 25 in 1969, the same age as Wilson; so was Joe Montana in ’82; Ben Roethlisberger was 23 when the Steelers beat the Seahawks in ’06; Brady was 24 in ’02.(About.comFootball) So age was not the factor. I thought I might have to eat some crow(not hawk) on this. But I kept looking.

      I looked at several factors until I found this one: In Superbowls where one quarterback who had previously won a Super Bowl(old hand) faced a quarterback appearing in the Superbowl for the first time(newbies), the old hands had a significant advantage. By my count, this has occurred fourteen times(if you count Bart Starr in the first Super Bowl versus newbie Len Dawson.) The old hands won ten of those matchups. Old hands included quarterbacks that had both won and lost a previous Super Bowl but not quarterbacks such as Tarkenton or Kelly, who never won a Super Bowl despite multiple appearances. Just appearing in a Superbowl previously was not enough.

      Obviously, Peyton is the old hand and Wilson the newbie. Newbie quarterbacks that have fallen to the old hands include Fran Tarkenton(‘74), Dan Marino(‘85), and Boomer Esiason(‘89.) From this statistic I derived the 33-13 score as follows:

      Old hands divided by total old hand/newbie matchups = 10 / 14 = 71%

      My Estimated Over/under score is 46 points total. Most people would probably have no problem anticipating a 24-22 victory by either team.

71% x 46 points = 33 points for Peyton(old hand), leaving
                              13 points for Wilson(newbie)
                              46 points

       Let me note for the Seahawks fans, that, of the four newbies who defeated old hands, all have occurred since 2001: Tom Brady(24) over Kurt Warner in ‘02; Eli Manning(27) over Brady in ‘08; Drew Brees(31) over Peyton Manning in ‘10; and Aaron Rodgers(31) over Ben Roethlisberger in ‘11.) The ‘hawks fans will immediately note that old hand Peyton Manning was defeated by a newbie not long ago. Could happen again. Yes it could. I am also aware that the trend to young quarterbacks since 2000 is startling. My theory is that it just doesn’t take as much to become an effective quarterback, what with the new protect-the-quarterback rules, as it did twenty years ago. Experience is not at such a premium. Alternately, the move to calling signals from the sidelines has made the quarterback position less significant. However, Peyton has revolutionized play calling in the NFL and is in full command, even to the point of training receivers.

      My third scientific reason for calling the game for the Broncos in a big way is the makeup of the teams. It is my impression that Champ Bailey has been held out specifically for the playoffs like the Ravens held out several key older players last year. and Terrance Knighton(Pot Roast) is big and cat quick. During the regular season, Knowshon Moreno ran for a higher average yards per rush than Lynch and fumbled only once to Lynch’s 3 times. In a pass-happy offense, Moreno scored 10 rushing touchdowns to Lynch’s 12 and 3 passing touchdowns to Lynch’s 2. I love the Beast. He’s been awesome in the playoffs. But Moreno can run, too. So can Montee Ball. Also the Broncos have four receivers in the top ten in touchdowns received during the regular season: Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker, Julius Thomas, and Wes Welker. Welker, with the fewest touchdowns of the four, had ten touchdowns last season. The top receiver for Seattle was Zach Miller with five.(espn.go.com)

      Finally, this is not the Broncos of the 80’s, but of the 90’s. Elway won it twice.  The team was built by a football player who knows what it takes. I love the Seahawks, but the Broncos are a significantly better team. Broncos 33, Seahawks 13. It is the Year of the Horse. mm

      P.s., for my friends who are not familiar with cowboy terms from the Old American west, a "bronco" is a horse, but probably a little wild.  In American rodeos, there are bronc' riders, who try to stay on a horse while it is trying to throw them off.  Throwing them off is called bucking.  Denver is a city in the old west in the Rocky mountains, where marijuana has recently been legalized, which makes the inhabitants thereof a little wild, also.  Hope this helps.m

Sniggerlings: "Bet on Me!"

Sniggerlings: Bet on me!

 

      Hey, don’t tell my new pastor, but for thirty years I bet the ponies in Southern California and other places with the advent of the Internet and closed circuit TV. I never beat ‘em. Didn’t lose a lot of money and had some fun. It could have been a lot worse.

      But, one of the most popular angles for years was betting a horse adding Lasix, a diuretic drug that was supposedly like aspirin. It not only flushed water out of a horse’s system before a race but was an analgesic painkiller for older horses and allegedly masked other, illegal drugs in their systems. At first, it was rare to see a horse adding Lasix, so the angle was to play any horse introduced to it the first time. Later, the play was added, to bet a horse coming off Lasix the first time. I discovered that adding Lasix was indeed a good sign if the horse looked otherwise okay and well meant that day.

      But then more and more and younger and younger horses -- even horses that had never run before -- began showing up with Lasix first time.

      Last time I looked it was hard to find a horse not on Lasix.

      But that was in my misspent youth. Recently, I had a start when I began taking a diuretic named Furosemide for high blood pressure. One day I noticed that what I was swallowing with my fries and chili dog was the generic name for Lasix. Now I had something more in common with thoroughbreds: mutual connections at the pharmacy. I missed out on betting on me, though: I noticed too late. But now my doctor has taken me off Lasix, and I’m ready for a prime bet in the right spot.

      By the way, this is my contribution to the world of horse race angles: If you see a thoroughbred taking a poop in the post parade in front of the stands, that is a very good sign. Think about it: weighs ten pounds less than when it weighed in earlier on the scales, is relaxed, and exhibits a certain lack of respect for the other competitors. My recollection was it won 60% of the time; unfortunately, I only saw that angle come up(or down) a dozen times in thirty years. You could go bankrupt waiting for the thing to happen.mm

Sniggerlings "NFL: Deal Me In"

NFL: Deal Me In

      You can deal me in to the NFL season now. I’ve already ante-d up with $19.99 for NFL.com’s “Rewind”, only to find NBC is streaming the games live. I think I’ve finished mourning for Tim Tebow. As a person of faith, I take the screw job Tebow got from the NFL hard. Nevertheless, Peyton Manning is setting records for my team, the Denver Broncos, and I just can’t sit out anymore.

      I wore my John Elway jersey today. I was upset to find that the number 7 is on backwards on the shirt. I took a look at myself in the bathroom after I had put on my jersey, just to see how natty I looked, and was disturbed to see the number backwards in the mirror. Nothing I can do about it now. I hope a backwards “7” isn’t bad luck for my team.

      I thought about this, too: I discovered the ethnic origin of John Elway‘s family name. He must come from swine. You, see, “Elway” is actually pig latin for “well”, like in the popular question, “Are ou-yay eeling-fay Elway oday-tay?”(translation, “’sup?”)

      I also noticed that the second most popular Green Bay Packer, in Yahoo’s “Related People” is -- after Aaron Rodgers -- wide receiver James Jones; problem is, the picture they had next to the wide receiver’s name belonged to the actor James Earl Jones of The Great White Hope, The Sandlot, Field of Dreams, voice over for Darth Vader in Star Wars, etc(born in 1931.) And, if you Google-ed just “James Jones”, you’d find out he was in World War II and wrote the novel From Here to Eternity.. Poor guy. The only one more forgotten than him was Pope Francis, who, last I heard, was unknown to The Wiki-types. They still had Pope Benedict in office.

      Have a nice day.mm

"Munsters without their Makeup"

Munsters without Their Makeup

      As today is Halloween and I am one of the myriad keepers of the keys to useless trivia, I want to remind everyone that you can see the actors who starred in the classic TV series The Munsters on rerun TV or in feature films of that era. For example, Butch Patrick appears without Eddie makeup as -- can you believe it? -- a little boy, on an episode of My Favorite Martian(Season 1, Episode 13, “How to be a Hero without Really Trying”) from about 1963. The episode number may be Hulu’s idea of a joke. I’m not too confident of the season and episode numbers on Hulu.

      Fred Gwynne(Herman) and Al Lewis(Grampa) were already well-known from a Sixties’ sitcom Car 54, Where are You?. By the way, I vaguely remember Fred Gwynne as an unaccredited number three stooge(“Slim” -- what casting acumen here!) working for gangster Johnny Friendly(Lee J. Cobb) in Best Picture On the Waterfront from 1954(also starring lesser known actors Marlon Brando(Academy Award for Best Actor) and Karl Malden.)

      Yvonne de Carlo(Lily) you can see in one of those $5 collections of John Wayne Westerns if it includes a good one, McClintock. In McClintock, Miss de Carlo plays a widow with a child who briefly makes Maureen O’Hara jealous for the attention of the Duke.

      I know nothing about Marilyn(Pat Priest), but she had a spiritual name.

      As for Eddie’s dog Spot, I think I saw him do a walk on in Godzilla with Raymond Burr looking out the window. I think it competed with Waterfront, but did not win anything that year. However, Spot reprised the roll ten years later on Munsters. He had had a little work done on the face and a tummy tuck, but looked really marvelous coming out from under the stairs. You couldn’t tell.

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"Zane Grey and 'The Thundering Herd'"

 

Zane Grey and The Thundering Herd

      Did You know:  According to the main character, John Doe, from the TV Show by the same name(about the year 2000, I think) these are facts: (a) the nation’s only active diamond mine is in Arkansas; (b) it is illegal to walk down Main Street alone after 1:00 p.m. on Sunday in Little Rock, Arkansas; (c) fish sleep with their eyes open.

      Here's another fun fact:  Did you know the most popular western novel of all time is Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey?  I'm still reading Zane Grey, the famous American western author from a hundred years ago. Still think he’s definitely about love stories and western action. I liked Riders of the Purple Sage, about Mormons and rustlers and gunmen and a couple of love stories; I liked a little less To the Last Man, a love story about cattle men versus sheep men based on the infamous Pleasant Valley War in Arizona, a little known “terrible and bloody feud“.

      I also finished Grey's The Thundering Herd and liked it more than either one. It’s a love story set against the background of the great Buffalo slaughter of the western plains. Wonderful descriptions of American Buffalo, of their herds and fights and killing, of the way people felt about it(mixed feelings), of the history of it, mentioning Sherman and Sheridan -- Civil War Generals who were tasked with fighting Indians and who used the killing of Bison to destroy the food source of the Indians -- practicing total war as they did versus the South in the Civil War, and of the politics of it: some states outlawing the killing(Oklahoma and Colorado) and other states debating it(Texas).

      One scene has a wolf teasing a huge herd of buffalo into a stampede and the view of the chase between hills and through valleys and across rivers as hundreds of thousands of Bison chase a lone wolf.  The heart of the story is a lone young woman, seventeen or eighteen, and her singlehanded fight to survive evil parents, Indians, the herds of Bison, and the western judgment of women as weak, to get back to the man she loved and had promised herself to in marriage.   

      Tonight I watched an episode of the TV show “Longmire”(A&E) in which a lone Bison faced off with Sheriff Longmire’s truck on a Montana highway, until a baby white Buffalo could cross in front. Synchronicity. mm