So the Olympics are pointless and boring, right? Hearing no objection, I’ll assume you agree, and since that was covered in great detail very recently, there’s no reason to beat a dead horse. But when it comes to over-the-top, in-your-face coverage of news about nothing, the Olympics a bronze medal finisher this week, barely making their way onto the medal stand.
Silver Medal – Tim Tebow
He’s baaaaack! And more ubiquitous than ever. Straight from the pages of the “be careful what you wish for” files, America’s most over-hyped quarterback has now joined forces with America’s most over-hyped football team. I can only imagine Five months ago I celebrated the arrival of Peyton Manning to Denver, and (stupidly, it would appear) assumed we were done with Tebowmania for good.
Now, instead of returning to the relative obscurity of Jacksonville, he’s ended up in New York, with the team that ESPN has inexplicably anointed as more important than the Super Bowl champions (who just happen to share a city with them) and force fed us for the better part of 3 seasons. To put this in perspective, I know people who like Tim Tebow, not many, but a few. Everyone I know without exception detests the New York Jets, and believe me, it’s not because of any time they’ve done them wrong on the actual field of play.
Why didn’t Jacksonville just make a Godfather offer for him? Things could’ve been so nice down south. The locals would’ve welcomed back a favorite son and Jags fans could’ve been give a bit of hope by the only thing (divine intervention) that could potentially elevate their team to relevance this year. And if it worked even a little bit? Boom! Automatic folk hero status. Not to mention, no East Coast media circus constantly churning on every piece of non-news.
Instead, we get even more shots of Tim Tebow with his shirt off, looking like he used his special Christ powers to absorb the 3rd-stringer, more Mark Sanchez looking constipated after missing a receiver, and of course, more of Rex Ryan’s (admittedly smaller) jowls, etc. Full disclosure, I picked the Jets to win it all last season. Not because I liked them, or thought they were the best team, but because this is the NFL, where crazy sh*t happens with regularity. I said they’d go 9-7, squeak into the playoffs, pull off some insane upsets and take the crown. Turns out I had the right read on the town, just the wrong team. The Jets were the team that got the help they needed on the final day of the season for the aforementioned squeak…only to cough up a game they had won in the 4th quarter against a lousy Miami team with nothing to play for.
The lesson? I hold a grudge against them for screwing up what would’ve been an epic prediction. The other lesson? All the talk about Rex Ryan being a great motivator feels like crap when his team goes belly-up 10 minutes from the postseason. Special bonus lesson? Mark Sanchez sucks, which is another reason I’m afraid we’re in for Tebowmania 2: Tim Takes Manhattan, at some point this season.
I have no idea where this is going, but I think it’s some place where I end up losing money and my temper this fall due to the results of several Jets games. Stay tuned.
Gold Medal – The Mars Rover
Have you heard about this thing? Of course you have, BECAUSE IT’S EVERYWHERE!!! Well, not everywhere in the literal sense, in fact it’s just on Mars, blistering across the surface at an average speed of 1 cm/sec. Don’t get me wrong, this bad boy can do a full 5 cm/sec, but due to the uncertain terrain on Mars, it only goes for 10 seconds at a clip, then stops to assess its surrounding for 20 seconds before continuing. Riveting stuff, eh? I learned that in the lobby of a Valvoline Instant Oil Change the other day because I couldn't start slamming my head into the wall to lose consciousness fast enough.
Which, as always, is my point, not the fact that they shot the thing into space, but the fact that they need to make such a big effin deal about it. You know what it’s taught us about Mars so far? It’s red. It’s red and made of rock. Congrats, Mr. Rover, you’re now conveying almost as much information as a filmstrip I watched in 4th grade. They called it Curiosity, but Inanity would’ve been a better choice if you ask me.
Before you come at me with the arguments about “furthering this” and “gaining insight into that”, let me reiterate that I am not against them putting a poor man’s R2D2 on Mars in the hopes it might find something interesting. Just wait to splash it all over every form of media until it finds something interesting! Cancer doctors don’t hold a press conference every day to announce that they haven’t found a way to cure cancer, because they know nobody cares. I’d argue that might be the most important scientific pursuit on the plant, certainly more so than lunar go-kart racing, but they’ve got tests to run and a Bunsen burning, no time for meaningless PR.
But hey, much like the Olympics, maybe I’m the problem here. Many people gaze to the stars in wonderment, I do so and think “I really hope we’re not going to go rootin around and wake up something in the middle of Mars that’s going to come down here and kill us."
But hey, I've always been the "glass half-empty" type.
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