Overrated: ESPN Coverage for the Little League World Series

Late summer truly is the lowest of low points for sports fans.  Outside of Major League Baseball there is nothing, LITERALLY NOTHING, to sustain a person's need for sporting sustenance.  Or, at least, that must be how ESPN feels.  How else could you explain their inexplicable airing and promotion of the Little League World Series?

For about as long as I can remember ESPN has aired the Little League World Series, and not just on ESPN 2 but their flagship channel.  As if that is something people want to watch!  In case you are unaware, the Little League World Series pits a bunch of pre-teens (13 and under) against each other for the title of who is the best bunch of children at baseball from one specific part of the world (but mostly the United States).

Want to watch a bunch of kids play a sport? No? How about a bunch of kids from Canada play a sport?

Seriously, what other sport would even dare try to subject the general public to watching a bunch of babies unironically competing?  The audacity is disgusting.

This year, there is a mildly interesting storyline in Mo'ne Davis, one fo the very few girls to ever compete in the LLWS and maybe the first with her ability to compete.  Even so, these stories have little more than novelty value.

I just can't wrap my head around the motivation for ESPN to air this?  It certainly couldn't be in anyway just a cycnical attempt to cash in on a bunch of kids playing a sport masked as tradition, that sentiment is nonexistent in today's sporting world.

This is a real thing, Wow.

Just look at this recent 30 for 30 short detailing the rise and fall of Danyy Almonte.  Almonte was the center of quite a bit of attention and subsequent controversy in August 2011 for playing in the LLWS overage.  It is fascinating in large part because of how much people cared.

I&width=576&height=324&externalId=espn:11311860">

Seriously, who really cares?

Still a part of me has to tip my hat to ESPN for so shameless trying to make a buck from sponsors by airing little babies playing a sport.  Eric Cartman would be proud.

Little League World Series and ESPN:  OVERRATED!

What Robin Williams Was

With the passing of Robin Williams this week, there has been an outpouring of grief from social media we haven't seen in a while.  Williams' career was big enough that it would make literally anyone on the planet envious.  His passing (and the manner of his passing) is shocking and saddening.

With a career as long and as sucessful as Williams' he ended up meaning a lot of different things to different people.  For those old enough, he was the bafoonish alien Mork.  For most people under 30, he was a world class movie star of family comedies.

I remember seeing Aladdin in theaters when I was six.  For years afterward it was my favorite Disney film as it was for many other young boys of my generation.  Looking back, I suspect that was in no small part because Aladdin was (and still is) one of the only animated Disney films to feature a male protagonist but then and now everyone's favorite character was Robin Williams' Genie.  A character so transcendent that he has become a staple of the Disney brand featuring in many stories, games, attractions, and shows that have no connection to his source material.

Then came Hook and Jumanji and Mrs. Doubtfire.  Robin Williams blew by Tim Allen and Chevy Chase as the definitive schmuck for family comedies in the first half of the 90s.  He moved on from there to adult comedies (The Birdcage is probably my favorite Williams' comedy), more serious work and an Oscar for Good Will Hunting.  It was also during this time that young fans like myself began to grow and explore his earlier classics Good Morning, Vietnam, The Fisher King and Dead Poets Society.

In the 2000s Williams' film work became more sparse and more sporadic in quality.  For every Happy Feet there was an RV.  The most important work of Robin Williams late career was in his return to his beginning.  

Stand up.

His Broadway show in 2002 let Williams unleash his wildly energetic force on a live audience and gave the United States some of its very first 9/11 comedy.  In 2009, he returned on HBO for his raucous "Weapons of Self Destruction."

Robin Williams was one of the first people that made it okay to laugh about terrorism.

When you look at the sort of man Robin Williams was, the sheer manic nature of him, his death is no less tragic but perhaps not quite so shocking.  One that reaches the ceiling in a single leap will always hit the ground twice as hard.  But what he has left behind is a legacy of one man that told many great and varying stories.

Below is a video of a memorable scene from Dead Poets Society in which Williams' character John Keating explains to a class of impressionable young men the value of poetry and art.  In it he quotes Whitman, and inadvertently declares his own very potent self worth.

"O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."

Boneless "Buffalo" Wings

Few inventions of man have been as majestic, brought as much happiness into this world as Buffalo Wings.

Invented in Buffalo, New York by Teressa Bellissimo these deliciously messy tiny bird parts have lit up the lives of millions of people across the world for years.

I still remember my first wing.  It was at Chili's and I was around 8 or 9 years old.  My sister Kerry talked my dad into going and to this day, Chili's wings are among my favorite saucy selections.  

True Story: I once got a girl to go out with me on a date at bar by going up to her asking if she wanted to go with me sometime to Chili's when this commercial was on the TV. The date was terrible, but it happened.

Yes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Buffalo Wings.  Nothing.  Which is why it is such a horrific tragedy that an abomination like boneless wings exist.

Now, I don't claim to be a connoisseur of wings, but I do have very particular preference when it comes to my wings.  I'm picky.  They can't be too big, or breaded, or have too many spices on them.  Its more about consistency than flavor, but its still important.  I admit that just because I don't like a certain wing, it doesn't mean its a bad wing, unless it's boneless.

My first experience with them came at 99 Restaurant and Pub, where they don't even have a normal, all-american, bone-in option!  They were terrible, of course.  And so is 99. (true story: my sister Kerry once got a baked potato from them and it had a worm in it).

Boneless wins.  The only thing they remotely good for is cutting up and throwing on a pizza, that is, if you enjoy ruining perfectly good pizzas.

Most terrible of all, they allow one to eat the chicken with a fork and knife completely circumventing the messy cook out nature of the food.  To eat wings without getting some sauce on your face is like drinking non-alcoholic beer: what's the point?  It rips the very soul from the culinary goddess who gave us this gift.

I just thank God Teressa Bellissimo is not longer with us to see her beaufitufl creation bastardized so ruthlessly.

Boneless Buffalo wings, you're disgusting and very, entirely Overrated.